I should have known better. There's no excuse. I'm such an idiot. AN IDIOT! I thought I was so clever. I thought I'd tie off the rope to the desk and get him out of that strange room. And I completely forgot about the door.
The locking mechanism sounded no different from any large metal utility door, and when I opened it, he was gone. Roark was gone, leaving nothing but the strange room on the other side. I cried out, again and again. I screamed. I even poked my head through the door frame to look around. I felt the force that pulled him through immediately as my hair fell straight forward to the opposite linoleum wall, as if pulled by a magnet.
I should have known that something like this would happen. I should have known the power of thresholds in magical spaces. I should have been more wary, more thoughtful. I shook my head and checked my phone for the fifth time in the last minute.
Brace had already responded, but I kept expecting, or hoping for, an additional message. Some bit of insight or advice that the pseudo-shamanistic man always seemed to have. I read my messages again, relaying Roark's disappearance. I took a deep breath and sighed a shuddering sigh, then sat on the desk. Yes, that desk, and stared out of the open window into the decrepit seventh floor of the tower.
I'm letting my anxiety get the best of me. I'm beating myself up for not knowing what I couldn't have known. I'm worried about Roark, I feel guilty, but it's not my fault. This whole situation is impossible to gauge, and that's not my fault. I tried to shore up my frantic thoughts with that rationalization, but my heart was having none of it. Every time I tried to forget, I just saw him falling through the door, and me stupidly acting before I thought and leaving to tie off the rope. I could hear his cries as the door closed.
I sobbed silently, and my vision started to become blurry. Scowling sourly, I smacked my cheeks. I messed up once, so I'm going to turn into some useless crybaby? There's still things I can do. I'm not going to wait here uselessly feeling bad for myself.
It was a quarter past three when I finally arrived. I parked at an abandoned power junction two blocks away, where a black utility truck might not look so suspicious in the middle of the night, and jogged the rest of the way to the site. It was witching hour. The final darkest hour before the light of a distant dawn begins to call attention to our actions. My long stride carried me swiftly to the brick tower. The Echo Valley Commerce Center. I'd done some reading on my drive over, gleaning as much information as I could in an effort to put some story together that would make sense of Tali's texts. It was an industrial tower with floors rented out by one bank, one mining company, an advertisement agency, a law firm, and a lobby organization. All owned by a small cabal of deeply intertwined local aristocracy. Bituminous coal was the common denominator between all elements. Sure, the town had commercial districts and manufacturing, but the maypole around which all money danced was the Echo Valley Commerce Center.
I easily vaulted myself up the broken first floor of the fire escape, my heavy form causing creaks and snapping to ripple up several floors. I would have been more cautious in other situations, but Tali and Roark needed me. I scrambled up the fire escape to the seventh floor and slipped through the open door I found there.
The inside was a mess of offices and hallways, but it wasn't hard to find the white window Tali had told me about. I was surprised by what I found when I got there.
The window was wedged open with bricks, and on the other side, a rope was tied around the middle of a desk, which had been positioned perpendicular to the door that led deeper into the office. The once clean glossy desk was now covered in a layer of new dust and had "FIRST DOOR ON LEFT. UTILITY HALLWAY" written in rich brown lipstick on the surface.
My stomach dropped. Had Tali gone ahead without me?
I hopped over the desk and into the overlapping office space Tallulah had described in her texts. I followed the taut rope into this surreal space and realized that Tali was taking no chances with doors any longer. The door from the desk room to the office had been pried off its hinges, presumably with a crowbar, and lay on the floor. The next door from the office to the white hallway was in a similar state. I rushed through both until I came face to face with a metal door. This door was wedged open with more bricks. Continuing to follow the path of the rope, it turned at a right angle, pulled on by a change in the orientation of gravity, then traced a line out into the darkness.
To say I was shocked was an understatement, but there were more important matters to deal with.
"TALI!" I boomed out as I stuck my head inside the door.
"I'm here!" was the distant echoless cry from inside.
I peeked inside, making sure to brace myself for the shift in gravity Tali had warned me about, and looked around. I could see the lino, where light from the door cast a rectangular glow on the far wall, but everything else on all sides descended into shadow. Everything except a beam of light, dancing around in the distance. Moments passed, and Tali appeared wielding a flashlight. Even though she warned me about what to expect, I still couldn't help but gape. She was walking on the far wall, rope secured to a climbing harness around her waist, and dangling at an odd orientation thanks to the shift in gravity. My shock was drowned out by my relief.
"Thank god." I sighed. "Girl, are you trying to give me a heart attack? I thought I'd lost both of you."
"I left you a message," she stated flatly.
"You should have texted me your plan, at least," I sighed.
She replied sharply, "You would have told me not to go exploring on my own."
"Yes, I would have!" I raised my voice. "Because you shouldn't!"
"We don't have time for this!" she snapped back. I recoiled, and she continued. "Roark is missing, and I'm not going to sit on my ass and waste time when I can be looking for him."
I sighed, nodded, and agreed. "Yeah... I get it. I just didn't want to lose you too."
"Don't say it like that." She grumbled as she untied the rope from her harness. "Here," She instructed. "Come on down. Go feet first, or you'll fall on your head."
Somewhat hesitantly, I grabbed the rope, sat down, and stuck my feet through the door. I felt the strange gravity take hold of them, causing them to dangle, then slowly started to let that gravity drag me down, like slowly being dumped out the back of a dumpster. My center of mass crossed the threshold, and immediately I repelled the short distance down to the lino wall that had become the floor.
"I've already explored the darkness. It goes on forever, and Roark isn't here."
Still catching up to so many impossibilities, I replied with a quip, "So you explored forever?" I was trying to introduce a bit of levity, and encourage her to have some hope that he'd still be somewhere here, but her reply was cold and analytical.
"I explored 90 feet out in every direction. 60 feet for one rope, and 30 feet for half the length of the rope tied to the desk. Then I shouted as loud as I could but didn't hear an echo. It basically goes on forever."
"That doesn't mean Roark isn't out there. I have some more rope, we can go further and..."
"That won't help." She cut me off. She sighed and looked down. "Sorry, Brace. I'm... really glad you're here, but I've already done everything that makes sense."
"Well, we have to keep trying," I replied.
"No."
Her response confused me, but after a moment of serious contemplation, she stated flatly, "We have to close the door."
A chill went down my spine, and I stared at her in silence. She let me process the declaration before continuing her case.
"He didn't wander off into the darkness in a matter of seconds. He vanished the moment the door closed. It couldn't have been more than a second before I opened it again, and he was already gone."
"But... maybe this door opens to a different space every time it opens. We don't know how this bullshit works."
She shook her head again. "I considered that, but look." She pointed and I turned my eyes to the lino. I didn't see what she was talking about at first, but at the right angle, catching the reflection of the light, I could see the faintest imprint of boot treads.
"Those belong to Roark. This is the same place he fell. It's like I said. He disappeared when the door closed."
"Well goddamn." I muttered. "Friggin hawk eye right there. Good spot." I smirked at her, and she rolled her eyes but smirked back.
"I've been doing this for the past four hours. I just really want to find him." Her voice trembled under the weight of restrained anxiety.
"I know... I do too." I replied softly. I offered a hug, and the tiny woman fell exhausted into my open arms.
People always said I gave good hugs. The benefit of long arms, a stocky core, and a high body temperature, I guess, but I couldn't complain. I wasn't the best with words, but I could always tell when someone needed a hug. I patted her on the back as she squeezed all the fear out of her body. When we finally split, she had a calmer, more determined look on her face. Just call me the energizer bunny.
After a moment of silence, I met her eyes. "Are you sure about closing the door?" She looked around the darkened room again, then met my gaze with her dark and serious eyes and nodded.
"I am." She declared resolutely.
"Then, I'm staying with you. Whatever happened to Roark, we're in this together."
She let out a gasp, clearly not expecting my reply, then smiled with relief and nodded.
We left the rope tied to the desk bundled up by the utility door and repacked the rest of our supplies in our backpacks. The only thing keeping the door open now was an old broken broom handle wedged in the doorway, that I was tall enough to dislodge by jumping up. The plan was that after the door closed, Tali could climb on my shoulders to open it up again if needed, but of course, neither of us expected that would be an option. I kind of hoped it'd be like a portkey or something, and we'd end up in Tahiti where I could spend my Emergency Time Off in relaxation, but I figured the odds of that were about one in a trillion, give or take a few billion.
"You ready?" I asked Tali.
"Do it," she replied.
I nodded, took a deep breath, and jumped, knocking the broomstick free of the door frame. Tali and I held hands as we watched the door close slowly, stealing away the light until nothing but a small sliver remained. I was nervous as hell, but a brief moment of introspection passed through my mind. This is obviously stupid. Who knows what type of existential horror could be waiting for us when that door closes. Am I really okay with risking everything for my friends?
Despite it all, I looked down at Tali and gave her a goofy grin.
Yeah. I am.
She met my gaze with confusion. She couldn't know why I was smiling like an idiot at such a desperate time like this, but I knew.
With an impossible calm, I let her know, "We're going to find him."
With that, the door snapped shut.
