Chapter 1

It oscillated.

Was that the right word? Yes, she supposed so. It rose and fell, but permeated an outward motion. As if forward and backward wasn’t enough. It needed to do more. It yearned for more.

Her first night had been a bit of a blur. She remembered passing through a vail, as if the wind had been sucked out of her just by walking across the threshold. Her socks scuffed on the ground. It looked smooth enough; a tart grey flavour. It felt coarse, like a rough blanket. As if all the dust in the world was lacquered under a sheen of paint. Tiny ridged bumps that caught her toes and rubbed against the ball of her foot.

So she’d lost her shoes. Oh no – there they were, pinched between her fingers. She laid her blood red leather platforms into the ground, “Shoosh”-ing them as she stood to her height.

It certainly set her mood amongst the throng of activity that greeted her. But there was no one in sight. She felt a thousand bodies whirling around her, but that may have been pure inertia. She felt like she was standing on an uneven floor – completely balanced, although somewhat feverishly active, as if the world under her feet was spinning. A not entirely unpleasant experience, a bit like being drunk and wobbling out of the Lamb and Flag of an evening expecting the next stage of the night to be thrust upon her.

Colour. The edge of her vision was filled with it. She had no idea how long she’d been stood there, but it was long enough to feel pins and needles creeping up her legs. It pushed against her thick black tights. Tights! Oh God, she’d been out! With Tricia, who’d tried to set her up with one of her friends, but she knew he wasn’t her type. He was all turtlenecks and local ale.

The room was an odd space. It bequeathed a pink-ish glow, cut through by orange streaks. She felt them against her cheeks, like a warm razor’s edge. Her form cast shadows on the intermittently pitted wall which did little to bolster her confidence. She’d picked out her most flattering dress; a little black denim number which gave her space to tuck a yellow jumper close to her waist.

She turned her attention fully to the room before her. A little bigger than the space she attended classes in, but it felt so much larger. A cool breeze brushed her ankles. She noticed a door standing ajar against the far wall. Through the gap it teased, she could see nothing but the same uniform grey floor stretching a few dozen feet beyond.

Before her was a hexagonal sculpture. It seemed complex and yet legible. The rising and falling motion she’d clocked emanated from a cylinder in the centre, which plunged down and crept up. A spinning cradle design within shot twinkles of dotted beams out across the walls. Lights danced across its flatter surfaces, broken up by strangely understandable switches, dials and levers. She was instinctively aware of a sound filling her consciousness. Had it been there the whole time? She wasn’t sure, but it spoke to her. A homely drone which didn’t seem to have an immediate source. It was everywhere.

She felt her shoulders drop, unaware that she’d been holding them to attention for the last few minutes. Or was it seconds? She seemed to lose track of time here.

She was drunk. She must be. Her face was glowing. The space between the gouge of her eyes and nose was cold, so she must has cried. She only cried in public after a few pints; her Dad’s homebrew had told her that. Her teeth were fizzing with the touch of hops, so she must have sunk a few. But it was Wednesday night and her first lecture started at 12pm, so there was no need to fret.

The flickering of multi-coloured lights beneath her eyes drew her focus back to whatever it was that stood in front of her. She could tell it was delicate and important, but she felt an instinctive need to touch it, like a museum exhibit that dared you to step beyond the security rope. She took a yawning step forward and caught her balance on the edge of the console.

She pressed her palms against the nearest control, a stick with a ball on the end which lent towards. Red under her hands, it gave off a stunningly dangerous flavour. Was it dangerous? Yes, she supposed so, but the right kind of danger. It hummed under her fingers. It hadn’t snapped forward, but she guessed that was a good thing. So she pushed. It gave a reassuring resistance to her will, before slipping forwards.

As the lever hit its maximum, the huge pair of double doors in front of her slammed shut. She was trapped. She’d walked straight into an unfamiliar place and caught herself in its midst. She ran forward, almost tripping over her clumsily placed DMs and attacked the door. Well, actually she just kind of draped herself across them lazily clattering them with her hand.

She snapped back. The room felt a lot bigger now. The shadows she had ignored lingered with an intense blackness. Someone could’ve been stood against what she assumed was the far wall and she wouldn’t even know.

Her chest tightened. Her mind raced with a thousand possibilities. What had she stumbled into? It wasn’t frightening, but she was sure this wasn’t a great place to be. It didn’t give off a bad vibe, but Casey knew she shouldn’t be there. She was trespassing for sure. She must have wandered into one of those swanky new banking developments on the harbourside – the kind of place that radiated unpleasantness.

Before she could fall deeper into her panicked state, she felt something rub against her shins. Casey yelped and peered down. A ginger cat looked up to her. Well-fed and calm, it could’ve have followed her in. But offices don’t usually have cats, so she assumed it must have trailed her off the streets.

Becoming her main concern, Casey bowed to pick it up. With a chirp, it dashed towards the middle of the room and stopped to bump the hard edges of the centre structure’s base. She helped herself down to the floor and put out a reassuring hand.

“Hey puss - come on”, she cooed. It turned its head in her vague direction, in that way cats do when they half-admire your attempts to communicate with them. She walked on her knees towards it, quietly calling out, expecting a security guard to scare her out of her skin at any moment. At least she’d be caught doing something innocuous.

Five feet away from the cat’s tail, it darted to the half open door against the further reaches of the room, the one that she’d warily noted earlier. Casey threw herself to her feet and ran to catch it, hoping she’d made the right call in assuming it didn’t belong here either. Its back half disappeared through the small gap in the frame and dissolved into the gloom beyond. She stopped short of following.

Casey turned back to the console and eyed the control that had sealed the doors shut. She nipped over and pulled it back towards her. The double doors whirred open and she saw the quiet city beyond the gap in the identical walls. “Okay”, she mused, and made a mental note of the lever’s position on the hexagonal board. She pushed it forward again and the city closed behind the tall concave flaps.

As if inviting her further in, a soft yowl came from the single door behind her back. She brushed her dress down, pushed her glasses against her brow and followed the tabby into the darkness.