Listen to me

"How do you know that this time will be any different? Look around. We're all stuck in here, just like you."

Neil felt the weight of the room press in on his shoulders, and he lowered his head.

The phone buzzed, just once.

Neil's head snapped up in an instant, and he felt the seconds beside him freeze as if they too, were watching, waiting to see what happened next.

In eight years working for EyeCare-Us, this phone had never so much as beeped. Always on, always clipped to the waistband of his pants, but more a theory than anything. Like a black hole- you knew they existed, but you pretended that they didn't.

Now here he was, an hour away from the weekend, last in the office on a cold Friday night, and it buzzes.

"You will always wear this on your person as long as you work here, do you understand that? I don't care what you wear, I don't care whether you have cut your hair, and I certainly don't care what you bring for lunch. But this phone...this phone will always be next to you. And if it ever rings, you answer."

Neil remembered the words because they were the only time the supervisor had ever spoken to him. Eight years, and they had never talked since. He hadn't actually seen the supervisor for a few months, but EyeCare-Us was preparing to go global, so he just figured that he was too busy to be on the ground floor.

At the time, Neil had been struck by the quiet ferocity of the man's words, and how he had refused to blink. Clearly, he wasn't joking.

A normal job, at a normal company, doing normal office things. The most bizarre part of his time here had been those instructions on day one, and work had become so mundane that he had almost forgotten them. Almost.

The phone buzzed again, and vibrated on the desk, as if to show its frustration at not being picked up the first time.

Neil pushed his headset down, and his fingers scrambled for the phone, its sleek and simple black interface a throwback to the earliest days of modern cellular technology. No touch screen, no colourful apps, no internet capability.

Fumbling slightly, he prised the cool screen up and jammed it to his right ear, hoping that he wouldn't hear anything.

"Hello, Neil from EyeCare-Us speaking."

He held his breath for an answer, aware of the sudden dampness in his shirt. His heart was also waiting, seeming to slow down rather than speed up, and the back of his neck was slick with sweat.

"eil...isten...close...I nee you...to get...to our...op...ions factor..., and...need you...to...hut down...the react...on...ment floor...tor, base floo...Ente...the cod...cut...powe...and...open...the...low door...Do...pen...the yel door."

The voice was frantic but clear, and Neil could make out of the words, even with the static cutting in and out, swooshes of air slicing across the words.

Even without the full message, he could feel the urgency in the speaker's tone. The voice was deliberately paced, as if to remove any panic, and almost rhythm-like, like they knew exactly what to say. It was a male voice, and almost identifiable, but not quite.

"You're breaking up. I didn't get all of that. Please repeat."

He kept his words short and tight, and waited for a response, his left hand scrabbling in the top drawer of his desk for a pen and paper.

"eil...isten...close...I nee you...to get...to our...op...ions factor..., and...need you...to...hut down...the react...on...ment floor...tor, base...floo...Ente...the cod...cut...powe...and...open...the...low door...Do...pen...the yel door."

Neil nodded as he wrote in black, noting the pauses and spaces in the first half that he had already written down, and how consistent they were. The message seemed to be almost identical to the first.

"Okay, okay. I have written it all down now. I'm missing words still. Who are you? Please repeat."

"eil...isten...close...I nee you...to get...to our...op...ions factor..., and...need you...to...hut down...the react...on...ment floor...tor, base...floo...Ente...the cod...cut...powe...and...open...the...low door...Do...pen...the yel door."

This time, Neil realised it was a recording. The timing was exactly the same, as was the missing syllables. The line abruptly went dead, and he quickly placed the phone on the desk, as if to disconnect himself from the message. But he had written them down, and they stared up at him patiently, blankly.

He didn't move, and ran his hands along the back of his neck, trying to cool down. It wasn't a phone call. It was a recorded message playing back to him. How? He had picked up- it wasn't his answer phone. And the voice had sounded human- it wasn't automated.

He eyed the phone, but it remained silent, just like it had been for almost eight years. His eyes flicked across the desk to the words he had scribbled, and darted around as he tried to decipher the jumble.

Line by line, he painstakingly filled in the missing letters or syllables, sounding it out loud, so that the noise bounced off the empty walls around him. He red-penned his annotations, and after a few minutes he tried again from the start.

"Neil...listen...close...I need you...to get...to our...operations factory..., and...need you...to...shut down...the reactor...on...basement floor...Reactor, basement floor...Enter...the code...cut...power...and...open...the...yellow door...Do...open...the yellow door."

As he read it out loud this time, and as the meaning of the words finally hit him, he shuddered.

Operations factory. Shut down reactor. Basement floor. Enter code. Cut power. Yellow door.

Code? What code? He didn't have one. But the rest all made deadly sense, and without pausing to finish, he was out of his chair, scrambling to put on his jacket, fumbling for his car keys, nearly forgetting to cram the message into the top pocket in the process.

Neil ran down to the carpark, head spinning as he fired up the ignition and made for the A1. He had never been to operations, but everyone knew where it was. EyeCare-Us had their main public office in the city, but everything innovative, cutting-edge, and high-level was made or held or discussed at operations. The two buildings were in sync constantly, and Neil often received comms from workers there. Rarely, if ever, had he sent anything back.

The reactor. As Neil sped through downtown, driving just over the limit but not enough to attract attention, he couldn't get the word out of his head. It was burning a hole in his chest; just words on paper nestled safely in his jacket, yet so much more.

He knew the company weren't working on anything nuclear, even if the name was a front. The glasses and lenses that the public purchased made up approximately 19% of their annual revenue. The rest? A combination of projects and products that they supplied to government and private, all to do with vision. Heat, thermal, laser, cooling, night, colour- you name it, EyeCare-Us was working on it, or had already come up with it.

He turned off the highway within fifteen minutes, and the questions continued to tumble over and over as city turned to field. With the amount of experiments and projects going on in operations, of course it would be powered by a reactor.

But what had happened? He would need a code to shut it down, and he didn't have one. Should he have searched the office first before leaving?

No, better to be heading to the factory. If there were an obvious code at the office, he would know it. Weaving past slow cars and keeping an eye on directions, he knew it would have to be in operations. It was just a matter of finding it.

Soon enough, Neil was pulling up to the factory, a little ways down a dirt road. There were multiple locked gates, but a quick flash of his ID was enough to scan and pass through. Though he had never tested it, he knew his clearance would at least get him into operations.

Parking past the last gate, he noticed that there were plenty of other cars around. Bizarre for a Friday evening, though he assumed operations worked to their own schedule, outside the regular hours of the public-facing office. There must be employees still here. All he had to do was find one, and get their help to find the basement and the reactor.

Simple enough.

His thoughts came hurried to him now, as if the urgency was more real now that he was actually here, at operations. The main doors slid open with a hiss as he held his wrist up, red moving to green.

No problems there- now to find someone who could help. Striding into the main lobby, he was struck by how quiet the building felt. It was not dissimilar from the lobby at the office, or any typical workplace for that matter. Wide and open, a front desk to sign in, faux pillars along the side, elevators on the left, and a waiting room to the right.

But nothing else. Where were the people?

Neil walked quickly to the front desk, knowing there was no-one there. The seat remained, as did the screens that would face the receptionist. But they were blank and cold.

A shiver trickled down his back, as he turned in a slow circle. He was in operations, and he was alone. For though he had never set foot in the place, they all knew that someone manned the front desk at all times. If even one worker remained in the place, even after hours, then there was someone waiting for them at reception.

No-one was allowed to be in here on their own.

Whether that was for their own protection, or the company's, Neil had never thought to ask. He cursed himself under his breath, realising that it was a case of how far his ID could take him. If he were denied access down, then he would be locked out.

And whoever had sent the message, sent to a phone that had never been rung, would be stuck, along with the reactor. He didn't want to even imagine what problems might be unleashed if it were to remain that way.

Ignoring the elevators, he made for the fire doors to the right near the bathrooms, taking the steps two at a time as he made his way downward. Spooked as he was by the silence surrounding him on all sides, he knew that someone had called here, and they knew him.

They knew his name, and they needed his help.

Keeping an eye on the signs on each floor, he descended quickly, feeling the air cool as he moved. G for Ground to -1, then -2, then -3, and finally, B.

Basement.

He prayed his clearance would hold, and pressed his wrist against the steel doors, pushing his forehead against the cool metal in an effort to calm himself. He wouldn't be able to break them down by force, of that he was certain.

Thankfully, he wouldn't need to. The small red light moved to a green glow, and he was in.

He wedged the door open behind him with a stray desk nearby, just in case. What he would find down here he didn't know, but it was worth having an exit route ready. The green changed back to red, and began to pulse slightly, as if in silent protest at the door remaining open. Too bad.

Neil scanned the room, looking for anything that would help. He didn't have to look far.

Down to his left, he could see the reactor. A mass of wires and cords, valves, and mega-batteries, it stood out like a metal thumb. Somehow smaller than he expected, it hummed quietly. Moving towards it cautiously, his eyes flitted around, looking for any sign of life or activity. Nothing stirred.

The Basement lay almost bare, except for the reactor. There were bits and pieces that showed people had been working here recently- a discarded coffee cup, a takeaway meal half-finished, a labcoat folded over a chair. But for the most part, there seemed to be nothing threatening to Neil.

No scary science projects, no mutated monsters, no experiments in huge glass test-tubes. He wasn't completely naive to what his company did- he knew a decent part of it involved skirting the law in murky off-shore deals, trades, and agreements. Exactly what was exchanged, he had never known, nor wanted to. He had kept his head down, and done his general administration efficiently and competently, in exchange for the handsome salary that kept him healthy and well.

He approached the machine cautiously, watching it whirr. Nothing seemed out of place, at least as far as he could see.

The code. He had almost forgotten- he needed the code to shut it down. Realising that there was really only one place to look, he searched through the pockets of the labcoat, and found it tucked neatly into the right-breast pocket. A small scrap of yellowed paper, it had a sequence of digits scribbled across it neatly.

9-3-1-18-21-19

Crouching down, he found the keypad on the reactor, pressed his wrist to it, and was relieved to find that somehow, his clearance had held, even down here. Whoever had granted him access to this deep in operations had been either a madman or an unintentional genius.

Prompted for the code, he punched it in carefully, noting the spaces between each of the numbers. Strange- all under twenty. Not exactly random them. Almost like actual code...

He glanced at the label on the side of the reactor, a yellow sticker which simply read "EyeCare-Us Industries".

The reactor accepted the code, and started to wind its way down, the humming slowly decreasing.

As it did so, Neil's own internal wheels began to whir.

Something about the number of digits. Six of them. He caught his own reflection in the cold metal of the now-quiet reactor, and his eyes flashed back at him. EyeCare-Us.

Thoughts and words flashed, jumbled and blending in and out. The reactor. The code. EyeCare-Us.

Something was going on here, something dangerous that needed to be shut down immediately. Something so bad, they had needed to call him.

What had they done? Had they pushed too far?

And all at once, it clicked. So obvious, so clear, now that he knew.

Icarus.

His blood ran cold, and he backed away from the reactor, his hand still clasping the code. Now that the humming was gone, he realised that there had a been a second, fainter, muffled sound he had missed in his first listen.

It was coming from the other side of the room.

He walked steadily across, all the way to what he could now see was a door he hadn't seen initially, distracted by the reactor at the other end. Faded yellow, it also had a keypad.

The yellow door. Of course. In his rush to shut down the reactor, he had forgotten. Clearly, whoever had called was inside.

Clumsy fingers punched in the code as the noise increased on the door. He could almost hear them shouting.

For some reason, they were locked inside, and they had called him. Now, he was nearly there.

With a soft click, the door unlocked, and he pushed it firmly, only to be grabbed by rough hands and shoved inside before he could protest.

The door clicked, and his eyes took a moment to adjust to the low light of what he could now see was a bunker.

It wasn't his surroundings that made his heart stop though. It was who was in there with him.

It was Neil. It was him. And there was more than just one.

"You idiot! I told you not to open the door!" he said. His other self, that was.

Neil's jaw dropped, trying to take in what was happening.

"I, I don't understand."

"Neither did we" he said glumly from the other side of the room.

"It's a loop" said another, not even bothering to face him.

"And each time we get a little closer to getting out, or so we think" said a third.

"And you were supposed to be the one to get it right. I said, do NOT open the yellow door" said the first Neil.

The second Neil simply held out the phone, and he took it, stunned.

"Make the call."

"Neil...Listen...closely...I need you...to get to our...operations factory, and I need you...to shut down...the reactor...on the basement floor...Reactor, basement floor...Enter the code...cut the power...and do not...open...the yellow door...Repeat...Do not...open...the yellow door."

"How do you know that this time will be any different? Look around. We're all stuck in here, just like you."

Neil felt the weight of the room press in on his shoulders, and he lowered his head.

"I don't."