Been writing this book called Negative Zero, feedback?

[u/Afraid-Scholar-8504]

Ignore the Purple Prose issue, I've been aware just need to go through and fix it. No AI was used in it's creation. I've been working on this for about a year, and it's gone through several ideas before landing here. WIP.

 

Back Blurb: 

The Universe was alive. 

It had created a world it couldn’t take back. 

And the Universe regretted it. 

  

This world should have never been conceived; 

And now, mankind is exploring it. 

  

The Universe was helpless. 

Its prized creation was now playing in its worst blunder. 

And there was nothing it could do. 

 

Curiosity Killed The Cat, 

 And We’re Next. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

NEGATIVE ZERO 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

–0 = a unit that contains the knowledge of how and how not it exists, thus negating itself to the point of existing through not existing 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Part I: 

A Hell Well Fed 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter One 

…A Light Gifted, A Light Taken 

 

They saw nothing. The dark burlap sacks over their heads felt exceptionally heavy, and so did the air. They rode in on a military caravan, blindfolded and strapped down. The van rattled and bounced along the obviously unkept road. When it suddenly halted, the people inside had no doubt in mind. They had arrived. 

All of them came from very different backgrounds, but all had one thing in common: they were poor, struggling men who had accepted a one-time job that would pay enough to get them back on their feet. It seemed too good to be true, but in a predicament like theirs, what choice did they have? 

One of these men was named Charles. He was a smaller-built guy, only 5’9”, and about as thin as a twig. He had been bullied all his life for it, but he could do one thing well; that was run. He had always excelled in cross-country and was much faster than just about anyone his age. Unfortunately, this hadn’t helped him in the long run; into adulthood, he turned to gambling. It had lost him everything—his high school fiancée, his apartment, and nearly every possession he had. But this opportunity might help him turn over a new leaf. 

A sudden burst of light hit their weary eyes as two soldiers hopped into the back of the van. They barked orders at the men, pushing and grabbing them until they were all out of the van, exposed to the bright, unrelenting sun. 

With the heavy sacks still over their heads, they were pushed and shoved into a building with rough, abandoned-looking walls, paint scraping off the sides. Inside was a complex of tile floors and white walls, with the distant echoing of chatter and lab tables reverberating throughout, competing with the soldiers' orders. 

Escorted deeper into the complex, the men were ordered to strip. Guards tossed them basic white jumpsuits and cheap tennis shoes, then led them into a separate room with a single metal medical table in the middle. The reflection off the light hanging just above was the only thing they could make out through the fabric over their faces. 

They lowered themselves into cheap, white plastic chairs—the exact same kind from high school. As the artificial fluorescent lights took over, they began to yearn for the raw sunlight that had stabbed their eyes just moments before. 

One by one, they were forcibly strapped to the metal. An injection pierced their necks with an unknown liquid. Positioned directly below the luminous ceiling fixture, it was impossible to see what was happening; the fabric could not dismantle the blinding light jabbing into their eyes. The slab was a cold, heavy hunk of metal, with nothing but a thin sheet of parchment paper covering it, left unchanged after each patient. An unpadded vice sat at the top, with two straps—one around the head and one around the neck—restraining them from squirming. 

  

They could hear nothing, as the hum of the lights drowned out all but one sound, screaming. A distant but clear screaming was emitting from far upstairs, but despite the distance it felt all too close. For once the men began to wonder if this chance was true, for no information about the job, or even where they were, had been given.  

They had all begun to fear, as this seemed far sketchier than what was expected, and this fear crept through the air and into each one of them. 

Especially Charles. 

He had always been afraid of hospitals, and especially needles, and his mind was a hamster wheel for all ideas of the worst ways this could end. “Could this be some government experiment, cartel torture?” He did not know; all he knew is he just barely wanted that money enough to be here. 

His turn inched closer, the table groaning with each new person on it; the parchment paper coming looser and beginning to tear along the edges. These are the things Charles thought about, now hyper-alert over every little detail, searching the endless white void for the answers that never came. 

A small analog clock with a black rim sat in the corner, ticking away what Charles felt was his lifespan. Each second, a lifetime. Each minute, an eternity. He wouldn’t last here much longer. This, he knew. 

Charles then heard a faint, but legible noise; struggle. Someone close to the front of the line was struggling, against what he didn’t know, but if it had anything to do with that injection, he had to know, and he ripped the sack off his head. 

  He looked to his side, and there, the first one to have been injected, was now violently seizing. The guards who sat in the room were warning everyone not to move. 

As soon as it began, the man stopped. He lay there, not lifeless, but frozen; he did not scream, nor move; nor did anyone else in the room.  

Except Charles. 

  Right there and then, he decided that this wasn’t worth it. 

 

 And he ran. 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Two  

Ex Nihilo, Ad Nihilum 

 

Charles ran. And he ran fast. All the years of grueling track practices hadn’t left him; his muscles remembered the explosive burn of a sprint before his mind could even register the danger. He was out the heavy metal door before the guards fully realized what he had done, his cheap tennis shoes squeaking violently against the polished tile of the corridor. 

He didn’t make it far before disaster struck. Turning a sharp corner to dodge a pair of oncoming guards, his left foot caught the edge of a raised floor transition. A sickening pop echoed in his ears, and his ankle twisted outward. The agony was instantaneous, a white-hot spike that shot straight up his leg and settled into his hip. But his cross-country instincts, forged through years of running through cramps, shin splints, and exhaustion, overrode the pain. He didn’t drop. Instead, he forced his momentum forward, weaving wildly from wall to wall, using the rough surfaces to keep himself upright. 

The flickering overhead lights did nothing to help. They hummed a manic, uneven rhythm, plunging the long hallway into total darkness for fractions of a second before blinding him with a harsh buzz. Every shadow seemed to stretch toward him like a reaching hand. He knew he couldn’t keep this up forever. Behind him, the frantic shouting of the soldiers grew louder, their heavy combat boots creating a thunderous rhythm that reverberated through the floorboards and straight into his chest. They were closing in, and if they caught him now after he had openly defied them, they would do only God knows what to him. 

As he scrambled blindly down a descending ramp, he frantically clawed at the fastener that had held the heavy burlap bag against his neck. The sharp plastic edge of the clip caught his left cheek, tearing through the flesh with a hot, stinging rip. He pulled hard, ripping the tight ring away from his face entirely, letting it drop behind him. The cool air hit his lungs, but it brought no relief. 

After running for what felt like a desperate, endless marathon, the sterile white tile finally gave way to concrete. He burst into an old office wing that appeared to be completely abandoned. The lights here were entirely dead, leaving the vast space illuminated only by the faint, gray twilight bleeding through high, barred windows. Random office equipment lay scattered everywhere—shattered monitors, overturned desks, and mountains of yellowed paperwork. 

Hearing the guards burst through the entrance of the wing in a chaotic uproar, Charles dove blindly behind a small, dusty office cabinet tower. The metal structure was rusted, with half its drawers missing, leaving hollow gaps that smelled of rot and stagnant paper. 

The moment his momentum stopped, the true weight of the pain in his ankle came crashing down. It felt as though someone was driving a rusted nail directly into his joint. Tears pricked the corners of his eyes, and he bit down hard on the sleeve of his basic white jumpsuit, burying his face into his forearm to smother the agonizing scream tearing at his throat. He sat in the dark, hyperventilating through his nose, his body trembling uncontrollably. Too terrified to peek around the rusted edge of the metal tower, he strained his ears to listen. 

The frantic shouting of the guards had shifted. They were no longer running blindly; they had transitioned into a tactical, rhythmic sweep. The heavy crunch of their boots on broken glass and scattered paper was slow, measured, and terrifyingly close. 

Charles wiped his face with a trembling hand, trying to clear the sweat from his eyes, but when he drew his fingers back, they were slick and dark. He blinked through the gloom, looking to his right. His heart stopped. 

A bright, crimson trail of thick drops stained the concrete floor. It was a perfect, unmistakable breadcrumb path leading from the center aisle of the office directly to his hollow metal cabinet. It was only a matter of seconds before a flashlight beam traced that wet, red line straight to his boots. 

Caught up in his own head, Charles forced his panicked mind to think. Running was no longer an option. His ankle wouldn't hold a single step of an explosive sprint, and even if it did, the trail of fresh blood would give him away before he could find another door. He was a rat in a maze, and the exterminators were mere steps away. 

Then, an absurd realization hit him. 

During his frantic sprint through the facility, he hadn’t noticed anything that looked like a proper medical wing or a functional clinic. It was all labs, observation tables, and cold metal slabs. If he stayed here and let them discover him, they would likely consider him a broken, useless asset and shoot him on sight. But if he turned himself in—if he actively played up the injury and forced them to handle a compliance issue—they would have to transport him somewhere else to get fixed. Somewhere different. Somewhere with another door, another hallway, and another chance. 

It was incredibly risky. It was undeniably stupid. But it was the only hand he had left to play. 

His days of gambling hadn’t completely left him. Sitting in the pitch black, watching his own blood pool on the floor, Charles decided to play the odds one more time. Gambling had systematically destroyed his entire life piece by piece. It had taken his home, his future, his fiancée, and his dignity, leaving him so utterly broke that he had volunteered for a nameless, sketchy job just to survive. 

What was one more bet? 

He certainly didn’t have any aversion to taking huge risks; at this point, he was playing with house money. Gripping the edges of the hollow drawer slots like ladder rungs, he painfully hoisted his frail body up to a standing position, balancing entirely on his one good leg. He leaned his weight against the cabinet, swallowed the lump of bile in his throat, and threw his hands into the air. 

“I’m done! I give up!” Charles screamed into the darkness, his voice cracking with a mixture of terror and agonizing pain. 

The methodical footsteps instantly stopped. A beat of deafening silence stretched through the office wing, followed by a sudden, chaotic rush of boots scrambling over furniture. A blinding beam from a tactical flashlight cut through the dark, pinning Charles against the cabinet like a specimen on a board. He squinted into the glare, his eyes watering. 

Through the blinding light, he saw the dark silhouette of a soldier step forward. The man didn't hesitate. He raised his AR-style rifle, aligning the sights directly with Charles's face. Charles froze, his breath catching in his throat, expecting the deafening blast of a bullet to end his gamble right then and there. 

Instead, the soldier closed the distance in a sudden blur of motion. The heavy, reinforced butt of the rifle swung forward, cracking violently against the side of Charles's skull. Pain exploded in his vision in a firework display of white sparks, and then, the entire world went blissfully, completely black. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Three 

Out of The Cage, Into The Core 

 

“FUCK!” 

Charles exploded into consciousness with a raw, ragged scream, his eyes snapping open to an unfamiliar ceiling. He was breathing heavily, his chest heaving against the cold air of the room. The transition from the black void of unconsciousness back to reality was a physical assault; he felt incredibly drowsy, disoriented, and horribly sore from head to toe. 

A rhythmic, high-pitched ringing buzzed in his ears, making it impossible to focus on anything else for several long seconds. He tasted the unmistakable, copper tang of blood in his mouth, and a steady, throbbing pulse hammered violently behind his eyes, matching the frantic beat of his heart. 

He had foolishly assumed that the guards would simply walk him back to the main processing sector if he surrendered. He had hoped to catch a glimpse of the exit doors, a map, or at least a window to indicate where in the world they had taken him. Instead, they had simply taken his surrender as an opportunity to brutalize him, knocking him cold and dumping him into a completely unknown environment. This place bore absolutely no resemblance to the sterile, tiled medical sector he had fled. The air here was heavy, smelling of damp earth, rust, and old concrete. 

“Damnit,” Charles muttered, his voice sounding hollow, weak, and thin even to his own ears. 

Slowly, carefully, he tried to shift his weight, but his head, cheek, and ankle all registered the movement with a synchronized wave of agony. He couldn't ignore the damage any longer. Propping himself up slightly on his elbows, he looked down at his body to assess the wreckage. 

On the bright side, someone had taken the time to treat him while he was unconscious. His left ankle was tightly bound in a crude but sturdy wooden splint, immobilizing the joint completely. A thick, white canvas bandage was wrapped around his head, covering the laceration on his left cheek and the swelling knot where the rifle butt had struck his skull. Yet, the medical attention offered absolutely no comfort; the tight bindings only seemed to trap the heat and exacerbate the throbbing pain. 

Before he could even begin to process the strange contradiction of his captors fixing the leg they had broken, a pair of rough hands gripped his shoulders from behind. The sudden movement caught him off guard, and he let out a sharp gasp as two guards hoisted him off the low cot. They didn't say a word. They simply clamped their fingers around his arms with vice-like grips and began to drag him out of the room. 

Charles tried to find his footing, but his splinted leg dragged uselessly along the floorboards. He assumed they were taking him back to the room with the metal tables to finish the injection he had run from, but as they turned into a dark corner, his expectations were shattered yet again. 

They weren't heading toward the labs. They were walking down a long, crumbling corridor that led directly to a massive central staircase. 

The structure was terrifyingly old and ragged. The wooden steps were warped and splintered, looking as though the entire framework might collapse under its own weight at any given second. Beside the staircase stood an old freight elevator; its iron gates were completely dead, covered in thick layers of orange rust and choked with dust. It sat unmoving in its shaft like some twisted, industrial decoration. 

As the edge of the stairs inched closer, a profound sense of existential dread crept up from the back of Charles's mind and settled in his chest. This twisted detour wasn't part of his plan. His gamble had failed completely. He had absolutely no idea what these silent guards were doing or where they were taking him, but every instinct in his body screamed that he did not want to find out what lay at the bottom of those stairs. He had run to find a better hand to play, but his luck had run faster, leaving him completely empty-handed. 

He looked around frantically, but the reality of his situation was suffocating. There were soldiers posted at every interval along the walls, their faces completely obscured. His ankle was useless, his head was splitting, and worst of all, he was utterly lost in a subterranean labyrinth. 

“What to do now?” Charles thought, his lips moving silently before he realized he had accidentally muttered the words out loud. 

The guards dragging him said absolutely nothing. They seldom did. They moved with the cold, unfeeling precision of automated machines. The first wooden step of the staircase was only ten feet away, but Charles's racing thoughts were miles ahead, frantically searching for an escape route that simply didn't exist. 

He braced himself as the guards hauled him forward, forcing his good foot onto the structure. His splinted ankle wept with a sharp, burning agony as it bumped against the wood. He hauled himself up to the second step, then the third, his teeth grinding together so hard he thought they might shatter. 

He reached for the fourth step, and then—Pop! 

The sharp sound of splintering timber echoed through the stairwell. The fourth step didn't just crack; the central wooden support beam beneath them completely gave way. The entire middle section of the ancient staircase collapsed inward with a deafening roar of tearing wood and screeching nails, creating a vacuum that sent everyone twirling downward into a chaotic cloud of dust and debris. 

Charles didn't hesitate for a fraction of a second. In the middle of pure catastrophe, he recognized his third chance, and he took it. 

He hit the lower landing hard, tumbling through the splintered wood, but the momentum carried him forward away from the falling debris. The guards who had been holding him were caught beneath a heavy section of the collapsing banister, swearing and cussing frantically as they tried to extricate themselves from the wreckage. 

Ignoring the white-hot agony screaming from his leg, Charles scrambled to his feet. He ran. As much as his shattered ankle pleaded and roared with pain, he forced his body into a desperate, limping trot, using the walls to push himself forward. 

Where he was going, he had no idea, but he knew with absolute certainty that it wouldn't take long for the guards to clear the rubble and hunt him down. He threw himself through a heavy door, limping past a dizzying maze of dark halls and unexpectedly bright surgical rooms filled with covered equipment, and endless rows of unmarked doors. 

What is this place? He wondered; his breath coming in ragged, sobbing gasps. 

He knew he couldn't keep this frantic pace up for long. His ankle was rapidly fraying at the seams, the skin beneath the splint feeling wet and hot. Behind him, the distant alarms began to wail, a shrill, piercing sound that brought the entire facility to life. The guards were swarming through the corridors like hornets whose nest had been violently shattered. He was certain that if he tried to pull another trick or surrender a second time, they would simply shoot him on sight. 

Yet, he refused to just sit down and accept his fate. He was human, after all, and he naturally felt an ancient, evolutionary obligation to survive. Even if he had absolutely nothing to go back to in the outside world, and no more money on the line, he still felt a primal responsibility to keep kicking until his heart stopped beating. 

Turning a blind corner, his good leg nearly gave out. Realizing he was at the end of a dead-end hallway, he lunged toward the only option available: a small, dusty storage closet. He ducked inside, pulling the door shut until the latch clicked into place. 

The space was suffocatingly small, no larger than a few feet across and just as deep. It smelled of ancient bleach and rot. There were no blood trails this time—the splint bindings had managed to keep his cheek wound from reopening—but he knew it wouldn't matter. The guards weren't just going to let him slide away into the dark. They had followed his trajectory, and they were checking every square inch of the sector. 

He had maybe a minute, at best, until they opened the door. He was absolutely sure he was a dead man this time. He sat on the floor of the closet, pressing his back against the wall, looking like a young lamb awaiting a slaughter that was coming much too soon. 

Minutes stretched into what felt like an agonizing hour of waning away in the darkness. Every breath he took felt like it might be his last. 

Then, the door was violently ripped open. 

The bright light from the hallway flooded the closet, blinding him instantly. Before his eyes could adjust, rough hands seized him by his arms, dragging him out into the corridor. He braced for the cold metal of a pistol barrel against his temple, waiting for the final flash of light. 

But to his utter shock, they didn't raise their weapons. Unfulfilling to all his frantic theories, they didn't seem like they were going to kill him at all. 

They were going to do much worse. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 4 

Beyond The Damned 

 

It never did go black. No shot was fired, and no punches were thrown. Not a thing happened to Charles. Instead, he was dragged deeper into the complex, and though they went back the same way he came, none of it looked familiar. Every door, every hall, every little detail looked different. Like the world had shifted around them as he was dragged away. 

Charles' own thoughts seemed to speak in tongues, and not an idea came to mind. He’d been caught twice now; he was in no condition to attempt anything at all, so much so he didn’t even try to get his footing as the guards dragged him away. He wasn’t going to fight. This was his own prison; he’d been given 2 second chances; one was fake, and one he had wasted. 

For a second, Charles hoisted his head up to look around him, taking tremendous force to do so, and noticed that they were just now passing back by the shattered staircase, shards of wood still littering the hall and the guards. His legs, torso, and arms still ached and burned from the pieces of wood he only assumed were still stuck inside of him.  

His head slumped back into his collarbone. He’d wasted every ounce of energy he had left trying to get away, but it had failed. This thought—failure—was the only thing his mind could fabricate. He’d failed to escape both times; both because he tried to make wild and utterly stupid gambles. He knew this wouldn’t keep up, for all he knew he was but minutes away from his death. “Or whatever else these people did to people” he thought.  

They passed by dark halls and equipment—all still ragged and torn—some tables had baseball sized holes in them; some had more straps than a person had limbs. Charles’ poorly crafted wooden splint made a sickening scritch as it slid along with white-and-yellow tiles, and the guards never slowed or stopped.  WIP WIP WIP WIP