It seemed that the row houses had given up on life.
Not dramatically. Not with walls crumpled in from the collapse of adjacent buildings, windows smashed out, evidence of any catastrophic event necessitating the attention of a city repair crew. But in a gradual diminishment of what passed for architecture in a post-industrial downtown area, brick facades weathered a deep grey-brown from years of salt-laced air, mortar slowly decaying in a manner unlikely to become a problem in another couple of generations.
Emily Reed's flat was central in the terrace, third floor, and her windows overlooked the Irish Sea, which was west-facing. On days when the sun was shining, although this was not often, one could see the turning wind turbines off the coast, their warning lights blinking like lighthouses through the fog, although ships no longer sailed around them since the shipping industry had relocated long ago.
Cell phone reception was unreliable so close to the water. It had something to do with the electromagnetic currents around the turbines or perhaps the steel-based infrastructure that reflected the cell phone towers that were slapped up after the fact. Think bursts of connectivity in the wee hours when the atmospheric conditions were just right, followed by times of de facto silence.
The old church buildings had largely been reused. They were now community centers, or they were flats that had been converted, or they were simply walled up and abandoned because the cost of maintenance was beyond any possible return on investment. St. Bartholomew's down the street was a climbing gym. The Methodist chapel was a food bank three days a week. Holy spaces turned practical spaces.
This was a place that was systematically forgotten. Not in a negative way, but through the natural degradation that occurs when importance shifted somewhere else. Buildings were forgotten, industries were forgotten, people were forgotten if they did not migrate somewhere that was important to the national history.
Emily was a data archivist, which was a fancy term for someone who digitized physical records and set up backup systems. She worked in the municipal records office, where her job was to preserve documents that no one else looked at unless they were doing some sort of genealogical research or were involved in a property dispute.
She had been sleeping fitfully. Had been for the past three years, ever since the incident that official circles had ruled as death by misadventure, deciding that it was not necessary or even proper for them to go into details when details necessitated acknowledgment of facts that official circles were unable to confirm at this point in time. Her sleeping patterns had become fragmented.
The case files were kept in physical binders. Three of them were lined up chronologically on the bookshelf beside her desk, spines labeled with dates and codes of no import to anyone but her. Not digital, not cloud-stored, not backed up on external drives. On paper, printed pictures and typed words, the sort of files that could not be altered or deleted from afar.
Emily was not trying to bring back her brother. She had believed that he was dead, that he was gone with finality, that his finality had ended with the disposal of his body according to procedures that applied to the anomalous corpses that were not reclaimable by family members to give decent burial rites to the deceased.
But the one thing she could not accept was the erasure. The removal of Elias from the universe of record, the way every last detail about him, everything, was categorized and/or redacted and/or vanished into the voids of the bureaucracy, as if he'd existed to be corrected, as if he'd been a problem to be solved instead of a life to be considered.
So she maintained the files. Updated them as fragments of information slipped through the cracks in the system. Cross-checked discrepancies between the official account and the statements of witnesses as the years passed, when it became safe enough to go against the party line.
It was important to understand why evidence was required. The evidence required preservation. Preservation required an acceptance of what was likely to be a lifelong commitment to a conclusive outcome.
The email hit her inbox at 3:47 a.m. on a Tuesday morning. No warning beforehand; it just appeared when she sat down in front of the open laptop after another unsuccessful attempt at sleeping. The from field was empty. It didn't say "unknown" or use some anonymized routing address. It was just blank. Where the "from" address should have been was nothing.
Subj: Re: LOOP INCOMPLETE
She should have deleted it. She should not have opened an email from an unfamiliar source, especially if it came from addresses that seemed to suggest distribution by computer rather than from a person. However, the subject line contained phrases she'd seen in the bits, the scraps of technical information that had been leaking out from whatever government investigation was thought to be closed.
Loop. They had mentioned loops. Circular patterns in something, a process that led back to the beginning, a way to reconnect the end to the start that defied how time was supposed to work.
Emily opened an attachment.
Partial autopsy photos, extremely redacted. Black bars over most of the images, with bits and pieces accessible. These bits included things that could not possibly exist within a human body. Crystal formations that grew from tissue that would otherwise be purely organic. Metallic elements that were not surgically implanted but instead seemed to exist on a cellular level with bone and muscle.
A symbol was present in several photographs, visible in ritual scarring or strategic burning in areas where visible skin remained. A geometric pattern that didn't belong to any particular religious ideology she'd researched. That is to say, none from fringe cult iconography found in academic sources, just design elements which implied meaning in relation to intentions rather than simple randomness associated with trauma.
But it was a single catchphrase that was included in every file and every picture, in every language.
English, French, Arabic, Mandarin, languages she didn't recognize, in addition to translations offered by software indicating they may be dead or engineered.
THE LOOP IS NOT CLOSED.
Not "the loop is incomplete" or "the loop requires completion." Not closed. Present tense statement, asserting the status of a thing that has presumably been completed, contained, neutralized in official reports.
She could save those images on tangible media that would never be able to connect with internet-supported devices. Then she began searching the symbol with her own documentation to find out any usage of this symbol that could explain the meaning behind it.
Nothing. The complete absence from everything she had gathered over the past three years. Which was either new information that had not leaked into the media before, or it was false intelligence intended as misdirection to manipulate her with deceptive evidence.
However, the images of the autopsy matched his physical appearance. Height and weight consistent with what she remembered, distinguishing features evident in the uncensored areas, matching childhood injuries she could attest to. Either these represented the genuine article about what they'd discovered, or they'd had the detailed knowledge of her brother's appearance and the skill to produce a convincing forgery.
The date stamp on the file indicated it had been produced six hours previous. Recent, not historical. Someone had assembled this data recently enough that it was still considered pressing, still necessary enough to transmit despite the dangers inherent in distributing classified information.
Contract analysts, perhaps. TR-whatever that acronym signified in the redacted paperwork, employed secondary contractors for specific duties that could not or would not be done by those on their main staff. And contractors. that indicated vulnerabilities, areas in which controlling information was dependent on contracts rather than on personnel devotion.
Someone wanted her to know. Wanted someone outside the official apparatus to understand that whatever they claimed about closure was inaccurate or incomplete or deliberately false.
Emily closed the laptop and sat in the dark, listening to wind rattling through poorly insulated windows. There was no warmth in the apartment, even though the radiator was running, letting warmth escape through insulation standards that were merely meeting requirements.
This phrase echoed repeatedly in her mind. THE LOOP IS NOT CLOSED. Suggesting that it is not finished, that what had happened to Elias was not over despite being contained.
She wanted to see the site. The real-world site, not just the paperwork and testimony. Three years of bureaucratic obstruction had denied her the opportunity, restricted site, secure facility, no entry by civilians no matter how well-connected. But other sites existed. Sites mentioned in the pieces, sites where such events had been documented before drifting from memory.
Tidal power station. Abandoned twelve years earlier, when it became clear that the project would not produce economically viable power, slated for scrapping, but demolition costs outweighed the material values to be scavenged. It was how she'd first encountered mentions of it in local online news archives: accounts of strange occurrences that had been ascribed to vandalism and mistaken identity until the site had been closed off without explanation.
Access was easy. While it was technically illegal, it was not actively protected, merely fenced off with the standard trespassing notices that were regularly enough disregarded that the area was not actively enforced.
If the resonance was true, if this thing that had killed Elias had spread to other areas, that was the closest confirmed incident. It was thirty kilometers up the coast. She could investigate it by bus, if she planned her schedule right, during daylight hours when she could put her presence down to curiosity about industrial archaeology.
Emily checked the transit schedule and saw that there was a route that would get her there and back in a single day. Then she worked through the binders, pulling out pages that might be of interest, scanning them into files that would be secure from the possible compromise of her laptop.
Preparation without expectation. Investigation without the certainty that it would bear fruit, beyond just another wasted day and the knowledge that sometimes, coincidences were just that.
But the loop was not closed. Someone had made sure she understood that. And she understood, and understanding necessitated action even when action would not and could not fundamentally alter Elias' absence.
---
The tidal power station was like industrial sculpture that was dedicated to failure.
Giant concrete structures intended to harness the flow of water through turbines to turn the tide into electrical power. An engineering dream that had not factored in the costs of maintaining the structure, the rate of corrosion, or the basic economics of the fact that it required a more constant source of energy than the tides offered.
Twelve years of abandonment had degraded it to a condition of being neither ruin nor monument. The concrete was pockmarked by salt erosion, while metal parts such as railing, access ladders, and turbine blades demonstrated rust in degrees of oxidation from discoloration to point of failure. The entire project was in a condition of limbo: neither functional nor collapsed.
It was chain-link fencing topped by layers of barbed wire that had been hacked at and repaired and hacked again by trespassers seeking various reasons to come here: urban exploration, drug use, solo time in isolated areas away from where people lived. Emily located an opening readily enough: metal peeled back and held in place by wire that came loose after some manipulation.
Reports of collective dreams appeared locally three months ago. These individuals within a five-kilometer radius of the station who shared similar dreams at night—corridors made of brass, amber light, experience of sliding sideways through space in ways that defied physical laws. Note that these are all recorded independently before anyone knew that they too shared similar dreams.
The power disruptions during REM cycles, someone had observed. This was recorded in one of the fragments Emily had collated. The utility company had looked into them and dismissed them as a function of their infrastructure being in need of replacement, though this hadn't been a practical solution given their budgetary issues and the expenses such upgrades could imply in the future.
A sound characterized by "metal breathing," documented by numerous witnesses. Rhythmic, machinelike but with an organic twist that hinted at a living system rather than mere machinery. It could not be recorded—sound equipment malfunctioned or nothing was recorded despite sounds being perceived by human witnesses.
Emily went all the way around, capturing images of the area despite the knowledge that pictures rarely conveyed what made a place important. The turbine housings, which could be entered from the breached doors, featured internal space large enough to hold and control the flow of water.
The turbines were also still there, too costly to dismantle and useful only for the scrap value of the metal, which would actually cost more to ship than it was worth. Corroded iron skeletons twisted into artistic forms, with turbine blades locked into final positions they'd held the day the plant closed.
They were vibrating. Subtle, almost imperceptible, but definite vibration without any apparent source of energy. There was no wind passing through the closed chambers, no water flowing through the intake channels that had been closed off to prevent flooding. Only the metal, humming at some frequency Emily didn't recognize but could certainly feel in her teeth and in her chest.
The saltwater pools inside revealed something rather strange. The water that was left, rather than being evenly dispersed across the floors, was forming perfect circles, areas where the water had retreated, leaving dried salt deposits defining the edges.
And the chalk symbols. These appeared on concrete surfaces overnight, according to local reports, and were designs which lacked any equivalent in the standard graffiti alphabet. Neither markers of territory, nor aesthetic statements, they were simple geometrical patterns which implied a degree of order and purpose.
Emily began to picture everything as she knew that the photographs she was about to take would possibly display less than what she was seeing right before her very own eyes.
She looked around, noticing she wasn't alone.
Not dramatically. Not with sudden appearance or menacing presence. Simply the growing recognition that other people were coming in their own separate fashion, through other entry points, with other purposes.
None of them seemed fanatical. It was this that struck Emily so forcibly—the complete lack of any physical signs which might suggest cult membership or extremist ideology. Merely regular folk of varying ages and apparently diverse backgrounds, dressed suitably for a sea climate and industrial investigating.
But they moved as if they knew where they were going. No pause, no meandering. Straight routes towards particular spots in the facility as if led by an unseen hand or following an internal map.
The Veiled Choir. The name came in pieces, the organization linked to the death of Elias, but the details thoroughly redacted. It was not a hierarchical organization, not a set of doctrines they studied and observed in order to follow. Something far more dispersed, self-organizing, where people came to a common goal in a way the official inquiry could never explain.
Emily observed these people gather around the main turbine chamber, aligning themselves in a fashion that seemed ritualistic yet not necessarily orchestrated. No one was issuing commands. No one seemed to be in charge. They simply knew where to place themselves.
They looked ready. Not ready for fighting, for being found out, for anything necessarily, just for what they were apparently in this place for, what they presumably knew was to be done.
Emily drew closer, attempting to appear nonchalant despite an increasingly strong sense of having stumbled into something that she neither understood nor was prepared to deal with. A public access claim would be viable on achallenge – this was not an actively secured area that employed guards or surveillance that she could see. Simply neglected infrastructure that prohibited trespass but effectively allowed it.
She came close, maybe about twenty meters to the gathering, before the feeling struck her.
Sudden migraine. Pain exploding from nowhere to searing, debilitating levels in an instant. Not a gradual increase but a complete, as if a switch had been flipped from someone else entirely to her pain centers. The vision went white around the edges, shrinking to a tunnel that barely sustained awareness of surroundings.
Auditory echo not associated with sound. As if someone is talking right behind her but when she turned... slowly, as any movement exacerbated her migraine—no one was there. The echo remained as it was, with words in a language she couldn't decipher constructing meaning in phrases that made sense but not in a way she could conceptualize.
Brief sensation of falling sideways. Not forward or backward or down, but along a direction that never had a name when discussing the basic geography of space. As if the force of gravity had turned a ninety-degree twist in a realm that shouldn't exist, pulling her towards nowhere while keeping her immobile.
No destination in displacement, her mind filled by pain and confusion. The displacement of moving but not going anywhere, of being transported while being in one spot, of undergoing a journey which corresponded to no physical location.
Then it stopped. Not gradually lessening but simply cutting off altogether, leaving her winded and dazed but operational. The migraine alleviated to dull throbbing, the echo faded away, the feeling as though she were tipping sideways returned her to the normal forces of gravity.
They had not moved. Remained lined up in formation, as if unaffected by what she had been through. But one of them, a middle-aged woman with grey streaks in her hair, was observing her with a mixture of curiosity and concern that didn't quite reach out to offer help.
Emily slowly moved backward, keeping the group in sight while placing distance between them. Her hands were shaking, her breathing erratic, her nervous system struggling to adjust from the recent occurrence.
She didn't see another world. Didn't see Elias or brass corridors or any of the images that came to mind in the shared dreams that people spoke of. Only the sense of displacement, the feelings of being drawn towards something that couldn't be reached by moving in the normal way.
Something had passed here. Recently enough that traces were still present, that proximity had triggered a reaction in others who had not been intentionally exposed. The Loop is not closed, the email had said. And this was evidence, proof that what had killed her brother was not, in fact, safely contained, as official accounts had concluded.
Emily made her way back to the door carefully, photographing herself to record her trail even if the photos likely wouldn't reveal any important details. Outside, the ocean breeze was fresher despite its salinity and impurities, the openness a welcome change even though Emily preferred being in a contained environment.
Missed calls on her phone, texts that had piled up while she was in the building where no signal could reach. Nothing urgent, reminders, spam, the constant buzz of a world she normally interfaced with without thinking about it.
But the final notification was not like the others. Email notification. No sender. No message title. Just the timestamp of three minutes ago. Which was impossible since she was indoors with no connection when the message was received.
She didn't open it right away. Waited until the bus was there, until she was settled into her seat and leaving the facility behind her, until she was far enough away that she could feel safe even though the safe distance was probably irrelevant if something was going to get her from afar.
There was single image in the email. Sketch, not a photograph, done with technical detail that could indicate highly skilled artist or computer illustration from existing image.
A brass ring. Twenty-two millimeters in diameter based on the scale bar included in the corner, simple band with inscribed symbols that had matched descriptions she'd compiled from the fragments.
And one—the ring, in an addition that the ring hadn't indicated in any of the documentation she'd found. A hairline fracture, from the inner edge of the symbol to the outer edge, in one of the symbols etched there. So slight, the shading so subtly done it seemed to have happened just recently, after the original work.
This is how the fracture appeared to glow a faint amber in the drawing, the internal illumination spilling out into the world along the fracture in a way which indicated it was not merely broken but leaking.
Whatever it may have held, or channeled, or symbolized was able to find its way along the fracture, to spill out. Emily saved the file and closed her laptop, looking at the gray row housing through the window of the bus as the landscape shifted from coastal to dense with urban population again. It would smell of ozone when she got home—had since she'd been saving all the files and researching the pieces.
A chemical smell that wasn't normally present without electrical charge or atmospheric conditions that weren't present. The Loop was not closed. The circle was broken. The phenomenon was infecting secondary sites in a manner that seemed to defy the prevention and detection capabilities of the containment process.
But someone was making sure she knew. Getting her information through channels which shouldn't exist, keeping the lines open no matter the need to classify these from public knowledge. She didn't know who these people were or why she'd been chosen to receive the message. Didn't know if this was some honest tip from the troubled analyst or some kind of manipulation by the agencies that had much to gain from the investigation but couldn't do it themselves as civilians.
But she would document it nonetheless. File it away, cross-reference it to other things, create an archive that may, perhaps, someday allow her to discern why they were so intent on covering it up.
Elias was dead. Case closed. Elias was dead. Case closed. However, the loop was not ending. The ring was falling apart. And whatever had been contained was managing to seep through the cracks into places that no one could yet admit.
Emily Reed would watch on. Keep filming. Keep recording evidence that not all is complete when all official indications to the contrary are provided.
Because comprehension was dependent upon evidence. Evidence depended on the existence of a witness prepared to notice what others were paid to ignore.
The wake left from Elias's death was still growing. She would follow that wake until it faded away or engulfed her, just like it had engulfed him. There was no other option left for her to live with.