“Thank you for the warm welcome. This is a very lovely home you have here by the way,” Jakob said, his hands folded behind his back as he surveyed the bookcase with obvious curiosity. There were several books I recognized—Brave New World, 1984 by George Orwell, and Slaughterhouse-Five—along with a variety of other, more esoteric titles that I didn’t. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Helter Skelter, and a complete copy of The Pentagon Papers.

  Ed snorted and rolled his eyes. “You Germans always were polite ones, but there’s no need to sugarcoat things. You can just say it’s a shithole, I won’t be offended.” He paused. “Still, I’d rather have a shithole bunker out in the middle of a cornfield then a cookie cutter flesh house over in Sunnyside proper.”

  “Did you build this place yourself?” I asked. This guy had doomsday prepper written all over him, so I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the answer was yes.

  “Naw, I found it a bunch of years back,” Ed replied casually. “This place is a vestigial remnant from before the HOA consolidated its grip on this floor. Or at least in this quadrant,” he amended. “I’ve been here for”—he paused and silently counted on his fingers—“forty years, I think? Maybe longer than that. But a long time, is the point. I no-clipped sometime in the late seventies. After the war. Back in those days, this was floor nineteen, not twenty-four. Everything was different then.”

  Ed lowered his foot with a wince, then reached into his coat and pulled out colorful glass bong as long as my arm. He packed something pungent into the bowl, then promptly set it ablaze with a small trickle of mana.

  “Sorry,” Ed apologized, before taking a huge, burbling rip on the other end. “Like I said, bad arthritis. This helps with the pain. And the PTSD,” he added, almost as an afterthought.

  “I don’t give a shit what you do in your own house,” I offered with a shrug, “but I’d love to circle back around to that other thing you said.”

  “The part about my arthritis?” he asked.

  “What? No,” I grumbled. “Not the arthritis. As shocking as you might find this, I also do not give a shit about your arthritis. I meant the part where you casually mentioned that this used to be floor nineteen. That seems sort of important with broad and potentially horrifying implications. I was operating under the assumption that there are a thousand floors. Period. End of story.”

  “Yeah, that’s the corpo narrative.” Ed squinted, then blew out a cloud of smoke. “It’s what everyone wants you believe. Sure, maybe there really are a thousand floors. I’ve talked to some of the old timers who say there have always been and will always be only a thousand floors.” He leaned forward, tapping the table for emphasis. “Maybe that’s true, maybe not. But one thing I know, certain as sin, is that this place grows. About a floor per decade give or take a few years.

  “Which means that if there really are only a thousand floors, some of them must merge. Or maybe they atrophy and die off—like a crab shedding its exoskeleton.” He shrugged, the motion almost dismissive. “Or maybe that’s bullshit too, and there’s actually two-thousand floors. Or three. Or ten. Or maybe the floors rotate just like the quadrants do. The point is, anyone who tells you they’ve got this place figured out is full of horseshit. The Backrooms don’t play by any rules you or I understand.”

  Jakob immediately fished out a notebook from his coat pocket and started scribing furiously at a blank page. “Fascinating,” he muttered under his breath. “I’ve heard both prevailing theories, but it’s always been from a second or third hand account. Never from a firsthand source. You’re saying that you, personally, have been on this floor since it was floor nineteen?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying, hoss,” Ed nodded in confirmation. “And it’s not just that, either. I’ve had decades to see how much this floor’s changed since I first got here. A lot of Delvers think these floors are static—unchanging. They’re wrong. Floors get updated, and that’s why I think there’s some merit to this whole floors-merging theory. If you’d seen this place back in the seventies, you wouldn’t even recognize it.”

  He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, a faraway look creeping into his eyes.

  “Thematically, it was similar, I guess—one giant, endless neighborhood. But it wasn’t modern. Not like it is now,” he said. “It was like a Leave it to Beaver fever dream. Just try to imagine a distorted replica of 1950s mid-western American town trapped in a goddamned snow globe. Reminded me of one of those government instillation towns the CIA used to build out in Nevada to test nukes on.”

  Ed reached for his bong and took a deep rip before continuing.

  “Except back then? Everything was in black and white,” he added. “The people. The houses. The grass, the trees, the sky. Grayscale. All of it. Everything but the Delvers who passed through. We were all in brilliant, high-def LSD technicolor. Unless you stayed here too long. Then you started to lose your color, too. But that was a small price to pay for safety. Once upon a time, this floor was one of the largest Safe Harbors you could find between the VFW Reception Hall on floor zero and floor 100. People stayed here. Lived here. It was… different then. Simpler. Safer.”

  “Wait, what? The VFW Reception Hall?” I repeated, quirking an eyebrow. “Do you mean the Lobby?”

  “Is that what floor zero is now?” Ed asked, sounding tired. He took another rip on his bong, then pressed his eyes shut and rubbed at one temple. “Christ, I’ve been out of the loop too long.” He exhaled another long plume of smoke. “It’s been eight or nine years since the last time I bumped into anyone else. At least, I think it’s been eight or nine years. Time’s wonky here. Doesn’t matter,” he said, waving a hand through the air. “Point is, this place changes.”

  He paused, leaning back in his wobbly chair.

  “Err, the Backrooms, I mean,” he clarified. “Back when floor zero was the VFW Reception Hall—not this Lobby nonsense—this floor was a Safe Harbor. Being stuck in black and white was annoying, but you got used to it. And for a lot of Delvers who gave up on the idea of going home, this level was the closest we ever got to reclaiming some sense of normalcy. Nice homes. Lots of open space with trees and grass. You can even look up at the sky.”

  “And there were no Dwellers here?” Jakob asked, still scribbling in his journal.

  “A few,” Ed admitted, taking another hit before setting the bong aside. “Mimics, mostly. Weird ones, though. Instead of pretending to be furniture, they pretended to be people.” He glanced at Croc, who no longer looked like a blue parrot and instead resembled a blue rubber dog. “They were like your friend there. Which is to say, very shitty at disguising themselves. You could spot ’em a mile off and as long as you didn’t get too close, they minded their own damned business. Pretty good neighbors, all things considered. Not like the nightmares we’ve got now.”

  “What the hell happened?” I asked, genuinely curious. “Seriously, how in the hell did this place go from a grayscale 1950s TV town to this suburban hellscape?”

  “Best I can guess,” Ed said, his voice dropping into a conspiratorial whisper, “the closer a level is to the surface the more malleable it is. It’s like the upper floors are softer clay, easier to mold and reshape. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. I could never prove it for a fact, but I think a big part of the change had to do with this covert government black-op—Project Black Mariage. The Feds were always poking their noses where they didn’t belong and we’re all paying for it.”

  I stole another look at the bookshelf and my gaze lingered on the bound copy of the Pentagon Papers. Yep, definitely a conspiracy theory nutjob.

  “Now before you call for the men in the white coats,” he said, lifting one hand to forestall any interruptions, “just hear me out. Any of you happen to know what’s on the level below us? Down on floor twenty-five?”

  “It’s a VRD laboratory,” Jakob answered matter of factly.

  “That’s goddamned right it is,” Ed replied. He eyeballed Jakob, clearly connecting a few of the dots. “Should’ve guessed you’d know about the labs, being a Transmog and all. But it isn’t just Helix Splicers they’ve got down there, you know. There’s all kinds of VRD tech. Stuff that no one understands. Biological containment units, armories stocked like they’re prepping for World War III, R&D facilities with advanced technology that could reshape the world. And if you think the spooks at the CIA don’t know about this place, you’re higher than I am.

  “Trust me, they’re all over it. Hell, I’d bet my right arm that half of the tech DARPA is tinkering with is shit they’ve managed to salvage from the Backrooms. No different than what MJ-12 did with all the alien tech they recovered from the crash at Roswell—it’s just another layer of the same playbook.” Ed’s expression visibly darkened and his tone grew cold. “Ran into some of their agents about twenty years back. They called themselves B.E.A.C.O.N.—Bureau of Extradimensional Anomalies and Covert Opposition Neutralization. Bureaucratic pricks. The bastards tried to recruit me, if you can believe it.”

  I could not, in fact, believe it or half the other bullshit that was coming out of this guy’s mouth, but I held my tongue.

  “Yep, they wanted me on the team,” Ed continued, “on account of my distinguished military service during ’Nam.” He rolled his eyes. “Not that I was interested, you understand. Told them to go sit on a 105 round and spin. But I kept my ear to the ground, y’know? And that’s how I heard about Project Black Mariage. The Feds were particularly interested in a piece of VRD tech called the Nexus Pulse. What exactly does the Nexus Pulse do you ask?”

  He smirked and held up a hand to forestall any potential answers.

  “The Nexus Pulse,” he continued, “is an enormous goddamned radio transmitter capable of reprogramming all sapient minds within a certain radius. This thing could rewrite memories, eradicate personal identity, implant subconsciousness suggestions, and pacify entire population groups.” He took another bong rip. “Imagine if the government could turn every citizen in an enemy nation state into a violent sleeper agent? Or settle civil unrest with the push of a button? Scary as hell, right?”

  Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

  “And you think they were experimenting on the residents of the safe harbor using this Nexus Pulse thing?” I asked.

  “You’re damn skippy, that’s what I think,” Ed shot back, his voice rising, a vein pulsing angerly in his forehead. “And that’s what I think is at the heart of the radio station—the Nexus Pulse. The signal started changing people, but not just them. It started changing the Dwellers, too. The mimics. The ones pretending to be human.” He cackled. “Those Fed shitheads with BEACON didn’t count on that, though. They thought they were so smart, so in control. But they weren’t.

  “And I’m betting they sure as hell didn’t count on the Blight, either.” He leaned forward, as though imparting some great secret. “Now, this is pure speculation, mind you, but I think the Blight might also have some sort of rudimentary intelligence. It’s not just a disease or a phenomenon. I’m telling you, it thinks. The Blight started infecting the residents, right? But then the signal—the Nexus Pulse—it started infecting the Blight. Twisting it. Shaping it. And this? The HOA? It’s the result. A merger of man, monster, and machine, all controlled by a technology that was supposed to make things ‘better.’ Instead, it made everything a thousand times worse.”

  A heavy silence settled over the room as we considered the implications of Ed’s words.

  “That sounds utterly mad,” Temperance said, folding her arms and fixing Ed with a skeptical glare. “I’m just going to say it. You sound mentally unwell. I have been in the Backrooms longer than any of you and I can assure you, this world predates your current government by hundreds, or perhaps, even thousands of years. Furthermore, I’ve never heard of any of these so-called clandestine organizations and, frankly, your theory reeks of paranoia and the effects of prolonged isolation.”

  “Now, now Kleiner Hase,” Jakob chided patting her on the arm, “it’s no crazier than believing the Backrooms are a divine test, designed by an alien god to separate the wheat from the chaff.”

  I agreed with Jakob.

  Although Ed was clearly paranoid, his theory didn’t seem entirely outside the realm of possibility. I had no doubt that the Backrooms could theoretically produce an Artifact like the Nexus Pulse and if something like that did exist, I was equally sure the CIA would be interested in getting ahold of it. And considering the CIA’s checkered history and shady operating practices, would they really be above testing a powerful mind control weapon on people trapped in an extradimensional prison?

  Probably not.

  That still didn’t mean Ed was right, but maybe he wasn’t wrong either.

  In the end, though, the truth didn’t really matter. Not to me.

  Temp was as crazy as a bagful of caffeinated raccoons, but I still trusted her.

  Sure, maybe Ed was a few fries short of a Happy Meal, but everyone in the Backrooms was fundamentally damaged in one way or another. Jakob was a pacifist in a Mad-Max murder-world, Croc was flesh-eating mimic who couldn’t properly mimic things, and Temperance was a homicidal pilgrim in a skin-tight bunny suit. There were no perfect people in the Backrooms. No normal people, either.

  Only the crazy ones survived here.

  Right now, there were only two things that really mattered.

  One, could Ed be trusted not to turn us into human-based meat chill the second he had an opportunity and, two, could he help us get past the wall of Kyles and Karens surrounding the exit kiosk? I wasn’t sure about the second question, but he’d had plenty of opportunities to screw us over and leave us for dead, and he’d chosen to help us instead. As far as I was concerned, he’d earned enough goodwill for me to lend him the benefit of the doubt.

  “Don’t mind Temperance,” I said to Ed, “she has very strong opinions and doesn’t play especially well with others. I’m sure she wasn’t trying to insult you—”

  “—oh no, I was indeed insulting him,” Temp clarified.

  “Thanks, Temp,” I muttered, “as always, your diplomatic abilities continue to shock and amazing me.”

  Ed chuckled, a low, raspy sound that carried more amusement than warmth. “At least she’s honest,” he said. “For what it’s worth, it’ll take a lot more than that to insult me. People have been calling me crazy for decades, kemo sabe. But here’s the thing. I was right about Agent Orange. About Operation CHAOS. About the Pentagon Papers and the Tuskegee Experiments. I was right Every. Damn. Time. You’ll see. Time is on my side. It always is. Besides, it doesn’t matter if you believe me. If you want to get out of here, you need me.” He offered us a wide grin that made him look more deranged than ever. “Because I can take down the signal.”

  “Like you did back at the cookout?” I asked, feeling an ember of hope ignite in my chest. “With the radio?”

  “Just like that,” he said, nodding vigorously, “but everywhere all at once.” He paused, seeming to appraise us carefully. “Come on,” he finally said, “let me show you something.”

  The chair squeaked as he pushed himself to his feet then lumbered over toward the steel blast door at the far end of the room. He paused by the birdcage and coaxed the parrot out onto his hand with a few soothing words.

  “Who’s a pretty bird?” Ed said, booping the parrot on the beak with one finger.

  “Kill you with fire,” she replied, inching her way onto his shoulder.

  “That’s my girl,” Ed mumbled, before returning to the blast door. He disengaged the locks, pulled the hatch open with the shriek of rusty hinges, then ushered us into the connecting room, which was far better furnished than his living quarters.

  Tables lined every wall, all of them loaded down with various electrical equipment. Spools of wire and buckets of gutted radio parts, along with heaps of transistors and capacitors, diodes and electrical relay switches, fuses and transformers galore. The guy had enough batteries to fill a bathtub. He also had scads of tools and although I wasn’t an electrician by trade, I’d installed enough lights and changed enough wall outlets to be familiar with most of them.

  Decorating one wall was an enormous map with colored twine running from everywhere to everywhere else in a chaotic sprawl. It looked like one of those true crime cork boards, and it definitely didn’t make Ed seem any less crazy. Bits of red twine all lead to one central location, neatly labeled as WBSC – Sunnyside Community Radio Broadcast Station.

  As impressively insane as the board was, however, the true pièce de resistance was the enormous device occupying the center of the room—two parts radio, one part bomb, and easily the size of a car engine.

  “This here is Big Bertha,” he said, affectionately patting the side of the enormous bomb/radio disruptor. “I’ve been working on her for years and she’s finally ready to go. Once I fire up Bertha, the Signal will go down all across Sunnyside. It’s basically a giant magical EMP that’ll fry the Nexus for good.” He snapped his fingers with a loud crack. “Boom. Just like that. Once the signal fails, all the Sunnysiders will be mindless husks just like they were at the party after I set off the smaller disruptor. Except this time, it’ll be permanent.”

  “What about the elites?” I asked.

  “Like the Kyles and the Karens who were standing guard outside that fireworks tent?” Ed asked.

  “Yeah, like those,” I replied evenly.

  “Those things are tough. Taking down the signal at the source is the only way you’re getting past them,” Ed said.

  “And this device can do all of that?” Jakob asked, crouching down to examine the machine in closer detail. “If that’s the case, then why haven’t you used it yet, I wonder?”

  Ed grimaced then rubbed the back of his neck. “See, that’s the only catch. Big Bertha can crash the Signal, but it needs to be near the source. Within fifty feet or so of the Nexus Pulse.” He headed over to the map and pointed at the radio station. “The WBSC Community Broadcast Station,” he growled. “That’s where the Nexus Pulse is. I’m sure of it. Those weird radio announcements you’ve been hearing? That’s all part of the Signal. Big Brother, always keeping their eyes and ears on you. Getting into the radio station itself is the rub, and I can’t do it alone.

  He lifted one hand, palm up, and conjured a miniature replica of a two-story building of reinforced concrete with a large steel broadcasting antenna protruding from its flat roof. The letters WBSC ran boldly across the front of the building, which reminded me more of a prison than it did of a radio broadcasting station. Encircling the perimeter of the building were Sunnysiders. An army of Elite Kyles and Karens, even more dangerous than their counterparts.

  “Wow, that’s amazing,” Croc marveled. “How do you do that? Make the picture, I mean?”

  “Illusion magic,” Ed replied tersely. “It’s sort of my specialty. This”—he gestured toward the slowly rotating illusion with his free hand—“is the Broadcast Station. As you can plainly see, the outside is crawling with hostile Sunnysiders. There’s no way to get past them and even if we could, which you can’t, the building itself is built like a goddamned siege fortress.”

  “Great sales pitch,” I said, folding my arms across my chest. “Really filling me with overwhelming confidence.”

  “Oh ye of little faith,” he replied. “Getting past the Elites might not be possible, but I’ve found another way in.” He snapped his fingers, and the illusion zoomed out, revealing a maze of interconnecting underground passageways. “There are a series of fallout tunnels that still run beneath the city—vestigial structures, just like my bunker. Those structures aren’t a part of the HOA, so the Sunnysiders avoid them like the plague and one of those tunnels just so happens to connect to the station’s subbasement. The only wrinkle is that to get to the tunnel you have to go through here.”

  Another tiny building shimmered into existence, this one labeled Sunnyside Tiny Tots Preschool.

  “Wait a minute, I’m sorry,” I said, holding up a hand to stop him. “Is this a joke? You’re telling me that you need help getting through a preschool? Maybe I’m missing something here, but surely a bunch of little kids can’t be that tough, right? Hell, why can’t you just take one of those radio disruptors with you and use it on all the crotch goblins inside? Quick and easy.”

  Ed’s face had grown pale and his expression dark.

  “The horrors inside that Preschool are worse than you could possibly imagine,” he said, finally banishing the conjured illusion. “I saw a F-4 Phantom drench an entire town of noncombatants outside of Khe Sanh with Napalm and that still wasn’t as bad as what’s inside that god forsaken preschool. Plus, the disruptors don’t work on the kids, because the Signal doesn’t work on the kids.

  “The Sunnysiders, they reproduce like mimics,” Ed explained. “They hatch in clutches and the preschools serve as breeding grounds. The toddlers are small and relatively weak, but extremely violent and unpredictable. Once they get old enough, they evolve into Timmys and Tammys before being released into the cornfields, where they’re slowly infected by the signal and the SporeFeed, until eventually they evolve again into their adult form.

  “I’ve tried to get through the preschool a dozen times, at least,” he continued. “I’ve also almost died a dozen times, too. There are just too many of those goddamned demon babies. If we all went together, though?” He nodded. “We could do it. Get past the toddlers and into the basement of the broadcast station. From there, I activate Big Bertha, we take down the signal, and everything topside turns into anarchy. While the Sunnysiders are busy murdering each other, I can finally get away from this floor.”

  I felt a brief pang of guilt.

  From the sounds of it, all Ed wanted was to leave this place in his rearview mirror.

  Thing was, I could help him do that right now. I could use a Doorway Anchor to open a gateway to my shop and he could be free with two steps.

  Except, I couldn’t do that because we needed him. Assuming Ed was right, taking down the radio station would incapacitate the Sunnysiders guarding the exit kiosk which, in turn, would allow us to get one step closer to the Franchisor. If I let him go now, there was no telling how long we might be stuck here. So, even though it made me feel like a real bastard, I kept my mouth shut about the doorway anchor.

  “Well, what the hell are we waiting for?” I said instead.

  Ed nodded. “My thoughts exactly—and the timing couldn’t be better.” He glanced down at his watch.

  “What’s the rush?” I asked, suddenly feeling a creeping sense of dread.

  “It’s just a few hours until daybreak,” Ed replied. “Like all the kids in this fucked up town, the toddlers are significantly weaker during the daylight hours. Once the moon goes up, it’s a whole different ballgame. They get stronger, faster, meaner. Even gain temporary levels. And starting tomorrow night, it’s going to be worse. Way worse. Exponentially worse.”

  “What happens tomorrow night?” I asked, knowing full well I wasn’t going to like the answer.

  “The Bleeding Moon,” Ed replied. “Happens once every few years and lasts for about a month or so. Sometimes even two. The sun doesn’t come up. The moon starts to bleed. The kids, they start to evolve—turn into rabid, demon werewolves. But with horns. Instead of gaining ten levels, they gain fifteen, and they get real hungry. Trust me, it’s a whole thing. If we don’t move now, y’all could be stuck here for a good long while.”

  If I wasn’t sold before, I was now. “Sounds like we need to go kick the shit out of some eldritch toddlers.”

  “Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Ed agreed.