ABOUT THE COMMUNICATION ROOM Leonard Ackerman works at a remote army base trying to solve the greatest threat facing mankind. An alien invasion that has eroded our species down to very few numbers as far as Ackerman can tell. His base is compromised and Ackerman retreats to a laboratory he has never been inside, locking himself there with the enemy right outside his door. Inside the lab are thirteen telephones—from the American civil war through to Ackerman’s present day, about 100 years from now. This laboratory seems to be some sort of closed experiment and Ackerman discovers that he cannot exit the lab until the experiment has run its course. The method and ultimate goal of the test is beyond his reach for now... but the first telephone rings and the only thing Ackerman can do is answer...
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CHAPTER ONE Running had suddenly become very difficult for Leonard Ackerman. The thought of simply moving one foot in front of the other was too taxing in light of what was happening around him. All Ackerman wanted was to curl up in a ball and wait for it to end. He did run, of course he ran, because outside of his petrified mind, everything was crumbling. He could feel the weight of thirty stories pressing down on this base like a pressure on his lungs. He had to get somewhere safe, and then he’d be able to breathe. For now, he kept moving, but he could feel the blood running down his sleeve into his hand. More important than the alarms, or the rumbling of the floor under his feet, was making sure she was alive— Ackerman turned a corner and came to a full stop. Some dust crumbled from the ceiling onto his lapels, but he barely noticed. Another rumble shook the facility, and he could hear reports of gunfire down some distant corridor, screams of anguish and war cries from the grunts he was dug in with. But he still could only focus on one thing: the body lying at the end of the hall. Ackerman now approached at a trot. He could feel the adrenaline subsiding for a moment, then he came to see that the form of the body, still in a lab coat, was distinctly female. He wasn’t sure he was prepared to find out who that was sprawled out further down the corridor. Ackerman sighed as his approaching perspective shifted, revealing Donnica’s upturned face. Blood was pooling around her chest, soaking through her coat. Ackerman wanted to scream at the sight of her: one eye opened, the other half-shut. He looked away. O’Leary had been on a spree for some time, evidently. Ackerman had clocked into the Hex lab four hours ago, where he’d been known to lose time… “You just stare at rocks all day,” she used to tease. Ackerman admitted he was not hypnotized, more distracted by them. Distracted enough to miss this, enough to completely go unaware that a conscript
had slithered into their midst. He didn’t know how much damage O’Leary had done in that time, but it didn’t matter when he saw Donnica. The sight of her lifeless body brought with it a wave of helplessness and despair he had not yet known. This was personal. Ackerman squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. And in the din of destruction around him, he heard footsteps echoing down the hallway toward him. O’Leary. Coming to finish the job he’d started with his knife. The automated emergency announcement blared, imploring Ackerman to seek the surface, that the interior had been compromised and would he kindly get himself to safety. Well, he was trying, wasn’t he? The surface was not going to happen, that much he knew. Not right now. He’d have to get himself to a safe place and wait this out. Around the corner from where Donnica lay motionless was a security checkpoint leading to the lower laboratories. Ackerman had left his own key card back in the Hex. Not that it mattered, he wasn’t cleared for these labs, anyway. But Donnica was. He reached into Donnica’s pocket, hands gripping around the cold hard shape of her own pass key, one with a clearance level well above Ackerman’s. It felt not right, the taking of her card, so Ackerman lowered her one opened eyelid peacefully so she couldn’t watch him. He didn’t even have a destination in mind; he wasn’t thinking about that now. He started running again, but this time he had less trouble with it. Ackerman was simply and truly trying to survive. His mind’s inner pace sped up as he reached the kiosk and slid Donnica’s card across the display. He found himself flashing back to his encounter with O’Leary. There was the knife. That was what gave it away. Otherwise, he looked normal; they all did. O’Leary, who Ackerman had known down here, only not O’Leary any more. Ackerman knew exactly what he’d become—there was no question about that. And trying to defend himself from the attack, something that came naturally and instinctually, was the first mistake he’d made. Ackerman placed his hands against the clear plastic of the checkpoint waiting for the ID card to process, smudging it with some of his own blood. O’Leary’s footsteps drew closer behind him, echoing the deep
continuous pounding of his own heart. More far-off gunfire. Ackerman refused to turn around. Instead, as the door hissed open, he tumbled through the divider, hearing it click closed behind him. Ackerman kissed Donnica’s key card with relief, then realized with sickening agony that O’Leary and Donnica were lab partners—realized that the murderous man pursuing him would also have clearance to these labs. He could even hear O’Leary now, drawing his own pass card at the kiosk behind him. Ackerman stalked through the central atrium of the laboratories, planning to jam Donnica’s key card into the nearest door. There were six, arranged around a central atrium filled with artificial sunlight. Large potted plants stood in the corners, now long-dead husks. He received the negative tone that told him he was locked out and quickly moved on to the next. This cluster of labs was a dead end, and the only way out was the checkpoint he’d just passed through. Ackerman knew he was retreating into a corner. BLURP, BLURP, sounded the door, then the next, then the next. It was at the last unmarked lab door that Ackerman felt the lock click under his hand, the door give way. He was deposited into a dark, cavernous space. When he slammed the door, he could feel the handle click firmly, and he knew the lab was locked from the inside. His electronic cuff had been damaged in the encounter with O’Leary, the screen cracked and flickered, but he could still use the flashlight function. A small, bright bulb illuminated the room he now occupied. This was a large space and the light did not penetrate all the way to the other end. This filled Ackerman with an immediate sense of dread. A low-grade humming sound seemed to be coming from all directions. The humming became duller, as if changing speeds… Lights began to flicker on overhead, and Ackerman could immediately see that he was inside a dim antechamber. As the lights resolved, it was revealed: a glass cell suspended above clean, black, static-free tiles across the floor. There was a wire frame bridge leading from the entrance of the lab across the sunken sterile floor to the communication room ahead of him. Ackerman turned off the light on his cuff. The door Ackerman entered through shuddered behind him, and he
could hear the handle jiggling. Multiple attempts at a key-card swipe, punctuated with muted blurps. “You’re going to die in there, Ackerman,” said O’Leary. He had a pleading tone to his voice, giving the affect of caring. Again, Ackerman needed to remind himself that it wasn’t O’Leary at all behind there. “I know all about that room,” O’Leary’s voice took a reasoning tone, as if appealing to Ackerman’s sense of survival. The conscripts usually took this tone. It usually worked. “The thing about the experiment I’ve been running in that lab, Ackerman, is that once you’re inside, you cannot come out until you’ve completed the test.” A test? What test? Ackerman had pushed Donnica to explain what she was working on when it was just the two of them alone, even though it was against Xu’s rules. But the work she was doing was taxing, and the last thing she wanted after clocking out was to sift through what she could only describe to him as “emotional.” They were all at their wit’s end down here, she said, so he didn’t press her. Truth be told, the Hex lab wasn’t an easy assignment at all, Ackerman being one of the few who could stand so much time inside. Instead, they comforted each other—what few hours they had between shifts. O’Leary made a chuckling sound, but Ackerman knew it was just a sort of leftover from the true O’Leary. “So, you’re stuck in there, ahmigo.” That’s what O’Leary used to call Ackerman before, spoken with a drawl in his accent. The line between what he was and what he’d become was horrifically small, Ackerman realized. Because they remembered. Behind him, a bright light bloomed, causing him to turn. The lights finally came on inside the central glass cell. It seemed to float there, illuminated in space across the wire bridge. An announcement rang out: “The following is a controlled test. The test will end when all communications have been received. This room has been sealed for your protection and will remain sealed until the test is complete. We will begin shortly.” From inside the communication room there came a shrill ringing sound. The blood from Ackerman’s cut hand became sticky in his palm. He tore a strip from the bottom of his pant leg and wrapped it in a
makeshift bandage. Test, what fucking test? “Ackerman, listen to me now,” said O’Leary. The ringing sound stopped for just a moment, then continued another cycle of four bleating rings, a pause, then four more, and on and on. To Ackerman, it sounded like the ringing of a telephone, only warped and crackling. He turned to look at the illuminated cube across the gulf of the darkened lab. “Ackerman, whatever you do, ignore that sound.” Well, he’s a liar, was the first thing Ackerman thought. Whatever O’Leary knew before, he certainly knew now (ah-migo), but things got twisted depending on who was looking through O’Leary’s eyes. Ackerman knew two things: if a conscripted was coming at you, you ran. And if one was speaking with you, you didn’t believe a single thing it said. He took a confident step in the direction of the glass cube, the ringing sound trilling in his ears. “You remember Clayton, don’t you?” Ackerman stopped. Zeb Clayton, one of his fellow science officers. Clayton had gone missing one morning, some months before. They’d found him choked to death in his quarters; he’d hung himself there out of sheer desperation, Ackerman had thought. Hell, they’d all had the idea before—just bow out and end it. Part of Ackerman envied Clay then. Part of him hated him. And another part of him wanted to keep going just to prove him wrong. Donnica was particularly forlorn in the days after they’d discovered him hanging there. Ackerman had given him a pass, with the mood at the base being so grim. They all felt like they were staring at the end, anyway. Why not welcome it? “Of course you remember Clayton,” O’Leary cackled. “Did Donni ever tell you what was in that room? Did she ever…indulge you with what we’ve been cooking up?” Were they comforting one another, Ackerman and Donnica, during their encounters in the dark? For a moment, their entire relationship seemed based on one thing: distraction. But Ackerman refused to believe it was that simple. He cared for her in that psychosomatic way— butterflies in his stomach, they used to call it. “Clayton died because of that room, because of what it showed him. I heard what people said, how
he was just another suicide washout. But he knew, Ackerman. He knew what you all know, but are too afraid to admit. The communication room showed him the truth, and he couldn’t handle it. He cracked.” Ackerman made fists at his sides as the ringing started another cycle, etching his eardrums in such a way as to beckon him. He didn’t care what was making the prrrrriiiiiiiiiing—he just wanted it to end no matter what button he needed to press. Besides, speaking any more with O’Leary would probably drive him mad, anyway. O’Leary continued to chatter behind the door, but Ackerman stalked away from him into the echo chamber of the laboratory. O’Leary’s incessant squabbling dimmed, as though Ackerman had blissfully turned down the volume. He anxiously crossed the wire bridge, hanging only a few feet over the inky, black tile floor. The truth of the matter was that Ackerman needed a way out of this room, and he needed it quickly. There was O’Leary behind the door (locked until “all communications have been received”) and there was the ringing coming from the cube. Ackerman came to a glass door at the end of the bridge that led into the room-within-a-room. The door with O’Leary behind it was now about thirty feet behind him, back across the bridge. Ackerman pressed his hand against the glass and it slid open, revealing the interior of the communication room. It was a stark laboratory with complex circuitry snaking through the glass that made up the walls. Flat, gray reflective pads were spaced over the clear walls, floor, and ceiling at intervals of about five feet. They made the interior of the cube feel caged. The nodes were integral to its construction in some way that Ackerman knew nothing about. Nests of wires wound up from the center of the floor and up to a kind of junction made of the same plates of ceramic that dotted the walls, floor, and ceiling. Here, the umbilicals split and were funneled to the underside of a simple steel tabletop that was covered in a dozen or so items. With the ringing loud and distracting, the contents atop this table seemed unrelated. Ackerman quickly ascertained that the items were all tethered to individual strands of the same copper-colored wire running through the walls and floor. He identified the source of the ringing before he gave any of the other objects much thought.
It was a wooden box with a tiny black funnel at the top and a black metal arm jutting from the side. It looked…old, worn, the wood splitting in places. He lifted the box and noted its relative light weight to size ratio. Whatever was inside it making it ring was not very substantial, and the construction of the thing seemed almost a facade, to give the impression that the device had a singular purpose, for it seemed from a far-off time. The trilling sound it made had been buffered by the glass cube when Ackerman was outside, but inside, but it reverberated around the room like bullets ricocheting off rock all around him. Ackerman had to make it stop. But there was no discernible way to do so—save for a small brass button on the side of the box. Ackerman lifted the entire contraption in his hands, and the cord attached to it through the bottom of the lab table snagged short. Still holding the wooden box, it was here that Ackerman looked down at the rest of them. The wires were neatly tied off into bunches and fed into various apparatuses. What had seemed at first glance to be a hodgepodge of electronic equipment now had a collective sameness, and Ackerman’s mind instantly focused. The table contained neatly arranged telephones. Closest to where he stood with the ancient wooden box in his hands was another similar wooden box. This one wore its bells on the outside, with a cord freeing up the black cone in which to speak—a progression from the crude crank-operated one now ringing. Beyond that was a small, black, plasticencased telephone with the numerals one through nine printed around a plastic ring studded with holes. Beyond that, a green plastic lump with square buttons in a grid on its face. Ackerman had seen one before in a design archive. Telephones from throughout the ages, all of them. Ackerman stopped noting features and simply counted the tied-off bundles of cable and their respective gadgets. He continued down the branching slit in the table and came to the number thirteen before the box in his hands prrriiiiiiinged again. Ackerman set the box down and fingered the brass button, hesitating. Prrrrriiiiiinnnng! The box was making the loud noise, so he depressed the brass button. The click it made was punctuated by a crackle, then a pop, and a distortion the likes of which Ackerman had never heard
before, which caused him to jerk back from the device. A squelch-hisssquelch, followed by a coughing sound. “Bermuda Hundred to Virginia Base?” came a voice from a speaker inside the box. This was a very primitive telephone device, perhaps one of the first. He had seen pictures online, even remembered seeing some in the old textbooks. The black funnel on the top was for speaking into, the crank on the side for establishing voice contact. Ackerman spun the crank around, heard a whirring sound, and spoke clearly into the mouthpiece: “This is Science Officer Leonard Ackerman here.” The voice from the other side was silent for a time. Ackerman leaned in closer: “Can you hear me wherever you are?” “Bermuda Hundred to Virginia base?” Bermuda Hundred? Virginia base? Ackerman didn’t know such a location. And he didn’t know anyone looking to contact them who would use a such a device. “Maybe you have the wrong link…” Ackerman said back. “Who is this? State your name, rank, again? This is Len Ackerman—” “Bermuda Hundred to Virginia base?” The voice asked again, this time in a more hushed tone. The way the voice cut Ackerman off, the fuzzy and unrelated tone….Ackerman suspected that the connection was faulty in some way. “This is Len Ackerman, science officer. State your ID again…Bermuda Hundred.” The man on the other end sighed deeply, resigned to something. “I don’t even know if this tower is still operational, but if there is a connection, and perhaps you cannot respond, I will give you my story in kind. Bermuda Hundred was shelled, but it is a safe place, and I’ve time to dictate, for now.” There was a pause. Ackerman was at a loss. Was this part of the test he had unwittingly entered? To somehow piece together this man’s identity? Since he could not respond to him or let him know that yes, he had made a very strange connection indeed, Ackerman could do nothing but listen. The man on the other line began speaking again. “Yesterday we entered a skirmish. Chester Station, May the 10th.
This campaign was the most frustrated I’d seen Corporal Sanford thus far. We’d descended on the railroad near the Winfree house, engaged in sabotage. Two enemy brigades flanked us, led by that bastard Cabell—” Names sped through Ackerman’s head. Sanford, Cabell, Chester Station—none of them registered. “They were too many to meet head on, so we retreated into the trees. A faction was sent back to the Hundred for reinforcements. I, myself, retreated when they unleashed the cannons. We were no match for them. To add to these difficulties, the woods were fired early in the action, and the smoke and flames driving into our lines blinded us and deranged the precision of movements. Roughly an hour into the engagement, which included some hand-to-hand combat, our reinforcements arrived and we finally were able to push the Rebs back. Donaldson surmised that they were out of cannon fire. Last night, General Terry reported a Union loss as being 280 killed, wounded, or missing, and estimates being the Confederate loss at twice that.” Union. Confederate. Ackerman found himself practically blowing dust and cobwebs from those words in his mind. True, they were from the American Civil War. A conflict of purely terrestrial interest, one Ackerman and the collective hive of humanity had unwillingly forgotten in the 250 some-odd years since it had passed. Ackerman almost chuckled at the thought of that war, the quaint feeling it had now. Man fighting other men. With so many other things at stake, Ackerman had just the spark of an idea about when and where this disembodied voice was speaking from, but he needed one more piece of evidence to firm up his hypothesis. “We took close to fifty prisoners, which Donaldson clocked as a victory. Lord have mercy on Donaldson. It was the early dawn after the conflict, May the 11th, when a bright light descended from the general direction of the Confederate camp. It impacted the wilderness between our lines, and it was Donaldson who proposed it was a cannon misfire. But I will tell you, I have not seen a display such as this come from any man-made war machine.” It was them, Ackerman thought. Certain minds had traced one of the first shard impacts to be somewhere in the southern United States—
drawn to the conflict like a tick to blood. If Ackerman was correct, this communiqué must be some of the first ever recorded evidence of one such impact. “Sanford dispatched Donaldson and another platoon to investigate when the fires did not dissipate. It was not far away, and we could see the smoke continuing. I was placed on watch duty over the prisoners along with Corporals Pine and Nicholson. The prisoners took their turns heckling us, but we had them shackled to the very tracks we were sent to disturb. “It was near dawn that I saw Ascher, one of Donaldson’s men, emerge from the mist north of the tracks. He was across the holding area from Pine and myself, closest to Nicholson, who turned to meet him. I watched Ascher remove something from his belt and touch Nicholson in the belly, but I couldn’t be sure of what was happening at that moment due to my limited visibility, such was the nature of the early morning mist. I think I saw Nicholson collapse. Ascher continued through the group of prisoners toward me—and as he passed each one, he knelt down and drew something across their throats. He continued forward toward me, and when he was some paces out, I could discern the object in his hand to be a blade, his wrist and fingers gleaming with blood. I admit to you now, if you’re listening, that I did not fully grasp the direness of the situation until I saw his eyes. I knew Ascher to be a twitchy man, unable to meet the gaze of many. But he had no trouble doing so here, such was the first thing I noticed about his changed nature. However, there were many other details, as well, now that I am able to piece together the events of this morning. “Pine called out to Ascher as he advanced, stopping to execute another prisoner. By now, there was a fervor in the crowd of Confederates chained to the tracks. Some cried out for help as they watched their fellow soldiers slaughtered. Ascher did not respond to Pine, but he did meet his gaze. Forthright, he stepped across the body of the prisoner he had just slaughtered, then stabbed Pine in the throat, knocking him down as he choked on his own blood. The killing of the prisoners, in my mind, could have very well been a command from Donaldson, so perhaps that is why I paid it no mind. But when Ascher
attacked Pine, withdrew his knife with sickening precision, and then gazed upon me with that harsh, focused look—I tell you now, sir, that this was the moment I feared for my life. I removed my knife, in turn, and in an effort to defend myself, engaged in hand-to-hand combat with Ascher, my fellow Union officer. Throughout, I inquired as to the meaning of his slaughter of both the prisoners and Pine (as well as Nicholson, who I discovered lying in a pool of his own blood as our encounter moved toward the woods). He would not answer my questions and instead, continued to assault me with fierce precision and a terrifying nature to his gaze. Nevertheless, I obtained the upper hand and killed Ascher myself when he would not back down.” The voice paused. This retelling made the room around Ackerman feel smaller. The story he’d just heard resembled closely his encounter with O’Leary, not an hour ago. The difference was that Ackerman knew what had gotten into his comrade. This man on the other line, this soldier from a long-ago war, he did not. The voice made no mention of the whispering sound he most certainly heard soon after killing this Ascher conscript. Ackerman thought he was resilient enough to have initially rejected the beckoning call they emitted when they died. Some were lucky that way. “I sped through the camp on foot to warn my superior officers. But I found them all slaughtered in the same manner, most of them in their sleep. I myself fled to the signal tower only to find it abandoned, clearly shelled by Confederate forces most recently. Therefore, I am transmitting this message not knowing if anyone is out there to receive it. This is a distress call hailing from Bermuda Hundred, Virginia. Will anyone come and rescue first officer John Trow?” Silence. Ackerman wished to holy hell that this wasn’t a one-way conversation. He wished he could reach through this device and tell John Trow everything he needed to know. He wanted to spill an entire history of mankind’s dilemma in as many words as it took…but he couldn’t. The brass button alongside of the telephone popped out, ending the call. All became blissfully silent inside the communication room.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Adam Aresty is an author and screenwriter. He has a deep passion for genre fiction and mostly writes in the horror, sci-fi, and thriller category. Since he saw Jaws at a very young age, he knew he wanted to tell stories with monsters in them. Adam's novella, Recovery, was published in 2013 by Kraken Press. He wrote the screenplay for the horror comedy, Stung, and the film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in April, 2015. It is now available to stream on Netflix. Adam is currently working on a sequel to Stung, as well as a novel and many other works in progress. Originally from the great state of New Jersey, Adam traveled west to attend college at The University of Southern California, where he met his wife Holly. They continue to reside in Los Angeles with their Golden Retriever named Ace.