The cleaning was a form of self-flagellation. Alex worked with a grim, focused energy, stripping the bed, bagging up old magazines, and dusting surfaces that hadn't seen the light of day in over a year. He was an automaton, performing a task. Each neatly folded shirt was a small atonement. Each filled trash bag was a weight lifted. He was erasing the neglect, one square foot at a time.
He saved the area around the desk for last. To clean under it properly, he had to move the heavy wooden frame. With a grunt, he dragged it away from the wall, the legs scraping loudly against the hardwood floor. That's when he saw it.
One of the floorboards wasn't flush with the others. It was slightly raised, its edge darkened where it had been pried up before. A hiding place. Every kid had one. Alex's had been in the attic; Leo's, apparently, was right here.
A flicker of something—curiosity?—cut through his numb resolve. He knelt, his knees cracking in protest. He wedged his fingers into the gap and lifted. The board came up easily, revealing a shallow, dark cavity. Nestled inside, wrapped in an old t-shirt, was a single object: a thick, black, hardbound notebook.
His breath hitched. He lifted it out. It was heavy, its cover worn smooth at the corners. There was no title, no label. It felt less like a diary and more like a ledger. He unwrapped the t-shirt and sat back on his heels, the dust-filled air of the room suddenly feeling cold and heavy.
He opened it to a random page in the middle.
It wasn't a diary. There were no accounts of his day, no teenage angst. The page was a chaotic explosion of information. A complex, hand-drawn diagram dominated the left side, showing a series of interconnected boxes labeled with numbers and strange, cryptic names: Level 0: The Lobby, Level 1: Habitable Zone, Level 2: Pipe Dreams. Arrows labeled "Noclip (Unstable)" and "Clip (Stable?)" connected them in a nonsensical flowchart.
The right side of the page was filled with Leo's familiar, spiky handwriting, but it was frantic, obsessive.
…perceptual dissonance is key. The human mind rejects the non-Euclidean geometry, causing disorientation and panic. But the geometry IS the rule. The hum is not just sound; it is a frequency. A resonance of the space itself. 60Hz hum = stable baseline reality of Level 0. Any deviation indicates potential entity proximity or level transition…
Alex's blood ran cold. Noclip. Level 0. These were the words from their argument. The words he had mocked.
He flipped through the pages, a knot of dread tightening in his stomach. It was all here. His brother's "obsession" wasn't a passing phase spent on internet forums; it was a full-blown, terrifyingly methodical research project.
Pages were filled with complex theories about "liminal spaces"—the uncanny feeling of empty schools, abandoned malls, fog-shrouded roads. Leo theorized these weren't just feelings; they were places where the barrier between our world and… the other place… was thin. There were printouts of satellite images with red circles drawn around unremarkable patches of wilderness or decaying urban structures. There were mathematical equations attempting to model impossible physics. There were sketches, drawn from memory or imagination, of long, mono-yellow hallways, sprawling concrete parking garages, and dark rooms filled with writhing pipes.
Alex felt a dizzying sense of vertigo. He had spent his life fixing broken systems—networks, servers, software conflicts. He dealt in logic, in cause and effect. This journal was a testament to his brother trying to do the same, but the system he was trying to understand was reality itself. And his conclusion was that it was broken.
He slammed the book shut, his heart hammering against his ribs. This was madness. Grief-fueled fantasy. A brilliant, lonely kid inventing a world to escape into. It had to be.
But he couldn't stop himself. He had to see the end. His hands trembling, he opened the journal to the last written page. The entry was dated the day before Leo vanished. The handwriting was different—sharper, more decisive, as if written in a single, breathless rush.
October 12th.
I've found it. All the patterns converge. The power grid fluctuations, the localized signal dead zones, the historical disappearances in the area dating back to the 50s. It's not just a thin spot. It's a tear. A permanent, structural glitch in the texture of reality.
The old Concordance Office Building downtown. The one they're demolishing. Basement level, southeast corner. There's a section of foundation wall that, according to city records, shouldn't be there. It was part of an older structure they built over. It doesn't absorb moisture correctly. It's always damp.
They say the walls are thin there. A place where the world glitched. It's the door. I know it is.
I have to know, Alex. I have to see if it's real.
Forgive me.
Below the text was a set of hand-drawn coordinates, precise to six decimal places.
Alex stared at the words, at his own name on the page. Forgive me. It wasn't a plea for leaving them behind. It was a plea for what he was about to prove.
He dropped the journal as if it were burning hot. The sound of it hitting the dusty floorboards was like a gunshot in the silent house. The logical, methodical world Alex Ryder had built around himself shattered. In its place, a single, insane, terrifying question began to grow, a seed of static in the hollow of his chest.
What if his brother wasn't crazy?