Inescapable Escapism

My head was spinning. The sheer amount of information, of knowledge, I was soaking in was overwhelming, but it wasn’t enough. Rodgers had talked almost constantly, explaining every single room, every single place we passed, and I tried to commit it all to memory. It was impossible, and I knew that. Rodgers had even told me that he didn’t expect me to remember everything, but I wanted to.

It was all so fascinating. I felt like I’d learnt so much about the Academy and how things worked there, but I had even more questions. I longed to ask them all, but it was impossible. It felt like there wasn’t enough time in the world for me to do that, even if I somehow found a way to phrase what I wanted to know. They weren’t fully formed questions. They were just vague things that I was curious about, and whenever I tried to put them into words, I was distracted by something new.

I wished we could slow down and explore the Academy properly. Rodgers wasn’t rushing me. He wasn’t walking fast or brushing over things, but that didn’t matter. We could take all day, spend hours in each place, and it still wouldn’t be enough. There was so much more I wished to see or to go back to.

The greenhouse, in particular, was calling to me. It was attached to one of the classrooms upstairs, and the moment I set foot in there, I wanted to stay there forever. It was so fresh, and it smelt like the outside world. The wonderful earthy aroma of damp soil hung thickly in the air, similar to the scent of the greenhouse in the induction but much more intense.

We turned a corner, and I looked around, turning my head as I tried to take everything in. One side of the wide corridor gave way to rows of bookshelves, dotted with strange, large glass egg-shaped things.

“What are they?” I asked, staring at one.

It was huge, almost reaching the high ceiling and easily large enough to hold a few people.

“A private study pod,” Rodgers said, slowing slightly. “Do you want to go have a look?”

There was a desk and a chair inside, I realised as we reached the end of a row of bookshelves and got an unobstructed view of one of the pods. There was nothing else, and that felt weird. There were other tables scattered around the library space. I could see them. The pods seemed almost unnecessary.

As I hesitated, unsure whether to say yes or not, I spotted someone walking towards the nearest pod. My eyes were fixed on them as they pulled the door open and stepped inside. The moment the door shut behind them, the walls turned opaque. It was almost like magic.

“Oh,” I breathed, causing Rodgers to laugh softly.

“Yeah, they’re pretty cool, right?” he said. “You can programme them basically however you want, so if you want to be able to see out, you can, but if you want to just have white walls all around you, you can do that too. I’m not really a fan of that, though.”

I glanced at Rodgers before looking back at the pod.

“You’re not?” I asked.

“Nah, it’s kind of… intense. I always preferred to just study in my room or out here.”

I nodded.

“That makes sense.”

Rodgers smiled before cocking his head towards one of the other pods.

“So… you want to go have a look at one?” he asked.

I swallowed, glancing at the others. I could only see the top part of them over the shelves, but some were opaque. There were people inside them, and that made me uncomfortable. Maybe there were people in all of the private study pods, and I’d be disturbing them by going and having a look. Even if the pod was empty, someone might be walking towards one just as I did. They’d have to wait for me to stare blankly around it before they could use it, and the mere thought of that made my stomach churn uncomfortably.

“No, that’s okay, thanks,” I said. “I’ll have a look another time.”

“Are you sure?” Rodgers asked. “We have time.”

I looked towards it again before shaking my head.

“It’s alright,” I told him, pausing before adding, “How do they work? Like, how does it go from clear to… not?”

Rodgers cocked his head to the side as he started walking again, and I joined him, waiting for him to answer.

“Huh. Honestly? I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it too much before, but I’ll find out for you.”

His words shocked me, and I just stared at him for a second, unable to respond. The fact that he’d so freely admitted that he didn’t know something took me by surprise. It wasn’t the first time he’d done that, but it was still weird to me. In a good way, but weird nonetheless. I was too used to my mom, who would never admit she didn’t know something.

“Thanks,” I said, finally finding the words.

“Ah, not at all. I like learning, and I’ve never looked into it before. I bet the answer is something really simple, though,” he replied, his expression thoughtful. “Do you want to have a look around the library at all? That’s pretty much all that’s on this side of the floor.”

I looked around, my eyes finding the lift at the end of the corridor. As tempted as I was to explore the library, I was also torn. I knew that we were almost finished with the underground levels, and then Rodgers had said that we’d go outside, which I was even more excited about.

The books were tempting, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to read any of them immediately. They could wait.

“Mmmm, I don’t think so,” I said, only a hint of reluctance entering my voice.

Rodgers must have heard it because he chuckled.

“You sure? You’ll have the chance to look around another time if not,” he promised. “Obviously, it’s never locked, so you can just come down whenever or in between classes.”

“Oh, really?” I said. “Cool. We can keep going for now, then.”

A smile came over Rodgers’ face as we approached the lift, and he pressed the button.

“Great. There’s not too much more to go down here anyway.”

“There isn’t?” I asked, watching the number on the screen above the door drop lower. “I’ve not seen the GSOD yet, have I? Is that down there?”

I was pretty sure we hadn’t gone past it, but I couldn’t be certain. Maybe Rodgers just hadn’t shown it to me because I wasn’t allowed to see it for some reason. That would make sense. I’d passed the induction period, but I hadn’t done any of the training or anything. Perhaps I had to do that before I was allowed in.

“It is,” Rodgers said, interrupting my thoughts and proving them wrong. “There’s not too much else down there. Just the GSOD, their lounge and snack room, and some storage. We used to have a lab down there too, but… there was an incident.”

Rodgers grimaced and shook his head slightly, but the lift arrived before I could speak. I hurried after him into it, staring at him.

“What happened?” I asked as the doors closed behind us.

“There was… a slight explosion. A really small one! No one was hurt, and they were barely even injured,” he seemed to insist. “But it distracted the GSOD workers, and some had to be evacuated, so…”

Rodgers trailed off.

“Ah,” I said. “That… doesn’t sound good?”

“It was not. We have operatives in the field at all times. They need to have constant access to the analysts should something come up, and they didn’t that day,” he said with a shrug. “Sure, there are other GSODs they get routed to if their call isn’t answered within a certain amount of time, but… it’s not the same.”

“That makes sense,” I muttered, unsure what else to say.

I didn’t know there were other GSODs. It made sense. If there were people on assignments at all times, they needed to be able to talk to people in case of an emergency. There had to be a backup or something. Plus, there were other Academies. I was pretty sure someone had mentioned them before, so it made sense that there were other GSODs too.

The lift dipped lower, and I felt my stomach drop. My eyes darted towards the screen, watching the number slowly move as we approached the lowest floor. It felt like it was taking too long. I could feel the lift moving; I knew we were dipping further into the ground, but the number was not changing quickly enough.

How far underground were we? The thought seemed to come out of nowhere, and it made my chest clench as panic sparked within me. I didn’t know the answer, but it felt like we’d travelled deep under the surface, and I hated it. I hadn’t felt claustrophobic before that point; somehow, it hadn’t hit me, but as I stood in the lift, slowly dropping lower, I felt my breathing start to speed up.

If something happened, if something went wrong, we’d be trapped. There would be tonnes and tonnes of rubble above us. We’d be stuck under all of it and unable to get out. No one would even know we were there. The Academy was a secret. Surely, there were people who did know about it, the government or something, but what if they couldn’t get to us? Then what would happen?

I forced myself to take a deep breath, my eyes darting towards Rodgers. His eyes were fixed on the screen as he waited patiently for us to reach the floor, seemingly unaware of the frantic energy that pounded in my heart. I clenched my hands together behind my back, wanting to hide how much I knew they were shaking from him. I didn’t want him to know how scared I was all of a sudden.

It would make me look weak, and that wasn’t acceptable. I couldn’t avoid visiting the GSOD or other underground rooms all the time. Most of the classrooms were down there, so I needed to get used to it, and I knew it, but it felt impossible. I was too scared, too overwhelmed.

“Ah, here we go,” Rodgers said as the lift came to a smooth stop, and the number on the screen finally became a three.

He grinned at me, his expression somewhat excited, and I forced myself to return the smile. I was terrified that he’d noticed how strained it was and ask me if I was okay, but he didn’t seem to notice. Or, if he did, he was kind enough not to say anything.

The doors opened, and I felt my mouth drop open. My worry, my panic, was pushed from my mind as I stared at the corridor ahead. I hadn’t been sure what to expect. The floors above us had been light and airy despite being underground, but the third subterranean level was… like something out of a science fiction film.

The long corridor was lined on all sides with thick glass walls, and I stared into the rooms on either side as we started to make our way towards the doors at the end. Both rooms were filled with rows of people, all facing a wall lined with computer screens. Each one was showing something different, and I turned, trying to work out what was on them, but they didn’t make sense to me. They seemed almost random, and some appeared to even be playing cartoons.

People weren’t even looking at those screens, though. Each person was seated behind a large desk with multiple monitors in front of them. Their eyes seemed to flit back and forth without hesitation, like they were able to keep track of whatever was happening on each of the screens at once, which seemed impossible to me, but maybe they could.

It was… intense. That was the main thing that surprised me. I wasn’t sure what I expected from the Global Security Operations Department. Perhaps I should have known it would look like that, but I didn’t. It was just so much more…

I wasn’t sure how to finish that thought. The rooms looked like the people inside should have been watching a spaceship launch. That was the closest example I could think of. I’d seen it in movies and news clips before. It seemed almost identical to the control room at NASA, and that felt strange to me.

But maybe it made sense. Rodgers had said they had people on missions at all times, and I realised as I stared into the room that I didn’t know how many there were. How many spies did the Academy have in position at any one time? Maybe they needed that many people to keep track of them all and to be constantly scanning the information they were sending in. Or perhaps they were preparing for upcoming missions, gathering intel, and preparing briefings or something.

Movement above me caught my attention, and I looked up, my eyes finding the cameras on the ceiling. There were so many. Each one was evenly spaced, and as I watched, I realised they were all moving constantly. It was so small, so fluid. Each camera turned, rotating slightly as we continued along the corridor, keeping us in their focus. They were watching us, tracking our movements.

Not, not ours. Mine. Somehow, I knew that they were focused on me and not Rodgers. They knew who he was. He’d worked for the Academy for ages. I wasn’t sure how long exactly, but I knew it had been a while. He’d trained there, after all, but I was new. I may have passed the induction period, but I was unknown.

My breathing was unsteady, and it was difficult to make myself keep moving. The thought of so many cameras watching me filled me with panic. It wasn’t just the knowledge that I was being watched or that there were probably weapons pointing at me. I knew they were. If the foyer had been filled with traps and other security measures, I had to assume the corridor leading to the GSOD was as well.

There was something else, too. Another reason that I was so frightened. A memory clawed at me, flashing before my eyes. A pastel blue wall, unmarked doors, and an endless row of carefully positioned cameras, all pointing at me. Shadowy figures waited behind the screens, watching as I tried to escape, monitoring my struggle and making notes, just like the people in the rooms on either side of me.

The hospital.

The corridor leading to the GSOD reminded me too much of the hospital I’d been in. The one where they’d experimented on me and drugged me, and I still didn’t even know why. I had no clue what they wanted from me or why they were keeping me there, but they were. I couldn’t leave. I could never leave, just like the Academy. I was too far underground. I wouldn’t be able to get out before they stopped me.

Was the hospital underground too? The windows hadn’t looked real. They were fake. Perhaps they were nothing more than screens attached to the walls far underground. Maybe it was in the same building as the Academy. There could be more floors below us; more people trapped in an endless waking nightmare, just waiting for death to claim them because it was the only way out.

No.

I squeezed my hands into fists as dizziness pulled at me. I wasn’t sure if it was trying to get me out of that world and back to reality or to drag me back into the world where I’d been locked in the hospital, but I refused to let it. I wasn’t there anymore, anyway. Somehow, I knew that. I’d found a way out. Rex, the person or whatever they were that I’d called for, had helped me escape. They got me out.

“Which one shall we go for?” Rodgers muttered, coming to a stop at the end of the hall.

Trying to breathe evenly and calm my racing heart, I looked around. I was not in the hospital, I told myself. I was in the Academy. Safe. There were three doors, I realised—one on either side leading into the GSOD rooms, and one at the end of the corridor. The doors to the GSODs were clear glass, but the other one was frosted. I couldn’t see through it.

Concern leapt in my heart at that realisation, but I batted it aside. That didn’t mean anything. A frosted glass door didn’t necessarily mean that they were hiding whatever was behind it. It just meant… something else. I wasn’t sure what, but it could have been anything. There wasn’t a lock on the door, anyway, so if they were trying to hide something, it wasn’t exactly secure.

My eyes flicked between the GSOD doors. There were no locks or places to swipe a card or anything on them either. Should there have been? It seemed weird that there was nothing stopping people from just being able to walk in.

“Um,” I said as Rodgers reached towards one of the doors, unable to stop myself. “Why aren’t there any locks?”

It should have been more secure, shouldn’t it? If it was so important, so necessary to the agents in the field, surely there should have been something more to keep people out.

Rodgers glanced back at me, a smile on his face.

“Good question,” he said cheerfully. “And the answer is fairly simple and has multiple parts. We trust the trainees here, so they can come and go as they please. Some people like to familiarise themselves with the rooms before they start working here, so we don’t like to limit their access. Plus, everyone here is highly vetted and checked, so the chances of anyone trying to access the rooms for nefarious purposes is very low.”

“That makes sense,” I replied.

“I’m glad. It’s not zero, of course. It’s impossible to make the odds that low, unfortunately, but we do what we can to make sure they are as close to it as possible,” Rodgers continued in the same upbeat tone. “But if you were wondering about it for more of an ‘if people were to break in’ or ‘if there was an attack or natural disaster’ kind of approach, that’s not really a worry for us either.”

There was a sparkle in his eyes as he looked back at me, and I was equally intrigued and concerned.

“Why not?”

“Security measures. The glass here is ballistic and able to endure considerable force, but also…” he paused for a moment as he pushed the door to the room on the left open and pointed up at the roof. “Do you see that?”

I looked up, staring in the direction that he’d pointed as music washed over me. At first, I wasn’t sure what I was looking at. Around the ceiling at the edge of the room was a strange contraption. It seemed like a folded metal barrier of some kind, hovering above us and waiting to drop, sealing us inside.

“What is it?” I asked softly, aware that people in the room were looking at us.

“Another security measure,” Rodgers said simply. “Should anything happen to the Academy or if there is a significant threat, the rooms are capable of being completely sealed off whilst still having access to electricity and the internet. There’s enough food and water inside to sustain a full shift for two weeks, and the shutters are capable of withstanding pretty much anything people can throw at them. They’ve undergone rigorous testing. It was very fun.”

Rodgers grinned at me, and I did a double take.

“You tested them?” I asked, shocked.

“I did,” he confirmed. “The old system down here was… lacking, so about five years or so ago, it was all replaced. They wanted to do a test run and make sure they were effective before they rolled them out nationwide, so… we did a drill.”

“Oh.”

“Not an actual drill,” Rodgers corrected himself quickly. “A training exercise. I threw basically everything I could at it, and it was fine.”

“That’s… good,” I said, unsure what else to say.

Rodgers’ grin widened.

“Oh, it was. You know, I did actually use a drill for part of it. Just a small jackhammer. It was pretty much impossible to get the angle right, so I couldn’t find purchase. It was more frustrating than anything else,” he said with a laugh. “But enough about that. Follow me.”

He turned away and started walking into the room, and I hurried after him. My eyes darted from screen to screen, trying to see everything whilst also avoiding the gaze of the people working in the GSOD. Most of them seemed to be trainees too. They weren’t much older than me. There were a couple of adults there, like the guy sitting behind the desk at the back of the room, but it was mostly kids.

I had no idea what they were looking at, though. The screens were a mixture of endless rows of text, pictures, CCTV footage, and the system that I vaguely remembered being shown while on the bus, the one that was designed to look like a simulation game but could be used to send information back to the GSOD. The concept of it had fascinated me before, and seeing someone actually use it was…

“Darren, how’s it going?” Rodgers called as he approached a boy who looked up from his computer screen.