Open Room

The Fulcrum rattled.

‘Keep doing that,’ I said.

‘I don’t know what I’m doing,’ Hasegawa replied but kept her hand tensed toward the door.

I needed a surface for the Fulcrum. I tried pulling it with both hands or against my chest, but it didn’t fuse. Then I fused it to a resistance band and pulled them apart, like opening a massive bag of chips. The force application was far from optimal, but it didn’t need to be. It needed to be enough.

‘We’re moving,’ I said. I pulled with my arms around Hasegawa’s shoulder and side, almost like being carried on her back. I pulled harder. We drifted toward the door. We started to escape the pull of the unseen force. Warmth returned to my extremities. Light from the grey of my room got closer.

‘Keep going,’ I said. ‘Keep going!’

Closer.

Closer.

‘I can see it,’ Hasegawa exclaimed.

Closer.

Closer.

We flew across the threshold and thumped bodily to the floor. I landed on a stray steel plate and bruised my side, after which I removed myself from Hasegawa and ran my hand across the tatami. Never had solid ground felt so good. The void didn’t feel like anything, yet it weighed heavily on you, as if adrift in the middle of an ocean, pressure mounting, knowing your body will give out eventually.

But our bodies hadn’t given out.

My heart still pumped blood. Lungs still expanded and contracted.

We got to our feet and laughed, making other celebratory sounds, too manic for articulate thought or words. We jumped around, basking in the bliss of survival.

#

After Hasegawa and I recovered ourselves, we sat on opposing walls and I listened to how that very day Hasegawa and her friend, a girl referred to as Gecko, were almost kidnapped by a man, whom they killed. They would've escaped, had Junko not stepped in. They were levitated to a van, blindfolded, and brought somewhere else. Judging by the downward staircases, sounds of an elevator, and general sense of stillness, they were underground. As for why: Hasegawa had the Conduit-Source technology. They couldn’t simply kill her, as the tech needed to slowly “desynchronise” with her before extraction, which explained why they put her in the semi-coma.

As for the wider question of “why” Hasegawa was an enemy, it was because she wasn’t part of the organisation Junko worked for, who used the Conduit-Source technology for their own purposes. Hasegawa was of the opinion that they did more than organ harvesting, but we couldn’t afford to throw around theories. She needed to escape.

‘I can wake up, now,’ Hasegawa said. ‘In this room, I can feel my body out there.’ She peered at the ceiling, as if to peek at reality somewhere far above. ‘When I wake up, will I be able to use telekinesis?’

‘If you do what you did earlier.’

‘And you’ll help me?’

‘I’m your Source,’ I replied.

‘You were Kishimoto’s Source, too.’

I winced. ‘I screwed up. I put you in this situation. I’m trusting that you’re not harvesting organs, too, so I’ll help you. And maybe when you’ve escaped…’

‘What?’

You could help me escape, too. ‘Nothing,’ I replied. ‘You should try waking up. Good luck, Hasegawa.’

‘Rina. It’s shorter, so use it. I don’t want us wasting milliseconds communicating.’

‘Rina,’ I said, though I didn’t feel hesitation and discomfort like when I’d changed from “Kishimoto” to “Junko”.

Rina went to the door, but she’d already started to fade. Her body in reality had begun to regain consciousness. When she disappeared, silence returned to the room. I hopped to my feet and started a warm up. If Hasegawa—if Rina needed to escape a secret underground facility, she’d need a lot of power on the Fulcrum. Maybe more than I could provide. Likely more than I’d ever tried to use. I tried to mentally reconcile the need to push my body to an injury, if it meant victory.

I spun my arms in circles and used the resistance bands, warming up my shoulders. Then I squatted a couple dozen times, getting ready for that crouched position over the Fulcrum.

At the bottom of a squat, light appeared on the floor. Not just light. Colour. Beams of pale, coloured light and shapes came from the window. Confused, I went and opened the dusty blinds. I was greeted not by the void, but by a white ceiling.

I couldn’t linger for long. The Fulcrum glowed. I pulled in response. I didn’t need to apply much pressure before it went back to normal.

Back at the window, the white ceiling moved, replaced by a full room, white and padded, with checkerboard floor. Massive hands appeared in the window, as if they sprouted from the sides. The scenery in the window moved, angling down, to a table with broken leather restraints, and then a body in a hospital gown. Trays of medical instruments, glass cabinets, and countertops of supplies lined the wall.

The hands changed angles. They looked familiar.

Rina?

My speakers turned on. I heard bare feet against the tiles, coupled with laboured breathing. ‘Rina,’ I said. The view from the window blurred. Rina must’ve sharply moved her head. ‘Can you hear me?’ I asked. ‘It’s Kenji.’

‘Where are you?’ she said aloud.

‘My room. I don’t know why, but I can see what you see.’

‘How many fingers am I holding up?’ Rina put up three fingers on her right hand, and I responded as much. ‘Not sure if I like you being in my brain.’ That time, her voice came through differently. Rather than through the speakers, it sounded like a whisper coming from the walls.

‘I’m not in your brain,’ I said.

She jumped. ‘I swear to—you can hear my thoughts, too?’

‘Let’s focus on escaping.’

Rina tentatively agreed and started to search the room.

Junko had experience with the Conduit-Source technology. She must’ve known to deliberately keep me detached from her conscious senses. Rina didn’t know how, and it was for the best; this way, I could support her directly, knowing when I’d need to use the Fulcrum, and even pointing out things she might’ve missed. Like the obvious...

‘What’re you doing?’ I asked, as Rina inspected the metal tools. 

‘I should be able to pick the lock on the door.’

‘Or we could…you know.’

‘Oh yeah.’ Rina raised her hand to the door. I repositioned the glowing Fulcrum so I could watch the window as I pulled. I applied some pressure. The door creaked and bowed inward. A bit more pressure. The hinges broke and the door crashed to the floor. A concrete hallway lay beyond.

In a second, the white lights went out, replaced by harsh red, coupled with a blaring alarm.

‘I am here. I am afraid. I must not hide. I will not be swayed,’ Rina thought.

‘What is that?’

‘Forget about it.’ Rina jogged down the hall and entered a wider, curving hallway, like the middle of a sailboat’s steering wheel. The “spokes” were other hallways splitting off from the main one. Signs hung over each diverging hallway. Rina had come from the “installation room”.

The sound of multiple heavy footsteps came from either side of the rounded hallway. The nearest hallway was the “training room”. There wasn’t time to reach any others. ‘Might be useful,’ Rina thought, and hurried there.

Inside, it looked like a mix of a corporate conference room and a high school’s weights room. The area closest to the door had filing cabinets, a conference table, and soft, rolling chairs, but adjacent, without so much as a partition, were various racks, barbells, dumbbells, and machines.

While my eyes focused on the weights, Rina rushed to the filing cabinet. ‘What’re you doing?’ I asked. She explained the need for information on the tech, how it worked, limitations, tips, anything that might help.

Smart, I thought. I would’ve suggested the more dull idea of grabbing a dumbbell to use as a weapon.

Rina made the right choice. The filing cabinets contained dozens of files and manuals, but the names were too technical to be intuitive. Rina grabbed them at random, flicked through the opening pages, and tossed aside the useless ones. She moved fast, and her brain worked quicker than mine. While I tried to decipher a document’s opening lines, she’d already discarded it and grabbed another.

Two piles formed. The larger pile was ignored, while from the other Rina scooped up folders and loose papers. ‘Were you friends with Junko before becoming a Source?’

‘Nope,’ I replied. ‘She explained it to me.’

‘Makes me wonder why you were so loyal.’

I chewed my lip. It all came back to old feelings. ‘Guys want relationships to procreate,’ I recited. ‘Girls can form friendships with guys and girls, but guys can only be friends with guys. If they’re friends with a girl, it’s to have sex. That’s biology.’ It sounded stupid aloud, but I kept going. ‘I revolted against that. I-I wanted to dedicate my life to a girl without her knowledge, always helping her in secret. If she was happy, I’d be happy.’

‘Without her knowledge,’ Rina scoffed. ‘Or her consent.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘You don’t think it’d be annoying to have some guy secretly interfere with your life?’

‘I wouldn’t expect anything in return.’

‘Yeah, not the point. As for that biology stuff, that’s even more bullshit. The only guys who think like that also think girls are only for sex or worship.’

‘Bet you don’t have any guys friends.’

‘Says the shut-in.’

‘I know how guys think.’

‘You know how you think.’ She tore an excerpt from a document. ‘Why’re we talking about this? We need to escape.’

You started it, I grumbled to myself.

Rina read for a couple minutes more. Then she asserted that she had a decent grasp on being a Conduit. She mentioned muscle tension, visualisation, and something called the Valsalva manoeuvre. ‘We should test—’

The entrance opened. Rina ducked behind a leg press machine. The sled kept her hidden, while gaps between the metal fixtures let her peek at the doorway. An armed guard strode inside. They wore an all-black jumpsuit, armoured vest, and an AvMak helmet. Judging by the gear, they were better funded than the usual security contractors hired by mega-corporations. Bold text on the vest read: S.E.E.R.

The guard inspected the documents and filing cabinet, before surveying the rest of the training room. They took a step toward the equipment. Rina tensed her arm. The Fulcrum glowed red. ‘What’re you doing?’ I asked.

‘I’ll steal the gun,’ she thought.

‘You don’t know how it works.’

‘I know enough.’

Rina tensed her arm again, and the Fulcrum rattled louder. I was about to acquiesce, when the guard’s radio crackled. A voice ordered them to rendezvous at the depot. When the radio cut out, the guard jogged from the room.

‘Were you going to pull it or not?’ Rina’s thoughts pressed upon me, the emotion translated as a tangible physical reaction. It felt like standing too close to a heat lamp. Implicitly I understood it as anger.

‘You aren’t ready.’

‘I’ll show you right now,’ she snapped, and gestured at a kettle bell.

With the guard gone, at least we’d have time to figure out our combined strength and limitations. Well, that’s what I thought. As I crouched to grab the Fulcrum, to lift the kettle bell, a toilet flushed. Another door, at the end of the training room, swung open. A woman stepped through the door, zipping up her jeans. She glanced up, did a double-take, and locked eyes with Rina.

No time for strength tests.

‘Ume,’ Rina thought. I knew the woman but not the name. Didn’t matter. She was Junko’s lackey. A dozen pieces of equipment began to levitate.