The Ascension Pit squatted at the end of the street like a machine that had learned to pray.
Detective Fulger sat in his car for a moment longer than necessary, engine ticking, rain crawling down the windscreen in slow veins. Harrowick Street throbbed tonight. Heavy bass leaked through brick like wind through a sieve. Even with the windows up, he could feel it. Not sound.
Undeniable pressure.
The likes that any detective would run from.
But not him.
Like the city's pulse had dropped a few octaves and decided to crawl under his skin.
He didn't like places that announced themselves before you stepped inside.
The building rose in black glass and burnished chrome, all brutal angles and mirrored surfaces. LED strips cut across the facade in circuit-like patterns, lighting up in time with a steady heartbeat rhythm.
Thump. Whump. Thump.
The structure gave off a low hum that vibrated through the soles of his shoes when he stepped out of the car. A subsonic tremor you didn't hear so much as register, like distant artillery, an oncoming storm, or a low-level earthquake.
Fulger adjusted his coat, checked the badge, and walked in.
The bouncer at the door attempted to stop him, but a flash of his badge interrupted the bouncer.
The doors parted without a sound.
As soon as the doors closed behind him, he covered his badge.
'Nobody is going to nark in a place like this. Not to a cop.'
Inside, the world changed from the chilly grey afternoon outside, into heat, light, and movement inside.
As shown through the LED lettering, they called it The Pit, and the name wasn't subtle.
The main floor dropped away into a wide circular depression, bodies packed tight around a 360-degree stage that rotated slowly like a turntable.
How they didn't lose their footing, Fulger couldn't tell.
Performers moved in silhouette. DJs, dancers, figures in luminous vestments raising their hands from the centre stage as if blessing the crowd.
Light priests, someone had called them in a report. Fulger filed the term under bullshit and moved on, but seeing it in person, he could see how it could enthrall someone.
The lights were everywhere. Not just overhead, but on the walls, floor, and in air itself via lasers.
They didn't flash randomly, it seemed. The kind of rhythm that made thinking feel optional that belonged to a beat which didn't exist.
Fulger forced his focus narrow. Your peripheral vision lied to you in places like this.
Sound hammered at him from all sides, but beneath the music, beneath the bass, there was something else.
A cadence.
Words, maybe.
Not loud enough to hear, but present enough to irritate him.
Like a song you couldn't remember but hated anyway.
He felt it then.
A pressure behind the eyes. A mild disorientation. Nothing dramatic. Just… wrong. Like standing too close to heavy machinery.
"Crowd psychological manipulation", he told himself. Expecting the words to make it easier to stomach somehow.
Dispensary booths lined the edges of the floor just outside the pit. They were sleek, clinical things that glowed a soft blue.
Fulger approached and smiled his devilish smile that he'd curated over the years to get just about anyone to trust him.
"What have you got for sale?" He asked the staff member in a pharmacist outfit designed like it was supposed to be worn to a festival or murder and chaos.
"Aren't you on the clock, officer?"
"Detective, but yes." Fulger raised his eyebrows in surprise.
He eyed the entrance of the club.
'The bouncer... They've got a tight communication network here.'
Fulger's jaw tightened.
"And even if I am on the clock, can't I get something for when I'm off-duty?"
"Afraid not."
"A shame."
Fulger left the dispensary and noticed that all of the dispensaries were turning customers away.
'Should have come undercover, I guess. I'll just have to squeeze information out of the head honcho, then.'
He flagged down a passing staff member.
She was young, immaculately groomed, eyes glassy but alert.
The uniform looked less like the usual workwear of a club and more like ceremonial dress.
"I need to speak to the manager," Fulger said, holding up the badge.
The staffer smiled a fraction too slowly. "Of course. Bar or floor?"
"Sorry, I meant the owner," Fulger replied. "If he's in."
Something flickered behind the staffer's eyes.
Fear.
Fulger flashed his badge.
The fear turned to calculation, then obedience.
"This way, Detective."
They weaved through the crowd. Fulger noticed how people parted without being asked, how bodies shifted instinctively to clear a path. No shoving. No resistance. Just compliance.
'More conditioning', his mind supplied. 'They're like sheep.'
The bar manager was a broad-shouldered woman with augmented eyes that tracked Fulger before he even spoke.
One look at the badge and she nodded, already reaching for an earpiece.
A minute later, a man in black stepped out of the shadows, head of security by posture alone.
Ex-military or private security.
Clean, alert, and held the presence of a man who knew what facing death was like.
The kind of man who knew exactly where Fulger's gun sat without looking.
"You'll come with me," the guard said.
'Time to meet the illustrious and elusive Tobias Kairn.'
They ascended.
The second floor, The Reverent Rise, according to signage Fulger mostly ignored, overlooked the Pit through one-sided glass.
Velvet floors. Obsidian-looking walls and ceilings. Several times, Fulger caught himself trying to catch something in the corner of his eyes, but there was nothing there.
The noise below reduced to a distant heartbeat.
"That's some good soundproofing."
"Patented materials, actually." The bouncer responded proudly.
Fulger felt the pressure again. Stronger.
The pressure was like swimming against a current.
The sensation dulled, dispersed through the room as if the building couldn't quite get a grip on him.
The guard stopped at a door that didn't look like a door until it opened. The door had a fancy retina scanner beside it for usual entry, but someone had opened it from the inside.
A man already looked at Fulger and was already talking.
"Against what you might expect, a club isn't just sound and light, Detective. It's intention. Architecture with a soul."
He was younger than Fulger expected. Hair as black as night with golden streaks flowing through the lines.
Immaculate suit. Amber eyes that moved too precisely, like a snake watching it's prey.
"A building with a soul, you say?"
The office overlooked everything through a one-way mirror, much like the passageway leading to it. A black marble desk veined with gold rested at the end of the room.
Fulger clocked something and disliked it immediately. In the corner, something geometric and wrong sat half-hidden from his perception. An art piece, he assumed.
Fractal. Spiral. An unknown shape.
His eyes slid off it without his permission no matter how many times he tried to focus on it.
'An illusion?'
Tobias spread his hands. "Indeed, and The Ascension Pit is a sanctuary. People come here to shed things. Guilt. Fear. Limitation."
Fulger didn't sit.
"All thanks to pulse, I assume. I'm here for that," he said flatly. "And Brad Hopkins."
Tobias blinked. Just once.
"Oh," he said softly. "You're not listening."
Fulger met his gaze. Cold. Unmoved. "Ask your questions. Or answer mine."
Something crept into Tobias's expression.
Not fear, but curiosity.
Like a musician who was confronted with someone immune to the joy of music.
"Pulse isn't a drug," Tobias said after a moment. "It's a medium."
"What does it do?"
"It helps people hear themselves."
"People on the street say it helps them hear the truth."
A smile, thin as wire. "People say many things."
"Where does it come from?"
"Everywhere," Tobias replied. "Nowhere. Depends how you listen."
Fulger leaned in slightly. "Funny thing about sound," he said. "You can always trace the source."
For the first time, Tobias hesitated.
Outside, the club pulsed.
Thump. Whump. Thump.
Fulger felt it again.
Something trying to slide past his defences and failing.
Like trying to find a radio station, but you're sitting in a steel box and no signals can enter or exit.
Whatever this place was, it wasn't built for him.
And that told him everything he needed to know.
"If you're done here-" Tobias started.
"I am. I'll be seeing you again soon." Fulger threatened.
"Sooner than you might think." Tobias upped the ante and smiled widely.
The bouncer stood between Fulger and Tobias and walked him towards the exit.
"Hey, big guy. No need to push. I can get a hint, I'll leave."
Just before the door to the office closed, Tobias spoke.
"And next time, detective, bring a warrant. If you can acquire one."
'Smug prick.'
Fulger was led outside, and the moment he hopped in his car, he updated his files on Pulse, the Ascension Pit, and Tobias Kairn. A the bottom of his notes, he scrawled a single word.
"Occult?"