D3CONF3D3RATION

I stood before the impassive door in the dimly lit hallway, my palm pressing against it gently. The door swung open silently, revealing a brightly sun-lit room, expansive in every direction, with a seamless, opaque skylight for a roof and walls made of the same material, letting in light from all directions, erasing any shadows in the corners. The room was very much a warehouse, filled with lines of wooden bookcases that sometimes were organized in straight rows and sometimes…

Read More Read More

Justine and Daniel followed me into the hall, paying attention to everything I said and did. They didn’t say anything while I was examining the mysterious door that I was drawn to earlier, the one I told myself I was not ready to enter. I turned to look down the other end of the hall, showing in the dim lights above the door to Dr. Elena Vasquez’s laboratory. It was like the door I was just looking at, with no…

Read More Read More

I felt someone gently shaking my shoulder, massaging it a bit and then getting a bit more insistent. I could smell an intoxicating fragrance of soapy roses that burned my nostrils a bit by its sharpness. Someone was speaking to me, quietly at first and then impatience creeping into a woman’s voice. My eyelids fluttered a bit, and I winced in the bright light coming fromoverhead. I could see the outline of the woman speaking to me, and then focussed…

Read More Read More

I counted the hours by the hum of the lights. The skylight dimmed and brightened on a cycle I had no way to measure, but I started to feel its rhythm—a slow breath of light and shadow that had nothing to do with the sun. Someone outside was controlling it. Someone who wanted me to lose track of time. I didn’t. I lay on the bunk and listened. Not to the speaker—to the room itself. The ventilation grate in the…

Read More Read More

I sat on the edge of the bunk, my feet flat on the cold concrete, my hands resting on my knees. The residue of the meadow still flickered at the edges of my vision—a faint shimmer of green, the ghost of a stream I could almost hear. But I wasn’t chasing it anymore. I was thinking about the speaker. It was embedded in the ceiling, flush with the concrete, unremarkable. A small circular grille painted the same grey as everything…

Read More Read More

I lay on the lower bunk of the bed in his cell, settling in for what he new would feel like an eternity. The mattress was as uncomfortable as he expected, even though everything in the room seemed to have rarely ever been used. The sheets and pillow had a stale odour but were clean and crisp, and the springs of the bunk above him were in pristine condition. The floor was polished concrete and free of debris, other than…

Read More Read More

I woke up and didn’t know how long I had been sleeping, with no windows to tell me that the time on the clock ticking on the wall was the actual time or not. The laboratory I was contained in was dim now, with the overhead lights turned off and only a few sconces around the room lighting up the benches of beakers, tubing and the carefully labelled jars and bottles of chemicals lining the shelves about the counters. I…

Read More Read More

The taste of copper and antiseptic dragged me back to consciousness like a fishhook through my sinuses. My head felt stuffed with cotton batting, and every breath carried the sterile bite of filtered air. Not the mountain cabin’s pine-scented atmosphere, not even the leather interior of Justine’s limousine. Somewhere else entirely. I tried to sit up and immediately regretted it. The world tilted sideways, and my stomach lurched in protest. Whatever they’d used to knock me out had left my…

Read More Read More

The gloomy clouds over the mountain-lined valley never lifted and seemed to get denser as the afternoon passed into evening. The sun was a pale disk beyond the clouds, lighting up the glacial lake to mirror the grey sky, reflecting like polished silver plate. We were still going through books that were relevant to the predicament the Valdorians had set up for Daniel, trying to find the best way out. The news story had broken as Daniel had intended, thanks…

Read More Read More

We found the canoe wedged between two rocks on the far shore, its hull scuffed but intact. Daniel righted it, checked for leaks, and gestured for me to climb in. The paddle strokes were slow and deliberate, the lake’s surface glassy under the late afternoon sun. Neither of us spoke much. There was nothing left to say about JD Ruff—he was gone, and the echoes of his visit were already rippling outward. By the time we rounded the final bend…

Read More Read More