SCP-7432-3

Link to article: SCP-7432-3.

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The glimmer of hope was enough to spur them back into action.

Returning to the tower’s base, Pyke and Hanrahan charged straight for the dead-end they had come from, the former sending the drone eastward; her hands shook when turning the camera toward the central widdershins tower – so the drone could be directed around it – accidentally brought the cottage into view.

Widdershins had brought them in; clockwise took them out.

The journey was swift and simple. When they looked back, the tower was distant again, with the dividing walls behind it; they went counter-clockwise to go inward, soon after finding the house with the open gate again, and two turns later reached the outermost arm of the spiralling road, following it clockwise for fifteen minutes before its curve reversed direction. Hanrahan and Pyke accelerated into a sprint, stopping only when the sound of their footfalls changed.

Just as before, the ground abruptly changed halfway through the arch, the asphalt road replaced by ankle-height grass identical to that used as lawn by the houses. It spread out before the pair, bordered beyond the tunnel by a pair of dense hedge-walls four metres in height, forming a path equal in width to the main road – and, like its artificial twin, curved off to the right before going back left, disappearing from view.

The hedge-walls were decorated with a plethora of blooming flowers, all of different sizes, shapes, and colours, though in the lattermost aspect there was an evident bias toward vibrant, almost fluorescent hues. The grass floor of the path, on the other hand, was only interrupted by a few lightly dispersed pieces of vermillion-brown stone.

Above the scene stood the towering statue, still physically painful to look upon directly; the figure’s legs were covered in a network of green tendrils, trying to scale the structure like a rampant, unchecked kudzu, but they thinned out and went no further than the knees.

Hanrahan slowed to a stop, catching his breath; Pyke collapsed to her knees, face downturned.

No words were shared – none needed to be. Hanrahan just silently went over and joined Pyke in her muted, shell-shocked mourning. Neither had liked Kelly’s presence over the past years, nor considered him anything resembling a friend; but he wasn’t a bad person. An annoyance, a nuisance, a reoccurring pest – but not someone deserving of the fate he received.

They knew there was nothing they could have done. There was no reason to suspect a shapeshifter, and when __it__ attacked, they had tried to protect Kelly. What little could be done, had been.

But the weight of guilt and hindsight regret fell on them anyway.

They should have known __it__ wasn’t him. They should have figured out how to mislead __it__. They should have believed Kelly the moment they saw him. They should have killed __it__, somehow, before __it__ killed him.

They shouldn’t have left. They shouldn’t have abandoned him.

They took time to rest, eat, recuperate, and wallow in despondency. How long, they didn’t know – in their minds, not enough to do Kelly justice. But eventually, their attention turned to the area ahead, and the newly-arrived drone’s aerial view.

Seen from above, the area sported the same, identical spiral; coiling inward counter-clockwise from the west arch, reversing at the base of the statue, coiling outward to exit through the other gateway. But whereas the suburbia had a chaotic maze of streets, the garden instead had a simple array of straight and narrow alleys, radiating out from the centre like lines of longitude from the south pole – except the corridors are non-continuous, spanning only between one arm of the spiral and the next, their termini offset half-way between each other such that they all begin and end with T-junctions.

‘Multiple discoloured sections throughout,’ Hanrahan said, the tone of his voice trying, and failing, to mask his still-lingering regret. ‘Reddish-brown. Could be structures, or dying plants.’

Pyke nodded absentmindedly, the half-eaten bar in her hand taking more energy to eat than it was giving.

‘Same spiral, same… rules, maybe. We’ll go counter-clockwise.’

Pyke’s eyes widened. ‘You think… __the thing?__’

Hanrahan grimaced. ‘If the lights go out, identity check. Immediately. If either… if either of us fails, just run. Go north. Northern arch.’

He pulled out the tracking device, checking the Keystone fragment’s location; still coming from the statue, high up. With a nod of confirmation, they set off.

The stagnant air beyond the arch was freshened by a thick mixture of sweet and sour odours. The flowers, though wildly different enough to be several thousand different species, all bloom from the same, singular plant making up the hedge-walls – neither a shrub nor a thorny vine, but a strange mixture of both. Hanrahan narrated this, but Pyke took no samples; neither wanted to waste time anymore and feared the damage to the perfectly-shaped flora – as flat as a true wall should be, both on the sides and on top – might invoke retaliation from **whatever inhabited the place**, if anything.

Hanrahan and Pyke idly scanned over the surrounds as they went, equal parts cautious, bored, and curious – but like the suburbia, the garden stuck to its theme monotonously. Short green grass underfoot, occasional vermillion-brown rubble; tall hedge-walls on both sides, curving smoothly; a steady spattering of flowers across their surfaces; and every twenty metres, a pair of lit, enclosed lanterns hanging from protruding branches near the hedge’s peaks.

They reached the first intersection and turned left.

The corridor they turned onto was almost claustrophobically narrow, barely wide enough for the two of them to walk shoulder-to-shoulder without brushing against the walls if they chose to do so. Single file gave no such problem – the plants did not protrude from the walls (sans the lantern-bearing branches, which joined together as an arch overhead to share a single light), keeping themselves flush against the long, perfectly-straight hallway.

Pyke kept her attention on the drone’s footage, watching in case they were moved elsewhere in the garden. Hanrahan tried to watch for threats, but found it increasingly difficult to; the monolithic knight statue filled the visible sky, making it painful to watch the hedge-tops, and even otherwise a headache was growing behind his eyes, alleviated only by closing and rubbing them --

A half-buried stone caught his foot. He stumbled; Pyke, unaware, bumped into him; then he fell face-first into a hedge.

The impact sent out a short-lived shockwave throughout the wall, dislodging a cloud of pollen that filled the air with a light yellow haze, their mouths with the taste of flowers, and strengthened the abounding sweet odour.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ Pyke said, pulling Hanrahan back to his feet.

Hanrahan nodded, the pollen sending him into a mild sneezing fit, followed by Pyke’s own. He covered his nose and mouth with one hand and patted himself down with the other, checking his gear and realising his radio was absent. Pyke pointed where he had landed.

The antenna of his radio was sticking out from the hedge – which was pristine and undamaged, as if Hanrahan hadn’t fallen and crushed it at all.

He grabbed the antenna and pulled; the hedge bulged slightly, but the radio remained entombed. Hanrahan wiped the mucous off his other hand, got as best a grip with both as he could, then pulled; the same result. He was about to start hacking at the plants with his machete when Pyke grabbed his shoulder.

‘Don’t,’ she said, still sneezing and spitting out the mucous that found its way into her mouth.

‘Need,’ Hanrahan said.

‘Danger--ous, could -- annoy -- **something**. Leave -- it.’

Hanrahan took another look, then nodded. If there was **a gardener**, he thought, they wouldn’t like their garden being torn up – they were lucky the accidental fall had somehow caused no damage. He gave the radio one last tug – no movement at all, as if set in concrete – then continued along the corridor, sneezing into one hand.

The fits continued when they reached the main road, but were dwindling. Right turn.

‘Confirm what -- you saw,’ Hanrahan said, scratching at his face, finally able to speak again.

‘You fell,’ Pyke said, flicking a snot-coated hand to one side. ‘Landed in the hedge. When you got up, it just grew back into place, instantly.’

Hanrahan nodded, now scratching at his arm. ‘Thought so. Might grow over -- us if we fall in again.’

Pyke nodded. She watched as he scratched his neck.

‘You alright?’

‘Itchy,’ he said. ‘Poison ivy.’

Pyke grimaced, stopping to put down her pack. ‘Why didn’t you say?’

‘It’s ivy, I’ll be fine.’

‘It isn’t ivy, we don’t know what it is. Come here. How is your head?’

She retrieved her first aid kit.

‘Just a headache from looking at the statue.’

Pyke gave Hanrahan both a bottle of calamine lotion, and a concerned, irritated glance. ‘Sit down, put that where it itches. I’m taking lead.’

Hanrahan frowned. ‘Why?’

‘Because you ran into a pole and gave yourself a concussion,’ she said, pulling out a small flashlight. ‘Look here.’

‘I don’t remember that.’

‘I know, amnesia is a symptom. Any nausea?’

He shook his head.

‘Don’t shake your head, you’ll make it worse. Yes or no.’

‘No.’

She flashed the light in his eyes. ‘Ringing ears?’

He shook his head; she grabbed his chin, stopping him.

‘Don’t. Shake. Your head. Do you hear ringing?’

He paused. ‘I think so.’

‘Blurred vision?’

‘No. Are you sure I hit a pole?’

‘It’s why there’s a bandage on your head.’

Hanrahan reached up and felt the gauze.

‘… you’re leading.’

‘Thank you.’ She turned off the flashlight.

‘How bad?’

‘You’re going straight to a hospital after this. Try not to think until then.’

‘We’re in the middle of a mission.’

‘Emphasis on “try,” should be easier without…’

She didn’t finish the sentence. Hanrahan grimaced and nodded.

‘Stop. Shaking. Your damn. Head.’

Once Pyke packed away the kit they set off again, with her in the lead. She kept the computer tablet in one hand, occasionally checking the feed for any changes – Hanrahan wasn’t fit to take the duty, she decided, forcing her to juggle both his and her own. Her eyes scoured the surrounds, watching, waiting – interrupted only by the occasional extended blink, prompted by an emerging dull ache behind her eyes, dismissed as the product of the growing pressure on her.

Though the junctions were closer, being nearer to the heart of the garden, the agents’ walk is longer – the archway wasn’t equally between two inward-leading intersections. The scenery remained the same until they passed the fourth lantern, when something vermillion-brown came into view ahead, dominating the hedge wall.

Pyke stopped. She turned her head slightly, straining to listen.

‘Pyke?’

She raised a hand to quiet him. Pyke looked back the way they had come, then back to the path ahead. A few moments of silence passed.

‘__It’s__ here.’

Hanrahan spun to see the road behind. It was uniform and unchanged, evenly lit along its entire visible length.

He turned back at the sound of Pyke sprinting away, going clockwise – nowhere near as fast as before, still wearied by the repeated, extended running from earlier. Hanrahan followed.

As they ran toward the evidently artificial structure ahead, Pyke’s heart sank as she realised how horribly exposed they were; in the suburbs they could take refuge behind fences or in the backyards, but the garden lacked any form of cover whatsoever. The drone’s feed – which showed the region to be fully lit, unlike the cottage and plain in the north – indicated the same was true everywhere; the only options for escape were to reach the centre in the hope of finding shelter, or going for one of the archways in the hope the pursuer wouldn’t follow through them.

‘Door!’ Pyke shouted, pointing to the half-ruined section of vermillion-brown castle ahead – and its single wooden door.

The hope of escape gave her a surge of energy. Hanrahan, on the other hand, steadily dwindled in pace, constantly looking back but finding nothing but the same illuminated road behind.

Pyke stopped short of bashing straight through the yew-wood door, first grabbing the ring handle to figure out which way it opened; the answer being neither. She yanked the handle with increasing force, then resorted to pushing the door with her shoulder – with no evidence of movement, she stepped back to kick at it.

‘Pyke, stop!’

‘We have to get off this road before --’

‘It’s not a door! Remember the last area? None of the doors were real!’

She paused, then started looking around. ‘Alright, alright, if – if we --’

‘Calm down, we’re ok,’ Hanrahan said, grabbing her shoulders. ‘Look, the road is still lit, we’re fine. Nothing chasing us, nothing’s changed.’

He was right. None of the lanterns in either direction had changed – no swinging, flickering, nothing. Still, static and lit.

‘I don’t…’ Pyke said. ‘I – I heard it, I know I did…’

‘Do you see anything on the footage?’

She didn’t. The whole area was uniform and orderly, as always.

‘Hanrahan, I didn’t --’

‘I know, and I believe you. But we aren’t being chased, at least in the same way, so it must mean something else here.’

Pyke stepped back, breaking away from Hanrahan’s grip.

‘The emerald blade sings in the twilight.’

‘Wending the weird of the world,’ he replied. ‘The emerald blade sings in the twilight.’

‘Lamenting the close of its lore,’ Pyke replied – the phrases identifying themselves to each other. ‘The rules haven’t changed, this area has the same spiral, the same pattern.’

‘But it //is// different. The same pattern, to always go counter-clockwise, but different otherwise.’

‘But why? For a random place that shouldn’t exist, there seems to be an awful lot of… order, intent, here. Why?’

Hanrahan was about to shake his head, then shrugged instead. ‘As long as we get out of here as soon as possible, we don’t need to know. Leave it to the researchers to argue over. Speaking of which…’

He stepped back from the ruins to record their entirety.

‘Ruined structure,’ he narrated, ‘medieval design, possibly remains from a fort or castle. Built from blocks of vermillion-brown stone – material is present in all three areas, but no evidence of a quarry anywhere.’

‘Could be buried under this grass,’ Pyke said, lightly stomping one foot. ‘Or taken from the foundation of that statue.’

‘Good thinking. Structure has a single door, non-functional, possibly aesthetic. The hedges…’

He paused, then pointed to where the hedge-walls met the ruins.

‘The hedges are flush with the wall, or vice-versa. Same with the floor and grass; only the parts of the structure protruding into the path have been removed, as well as everything above the top of the hedge. The remainder appears untouched.’

Pyke jumped, letting out a shout of surprise and shock. ‘Something just crawled over my foot!’

‘What?’

‘I don’t know, I didn’t see it!’

They searched the grass – nothing out of the usual. A shared glance served as silent agreement to get going again.

Onward they went, following the uniform, ankle-height grass counter-clockwise; scanning the monotonous, flower-studded walls; glancing over lanterns, each mundane and yet slightly… off.

Pyke groaned, rubbing her eyes to stifle the growing pain behind them. She didn’t look up anymore – the sight of the knightly statue, facing toward the fourth, central tower, only exacerbated the pain, but even without it the headache grew. She //had// tripped and hit the road hard – maybe she was concussed as well.

The further they travelled, the more the odd sensation of a pervading, elusive wrongness gnawed at her. Not the wrongness of the suburbia – not the discomfort of perfect, endless repetition – but an intrinsic one, fundamental, all around and plain to see yet hidden beneath a filmy surface. Pyke only felt it in person; the drone’s footage lacked it, but nonetheless seemed wrong somehow…

They reached the next turn, and she realised.

‘Can you pass me the compass?’

Hanrahan frowned but gave it to her. ‘Why?’

‘This is wrong. Do we have a magnet, or…’

A pause. ‘Your radio,’ he said.

‘I don’t follow.’

‘Battery for power, strip the wires, wrap it around the metal in the antenna. Electromagnet. It’s already useless – mine is in the hedge, Kelly… isn’t going to answer.’

‘Blake?’

Hanrahan paused. ‘We haven’t heard anything from him. He may not even be here. You lead, your choice.’

Pyke shook her head. ‘We need it in case he calls us. But you’re right, we can gut something that we don’t need, like…’

She put down her pack, fished through it – and pulled out the air purity tester.

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’ll run a test now, but I don’t see any reason we’ll need it again. We already know what the air is like.’

Despite the wealth of plant life, the atmosphere of the garden isn’t any fresher than before, merely scented with a cocktail of organic, floral molecules. Pyke opened the device and plucked out a battery and a copper wire, stripped it, and wrapped it around a screw – counter-clockwise, out of caution – then used duct tape to attach both ends of the wire to the battery’s terminals. The compass needle turned, aligned with the new electromagnetic field.

‘What do you mean, wrong? What’s wrong?’ Hanrahan said, watching as Pyke put down the magnet, orienting herself in the direction of the artificial north.

She slowly turned in a circle – counter-clockwise, but by coincidence – watching as the red needle tip turned, passing the numbers on the compass’ circumference; her angle relative to the false north.

10; 20; 30; 40; 50; 60…

110; 120; 130…

280; 290; 300; 310…

360.

Hanrahan’s exasperated sigh bordered on an irritated groan.

Pyke had completed a full 360-degree turn, but there was still more circle to go. She kept turning until she finished it.

‘400,’ she said, disabling the electromagnet. ‘There’s 400 degrees in this circle.’

‘Semiohazards.’

‘This is everywhere – I think it’s geometry that’s different here.’

‘How do you know it’s everywhere?’

Pyke showed the drone feed. ‘You can’t see the lanterns, just their light. I’m guessing they’re in the… extra geometry, the extra 40 degrees, and the camera can only pick up what’s in baseline… spacetime, or whatever.’

‘That would explain the statue.’

‘Painful because it’s built in a way we shouldn’t be able to see, wrong on here –’ she held up the tablet ‘– because we’re only seeing what it would look like normally.’

Hanrahan rested a hand on his chin. ‘Could that be how the shortcuts in the last area worked too?’

Pyke shook her head. ‘I doubt it. The distances we skipped seem more like wormholes than rounder… houses. Anyway, don’t think about it unless you have to, just make sure the recording has this.’

Hanrahan did. Pyke led them down the next corridor, deeper into the garden; the silence led them down trails of thought, deeper into their own minds.

The group was no stranger to unforeseen trouble on missions – the time Kelly accidentally gave a seventeenth-century pickpocket a time machine being an example – but this mission was undoubtedly their worst.

The team’s roster had changed endlessly over the years, a revolving door of promising faces joining the static nucleus – the arguing Kelly and Pyke, and the enabling Blake – then leaving months later, frustrated, wearied, and resentful; Hanrahan was the latest such addition, transferring over following the untimely end of his former comrades, and the workings of his planned departure were already in motion.

But the roster always changed //by choice.// They had never lost a life in the field, much less two in a handful of hours; it was a rude awakening, one worsened by the place’s unnerving insistence on stagnancy, monotony, acting only enough to remind the agents they weren’t welcome, but otherwise leaving them to dwell in silence, with nothing to focus on but themselves. Even the arguing was gone.

Was this some kind of purgatory? A place constructed by chance and fractured time, serving as a place of penance? A prison to hope, sundering them from the distractions of their regret, forcing them to dwell on the past, the sins of their actions, feel the full weight of their shame instead of fleeing --

Pyke’s scream rescued Hanrahan from his spiralling thoughts. She stared in horror at her leg.

‘Blake,’ Hanrahan gasped.

Only Blake’s arm – holding Pyke’s leg with a white-knuckled death grip – and the upper half of his grizzled face were visible. He looked like he had been trying to crawl out of the hedge, but the vines had grown back and entombed him, covering his mouth and even venturing up one nostril. His skin was covered in vivid red rashes and blisters wherever the plants touched, and his eyes constantly darted about, settling on Pyke and Hanrahan only momentarily, as if struggling to focus on them. When Pyke pulled herself free his hand flailed about, trying to grab her again.

‘How did he get here?’ she said. ‘This is --’

‘Just get him out!’ Hanrahan snapped, fumbling to draw his machete.

The moment Pyke grabbed Blake’s arm, he grabbed hers in return. His eyes were generally directed toward her, but still seemed unable to lock on, as if looking at something – multiple somethings – behind her; but there was nothing there but the opposite hedge wall.

Hanrahan ruthlessly hacked at the overgrowth, only taking care to avoid hitting Blake and Pyke. The latter moved anyway, watching the uncharacteristically ferocious swings as she pulled on Blake’s arm, hoping the damage would free him.

It didn’t.

The vines regrew faster than Hanrahan could slash, multiplying and intertwining like a floral hydra, making the wall stronger instead of weaker; Blake moved less and less with each tug. Even if he wasn’t tired, wasn’t injured, wasn’t panicking at another, inevitable loss, there was no possibility of Hanrahan humanly overcoming the anomalous rate of growth.

‘We’ll get you out, Blake,’ Hanrahan said. ‘Pyke, pull damn it!’

‘He’s seizing,’ Pyke said, watching Blake’s restricted, erratic movements. ‘Hanrahan, I need my kit, now.’

‘I said pull --’

‘Stop and give me my damn kit!’

The pause was just long enough to show Hanrahan heard her, but not long enough to prove he understood.

‘That’s an order! Stop!’

One final slash – an act of frustration, defiance, or both? – and he tossed the machete to the ground.

‘It’s strangling him,’ Hanrahan growled, dumping the medical kit in reach of Pyke’s free hand, then picking up the machete again.

‘Don’t cut the damn vines,’ she hissed.

‘Why not.’

She pointed to the vine growing up Blake’s nose. ‘The brain is easier to reach through the nose. He might… need it, now.’

Hanrahan’s face contorted into bewildered disgust. ‘You think he’s //part of the damn plant?// How the hell would that even --’

‘How does a circle have four hundred degrees in it? How does a disappearing keystone lead to this? How does this whole damn place exist at all? //We don’t bloody know,// Hanrahan, we don’t even know if this //is// a plant, or just something pretending to be one! Everything in this damn place just follows its own damn rules, so what’s stopping a plant from hooking itself up to his brain and making itself irreplaceable, huh? What if this whole damn maze //is his brain now,// and you’re running around chopping it up like an idiot! So just shut up, do as I bloody tell you, and let me work before we screw up and get him killed!’

Hanrahan’s glare voiced his disapproval, but he complied. He didn’t attack the hedge – but neither did he put the weapon away.

‘Blake, can you hear us?’ Pyke said.

She wanted to act, to rescue her leader – if not to gain some relief from saving his life, then to pass the burden of command back to him. But she was more fearful a desperate action would be disastrous, that her intentional actions would kill him; but inaction was equally perilous.

The sound of Hanrahan turning caught her attention; he was looking back the way they had come.

‘Hanrahan?’ she said, fear saturating her voice.

‘… I thought I saw something.’

‘Saw what?’

A moment’s silence. ‘I don’t know. Just… something.’

Pyke made a mental note that Hanrahan’s concussion was worsening, then returned her focus to Blake.

His continued movement refuted her initial theory that the damage to the vines was the cause of the spasms – either akin to carelessly cutting a brain during surgery, or the plants manifesting their pain through him. Any such damage was long healed, leaving only a light fog of dislodged pollen, but Blake’s erratic movement continued; the terrified twitching of his eyes, the constant tapping of fingers against Pyke’s arm…

She paused, watching his hand.

Tapping – not constant, writhing, uncontrolled movement; intentional tapping, timed, with only his index finger moving. She looked back into his eyes.

‘Hallucinating,’ she said, turning to check behind her again; nothing. ‘Not seizing. He’s seeing things but he’s conscious, using morse code.’

‘Saying what?’

Pyke tapped the code for ‘BK’, a request to interrupt; but Blake continued, tapping away at the same, hurried rate. Her second and third attempts had the same result.

Dot dot dot dot dash, long pause; dot dot dot dot dash, pause; dot dot dot dot…

‘The number four, over and over again. I don’t think he can…’

Dot dot dot dot dash, pause, repeating; that’s what Pyke felt Blake tap.

But what she saw was different.

Dot dot dot dot dash, pause; that matched.

Dash dot pause, dash dash dash pause. But she only //felt// the same pattern for the number four.

Dash, pause, dot dot dot dash dash, pause, dot dash dash dot…

‘Pyke!’

She turned at Hanrahan’s voice, pulled from the confusing dissonance between touch and sight. He was gripping the machete, ready to fight, and pointed down the corridor at nothing.

A sliver of fear stole into Pyke’s heart. He’s getting worse, seeing --

Her eyes snapped back to Blake’s hand. She saw one thing and felt another.

She saw Kelly’s face where Blake’s has been.

Pyke jumped back in terror, colliding with the other hedge wall, dislodging a huge cloud of hallucinogenic, descending pollen.

‘Masks,’ she gasped, coughing as it filled her mouth, her nose, her eyes.

Even as she stumbled toward her open backpack, trembling hands searching for the respirator mask, she felt the pollen crawl down her throat, into her lungs, bursting through into her blood where it --

Where it //hatched//. She could feel it, unmistakeably; thousands, millions, billions of ants, hatching within her, within her chest, her arms, her brain, skittering forth to conquer the new world around them, her internal world, acting on their intrinsic instinct to spread, to invade, to replace, converting her into a nest, a quarry, the starting point of further conquests --

She screamed and fervently scratched at her skin, her arms, her neck, tried to get at the insects within, the insects she could feel skittering, scraping, moving beneath the surface, through her veins, her arteries, her neck, her //eyes// --

No, no, no, stop, stop stop stop, it wasn’t real, it wasn’t real. She felt it, clear as day, as truly as the clothes she wore, the nails in new wounds, it //felt// undeniably real, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t, it wasn’t, it was a hallucination, nothing more. The ants weren’t real, the skittering – the consuming itching, felt from the inside – it wasn’t real, there was nothing, nothing to --

A roar, a scream, but not hers, masculine. Nearby, very nearby --

The click. She heard the click, the sound, that accursed noise from before, the hunting cry of, of __that thing, the beast__ that had taken Kelly…

Kelly in the bush, arm out, cried and wept and sobbed, trapped, suffered, because of her, her fault, //you let them build on me// --

No, not real, not real, not Kelly. Blake, Blake, it was Blake, Kelly was gone, taken by __the shapeshifter__ – not real, wasn’t isn’t real, a hallucination, an illusion.

‘Is it?’

She spun around, trying to find the voice.

Everywhere. Faces, everywhere, in the hedges, screaming, pleading, everyone – Kelly, Hanrahan, Blake, Crevin, Reynders, Xyank, everyone, //everyone//, everywhere, all there, in the hedges, all watching her, her, //Pyke//, suffered, crushed, failed by her as the hedges moved, writhing like snakes, spread, consumed, grew, squeezed everything they despised, suffocated, suppressed, conquered, conquered like ants, ants, they were ants, she were ants, //they were under her skin!//

She saw herself, within the hedges.

‘What is real, here?’ Herself said to she. ‘Is real real?’ [!-- AUTHOR NOTE: DON'T CHANGE THIS. THIS IS CORRECT. --]

Something collided with her, knocking her face-first into her face.

__It.__

She picked herself up from the stone-tiled floor, screamed, ran.

Widdershins, widdershins! Go Widdershins!

Which way? Where were the hedges? Which way was widdershins? Widdershins to what?

Her feet squelched, aflame, as she ran across the charnel space. The reek of blood and dominion filled her nose, scratched at her arms, scraped open wounds, as lifeless birds twittered peacefully beneath the blinding, rotten sky.

She matched the horrified screaming with her terrified own as she rebounded off the prison wall, mindlessly turned right, and fled from the faceless, deformed half-people around, pressing in with blackened hooks, blackened chains, blackened hands --
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She grabbed at the muzzle on her face, pulled at the burning steel, tried desperately to get it off get it off get it off before the vines, the vines, the fingers grew up her nose, into her eyes, stifled her, suffocated, killed at the command of their master --
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Pain. She howled in agonising pain as her mother, no her father, no both in one, twisted and deformed into a chaotic, ever-shifting horror, brought its tendril down, the weapon finding catch in her hand --

She pulled the weapon from her progenitor, the all-encompassing darkness around greedily consuming both it and the crystals spilling from the wound in her gauntlet, then in desperation she pummelled the Lovecraftian horror, tried to protect her ever-dwindling presence in the void by reducing its own, struck it until it too howled in pain --
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She fell back into a pool, frigid, gnawing at her bones, freezing around her, solidifying before she could get any more than a single finger above the surface --
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The building around her shattered, releasing her, an imprisoning cocoon no more, revealing the twisted cityscape beyond, neither right nor wrong, but a morbid blend of the two, a distortion of truth --
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She ran through the twisted corridor, half-mindedly watched as the crumbling walls and pillars around her were restored, the rubble drifting up, returning to its place, rebuilding an ancient, unparalleled glory --
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She ran across the open space, ignored the crunching and squeals of the hordes of bugs underfoot, swatting off whichever few found their way onto her to nip and bite and plead and wail --
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She turned left too late to avoid Kelly, tackling her off the roof of the tower, twisting and distorting as his finger-vines reached behind her eyes, into her mind, his eyes shattering her own from behind his barrel helm --
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She fell into the darkness, forever, her vision filled with an endless, widdershins spiral, twisting down, down, down… or up, //up//, was she looking up, falling up, up into the infinite, burning like a meteor, a wick, a fuel, burning away the corruption, the insects, the insects on her, within her, throughout her, her her, purifying her by fire to charcoal, to ash, the dawning light at the core of the helix rebuilding her, making her anew in a new way, perfect, proper, golden, that blinding light from above, behind **its** head, speaking to her, calling her, her name, bringing her from chaos to order, order, perfect true order, lifting the darkness around her, behind her, sculpting the void into earth, into grass, comfort, shaping the howling, hateful silence into rustling, bliss, peace, growing the world around her, fixing it, building it as it should, to her will, **its** will, the right will, to guide, to control, to perfect, never failing, cannot fail, can never afford to fail, that light, that light, **that light**…

It was too bright, too great; she lifted a hand to block it out, but it simply moved, insistent on disturbing her, stabbing into her eyes, her headache, her //head//…

Pyke groaned, reaching out and grabbing the light, plucking it from the sky… no, the hand, the hand of Hanrahan.

‘Pyke, can you hear me?’

She tried to answer, but something was… her face. Something was on her face, cold, plastic, wrapped around… mask. Respirator mask. Pyke reached to take it off, grunting at the piercing pain in her hand. Something was wrong with it, the feeling incomplete --

She blinked at the hand; bandaged, missing two fingers. Hanrahan took off Pyke’s mask.
‘What…’ she groaned as Hanrahan sat her up.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I thought… you looked like…’

The machete, bloodied, lay in the grass behind him. His face was bloodied too, with a broken nose, black eye, and bleeding lips.

‘Pollen,’ she said. ‘Drugs.’

‘I know, but I --’

‘Where…?’

They were in a huge circular clearing several kilometres in diameter; the encircling hedge-walls around were evenly interspersed by the narrow corridors, radiating out in every direction, sans the one a distance ahead of Pyke – by its width and clockwise curve, obviously the terminus of the main path.

Pyke pointed. ‘Kelly.’

Hanrahan looked, slumped, then turned back to Pyke. ‘It’s not him.’

‘But I…’

‘I don’t see him, Pyke. He isn’t there.’

She stared a few moments longer.

The view behind was dominated by a colossal golden wall, with a pair of gigantic, vine-coated boots partially visible behind it on either side.

The base of the statue. **The heart** of the garden.

‘How long…?’

‘I don’t know,’ Hanrahan said. ‘I realised I was lying here about… fifteen minutes ago. I don’t know how long we’ve been here, or how we got here. But our gear is here, all of it.’

Pyke’s eyes widened in hope. ‘Blake?’

**‘I.’**

They flinched at the voice. Both looked up.

**What they had thought was a statue** was leaning forward over their monolithic gold claymore, head tilted toward them. The eyes were hidden in darkness, somewhere behind the impossible geometry of the barrel helm, but Hanrahan and Pyke could feel they had **its** full attention.

An extended silence ensued as the agents locked eyes with each other.

‘You can… hear us?’ Pyke said.

The helm tilted in acknowledgement, unseen by the pair. **‘I can, Agent Pyke, and Agent Hanrahan.’**

They winced at their names.

‘May we… ask your name?’

**‘I am the King.’**

Hanrahan nodded, then escalated into a full bow, copied by Pyke. ‘Thank you for bringing us here, but… why?’

**‘I saw your attempts to deface my garden.’**

Hanrahan paled. ‘We apologise, we didn’t know --’

A resounding, repeated booming filled the air, like a succession of thunderclaps. Chuckling.

**‘I am not angered, Agent Hanrahan. Your futile attempts to defy the order of this place have been amusing, nothing more.’**

‘What… is this place?’ Pyke said.

**‘A home. A prison. A triskelion.’**

Pyke’s eyes widened. She picked up the drone’s tablet from the grass nearby.

‘Hanrahan,’ she said.

The drone’s view was still dominated by the garden, but Pyke had turned the camera toward the western suburbia.

‘Spiral starts at the arch,’ she said, pointing to the screen. ‘Coils inward, then back out, comes through the arch, then does the same – another spiral, in, out… it’s a triskelion. The spirals are part of a triskelion, and everything is built around it.’

Hanrahan removed the first Keystone fragment from his pack.

‘Counter-clockwise, like on this,’ he said. ‘You were right – this place isn’t random, it’s linked to the Keystone.’

Following the motion of the connected paths, Pyke turned the camera to the north; the cottage and its firelight came into view. Both agents immediately turned their heads away.

‘But where is the spiral in the first area?’ Hanrahan said.


**‘It is there. Just concealed.’**

‘You said this place is a prison,’ Hanrahan said. ‘For who? You?’

The King turned their head westward. **‘For __the Interloper,__ who you have met twice now, and all that follows their design; to disrupt the way of things, tear them down. I enforce the order all things should follow, defending and cultivating it here until it can do so itself. That is why I permit your defacement of my work.’**

__The Interloper.__ The thing that took Kelly.

Kelly.

‘**King,** sir,’ Pyke said, trying to meet their gaze but unable to succeed for long, ‘we had a friend --’

**‘Agent Kelly. I am aware.’**

‘Can you – can you rescue him?’

The helm shook. **‘He belongs to the Interloper now.’**

Pyke’s face sunk.

‘Agent Blake, then?’ Hanrahan said. ‘He was here, in your garden --’

**‘No.’**

‘Why not, sir? He isn’t --’

 **‘He is a part of this place now, a part of the order. To release him is to invoke change, which is the domain of __the Interloper__. I cannot release him because I cannot afford to be corrupted from my duty.’**

‘But he’s just one man,’ Pyke said, ‘and none of this --’

**‘My will does not change, Agent Pyke. You cannot last in this air, and what is done will not be undone. You have come here for a reason.’**

‘We seek a Keystone,’ Hanrahan said, trying to hide his displeasure. ‘Or part of one.’

Again, the helmet tilted. **‘Each of us three holds a fragment of it. You have that which belonged to __the Interloper__.’**

Pyke’s eyes widened. ‘He’s not --’

**‘They do not pursue you. You need fear them no longer, Agent Pyke.’**

She almost deflated in relief.

‘And you have a piece too, **King**?’ Hanrahan said.

**‘I do.’**

‘Would you be willing to relinquish it, sir?’

**‘I would, for something of equal or greater value. Such is the order of things here.’**

Hanrahan dropped his backpack, rummaging through it. ‘I’m sure we have something that can help you, technology, or medicine, or even currency, gold for your sword --’

**‘All of which is lesser in value. I want your life, Agent Hanrahan.’**

The words dominated the ensuing silence. Pyke looked to Hanrahan – frozen, one hand still in his bag.

‘My… my life?’

**‘Your life. You.’**

Hanrahan slowly straightened up. ‘A piece of stone isn’t worth --’

**‘I have heard all you have said here, Agent Hanrahan. I know of the Keystone’s importance, and that you cannot leave without it. Your life for //her// life; you stay, so that she may take it and leave.’**

‘Surely we can come to another agreement?’ Pyke said.

**‘My will does not change. You will agree to my terms, or we will wait until you reconsider; I will not. I am patient. You are fickle.’**

Pyke’s eyes twitched as she mentally wrangled the facts. Hanrahan did the same.

‘What about Blake?’ Pyke said. ‘If you can’t release him -’

**‘No. Agent Hanrahan only.’**

‘You said a life for a life --’

**‘I said //he// stays so //you// may leave. Agent Hanrahan, or nothing.’**

‘But that – we’ve already lost a life--’

**‘Agent Blake is a separate affair. My will does not change. I only accept Agent Hanrahan’s life for the fragment. Nothing else.’**

A few moments passed. Hanrahan turned to Pyke, his expression hard-set and graven.

‘Finish the mission.’

She turned to him, horrified. ‘You can’t seriously be considering this!’

‘I’m not, because there’s nothing to consider. Neither of us can leave without it, and both of us can’t stay.’

‘No, I’m not leaving you here, I…’

‘I’m not going to make it anyway. My head is pounding, I’m still seeing things, and I can’t think. You’re the only one left that’s well enough to get out of here. It has to be you. I couldn’t save Kelly, I couldn’t save Blake, but I can at least save you.’

 She looked up at **the King** again, briefly. ‘What about me, take me instead!’

‘Pyke!’ Hanrahan snapped.

**‘No.’**

‘I accept!’ Agent Hanrahan shouted before Pyke could intervene.

He felt the change immediately. An immense, dense weight, the likes of which he had never felt before, fell on his mind – he knew, instantly, he had just agreed to something he couldn’t break, nor bend, nor abuse or avoid in any way. Hanrahan knew, completely and incorruptibly, that he could never leave that place without the bidding of his master, **the King**.

Pyke stared at him, mortified, tears welling in her eyes. Another person she had failed, another life lost; another weight on her conscience, even if unfairly so.

‘Finish the mission, Pyke,’ Hanrahan said. ‘Put the Keystone back where it belongs.’

//Break the paradox. Fix the timeline. Erase this place and everything – everyone – in it.//

**The King** lifted their right hand from the colossal claymore’s pommel, palm up. They knelt down on one knee – their movement effortlessly snapping or uprooting the dense vines on their boot, filling the air with the dull ruckus of snapping ropes, raining soil, then the dull, resounding thud of the footfall – and lowered their hand to the ground, tilting it.

Against the continent-sized gauntlet, the Keystone fragment seemed little more than a single grain of sand, tumbling down the length of **the King**’s hand before launching off the middle finger intact, landing on the grassy ground and rolling along to stop at Hanrahan’s feet, intact and undamaged.

It wasn’t the top fragment. It was the right-hand third, the mirror of __the Interloper__’s piece, with the lower-right spiral of the triskelion. The two fit together along the vertical break, spanning the base of the Keystone to the centre, where it split off into a Y-shape. Hanrahan gave both to Pyke.

**‘You have what you came for,’ the King** said, returning to their original posture.

‘This isn’t the right piece,’ Pyke said. ‘No, it’s… it’s a piece, but not the piece we…’

She paused. She paled.

‘You said there are three of you,’ Pyke said, her heart beginning to race.

**‘{{They}} hold the fragment you seek.’**

‘Where …?’

**The King** lifted a hand, pointing northwest. Pyke didn’t need to see – there was only one thing in that direction.

The cottage.

‘C-could you speak to them, ask if th-they would…’

**‘{{They}} are expecting you.’**

Hanrahan caught Pyke before she collapsed. He felt a twinge of shame – not at leaving Pyke to continue alone, what little mercy he was able to buy her. No, his shame came from the fact he was //glad// - glad to abandon Pyke at this juncture, knowing the only place left to go was to the cottage, to speak with {{the inhabitant}}. As much as he told himself not to, relief continued to well up.

‘Finish the mission, Pyke,’ he said, partially trying to motivate her, otherwise trying to remove the source of his guilty relief. ‘You can do it. You have to.’

She took her time preparing for the next, the final, leg. With shaking hands she sorted through Hanrahan’s backpack, scavenging potentially-useful items from it, assisted by the very person she was treating as deceased.

She took his camera, hoping to complete the recording; she also took the tracking device, in case the third piece somehow moved again – when she checked, the signal was coming from the northwest. She decided {{the third inhabitant}} must have been on the move, the whole time – distributing the broken Keystone, while the agents unknowingly followed.

She added his ammunition to her own – useless since everything around was invulnerable, but it was at least a hollow comfort.

She left his food; a final meal to enjoy, if he could, before his existence was erased by the place’s undoing.

Hanrahan gave Pyke one of his identity tags.

They embraced; neither could change the inevitable, nor deny the misery to come, but unlike Kelly’s passing, they made the parting as positive and complete as could.

**The King** said nothing the whole time, watching in indifferent silence as the hug concluded.

Pyke set off to the entrance of the main path, the colossal, widdershins tower dominating the sky above it. She looked back repeatedly, unwilling to leave Hanrahan behind, but unable to prevent it.

She stopped again when she reached the clockwise curve in the path, beyond which the garden’s core grove would be obscured from view by the hedge-walls.

She looked back, seeing Hanrahan’s tiny figure at the base of **the King**’s sword, an ant at the mercy of a titan. She saw two other figures, too; Blake and Kelly, she thought, though they were too far to make out clearly. Hallucinations, regardless – she donned her respirator mask to prevent the pollen from tormenting her with guilt any further.

She turned and continued onward.

Pyke never saw the others again.
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