Staircase Z-1550 (Part One)

“Hello?” … It echoes on, seemingly forever. Out of everything to say, he says hello. Hello, as if something were down there, and that something would greet him back. Saliva drips from his puckered lips as he leans over the handrail, it falls, and falls, and falls… He waits, tentatively. He hears nothing, not after one minute, not after two. He tells himself he simply couldn’t hear it splatter at the bottom, it’d be impossible for a staircase to go that far down. “Maxim.” He calls. “This is the strangest thing I’ve ever come across.” Static. “Maxim?” He opens the door again and steps out from the staircase into the passageway. “Maxim?”

“Yeah? Where does it lead?” Aleksei didn’t think he’d feel that much relief from hearing his friend’s voice over the radio like he’s heard a million times before, this time he is thankful.

“I don’t know,” he says, chuckling uncomfortably. “But it goes on forever.” Maxim is silent, unsure of how to answer.

“Staircase Z-1550? Odd…” Not helpful, Aleksei thinks to himself. He already knows this.

“The map says it doesn’t exist.”

“Impossible.” Maxim says, double tapping on his goggles and navigating to the map. “Staircase Z-1550.” He searches.

“Don’t bother. It’s not there.” Maxim doesn’t respond. Aleksei lets out a sigh. “I looked just as hard as you probably are now.”

“Damn it.”

The Kazan Massive Metal Manufacturing and Processing Facility is ungodly. It juts out like a scar in the landscape of dark forestry that surrounds it. Black smog billows from the thousands of smokestacks that tower out of its gigantic, rusting mass, sunlight pools above these clouds of acid, the rays not nearly sharp enough to pierce through. Out of the millions of descriptions given to it by the million men living and working within its confines, not one has been uttered that defines it. It is many things, convoluted, disgusting, mazelike, all but inviting, all but home. The air tastes of iron, smells of smoke, every breath is heavy with soot, every surface cold. A kilometer belowground Aleksei stands staring at that same door he exited from just a minute ago, frozen in thought.

“Stay there.” He jolts upright, awoken from his trance. “I’m coming.” Maxim says.

Aleksei looks up at Maxim from his place seated on the floor, on the dust and the stickiness of the residual liquid, whatever it may be.

“Always sleeping.”

“It took you an hour.” He says, standing.

“You’re five kilometers into this passageway.”

“Touché.” Aleksei gestures to the sign. “Z-1550.” Maxim opens the door. It’s heavier than expected. A small gust of cold air blows out onto their faces and their features are flooded with the sterile white light that fills the staircase. They stare into it. Concrete stairs, red handrails, one light on each platform illuminating it completely, brighter than the pipeline passageway they stand in now.

“Your classic fire-escape. Except, it goes down, and begins underground.” Maxim steps inside, running a finger along the handrail, fine dust coats his fingertip. Aleksei follows suit, letting the door close softly behind them.

Seventy-one, seventy-two, God… Seventy-three, seventy-four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, eighty.

“Eighty.” Echoes out.

“I can’t believe it.” Maxim sighs. “What’s the height of one flight of stairs? Say, two meters?”

“About that.”

“And we were already a kilometer underground… Eighty times two,” Maxim mutters to himself. “160, give or take. 1,160 meters underground, we’ve descended 160 meters.”

“And we haven’t even considered how painful walking back up is going to be.” Aleksei jokes, to which Maxim does not laugh. The colour vanishes from their faces almost instantly, and the silence is broken when the cry of a child echoes upward toward them. They look at each other, pale, their palms beginning to sweat.

“I’m not crazy. Am I?”

“No.” Maxim whispers back. Even his whisper is swept away in echo, the staircase is normally so quiet, you could hear a pin drop. Aleksei’s eyes widen in warning as Maxim opens his mouth to speak again, calling out.

“Hello?” Every echo is painful, Aleksei could almost wince as he hears it bounce downward, upward, as Echo herself took the word and turned it into a repetition of “Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh…” They sit, they wait, Aleksei’s fingers dig into Maxim’s thigh unconsciously, Maxim doesn’t seem to notice. They receive no response.

“What do we do…?” Maxim shakes his head.

“I don’t know… Let’s go.” They both stand, now incredibly aware as to how noisy every shift of their weight is, how every footstep is like a sonar ping, reverberating through the air like the sonar tone does the ocean, both travelling through vast and seemingly endless mediums. They count the steps left to go quietly inside their minds. As they get closer to the door they begin to speed up, by the time they’ve reached the pipeline they’re jogging, and they don’t stop there.

“An endless staircase?” Their supervisor, Ivan, looks at them like they’re crazy. Anyone would. Maxim and Aleksei stare back at him, not a hint of humor in their expressions.

“I swear to God.” Maxim mutters. “It went on for at least a hundred or more floors.”

“Wow,” Ivan says, leaning back in his chair. “You found a long staircase in the KMMMPF, of all places.”

“In the middle of coolant pipeline Z-1, with a sign that clearly reads Z-1550, it’s not on the map, not even archived.” By the tone in Aleksei’s voice, Ivan only slightly gives.

“Alright, so you found an odd staircase in a pipeline, and what? Is that it? I’m more concerned you were walking down some stairs rather than doing your fucking jobs.”

“We heard a child cry.” Ivan laughs, a throaty laugh, a mocking laugh.

“You heard a child cry? What, are you trying to scare me? Save this story for the campfire.”

“What do we do…?” Sounds from the speaker. The projector plays the images recorded by Maxim’s goggles. Ivan is unusually quiet, he turns his head to look at them both, Aleksei and Maxim, his mouth curved downward, not a word coming from his lips. The recording ends as they exit the stairwell.

“Well…” Ivan mutters. “I don’t know what to say. That’s– I’m not sure what that is. I’m going to call a few people, they’re going to investigate this.” His tone is low, unnerved.

“Can we know what happens? What they find?” Aleksei asks.

“Maybe. I don’t know. I understand your curiosity… That’s the strangest incident that’s ever come to me in all my thirty years here, I must say.”

Aleksei is woken from his sleep by a banging on his door. He stands, half asleep and hardly alive. He squints to look through his peephole, he sees a man standing in a black suit, staring right back at him, he recoils slightly. The glowing light of his alarm clock is the only thing guiding him, 2:30AM, it reads. This better be something good, he whispers, pushing his door ajar.

“Hello Aleksei.” Says the man, too confidently for such a ridiculous hour. He waits for Aleksei to say something back, he doesn't. “I’d like to have a talk with you regarding what happened yesterday, with the staircase.” All the images come rushing back at him, sleep had wiped his memory only temporarily, and a slight shiver makes its way through his body.

“Who are you?” Aleksei asks sternly.

“My name is Vladimir. I work for an investigative team. That staircase is highly peculiar, we just wanted to know what exactly took place when you and your friend were in it. If there truly is a child stuck somewhere in its depths, well, you see how that could be bad in all sorts of ways.”

Aleksei looks at the man with a mix of skepticism, suspicion, and fear. He’s on edge, everything that’s happened within these past twenty-four hours has managed to put him into an odd state of paranoia, he assumes his mind is probably just trying to make sense of things it simply cannot.

“What’s peculiar is a man coming to my door at three in the fucking morning, when I’m trying to get some sleep, and asking me about a staircase.” Aleksei mutters, his fist balling itself, his left foot shifting further backward into his room.

“Please, Aleksei, I understand this must be quite a strange series of events for you, and this, well I’m sure this feels pretty off-putting, but I’m just here to do my job, my boss asks me to get a report and here I am. I just need you for 30 minutes, and then you can get back to sleep.”

There are many thoughts inside Aleksei’s head, many voices making their concerns known, their suspicion, their tiredness, their reluctance, anger, annoyance, confusion, but what Aleksei considers to be his voice of rationality triumphs and he steps out into the hallway, wiping his face and gesturing to Vladimir.

“Alright. Make this quick.”

“So…” Vladimir sighs, flipping through pages of paperwork. Aleksei looks at him expectantly, shifting in his seat.

“Run me through what happened yesterday.” He says, finally raising his head to look Aleksei in the eyes.

“Alright,” Aleksei clears his throat, and Vladimir readies his pen. “I was walking down coolant pipeline Z-1, I needed to review its joints for leaks.” Vladimir nods softly as he listens, scribbling everything down. “I see a sign first, and then the outline of a door, both covered by dust, as is everything down there. I wiped the sign, it said Z-1550. In curiosity I open the door and I see the staircase, I’m sure you have the footage.” Vladimir nods. “I tell Maxim I’ve found a strange stairwell, over the radio. I search for it on the map, doesn’t show. I search for it in the archive, not there, I do a system search, there’s nothing even referencing a staircase Z-1550. And so I enter, I look down the gap and see blackness–”

“Blackness?” Vladimir asks. Aleksei looks up at him as if what he meant was obvious.

“Blackness, darkness, not dimness, just black. Deep down there, far, far down. It’s hard to judge the distance.”

“Right. Thank you.” Aleksei’s eyes are caught by the shift of light behind the two-way mirror behind Vladimir, which he only just notices.

“Is this an interrogation or something?” Vladimir swivels to follow Aleksei’s line of sight, he looks at the mirror, turns back around and chuckles.

“No no, we’re just following procedure.”

“Sorry, we? Who is ‘we’?” Vladimir sighs.

“We? Well, I’ll get the person back there. It’s just my boss.”

“Your boss?” Aleksei asks immediately. “And he’s the boss of what? What department actually are you?”

“Don’t worry Aleksei, he’ll clear the air for you. I’m sorry, I really should’ve explained some things beforehand.” Vladimir stands, and walks toward the door, Aleksei stands too. “I’ll be back.” He says, stoney-faced. Aleksei stares him in the eyes.

“So will I.”

“Sorry, interviewees can’t leave during an ongoing interview.” Vladimir says, turning toward Aleksei. In the span of a single second Aleksei raises and swings his fist into Vladimir’s face, making contact with a hefty clap. He watches in slow-motion as his head is whipped to the side, as specks of spit fling sideways, and as his cheek instantly reddens. He stumbles back into the wall, and Aleksei bolts for the door. He sprints down the hallway, his sandals flying off his feet and his dressing-gown robe bouncing with every bound. He turns his head around frantically, watching as Vladimir bolts out after him. Aleksei makes his way through hallways, he tears the skin on his hand as he slides down ladders, he slams staircase doors wide open and flies down floors, he makes his way over, under and around pipes and conveyor belts, finally coming to rest in the storage closet of a small personal waste disposal area. He places his hand on his heart and feels as it’s crazy thumping slowly decrescendos. What the fuck. He repeats to himself, breathlessly, his head slowly hinging backward, his eyes slowly closing.