The Pit

Andrew Polk
Nov 5 · 4 min read

Only Harlan and DuBois were left. Faraday bought in on level one to a Trapdoor Sponge, a rookie death. Blythe put a bullet in Morgan’s head when his legs shifted through his torso on five. They lost Blythe somewhere between nine and ten, presumed dead or incorporate. On twenty-one Rudolph had his throat opened and all his blood split-second-sucked by a Vitruvian Doppelganger posing as an injured member of away team Charlie. Bayard and Vasquez took an alternate route on fifty-four and were never seen again. The Haru brothers and Washington said to hell with it and turned back on ninety-nine. It was an auspicious number but on ninety-nine up was down and down was up and so they went up down directly to their deaths. Harlan and DuBois thanked them.

“Was the last floor one-forty-five?” Harlan checked his rifle as DuBois plundered the infirmary. Most of what they met on these levels would be split-second death but there was no use going out sober.

“Yeah. Beyond sequence now. Pit history, we’ll get our own chapter.” Grim joke. The Pit was strictly white-out: a never-was, never-will place. Omega clearance got you oral briefings. Say the wrong thing to the wrong person and your implant would destruct immediately. Stories went up to level thirty-four. Everyone else hadn’t made it back.

-

Back in the early aughts the G-men commissioned a counterpart to that big, bad atom device overseas. Theirs was science and friendship and all that Nordic shit. We had Reds or Browns or who fucking knows anymore to beat. We stuck all critters of all kind and all kinds of folk into that sucker. Seemed pretty bright at the time. In hindsight, probably not the best idea. Of course, you don’t really understand how bad it can get until the baboon you dissipated in the device comes back as mercury mist.

So, all the scientists died and all the G-men down there died and they all officially were lost in the sinking of the U.S.S. whatever. Your average brain-dead civvy might assume all that death would close the project. Can’t even hold a conversation with those types. Big-brain G-men got real horny for the project, passed an appropriation for near-infinite funding. Every contract, every project, every development had a bit skimmed off the top to pay for a parade of bodies into the Pit. They’d learned a great deal from the sacrifice.
The Pit as it was designed had twenty levels, nineteen underground.

Something or someone or someforce decided that wasn’t enough. Every so often a survivor would return with his psyche intact and brief the powers that be on the new land. They’d found the bodies of researchers of which there were no birth records, no friends, no family. Files from projects never started. The walls showed links to the world but interviews found no recollections of the projects nor people.

Clearly, more excursions were needed.
-

Harlan and DuBois found Rojas on one-something-something. The numbers weren’t right and they might never be again. Rojas was sweating bullets.
“Ricky. Where’s my money?” DuBois trained his rifle on the gaunt man’s skull. They froze for what felt like an eternity before Rojas sank to his knees and started crying.

“Oh my God. Oh my God. Jerry. Jerry! Jerry, fuck you, God damn, fuck you Jerry. Fuck you. Ah, ah, wha…” On his hands. He rolled over, completely limp, sobbing and gasping. Harlan put two rounds into the ground next to his head and was relieved to see they provoked no reaction. Not Vitruvian. DuBois knelt next to Rojas and started feeling his pockets.

“Ricky, what do you think you owe me with interest? How long has it been?”

“Man, I, man… two… days? You can have all my money, all of it. All of it. You can have it. My Mustang, you can have my Mustang. My house. What do you want? Please. I want to go home.” Rojas wrapped his arms around DuBois while he kept rifling through pockets. Pulled out six dog tags, one empty pistol, empty canteen, what looked like a scalp, some wrappers, and a knife encrusted in blood. It had been four years since his team disappeared.

“Deal. How deep did you get?”

“Ah, ah, fuck… I don’t… the numbers are fucked, aren’t they?”

“Yeah, yeah. How deep though?”

“One… one-seventy?”

“Damn, that’s impressive. New record! What brings you back up our way?” Rojas calmed.

“I figured it out. I figured it out. There’s a rhythm to it. Everyone’s trying to go deep and go back. You can’t go back. I had to go back to tell them.” His eyes were sharp on DuBois, unblinking.

“Well, we’re here now. Let’s go deep again.” Rojas scrambled away and pressed his full form against the wall.

“No! No! Fuck you! I went enough! I went down and I went enough! You can fuck off!” He reached up under his shirt and Harlan blew his head out the back of his skull. Body relaxed and slid over. DuBois sighed, walked over to his body and lifted his shirt. Where his innards had been there were now instruments of butchery, slick ichor spikes for ribs and razor orbs suspended by corded muscle. Looked like he was reaching for his not-stomach, some sick net of barbs and pus. What kept him ambulating was anyone’s guess.

DuBois took his tags and stood. Harlan said nothing. He’d been with him through basic, through the divorce, helped him lose the car he’d used for unpleasant business. They’d take the next level and the next until they found whatever Rojas had found. Then they’d go even deeper.

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