T-008 Dark room

Threshold Institute · Case file T-008

Number

T-008 in the catalogue

Kind

Room

Class

Class I: harmless while it is left alone

Found

Year 11, month 5, day 6

Where found

The last storeroom of the sealed level's east wing

Status

Unchanged since the breach; it does nothing to anyone who stays out

Now

At the lab and in the rift

Part

Part II: The rooms turn

Containment procedures

The storeroom is emptied and sealed behind a warning plate that bears its number and a black sun. Its four lamps stay lit on the light rule (see T-004), though they light almost nothing inside. No one enters T-008 without a rope, a second walker at the door and the order never to take what is dark for empty. T-004's cell was moved away from the east wing in year 11 and is never to be moved back. A room on the sealed level that is dark with its lamps lit is reported as T-008 until shown otherwise. T-008 is placed in Class I: it does nothing to anyone who stays out of it.

Description

A room where light dies. Every light in it reaches about two tiles and no further, whether it is lit inside or shone in from the door: a lamp, a torch beam, a fire, a muzzle flash. The eye does no better, and the night-vision and thermal goggles tried in later years see no further than a lamp. Past that reach the room is pitch black, and sound in it comes low and hushed. The room is otherwise a room: its walls, floor and plan hold, and nothing in it hurts anyone. What stands in its dark, though, is not seen until it is within two tiles.

Discovery

After T-007 the Institute believed that its thresholds came out of the chamber and could be followed. On the sixth day of the fifth month of year 11 a supply runner, Tomas Rehn, nineteen and in his first month as a technician, was sent to the east wing's last storeroom with a crate of lamp batteries, because the night guard had reported it dark with all four lamps lit. Rehn went in with a hand lamp and saw its beam stop two tiles out. He walked the room on a rope with his eyes shut, counting his steps against the plan, and the plan held. Mara Okafor did not believe that the room was only dark. Her team went in with every lamp the sealed level had and came out by feel, and nothing was in it. A guard stood the night in the doorway with his rifle on the dark, to be sure, and in the morning said that a room he could not see into was the worst post he had held since year 4. T-008 was the first threshold that was a place and not a creature, and the proof that T-001 no longer leaked only things: it leaked rules, and the rules settled in the building. It was also the first sign that the defence the shade (see T-004) had taught the Institute, light, could fail.

Addenda

Addendum T-008-A

Rehn's own account, written the same day

I set the crate down inside the door and lit my lamp, and the lamp showed me my own hand and the crate and two floor tiles, and then nothing, as if the room ended there. It does not end there. I paced it on the rope: nine paces by six, as on the plan. I could hear my own steps, but low, as if through a blanket. From the middle of the room I could not see the door, though the corridor behind it is lit end to end.

Addendum T-008-B

memorandum, M. Okafor to Director I. Varga, Year 11, month 5, day 8

Everything we have built on this level since year 4 rests on one rule, and that room breaks it. If T-004 were in there, we would not see it with every lamp we own until it was within reach. I want T-004's cell as far from the east wing as this level allows, and I want every guard carrying a second lamp and an order never to take a dark room for an empty one.

Addendum T-008-C

note

Granted in full. T-004 was moved that summer. Director Varga moved Rehn from supplies to a survey of the building, which until then had not needed one. Dr Selma Kader, the Institute's physicist, took light readings in T-008 for a year and found that the room took more of the light on the days the growth (see T-006) came back fast, and less on the days it was cut back. She could not say why. The night staff called it the sponge. Rehn noted in his survey book that T-008 was the first threshold of the building that did nothing at all to the people in it, and the one the guards feared most. He walked every corridor of the sealed level with chalk and a count over the next years. In the archive under the observation wing the count went wrong another way (see T-009).

Previous fileT-007 MirrorPart I: The tear Next fileT-009 Gravity roomPart II: The rooms turn

In the file

• People: Director Ilse Varga, Tomas Rehn, Mara Okafor and Dr Selma Kader.
• Places: The Institute’s site, The containment chamber, The sealed level and The observation wing.

In the game

The note you find in the game:

Year 11, month 5, day 6. Found in the last storeroom of the sealed level's east wing, after the night guard reported it dark with all four lamps lit. Tomas Rehn, nineteen and in his first month as a technician, carried a crate of lamp batteries in, saw his hand lamp's beam stop two tiles out and walked the room on a rope by count: the first threshold that was a place and not a creature.

A sealed room on the lab's lower level where light dies. Every light reaches 2 tiles in it, from inside or from its door: a flashlight, a lamp, a fire, a muzzle flash, even the eye. Beyond that the room is pitch black.

Night vision and thermal goggles see no farther. Mara Okafor's team went in with every light we had and came out by feel. Found behind a warning plate that bears its code and a black sun.

Status: unchanged since the breach; it does nothing to anyone who stays out.

Today it is found at the lab and in the rift.

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