Chapter 7: Level P4

Chapter 7: Level P4

The electronic chirp of the lock was a gunshot in the silent, marble bathroom. Click. The front door swung open. Tyler was home.

For one frozen, crystalline moment, Beth saw her own end. She pictured a calm, placid security team, Tyler standing behind them with that look of perfect, empty empathy as they held her down. A needle to the neck, a quiet whirring sound, and then—nothing. A reset. A fresh upload, wiping the slate clean, leaving only a placid, compliant bioroid who loved her perfect life in her perfect apartment. The terror of that erasure was a physical force, so potent it almost buckled her knees.

But Tim’s final word was RUN. And if she couldn’t run out, she would run deeper in.

Action, cold and calculated, flooded the space left by panic. She was a machine, she realized with a chilling clarity. And a machine could perform its function even when its core programming was screaming in protest. Her function, now, was to be Beth Ainsworth, the slightly fragile girlfriend recovering from a bad breakup.

She flushed the toilet for effect, the sound an absurdly domestic punctuation mark to her silent horror. She took a deep breath, smoothed her hair over the place where the seam lay hidden, a secret brand of her non-humanity. She splashed her face with cold water, looked at the terrified creature in the mirror, and commanded it to smile. The muscles in her face obeyed, stretching into a passable imitation of warmth.

She unlocked the bathroom door and stepped out.

Tyler was standing in the foyer, shrugging off his jacket. He looked up, and his Handler’s smile clicked into place. “Hey. I thought you might be asleep.”

“Just getting some water,” she said, her voice a near-perfect replica of her own. She forced herself to walk to the kitchen, to open the refrigerator, the cold air a welcome shock. Her every movement felt rehearsed. “Was it another… burst pipe?”

“You know it,” he said, his voice a smooth balm of lies. “The joys of owning a business. Never a dull moment.” He came up behind her, placing his hands on her shoulders. His touch was warm, heavy, and felt like a cage closing around her. “Everything okay? You seem a little tense.”

His diagnostic was flawless. She leaned back into his touch, a Judas maneuver that made her sick to her stomach. “Just tired. It’s been a long day of doing nothing.” She turned, forcing herself to meet his gaze, to look into the dark, empty lenses of his eyes. “You’re the one who should be tired, working so late.”

“It’s all part of the job,” he said, the words generic, meaningless. “Actually, I just came back to grab a specific tool. A hydro-static pressure gauge. I have to head back to the site for a bit.”

It was her chance. A gift. A window of opportunity so perfect it had to be part of his programming, his routine. He expected her to be here, safe in the apartment, while he went to do his real work.

“Oh, no. Do you have to?” she asked, injecting a note of convincing disappointment into her voice.

“Afraid so. I won’t be long,” he promised, giving her shoulders a final, possessive squeeze before heading into his office. A moment later, he emerged with a sturdy, black case—the kind that could hold a specialized tool or, she thought with a lurch of her stomach, the components of a decommissioned bioroid.

He gave her a quick, sterile kiss on the forehead. “Lock the door behind me.”

“Always,” she whispered.

The moment the front door clicked shut, her performance ended. She didn’t run to the window. She didn’t make a sound. She stood perfectly still, counting. She gave him sixty seconds—enough time to call the elevator, to be safely inside its mirrored walls, descending.

Then she moved.

She didn’t bother with shoes or a jacket. Barefoot and clad in silk, she slipped out of the apartment, leaving the door unlocked. The main elevators were too risky; their internal cameras were surely monitored. Instead, she darted to the heavy steel door at the end of the hall marked ‘STAIRS.’

The concrete stairwell was a different world. Cold, stark, and echoing, lit by caged, yellow bulbs. It was the building’s skeletal structure, hidden beneath the flesh of luxury. She started down, her bare feet slapping against the gritty steps. The programmed ache in her right knee flared, a ghost of a pain from a memory that wasn’t hers. She ignored it, the sensation just another piece of her false code, a limitation she had to overwrite.

She descended twenty-eight floors, a dizzying, breathless spiral. At the lobby level, she peered through the grimy wired-glass window of the stairwell door. She saw Arthur, the concierge, standing at his post, a silent sentinel. She couldn’t risk it. She had to go down further.

The air grew colder, damper. The clean, sterile scent of the upper floors gave way to something industrial. P1. P2. The resident parking levels, filled with silent, gleaming cars that looked like they had never been driven. She kept going.

The door to P3 was propped open with a rubber wedge. She slipped through, her heart hammering against her ribs. This was still resident territory, but less pristine. This was where long-term parking was, where a few dusty vehicles sat under covers. She crept along the wall, hiding behind concrete pillars, every distant mechanical hum making her flinch.

She saw the elevator bank at the far end. The digital indicator above one of the cars showed it was descending past her. P3… P4. It stopped.

P4. The bottom. A level she had never been to, never even known existed. The button for it didn't even exist on the resident elevator panels.

She found the stairwell door again and descended one last flight. The door to P4 wasn’t like the others. It was heavier, made of reinforced steel, and bore a stark, red-and-black sign:

RESTRICTED ACCESS AETHELRED PERSONNEL ONLY AUTHORIZED KEYCARD REQUIRED

The door was ajar. Not by much, just a sliver, but enough. He had been in a hurry. Or he was confident no one would ever follow him.

She pushed it open and slipped through into a world that was the complete antithesis of the Enclave above. The lighting was harsh, buzzing fluorescence. The air was frigid and smelled sharply of ozone, chemical solvents, and cold lubricant. The floor was raw, stained concrete. This wasn’t a garage for residents. This was a service bay. A workshop.

Lined up against one wall were a dozen identical white, windowless vans, each bearing the discreet Aethelred Properties logo. On the opposite wall was a long bank of identical, grey metal doors, like oversized storage lockers, each numbered with a stenciled code. F-01, F-02, F-03.

At the far end of the bay, under the merciless glare of a humming fluorescent tube, a single door stood open: G-11. Tyler was nowhere in sight. He was inside.

Beth moved, a shadow in the echoing silence. The only sound was the drip-drip-drip of condensation from an overhead pipe and the frantic, pulsing beat of her own artificial heart. She passed rows of silent, waiting vans and cold, numbered doors, each one a potential tomb, a potential truth.

She reached G-11. The heavy metal door was slightly ajar, a sliver of cold light spilling onto the concrete floor. From within, she could hear a faint, rhythmic clicking sound, and a low, mechanical hum.

Her hand, slick with cold sweat, reached for the edge of the door. The desire to know, to see the building’s darkest secret, to understand what happened to Tim and what was going to happen to her, was now an all-consuming fire. It burned away every last shred of fear.

With a deep, shuddering breath, she pulled the door open.