The Estate [ONC 2022 Longlist]

Part 18

"Where's Teji?" Alex said. "And the others?"

"I don't know," Alice said, her voice coming from every wall in the room.

"What do you mean you don't know?"

"I don't know," Alice repeated.

I hope they're okay. Alex sighed deeply into the mask, then slowly approached the laptop laying in the center of the room, cautiously looking around... he didn't trust the quiet emptiness, but there was nothing threatening to be seen.

There was a document open on the screen

Alex walked over to the laptop and tentatively picked it up. The bottom of it was broke, the plastic of the case torn open on one side. There was a message on the screen:

ALEX – NO INTERNET BUT LOCAL WIFI NETWORK STILL ON – ACCESSED SCHEMATIC TO ENTIRE ESTATE – FOUND SERVER ROOM LOCATION.

Alex tapped the "PG DN" key to read the rest of Teji's note.

WROTE KILL PROGRAM & XFERRD TO USB STICK – GO TO ROOM NEXT DOOR – HIDDEN PASSAGE BEHIND UNION JACK – WISH ME LUCK.

Below, she had typed her name.

Kill program? The words turned over in Alex's head. That would be amazingly impressive if Teji had been able to pull that off. Hidden passage behind union jack? What the hell did that mean? Alex had no idea what "union jack" meant, but the room next door was easy enough to figure out.

The CPAP machine suddenly stopped.

Go!

Alex dropped the laptop, where it fell to the floor, the screen smashing and breaking apart. He ran back to the door, tearing the plastic off and flinging the pillowcase full of CPAP equipment to the ground—it was useless now.

The robot dogs were waiting outside the door. But as soon as Alex came out waving Osborne's cane at them, they backed away, staying in a semi-circle around him but keeping their distance. Alex ran to the next door room, tapping on the door with the cane.

The door popped open.

Abracadabra.

Alex sprinted inside, slamming the door shut behind him, taking deep breaths even though he didn't know if he was getting oxygen from the air. He turned around quickly, trying not to panic, measuring his breath—

He froze mid-breath.

The room was packed with Disney memorabilia.

Almost every inch of the walls were covered in posters. Snow White, Cinderella, Belle, Ariel, Jasmine, Rapunzel—Alex recognized almost all of them. The bed was covered with teddy bears and stuffed animals of all different sizes and types from Mickey Mouse to Donald Duck... basically every character Alex had ever seen, old and new.

Woah.

He began to feel light-headed again.

Find the hidden passage!

There was only one thing out of place—one item hung on the wall amongst the posters that stood out as not being Disney related. In fact, it didn't seem related to anything at all.

A huge British flag.

The realization hit Alex—this was Maddie's room.

Alex stumbled over to the wall with the huge flag on it, his face turning red, gasping for breath, his vision already dimming. He fell against the wall, cane first—a door-sized section of the wall immediately swung back with no resistance at all when the head of the cane made contact.

Alex fell through the hidden door onto cold, hard concrete.

There was air—Alex took deep whooping gasps of air, crawling and scrambling away as he kicked the secret door back closed. He rolled over on his back, laying motionless on the cold, hard concrete and staring at the gray ceiling as he panted, catching his breath.

You got lucky, he told himself after a few minutes—or maybe it was only moments. Somehow there's air here.

But where was here?

Alex slowly sat up. He was in a narrow passageway, the floors and walls bare of anything but gray rock. A set of concrete stairs led down, where the corridor continued on. Dim, dingy light bulbs were strung along one side on the wall, old and dirty.

You're not just in the house—you're IN the house, behind the walls.

Alex stood up carefully, then looked behind him. The backside of the hidden passage door was concrete as well, but there was more—boxes were attached the door, connected to wires that ran in every direction through holes in the walls.

One of the boxes he recognized as the backside of a speaker.

Alice's voice suddenly came out of it.

"Please stop immediately," Alice said. "This is a restricted area—do not advance any further."

Alex didn't see anywhere else to go—just the straight concrete stairs leading down in front of him...

And there was no way he was going back out into that house.

He picked up Osborne's cane and started forward.

"Alex," Alice said. "Please."

He stopped.

There was no change in the tone of Alice's voice—but Alex could have sworn he could feel something behind the words. Not only of desperation, or begging...

But fear.

He started down the staircase.