The Gathering

The Studios

XVI. The Studios

The basement door was ordinary enough. Solid oak, brass handle, located beneath the main staircase. Emma had examined it already. She waited for the others before opening it.

"We agreed," she said. "Together."

"We agreed," Alice confirmed.

The door swung open to reveal stone steps descending into darkness. The air was cooler. Stone dust and old earth.

Emma went first. Her device cast a faint blue glow. The others followed.

Twenty steps down, the stairwell opened into a landing. Emma touched a panel on the wall. Lights flickered on. Recessed, modern, nothing like the Victorian fixtures upstairs.

They emerged into a corridor. Wide, stone-walled, illuminated by recessed lighting that activated as they entered. The stone walls radiated cold. The ceiling was vaulted, at least fifteen feet high. The corridor stretched ahead for what looked like a hundred feet or more.

"This is impossible," Sarah breathed. "The footprint of this basement is bigger than the house above it."

"Confirmed."

Emma was scanning in all directions now. Her device clicked softly.

"I'm registering approximately twelve thousand square feet of enclosed space. The manor's ground floor is perhaps three thousand."

She paused.

"The stone stress patterns are consistent with genuine construction, not illusion. This space physically exists."

"How?"

"I don't know. That's what makes it interesting."

The corridor had nine doors. Four on each side, evenly spaced. One larger door at the far end. Each side door was identical. Heavy wood, iron-banded, with a small brass plate mounted at eye level.

The first brass plate was blank.

"Should we...?" Lora gestured at the door.

"Systematically," Emma said. "First door first. Document everything."

Mia pushed the door open.

The room beyond was a recording studio.

Not a modern studio. A vintage studio, the kind that had existed in the 1970s and 1980s. Reel-to-reel tape machines lined one wall. A mixing console that looked like it belonged in Abbey Road dominated the center of the space. Acoustic panels covered the walls in patterns that the Wilds recognized immediately.

"This is our studio," Lora whispered. "The one in Nashville. The one we used from ninety-five to 2010."

"It can't be," Mia said. But she was already moving toward the mixing console. Her fingers found familiar controls. Worn metal, smooth from use. "We sold that equipment. The building was demolished in 2015."

"And yet."

Lora pointed to the wall. A photograph hung in a simple frame. Black and white, edges yellowed. Two young women, arms around each other, grinning at the camera with the exhausted joy of a completed album. The Wilds, circa 1998.

"That picture was in our studio. I remember when we took it."

Mia moved deeper into the studio. Her fingers trailed along the mixing console, the tape reels, the wooden edge of the producer's desk. She stopped at a side table cluttered with fountain pens, loose paper, cassette tapes.

A dented aluminum coffee cup sat among the oddments. Mia picked it up. Her hands steadied around the familiar shape.

"Yes, ma jo," she whispered. "I won't scold you any more. I promise."

Lora stood at the instrument wall. A brass trumpet hung on pegs beside the acoustic guitars. Thomas's backup horn. The one he kept in every studio they worked because the session players never had decent spares.

She did not touch it.

Her breathing had gone shallow. She clasped her hands together, fingers white at the knuckles.

"He polished it every Sunday," Lora said. "Even when we weren't recording."

The sisters stood apart. Mia holding a cup. Lora facing a wall. The room waited with them, patient as old grief.

Mia set the cup down. She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand.

"Someone knew," she said. "Someone remembered."

In the doorway, the others held still. Emma's device clicked softly, recording. Alice had gone distant, her gaze unfocused, seeing something beyond the room. Kamadan inclined his head, a slight smile crossing his features. Kash stepped back into the corridor, one hand pressed to her chest. Sarah looked from sister to sister, not understanding, understanding enough.

But the room wasn't just a recreation of the past.

"Hybrid configuration," Emma reported. "The analog equipment is fully functional. I can hear the tape machines humming. But there's also a complete digital recording and processing chain. State of the art. Possibly beyond state of the art."

She looked at the Wilds.

"Someone built you a studio that combines everything you ever used with everything you might want to use."

"Someone who knows us very well," Mia said quietly. "Someone who knows what we love."

The second door's brass plate was also blank.

Alice opened it.

The room beyond was nothing like the Wilds' warm, nostalgic space. It was stark. Geometric. Utterly modern. White walls that weren't quite walls. Surfaces that shimmered with latent energy.

Alice stepped across the threshold. The temperature dropped. The room activated.

Holographic screens materialized on every surface. Not flat displays but three-dimensional projections that surrounded her completely. Each screen showed a different image. Alice in her Victorian dress. Alice walking through a mirror. Alice standing at a crossroads where all paths led to impossible geometries.

"Visual reference library," Emma observed from the doorway. "Thousands of images, all featuring your likeness. The system appears to be responsive to presence. It activated when you entered."

Alice moved through the room slowly. The holograms shifted to track her position. On one screen, she saw herself performing. A concert venue, thousands of people, her voice filling the space with something that was not quite the music she knew.

"These are my phases," she said softly. "Other versions of me. Other paths I might have taken."

"Can you access them?"

"I don't know."

Alice reached toward one of the screens. A version of herself who had aged normally. Gray in her hair. Lines around her eyes. The image flickered at her touch.

"I don't know if I want to."

The room also contained recording equipment. But nothing Alice recognized. No microphones. No instruments. No conventional interface at all. Just the holographic screens and a single chair in the center. Surrounded by sensors.

"Thought-capture technology," Emma said. She scanned the sensors. "Theoretical. No one has successfully implemented it."

She paused.

"No one I know of, at least."

"Someone did."

Alice sat in the chair experimentally. The screens flickered. Responding to something. Her brain activity, perhaps. Or her emotional state.

"Someone built me a studio where I can record what? My dreams? My memories? The things I see in other phases?"

"Someone who knows you very well," Mia repeated from the doorway. "Someone who knows what you are."

They moved through the remaining doors systematically, as Emma had requested.

Kash found her studio behind the third door. Small. Intimate. Warmly lit. The room smelled of new carpet and electronics. A vocal booth with the exact microphone she preferred. A production desk configured exactly as she arranged her equipment at home. Even the chair was right. A specific ergonomic model she'd spent weeks choosing.

"How could anyone know this?" she asked. Her fingers ran along the desk surface. "I've never published my setup. I've never even photographed it."

"Surveillance," Emma said. "Extended, detailed surveillance. Whoever prepared this space has been watching you for a long time."

"That should terrify me."

"Does it?"

Kash considered. "No. It feels more like being seen. Truly seen. By someone who paid attention."

Kamadan's studio was behind the fourth door. Not a recording space at all. A meditation chamber. Cushions arranged in a precise pattern. Acoustic treatment that created absolute silence when the door closed. And, against one wall, a single high-quality microphone. Connected to a recording system that was designed for voice-only capture.

"I record separately from instruments," Kamadan explained to the others. "The four voices require focus that cannot be achieved amid other sounds. This space is optimal."

"There's that word again," Mia said dryly.

"In this case, accurate."

Kamadan sat on one of the cushions. He tested the acoustics. When he hummed a single note, the room responded. Absorbing the sound perfectly. Leaving no echo, no resonance. Just pure tone.

"Whoever built this understands how I work. They understand the Keepers' methods."

Emma's studio was behind the fifth door.

She stood in the doorway for a long moment. Not entering.

"Emma?" Alice prompted.

"This is not possible."

The room was a curved space. No corners. No flat surfaces. Everything flowing in organic curves that responded to Emma's attention even before she crossed the threshold. When she finally stepped inside, the entire room came alive.

Displays materialized in the air. Not holograms like Alice's, but something more fundamental. Direct interfaces with the electromagnetic spectrum itself. The air hummed with energy. Emma raised her hand experimentally.

The displays followed her movement.

She lowered her hand. The displays dimmed.

She thought a command. A simple test pattern. It appeared in the air before her.

"Thought-responsive interface," she said. Her voice was quiet. Unsteady. "Direct neural integration. No physical controls at all."

She turned to the others.

"This technology does not exist. The principles are theoretical. No one has..."

She stopped.

"No one you know of," Mia finished. "Yeah. We're getting that."

The remaining three side doors revealed generic studios. Well-equipped. Professional. But without the personalization of the first five. Standard recording spaces that could accommodate any artist, any style.

"Reserved," Alice observed. "For others who might join us?"

"Or for guests," Kamadan suggested. "Collaborators. The person who built this may have anticipated that we would not remain isolated."

"The person who built this anticipated many things," Emma said. Her voice was still processing the implications of her studio. "They know us individually. They know our methods, our preferences, our needs. And they've provided for possibilities we haven't yet imagined."

The large door at the end of the corridor remained.

They gathered before it. Six threshold-crossers and one Arkham native. Standing at the edge of whatever revelation waited beyond. The wood was warm under Mia's palm.

"Together?" Mia asked.

Nods around the group.

Mia pushed the door open.