‘First things first: if you see me running and you’re not already following me, you should probably start.’
The woman’s eyes were unreadable and her face betrayed no emotion, so he wasn’t sure whether she was joking. She sat behind an unimpressive office desk that looked like something IKEA would sell, her back straight and her haircut so precise it was like her face was contained in a little box. The desk was immaculate and empty except for a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. None of the usual detritus you’d expect to be scattered about the place. Either she never did any work here, or she was extremely fussy about keeping things neat and tidy. The haircut gave him a clue as to which was more accurate.
With this in mind, he decided that she wasn’t joking, but he replied as though she was.
‘I’ll try to remember that,’ he said with a smile.
She gave him a sharp look, but continued.
‘So, Mr Montgomery, are you ready to start the tour?’
He was about to answer but she had already stood up and was making her way to the door. He hurried to follow her.
‘Please call me Anthony, or Tony,’ he said, a little out of breath from trying to catch up to her. ‘Anthony always sounded too formal for me.’
She didn’t even look at him, and kept walking her brisk, precise walk. She was a tall woman, and it seemed to take him two steps to keep up with every one that she took.
The corridor they walked down was coloured like every other office he’d ever worked in: a beige blandness on the walls and a drab grey for the carpet. There were no pictures or artworks, nothing with character, nothing that would mark this place out as important or unique in any way whatsoever. It was cramped, the ceiling down much lower than his brain kept expecting it to be, and the hallway itself was narrow to the point that they had to walk single file. It almost as though he was in a submarine where space was at a premium, and everything had to be as economically designed as possible. He felt a moment of irritation towards the designers.
Then again, they were currently eight thousand meters below sea level, so maybe they’d had to design the facility this way. He wasn’t an architect or engineer, so he didn’t really know about this kind of thing. At least it was well-lit. Maybe a little too well-lit; he realised he’d been squinting from the bright LEDs ever since he’d arrived.
They reached the elevator at the end of the corridor. She swiped a keycard and, after a few seconds of whirring machinery, the doors opened and they stepped inside. She swiped her keycard again, told him to look away, and tapped in a code on the display. The light above it flashed green, and then the lift began to move.
‘I’m going to be honest with you, Mr Montgomery,’ she said, her tone clipped. ‘If it were up to me, you would not be here. This facility houses one of the most dangerous Subjects in the world, and its continued containment requires a level of care and professionalism that I just don’t think you possess.’
She was looking directly at him, her hands clasped together behind her back. A military posture. He didn’t say anything, but waited for her to continue, to get whatever was on her chest off of it. He’d dealt with people like her before.
‘It’s nothing personal,’ she continued. ‘I just know what this job entails, and I can think of several others who are much more qualified than you. However, I know you were appointed as a favour by one of the Overseers, and that kind of decision-making is above my pay grade.’
He opened his mouth to reply, thinking she had finished, but she went on as though she hadn’t seen this.
‘So I need you to try your best to grasp the enormity of what we do here, Mr Montgomery. It isn’t just life of death; it’s the fate of the entire world that’s at stake here.’
‘I—’ he began, but the lift slowed to a stop and the doors opened, interrupting him. She strode out, smooth as butter, into an identical hallway as before, and didn’t even look to see if he was following. He was starting to get annoyed with her.
‘I understand perfectly well what is at stake here, Director,’ he said when he was close behind her again. These damn narrow corridors. ‘I may have only recently learned of this whole project, but I was briefed directly by Overseer Hammond, so I know what we’re dealing with.’
They had reached the end of the hallway in front of two metal doors that looked very thick. She stopped and turned to stare at him, her eyes narrowed, angry. Something he’d said had pissed her off.
‘Mr Montgomery, with all due respect, that’s bullshit. You have no prior experience in anything like this, neither do you have a military background. By all accounts, you’re an abject failure, and you’re only here now because you called in a favour.’
She reached out and scanned her thumbprint on the wall next to the thick-looking metal doors in front of them. As they opened, she continued.
‘I will make peace with the fact that your appointment is another case of political interference, but I will not tolerate you jeopardising our work here. Is that clear?’
Inside, he was furious. The blood was pounding in his ears and he could feel his face had gone red with the effort of suppressing the anger he now felt. When he spoke, his voice quivered, and it made him even more angry, because it sounded like he was holding back tears.
‘Crystal, Director.’
She didn’t bother replying, just turned away from him and walked through the open doors. He followed, and because he was so wrapped up in his internal rage, it took him a moment to realise where he was.
A wide circular corridor stretched out on either side of him, curving around as it went. There was more space here than in the hallways he’d walked through, and the ceiling was higher up, curved just like the walls were. It was like he was inside a big 3D donut. The beige colouring was disposed of here; now everything that wasn’t exposed metal was covered with a glossy white coat of paint that made it all look like some futuristic spaceship. There was a squat rectangular window on the wall, directly in front of where they stood. He could see only blackness through it.
‘Welcome to the Observation Level, Mr Montgomery,’ the woman said.
Tony wasn’t listening. He was slowly walking towards that window, wanting to see outside of it, hoping to catch a glimpse of what he suspected was out there. Hoping, and dreading. He reached the window, but even when he pressed his face close to it, cupping his hands around the sides of his face to block out the bright lights of the facility, he still couldn’t see anything. Disappointment and relief warred in his stomach.
Her voice behind him startled him when she spoke.
‘Turn the exterior lights on for a moment.’
He turned, thinking she was talking to him, but then he saw she was speaking into her hand terminal. A moment later, the darkness outside the window was extinguished as powerful floodlights began flicking to life. At first, all he saw was water and the rest of the facility as it curved around. There was still darkness further down, and he was about to ask why they hadn’t turned the lights on all the way down, when the darkness moved. His breath caught in his throat, his mind rebelling against the sheer largeness he was seeing.
Subject 17.
It moved again, and Tony had to step back, his mind whirling and his stomach roiling. Seeing the thing had woken something atavistic in him, some ancient part of his brain was blindly panicking, sending out signals that told his body he was in mortal peril. The suddenness of this feeling was was like waking up to a lion standing on his chest, baring its teeth and roaring into his face. He stumbled, and fell onto his ass. His teeth clicked, and when the coppery taste of blood filled his mouth he knew he’d bitten his tongue. Not trusting the strength of his arms to lift himself up, or his legs to keep him upright again, he let himself sit for a bit while it felt like world was shifting beneath him.
‘I see you’ve met Levi, Deputy Director.’
He looked up. A kind-faced man with a balding head of hair stared down at him, the ghost of a smile on his face. His hands were in the pockets of his jeans, and wore a thick woollen sweater that looked like it would itch fiercely. After a moment, he removed his hands from his pockets and extended one to Tony, who grabbed it uneasily before the man pulled him to his feet.
Tony ran his hands over his suit, trying to smooth out the creases from his short visit to the ground. The man stuck out his hand.
‘Professor Okoye, Deputy Director.’
Tony took the proffered hand and shook it.
‘Tony Montgomoery. I wish we could’ve met in better circumstances, professor.’
The man waved this comment off.
‘Nonsense. I would have been worried if you didn’t react the way you did. We all had similar reactions. Isn’t that right, Director?’
The Director pursed her lips and didn’t say anything, so Tony spoke to avoid the awkwardness stretching out too long. Besides, he wanted to keep talking to avoid noticing that his legs were still shaking.
‘Professor, what the fuck is that thing?’
He looked at Tony, seeming to assess him, weigh him up. Then he turned to the Director and said, ‘Let’s go get a drink for this.’
The whiskey only burned a little as he downed it, and the second one went down even more smoothly than the first. A warmth filled his belly and spread outwards, reaching into his extremities like someone had poured warm sunlight into his bloodstream. He felt his body relaxing, shrugging off the weak and sickly feelings he’d felt ever since seeing the Subject. The couch beneath him was a faded grey, and looked old, but it was solid enough to keep him upright, which was more than he could say for his legs right now.
‘It’s different, seeing one in person, isn’t it?’ the professor asked. ‘The briefing material never really captures it.’
Tony was going to reply, but he pictured the immense darkness moving again, and he closed his mouth and swallowed hard to suppress the bile rising in his stomach. When he felt he’d got it under control, he spoke, his voice unsteady.
‘I just never expected—sorry, I feel awful.’
The professor gave him a kind smile.
‘As best as we can tell, Subject 17 can emit a low-grade telepathic field that our evolutionary biologists theorise developed to freeze prey in the fight-or-flight response. The prey then floats, unable to decide whether to turn tail and run, or stay and fight, right up until its tentacles have secured the prize. You’re feeling the residual effects of that.’
Tony shivered, but he didn’t feel like his stomach was going to disgorge its contents this time.
‘Well, that might not be the whole story, professor,’ said the Director, who turned to look at Tony. ‘I don’t think we can discount the fact that this thing is like something out of a Lovecraft story. Enough to drive someone mad just looking at it.’
‘I’ve never read any Lovecraft,’ Tony said.
Her face was carefully neutral, but he could almost hear her saying Of course you haven’t.
‘You might be right, Director,’ the professor said with a nod to her, as if he was ceding the point. ‘I do forget sometimes that the primary point of this facility is not to enable my research on Levi, but to ensure he is kept contained. Naturally, you are more concerned with what would happen if he ever gets out.’
He emptied the last of his whiskey, then continued.
‘I, on the other hand, am more concerned with figuring out all we can learn from him. It’s not every day that I have the opportunity to study a creature that was alive before dinosaurs roamed the Earth.’
The professor stood, the plainness of his outfit seeming out of place with the gravity of what he’d just said. His hands were back in his pockets, and he was rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, seeming eager to get back to work.
‘And, with that, I will leave you both to sort out the mundanities of your respective positions. I do hope you settle in well, Deputy Director.’
He moved towards the door, his walk casual and amiable.
‘Before you go, professor,’ Tony said.
The man turned to him.
‘Yes, Deputy Director?’
‘Why do you call him Levi?’
The professor chuckled before answering.
‘Subject 17 is, by far, the largest Subject we have ever encountered,’ he said. ‘So I took to calling him Levi, short for “Leviathan”, Deputy Director.’
With the professor gone, the profound implications of what he had been talking about began to disappate, Tony realised he was alone with the Director, and he suspected her feelings towards him hadn’t changed. Indeed, his embarrassing reaction probably didn’t do him any favours. An awkward silence descened on them, but when she spoke, her tone surprised him. It was softer, almost gentle.
‘I hope now you understand my position. My mission here is to ensure that thing never gets out, because if it did the consequences would be catastrophic. It would be like giving nuclear weapons to terrorists.’
‘I—I think I understand Director,’ he said.
She actually smiled slightly before she spoke again.
‘Like I told you earlier: if you see me running, you should probably start running too.’
Despite it all, Tony laughed. If there was a kind of hysterical edge to it, born from the fear of the thing that he’d seen, he didn’t mind, and the Director seemed to take this as evidence that he was taking it seriously.
‘I won’t let you down, Director,’ he said.
‘Oh, I’m sure you will, but as long as your fuck-ups aren’t so great that—’
Suddenly, a loud noise ripped through their quiet conversation. The whooping and ringing noise hurt his eardrums, and he guessed it was some kind of alarm, though he couldn’t imagine why it needed to be so piercing. He thought it might just be some kind of drill, but when he saw the Director’s face, and saw the colour had drained from it, he knew something was deeply wrong.
They stared at each other as the alarm blared; two more short whoops before it stopped, then a calm, automated voice spoke, announcing the cause of the alert.
‘Subject has breached containment.’
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