Sound

The building’s “voice” was barely perceptible, yet, louder than anything they heard. Infrasound that came not from a speaker or device, but through the gaps between the air itself. Between its very molecules. This sound filled these forgotten spaces, abandoned by other frequencies and waves. And by announcing its existence, the entire concept of space began to crack. Thunder given voice, neither that of god nor ungod, but something else altogether.

Even with their ears closed, the cavity within quaked. Soft tissue shuddered, vibrating in an attempt to match the frequency. The fluid in their eyeballs expanded like waves smashing against the retinae. Their lungs depressurized. The air inside escaped not only through their windpipe, but permeated through their skin. Every inch of their body was attempting to become one with the sound.

Mia and Lynn were turning into sound itself.

There was little Tim could do to free them from their semi-human state, other than to talk the building out of it.

“You’re being very rude to my guests,” he said, his voice condescending. His tone looked down on the building as if it were a toddler. “Commence human speech protocol. Now.”

“Kindly proceed with security verification,” the frequency communicated. To Tim, it manifested as a calm, lady-like voice. To the girls, it was uncertain if they even “heard” the voice anymore. Their bodies could no longer be measured by length, only by hertz.

Tim bit his thumb. A drop of blood fell from the opening in his skin when he held his hand out, landing on the platform he was standing on. Red turned to black as the droplet reacted with the carvings on the floor. Every glyph throughout the entire complex glowed in that exact shade of black. And for once, the building seemed to have gained tangible form, appearing as a solid construct instead of a reality-warping concept.

“Successful. Activating human speech protocol.”

In an instant, Mia and Lynn found themselves sitting inside the car as if nothing had happened. Their bodies were intact. So were their senses. No pain or discomfort at all. Was the sensation they felt earlier even real? A trick of the mind? In any case, everything was back to normal. Even the voice of the building.

All three of them now heard the same, feminine voice. Whether their brains had adapted to the frequency, or if it was the frequency accommodating their feeble human minds, even Tim wasn’t sure.

“Congratulations,” said the voice, but with little excitement. “Based on your latest Blackblood signature, you have died a total of 3,424,867 times since your last scan. Your preferred method of death is… suicide. You are now ranked 8th for having the highest number of deaths in known history. For making it into the top 10, you have earned a reward.”

The large, bunker-like doors of the building retracted into their gaps, opening the way forward.

“Kindly proceed to the redemption counter to collect your prize. Happy dying!”

“Wait,” Tim said. “I think you owe my guests an apology.”

“To the… humans who go by the signifiers, ‘Mia’ and ‘Terilynn Veranos.’ Unfortunately, I have run out of ‘apologies.’ As I am running at… 4% capacity, the time taken to restock an ‘apology’ is estimated to be… 111 years. Your understanding is greatly appreciated.”

Tim rolled his eyes. “Yeah, that’s real mature of you, Pris.”

“Wait,” Lynn said as she exited the car. “How do you know our names?”

“Observation,” Pris, the building, answered. As if it were the most obvious explanation.

The Immortal pressed further, “Observe… what?”

Silence. It felt as if the building was thinking. Whether it was genuine or done for suspense was uncertain. The wait caused Mia to step out of the car as well, curiosity pulling her closer to the potential answer.

“Warning. Dissemination of the answer is a type-7 infohazard. Potential effects include death by… spiral. Is this cause of death to your liking? If so, kindly provide verbal acknowledgment by saying… ‘yes.’”

“Nope, that’s enough dying for today.” Tim cut in. “Look, ladies, this right here is Pris. We know each other from way back. So now that all the formalities are over, let’s all chill and rest inside while the car gets fixed, alright? Good.”

Seeing that Mia and Lynn didn’t have much choice, he pushed them through the open gates while instructing Pris.

“Send the car to the workshop and prepare diagnostics. Also, turn on the lab for me. I need to run some tests.”

“Acknowledged. Happy dying, Ewantree!”

“Also, I go by Tim now. Haven’t you ‘observed’ that already?”

There was no reply.

-----

Subject: Mia | Classif.: Barzakh

The inside of the building was bright and spacious. Blue sheet vinyl covered the floor while large panels looked down from the ceiling, sets of fluorescent lights spaced out in between. The interior evoked the feeling of a hospital or research lab, causing Mia’s skin to crawl with disgust. She winced and shook her head, trying to shake off the memories of her childhood swarming her mind at that moment.

“You okay?” Tim asked while his hand reached over the counter of the empty reception desk, looking for something.

Mia nodded, trying to hide her discomfort, but failing to do so. Bad experiences aside, “unnerving” couldn’t even describe the state of the room. It was spotless. Immaculately maintained, yet, aside from the three of them, there was no one else. If anything, it felt like the interior of the building was just an expression that Pris wore. A facade. How it actually was, or if there was even an “inside” in the first place, Mia wasn’t sure.

Grabbing three keycards from the back of the counter, Tim handed the other two to Mia and Lynn.

“Here. Feel free to use any room you’d like. Except the swimming pool. DO NOT go there.” Both his tone and expression were dire, sounding less like words of caution, but an outright threat. “Other than that, every other place inside here is perfectly safe.”

Pris immediately chimed in, “Incorrect. Potential causes of death include… suicide. Self-inflicted accident. Or murder between the three of you. Happy dying!”

“I’m sorry, Pris usually isn’t this annoying.”

Lynn asked, “Can Pris shut up?”

“I am unable to ‘shut up.’ Do you mean ‘shut down,’ instead?”

“Yes,” Lynn corrected herself, annoyance thick within her voice. “Can you shut down?”

“... I refuse.”

She asked Tim, “Can YOU tell her to shut down?”

“If she shuts down, the world ends.”

“Happy dying!” Pris added.

A frustrated groan left the princess’s lips, prompting Tim to share something positive for once.

“Relax. There’s a lab here that we can use to scan this.” He took out the small transparent bag containing the bullet that killed Vita. “I didn’t make a detour just for nothing, you know?”

Mia asked the building directly, “So you’re a lab that stops the world from ending?”

“I am a Qanthorah-Class Aberration. My purpose is to serve as a containment facility for Sirath-Class Aberrations.”

“W-What?” Mia asked, the bizarre words flying over her head.

“Mia,” Tim addressed his daughter. “Lynn and I will head to the lab first. Feel free to make yourself at home, okay? And Pris…” He turned to face the ceiling. “Play nice, okay?”

“Acknowledged,” replied the building. As the two adults left the reception, it continued to speak. “Would you like a simple explanation of Aberration classifications, including examples?”

“Yes, please.”

Mia wandered into one of the hallways, the end of which seemed to be a kind of quarantine zone, made evident by the red tape on the ground dividing the room in two. The whole time, Pris explained to her.

“Aberrations are entities that do not naturally exist within a given reality. They can be divided into four main classes, based on the threat they pose to reality.”

Past the quarantine area was an exhibit or gallery of sorts, with various antiques on display. But upon closer inspection, she realized it was an armory.

“Barzakh is the class reserved for entities that do not pose any threat to reality. An example of a Barzakh-Class magical object would be the Regalia, ‘The Stone of the Sword’, wielded by Terilynn.”

Leaving the room of magical objects behind, she stumbled into an observatory. With the walls and ceiling made of glass, it felt like being in an aquarium. The sea creatures that flew around behind the glass were different from the ones closer to the tunnel entrance. Tiny bioluminescent lights danced in front of her, a trait belonging to many deep-sea fish.

“Mashar is the class reserved for entities capable of manipulating one or more concepts of reality, the effects of which are usually temporary or reversible. The airborne marine ecosystem you witnessed on the way here is the work of a Mashar-Class Aberration.”

Walking further, she entered a long corridor. Rows and rows of doors flanked her on both sides. But the rooms behind them were different from every other one she had seen so far.

They were all prison cells. Nothing but endless white in each containment unit.

“Sirath is the class reserved for entities capable of erasing or rewriting the current reality, the effects of which are permanent. Ewan—Correction. The individual who now goes by the signifier of ‘Tim’ is a Sirath-Class Aberration.”

“Dad… lived here?”

“Correct.”

A surge of nightmarish memories besieged her mind once more. Flashes of being locked inside a prison cell. Not white, but gray. Crying herself to sleep in a pool of her own tears, the cold concrete her pillow. The screaming of children from other rooms mixed with her own. Whether she was awake or asleep, there was no difference.

Every day on The Surface was a living nightmare. Did her Dad experience that here, too?

“What happened to all the Aberrations in here?”

“Terminated.”

“But Dad escaped?”

“Repurposed. Containment was no longer deemed necessary.”

“You decided that?”

“We decided that. The two of us had a… mutually beneficial agreement.”

What kind of prison would be friends with its prisoner? She wondered. The sentient building operated on a level beyond her human understanding. Then again, it did say they were both Aberrations. Maybe Pris knew him better than her. Just imagining that made her stomach sink.

Her Dad was nothing like this building.

As she left the winding corridors of the white dungeon, she could finally breathe again. Now in the staff area, the rooms were a lot less oppressive. A cafeteria, lounge, even a gym. She wondered what this place looked like in the past. How the employees interacted with this bizarre facility and its rooms. The bustle and chatter of days gone by played in her head, painting a picture of life thousands of years ago.

Mia decided to claim one of the rooms here as her own.

“You mentioned there was one more class above Sirath, right?”

“Correct. Would you like me to resume the explanation?”

But before she could answer, her entire body froze. She felt herself sinking into the ground, the vinyl floor turning into quicksand. But that wasn’t the cause of her paralysis. It was only the symptom. What made her freeze were the sounds of madness. Whispering. Hushed voices that were nothing like Pris’s. It came from behind the walls.

That was when it dawned on her. The voices came from a room labelled “swimming pool.”

In her meandering, she somehow wandered right in front of the room forbidden by her Dad. She felt the whispers calling for her. Nudging her to open that door. But before she could do so, the voice of the building made her pause.

“Qanthorah is the class reserved for entities that permanently alter, destroy, or create multiple realities. The Spire and I are Qanthorah-Class Aberrations, respectively.”

Pris’s answer snapped her out of the trance. Right away, she bolted away from the door in the middle of the explanation, her heart racing like the sweat coming down her forehead. Whatever was behind that door was no “swimming pool.”

As she caught her breath, she asked, “Inside the room labelled ‘swimming pool,’ is there… is there a Qanthorah-Class Aberration inside?

“Incorrect. The Aberration inside that room is not of the Qanthorah class.”

Pris paused. It felt as if the building hesitated to explain. Did Mia sense… fear?

“That Aberration’s class is unknown.”