Prologue

She could've done something about the fly that had been pleasantly sauntering over the counter for the last thirty minutes, but she wouldn't tempt fate by betraying her own kind. She too had been floating left to right awkwardly, hands trying to find something to busy herself with, trying to pretend she wasn't there. Olivia and Leo were behind the till, enjoying the slower end-of-day rhythm, having an intense discussion of which cocktail bar they should go to after work. As if measuring whether she was innocuous enough to be left alive, they would pause briefly whenever she came near; perhaps they wanted to tempt her to buzz in and reap the rewards of her disappointment when she was told she was not invited. She was never sure she could read them well, or if she could read them at all; all she knew was that there was a wall between them, and that was that.

An old man came in, and she positioned herself next to the espresso machine, waiting for her orders. As if karma had been called in to lay her law in the land, Olivia and Leo both had to bear the brunt of the eccentric's complaints: that coffee was too dear, that last time it had been too cold, that they should stay open later. Nested within his litany was a simple ask for a white coffee; she kept her eyes on the clock as she worked on it, and by the time the man was finished ranting, the coffee was in his hands and the sign at the door read Closed.

As predicted, the old man ignored them as they went about cleaning, and sat stubbornly on one of the tables, slowly sipping his coffee. She worked silently while Olivia and Leo laughed and discussed where they should meet and who they should meet. At one point she heard the old man grumble at her, getting up in a fuss and making a point of leaving his half-full coffee cup on the table. Without missing a beat, she emptied it and threw it in the bin.

Her back was itchy. She was slightly sweaty, her uniform being too warm inside the shop but too cool for her to step out without a jacket. Her sneakers were old enough that rain would filter through some crack or the other, leaving her with slightly moist feet for the rest of the day. Minor inconveniences. But that's what it all was, right? She herself, a minor inconvenience, a fly on the wall.

There was evidence, she supposed, that something was afoot. That there was a reason behind it all. She could use Olivia and Leo and the wall they'd built for her. Her customers, like that old man, who would be politely dismissive at best and stubbornly grumpy at worst. The tube that went on strike the days she needed it the most, the bus that she never seemed to catch on time despite being early for it. It was her last name, misspelt in the council bill tax despite it being a fairly common English surname. The missed deliveries that would always end up on her neighbours' doorstep. The direct debit that was never able to be set up in one go, the drama of call after call with either the electricity company or the water provider over which bill she paid and which bill she missed.

It wasn't her fault; it wasn't the world's fault either. After her father's death, she stopped taking things personally. She couldn't be mad at the council or the customer support person; she couldn't be mad at the computer that couldn't get her name right: they were, after all, symptoms of an undeniable truth. She just wasn't meant to be there. She was a nail that stuck out awkwardly, and the universe, bless her, was just trying to find a way to fix the mess.

She put on her jacket and closed the door behind her. The rest of the shops had either closed already or had long been out of business; their dark windows gloomily reflected her figure as she marched towards the tube station. She made a silent prayer when she arrived at the gates, hoping that today her card would be recognised.

No luck. As it often seemed to be the case, she had once again been demoted to a ghost.

"Excuse me," she asked one of the employees, "my card is not working."

As always, as if she didn't pass through those gates at the same time every day, she went through the motions of explaining she had credit, showing she had credit, and finally being let through by a slightly disinterested TFL employee.

In the deep underground, a hungry roar met her as the train left the station. As she waited for the next one, she flicked through the messages on her phone. The journeys after work always started similarly, but seldom ended in the same place. Through the internet, she had found communities of explorers of all kinds, and after long conversations had assembled lists upon lists of places she could visit. Some of them were on the typical London tourist trail or part of a more specialized yet public route. There were landmarks of days gone by, curiosities, markers of places long gone… and her favourite type, abandoned structures.

She would not need to travel far that night. She stepped onto the train and checked the instructions once more. It was all very hush-hush sometimes; abandoned places tended to attract unsavoury types as much as the zealousness of their mysterious owners, so she either had to deal with the local junkie or the run-of-the-mill apathetic security guard. There were some exceptions, and that's when her hobby turned illegal: like the place she'd be going to that night, a disused tube platform, built just off St. John's Wood station in the Jubilee line.

She exited normally, getting back onto the surface. She walked north up the road, looking for the abandoned building at the first crossing. The instructions said it was painted red; in the dim lighting, it seemed more like a tired, faded pink. She went around it like she meant business, and looked for a small window at the ground level behind the mass of bushes and dead leaves on the floor.

The street was dead, no light shone on her face, and she was for once grateful the universe thought of her as a ghost – as it was all the easier to slip in unnoticed through the cracks in London, and enter another world. She would've been more cautious had she not known that the person who recommended that place had visited it the week before; as it was, there was no need to make much of a fuss as the window had already been broken. She lowered herself slowly through the opening, turning on her flashlight as she did so, so she could watch where she landed.

Dust, grime and mould caked the walls. The stench of disuse hung heavy in the air; she covered her nose, regretting her decision to leave her mask at home. As she made her way through the corridor, she counted the steps, trying to find the right door to go through. The building itself had been once the station entrance, and in the last decade, it had made the rounds as a restaurant, a posh hair salon, and an art gallery. That little corridor had been part of the basement, and according to the notes she had, led to a staff bathroom. The stairs that led to the hall above, a storage room, and the door that opened to one of the many maintenance tunnels of London's underground. After the gallery had closed, three years prior, the only visitors to the building were TFL crew who needed access for some reason or another to the substation that was housed near the old platforms. The door, her informant had noted, was always kept unlocked, and so she stepped into it confidently.

As if such things could cancel themselves out, she found that the only times she felt at ease were the times when she was somewhere most people were not supposed to be. Perhaps it was because such places had been lost to time or lost to the world that they offered some sort of respite for the unwanted; it was as if the universe had forgotten they existed too, leaving its pesky laws outside of the door.

She reached the only remaining platform through a maintenance staircase. There was nothing fancy in this station, she knew; there was no old signage or beautiful tile work left behind. The platform itself had been modified and shortened; it felt more like a pile of bricks than anything else. She jumped into the old set of tracks, which had been severed at both ends by the foundations of the buildings that had been built nearby. There was a staircase on the other side, which led deeper underground, but its purpose was completely unknown. No urban exploring enthusiasts who knew of the history of the station had found a reason for it – it was right next to the modern tracks, so it wasn't something added after closure, and it certainly wasn't an original feature, since it lived right where the trains would have been running.

She got to the steps and flashed her light downwards, trying to catch a glimpse of where it led, only to find pure darkness. She hesitantly went down some steps, thinking perhaps she'd end up discovering something, to no avail. Stubbornly, she kept descending; down, down, with only pitch black in front of her…

And then she heard a scream. Her mind rebelled for a moment, thinking it had been an illusion, a distortion of the sound of the running trains in the distance. But in the same breath, her flashlight went out, and then something knocked on the floor heavily, as if someone had fallen right next to her.

"Hello?" she ventured into the darkness, trying desperately to turn the light back on. She took out her phone, but the screen had died.

More screaming followed, and this time it was noticeably female. She carefully glanced behind her…

A light flashed.