Patrick Lee - The Breach

A few of the guys teamed up and tried to demand that we stop going to the chamber to listen to the sound up close. They are saying that it does something to us, and that we're causing grief as a result. But we aren't causing ALL the arguments, I don't think. So nice try, but you guys can fuck off. I shouldn't get pissed like this.

The sound is pretty soothing now. It's all that keeps me in my wits down here. When will they come for us?

TIME IS HARD TO FOLLOW LATELY, I THINK IT IS A DAY LATER

I have this weird, shitty hunch about Ruben Ward, but don't want to write it down.

Also, I have to admit, I'm having a hard time staying focused, and today my right arm was shaking for like an hour when I was out in the chamber. But it's not from the sound. I really do like it quite a bit.

QUITE A LOT LATER

My hunch is Ruben is faking now. Was really unconscious at first, of course, but faking now so that he can stay out of the arguments and not have to side with me against all of these fucking people. It pisses me off if it's true. I tried really hard to wake him up just now, hitting him in the face even. Then many of the others pulled me away from him (of course they would if he's on their side the cowardly piece of shit). Now I am out in the hall by the chamber writing this.

Only the voices from the breach (we started calling it the breach, we like that name for it) make it better.

I will tolerate these people, but I know I would not lose sleep if they all got hit by a goddamned bus.

MANY, MANY HOURS (IT MIGHT BE A DAY OR MORE) LATER

Why? Why are you doing this? You don't have to be doing this.

Graham and Kurson and I were in the chamber for a long time and came back to find the rest had jammed the door shut with one of the desks. Graham was rightly upset and tried to break in through the glass, but the polycarbonate is very strong.

Not even kidding, I would love to kill all of these people, and Graham is the same. Kurson just nods, I wonder if he is only telling us what we want to hear.

I like the blue and purple there is a dance to it.

HOURS I THINK BUT TIME IS GETTING IMPOSSIBLE TO KNOW

Kind of losing the knack for keeping all that stuff straight, hours and minutes. I think I've taken for granted all my life how hard time is to keep track of. Quite hard. Quite a trick to it, I think.

STILL DAVE HERE DID I MENTION THAT?

No desire to go back into the room with the others, but just the principle involved drives me mad. I stand at the glass and look in at them, and they won't look at me, and fucking Ruben you fake coward motherfucker, I swear you are going to pay.

But mostly I am calm. Never been calm like this and I love it.

GRAHAM HAD A VERY GOOD IDEA

he broke off a metal conduit in the back of the chamber (took him forever kicking to break it) and is using the sharp break point to scratch a line through the polycarbonate window in the door. it's working, too!!! he has carved half an inch into the window on one side, and then this is great, he carved just the shape of the whole square he's going to cut into it, so those assholes can see what he has planned. he is a very smart man, it makes sense that he is secretary of the department of energy. we are going to get in there within a couple days and then ruben i am going to mount you like a fucking baboon i swear.

THE BREACH GAVE US SOMETHING

it must have come out a little while ago, a piece of green fabric the size of a napkin, did not see it come out, but I noticed it lying underneath the breach, and it had not been there before. tried to pick it up, but this makes no sense at all… it weighs hundreds of pounds, i just cannot lift it. graham and i together were able to slide it, try to smooth it out on the floor, what the hell is it??? i am not going crazy, it really weighs hundreds of pounds, this tiny little thing!

GRAHAM IS AWESOME

he lost it for a while and was pounding the conduit against the door window and then noticed a huge (huge) flap of his palm had torn away and was hanging, and right in front of them watching he took it in his teeth and ripped it free. he is an awesome man we killed kurson, not really a choice, we just set on him all of a sudden, it happened. no one's fault really, so it's fine.

WHO IS IT SINGING IN THE BREACH?

voices are so beautiful please i need to know who it is.

RESCUE!!! HAHAHAHAHA

(graham died this morning, don't even know how, someone had torn out his throat while he slept.) later two men in yellow suits and mountain climber gear pried open the elevator doors just like that, no warning, i was able to kill one with the conduit but the other was weasel quick and got away through the top of the elevator cab screaming don't.

BULLHORN ALL DAY

they are talking from high up in the elevator shaft i don't care just shut the fuck up, goddamn all of you. very upset that the window is still intact and these people may survive especially ruben he was supposed to die. sitting at the breach makes it okay. it is a day at the breach get it? i should be fine after all this, if i can stay here.

I THINK I KNOW WHO

ghost little girls. that's who is in there. that's who is singing in the breach.

Travis closed the bloodied notebook and caught the end of one of Paige's calls. The plane was twenty minutes away.

She nodded at the notebook. "What followed is what you imagine. The next team that roped in had guns." She was quiet for a moment, then said, "The Breach Voices are just one of a thousand things we're completely in the dark about. Their origin, their meaning, the reason for their effect on people. We just don't know, probably never will. I think about David Bryce often. Top of his class at MIT, father of four, respected by everyone who ever met him. He couldn't see the danger, even sitting in front of it with his eyes wide open. I sometimes worry that's the only story the Breach knows how to tell."

She led him back into the hall, and toward the open space at the end. The darkness there looked wrong: given what Travis had read, the Breach should be visible from right here. A few steps later he saw why it wasn't. They entered the cavernous chamber to find a hulking black shape nearly filling it, a dome the height of a three-story building.

To the right along the dome's base was an entry channel like that of an igloo. As they approached it, Travis saw the ghostly blue and purple light Bryce had described, projected through the entry onto the concrete wall of the chamber. Ten feet shy of it stood a simple metal table. Paige left her phone and watch there. Travis followed suit with his own watch.

He thought she'd head for the entry then, but she stopped, stared at him, her eyes working something out.

"You were a cop," she said. "A detective."

He nodded.

"Were you good?"

He breathed a laugh. "By no stretch was I a good cop."

"I know you were corrupt. I meant good at it. Were you good at detective work? Did figuring things out come naturally to you?"

He didn't hear judgment in her voice. Something else. Contemplation, he thought. He wondered why.

"Yeah. I was good at it."

Her eyes on him, unblinking. Then narrowing in thought.

"That might end up being useful," she said. "It's not often we get fresh eyes around here. I'll explain a lot more on the plane. For now I just need you to know what's at stake."

With that, she led him to the dome's entry, and through its heavy glass door.

Like looking into a depth. Into a furnace. As Bryce had written. The Breach was an oval ripped open across thin air, ten feet wide by three high. Blue and violet tendrils of light, flamelike in their substance but not in their shape, capered along the length of the tunnel, which was three feet in diameter and receded to infinity. Only in the nearest yard did the tunnel flare out to the wide oval.