J. Mitchell - Midnight City

She heard it constantly now, and it was growing louder, but like most survivors, she had learned to tune it out. She still hadn’t heard the voices, though, and she was grateful for that. The whispers that those who were older claimed they could hear underneath it. And it hadn’t really tested her yet, hadn’t fought her for control, but Mira knew it was all coming, the whole inevitable, grisly affair. As she got older, it would take more and more hold of her, and she would have to work harder to keep it at bay. Until, finally, she didn’t have the strength anymore…

But that was a problem for another time. Right now, she had business to attend to.

She headed toward the power plant, scaling cliffs and pushing through overgrowth as she circled the lake’s shoreline. The sun was almost all the way down by the time she finally reached the old gates and stepped through.

The open space in the middle of the plant was overgrown with weeds now. The fallen tower lay in a broken heap across the ground where it had crashed years ago. Part of it had come down on one of the administration buildings, crushing it to dust.

Unlike most abandoned places these days, Clinton Station had no graffiti, no signs of looting or pillaging, no indication that anyone at all had set foot inside in years.

Mira wasn’t surprised. Some stories were scary enough to keep anyone out of a place, and given the original purpose of the power plant, those stories were undoubtedly hiding and waiting in the dark tunnels beneath her feet.

She moved for the nearest building, her footfalls echoing far too loudly for her comfort.

She stood at the door there a long time, trying to convince herself to simply open it. It wasn’t easy. She could feel the fear trembling through her, fear of what might be beyond. But she hadn’t come all this way, risked everything she had risked, to freeze up here.

Mira steeled herself and reached for the handle. The door opened with a groan of rusty hinges…

…and nothing whatsoever happened. No sounds of spindly legs rushed forward; no shadows writhed and twisted and lunged at her. Everything beyond the door seemed empty and devoid of life.

Mira stepped inside cautiously nonetheless.

It had been a control room of some kind, Mira guessed. The banks of knobs and dials were still in one piece, but covered in so much dust, they were impossible to make out. She brushed some of it away, revealing a host of gauges and switches whose original purposes were long forgotten.

She surveyed the room quickly, found what she was looking for. A big, thick, faded red door in the far wall. She moved to it and wiped the dust away from a sign fastened on its surface.

“Jackpot,” Mira said to herself, smiling.

But what if it wasn’t here? She had traded a lot of artifacts (useful, valuable artifacts) for the information that led her here. Everyone she traded with had seemed trustworthy, but the world had evolved a certain degree of dishonesty. Everyone was a good liar when they had to be. You just never knew anymore.

It would be here, she told herself. It had to be.

Through a window in the control room, Mira saw the last traces of color fading from the sky, being consumed by the dark. She didn’t have much time now.

She pulled her pack loose, set it down on the floor. On the front of it, something had been embroidered into the fabric in bright red thread. A letter from the Greek alphabet, the δ symbol, a marking used the world over now to identify “active” artifacts from the Strange Lands. Her pack was overloaded with them—batteries, watches, vials full of glittering powders, springs, pencils, a bag of paper clips, magnets, lightbulbs, nails, and, of course, dozens of different coins, each wrapped in separate pieces of plastic.

Whenever she looked at the artifacts, they all seemed to writhe and push away from one another, as if some subtle, invisible force was slipping in and out between them. Mira had never decided if it was a real phenomenon or just her imagination.

She shifted through them and found what she was looking for. A large antique lantern that looked like it was ready to fall apart… but Mira knew it never would. At least not outside the Strange Lands. Artifacts were virtually indestructible once taken out. Mira remembered the Librarian’s theory that it was because their molecular structures “froze” once they were extracted. It was a good enough explanation for her.

Mira added oil to the lantern pan, then stuck a wick into a small hole in the bottom and fed it up through the top. But she didn’t light it. Not yet. Not until it was time.

Mira slipped her pack on, grabbed the lantern, pulled a flashlight from her belt… and stared at the big red door waiting in front of her. Her heart beat heavy and thick in her chest. Outside, the sun had set. It was now or never.

Mira opened the door and stepped through. When it shut behind her, pitch black fell over her.

MIRA NEVER KNEW A PLACE could be so dark. Shadows hung like thick curtains all around her. She quickly flipped on the flashlight, sending a beam of light shooting forward. It did very little to drive away the shadows that pushed against the illumination.

She was at the top of a concrete stairwell that descended downward into the dark. Her light didn’t reach very far down, and where it ended, the stairs were swallowed by the thick blackness. Nervously, she started down, each footstep echoing loudly in the tight, concrete confines. Much too loudly.

As she descended the stairs, the shadows crushed in on her. But nothing moved within them. Not yet, anyway. The light in her hand wavered as her hands shook, and each step downward seemed to require more effort on her part to accomplish.

But Mira took every step. After moving for an eternity, she finally reached the bottom, where the tight confines of the stairwell gave way to a much larger tunnel.

Her light still didn’t reach very far, but she could see the chalky concrete tunnel was lined with dark, dust-covered doors leading to different areas of the power plant’s underworkings.

She tried to remember the map the kid in Faust had shown her, even though he wasn’t willing to trade for it. The storage room should be near the end of—

A shuffling from behind her, like something slithering along the floor.

Mira spun quickly around, raised the light. She saw something dark scamper back into the shadows at the other end of the tunnel.

Or had she? Maybe her fear had imagined it for her.

She held the light where she had last seen… whatever it was, but nothing moved there now. Her heart beat heavy in her chest again; her breathing was quick and ragged.

More scampering, something moving for her from the other direction.

She spun once more, shone her light… and saw shadows slither away along the floor. Strange, unsettling clicking sounds—as if from dozens of teeth grinding against each other—echoed from the dark… then faded away.

Okay, that she most certainly had not imagined, and she forced herself to study every open door in front of or behind her.

And in the places where her light could not fully penetrate… the shadows moved. Dark masses of slow movement that writhed just out of reach of the light, waiting and watching.

More scampering, more shapes. This time on the ceiling behind her. Her light pushed it back. More from a door to her left, the hungry clicking sounds came again, louder.

Mira knew the flashlight was about to become useless. They knew she was here now, they would be on her any second…

She struck a match from a pocket and lit the wick jutting out of the lantern.