by Ben Farthing
Leon laughed, deep, from his belly. "If I could get the cover off. You ever see screw heads like these?"
Chris leaned in. The screws holding on the vent cover were black, their heads at least half an inch in diameter. A head that wide was designed to spread its clamping pressure over a wide area, so it wouldn't break through anything when holding back high forces. "Why's it so big?"
"The cover itself doesn't weigh much. But you'd have a hell of time trying to kick that out from the inside." Leon shrugged. "And look at this."
He shone his penlight on the screwhead. Instead of a flat slot, or a Philips head cross, it had four indented slits, forming a square.
"Looks like you'd unscrew it with two mini electrical plugs," Chris suggested.
"Did you bring any?"
"Must have forgot. Where do you even buy a screw like that?"
"Fabricate it yourself," Leon said. "But I'm more interested in the screwdriver that fits this. Look how tiny the slots are. You'd snap apart your tool trying to loosen this, unless it was cut from a solid piece of steel. Somebody's carrying around a four-pronged screw driver with needle thin prongs that won't snap. What's that tell you about how they built this tower?"
"Custom machined parts can be tracked down. Can't be but so many shops that can output the thousands of screws they'd need just for the vent covers."
Leon de-telescoped his ladder, stuffed it in his duffle bag, and threw the bag over his shoulder. "I guess. But custom materials would slow a project down. They built this overnight, remember."
That was looking more impossible by the second. They were standing on tile floors. Tile glue took twenty-four hours to set. The walls were drywall. Drywall mud took just as long to dry. And these walls were painted. The foyer didn't smell of fresh paint. It smelled more like cinnamon air freshener.
"Damn this is wild." Leon's white smile reflected the bright light from the inner doors. "I haven't been this excited since my brakes jammed on my four-wheeler last summer. Try steering through downhill switchbacks with your back wheels stuck solid." He laughed. "Let's find this maintenance room of yours. Maybe they'll have some driver bits that fit those vent screws."
"First we find my son." Chris looked back at his prybar, still holding the door closed.
The redhead now stood back from the doors, yelling into a phone and leaning backwards to look up at the building. The impossibly soundproofed doors kept him silent.
Chris wanted his prybar. Redhead's boss would likely be just as willing to commit violence for money.
"Hold on," Chris said to Leon. He jogged softly to the outer doors. He lifted his prybar off the handles, and gently slid it free. The doors stayed silent.
The latches and hinges were solid. The crack they'd put in the glass was gone.
Maybe the crack was only in the outer pane, and he couldn't see it from inside. But that wouldn't explain the latching mechanism fixing itself. They'd snapped it in half.
"What are you doing?" Leon hissed.
The redhead glanced their way.
Chris froze.
He went back to yelling at the phone. He hadn't seen them. The doors were opaque from the outside.
Chris gently pushed on the door they'd broken. It held closed.
He thought up a dozen explanations. None of them held water.
He must have been wrong about breaking the latch.
But he couldn't spend time solving this mystery. The only mystery that mattered right now was which direction Eddie went. Then after that, the money for Eddie's solid home.
They headed through the inner doors.
16
Chris expected a bland foyer, but instead found an open courtyard.
It felt so welcoming that he felt slighted when Leon didn't slow down to appreciate it.
Chris spread his arms, opening to embrace his surroundings.
The ceiling was thirty stories above. Office windows lined two of the walls, random in size and placement. The other two walls were the outer glass of the skyscraper. Four bridges crossed the open space, the first only three floors above.
The courtyard itself was open, airy, and comforting. Directly across from the doors they'd come in were another set of identical doors. To either side were sand colored elevator doors, and beyond those were doors to stairwells.
The center of the courtyard was a tiled floor, and in a checkerboard pattern across the floor were square planters with knee-high grass that tilted and shuddered in a shifting breeze.
Bright sunlight warmed the courtyard. The glass of the windows themselves must have been coloring the light, because the cold November sun outside was filtered through gray clouds, and left the outside world in dull, cool colors. But inside, the light warmly colored the bright green grass, and tile the color of beach sand.
To their left, a round structure with a lobby desk in front of it. The building management's offices would be in that wood igloo.
To their right, the checkerboard planters grew shorter until the waving grass's sod was level with the floor itself. A pond as big as a basketball court filled that end of the courtyard. The pond had no retaining walls, so gentle waves lapped at the grass and tile.
Chris imagined setting a beach chair by the pond, leaning back, then staring at the open space above until his heart slowed and his problems melted into little frustrations he could solve with a snap of his fingers.
Leon stomped to the center of the courtyard.
"Slow down," Chris said. He followed Leon. The breeze that massaged the grass felt cool on Chris's cheeks. It smelled of fresh dandelions.
"A second ago you were in a hurry." Leon hesitated in the middle of the courtyard. He looked from the wooden igloo to the elevator. "Where'd you say the maintenance room is? Back in the hut, or down in the basement?"
Chris grew distracted by the pond. The glass behind it was frosted, so he couldn't see through to the neighborhood outside. But the closer he looked, the more the pond's reflection stretched into a horizon of gentle waves. The light fixture's reflection even looked like a sunrise.
Maybe everything would work out.
The absurdity of the thought shattered his calm. Sherri was gone. Things would only "work out" once he had the income to give Eddie a stable home.
He shook his head. Eddie was in here somewhere. That was the most pressing issue.
Chris refocused.
Leon snapped his fingers in Chris's face. "Don't slow down, you'll start thinking of your ex wife."
"Technically not my ex, yet."
"Trust me, you don't want to try to win her back. I've been there. She kicked you in the balls. The best remedy is a shooting range. Two handguns at one time. You don't hit a thing, but it feels amazing. Of course, they tear up your membership card after that."
"You lost me."
"I'm saying let's keep moving. Are we going in there?" He pointed to the wooden igloo behind the receptionist desk. "Or down there?" He pointed to a stairwell door next to the elevator.
"Uh," Chris felt like he'd just woken up from a nap, or finished a deep tissue massage. His muscles felt relaxed, his vision soft. He didn't understand why Leon wasn't getting the same effect from this courtyard. "My son, first."
"Where do you think he went? You said he's looking for treasure."
Chris turned his back on the pond. His thoughts grew sharper. He checked his phone once more. No service. Where would Eddie have gone?
If he was living out their treasure hunting video game, then the level with the skyscraper had gold coins stashed all throughout. The biggest stash moved with each playthrough. But when Chris and Eddie played together, they always checked the basement first.
"We should head downstairs. But let's check in there first." He pointed to the wood igloo. If the blueprints were in such an obvious place, he couldn't put off searching for them. Another contractor might grab them first. Two minutes wouldn't put Eddie in anymore trouble.
"Lead the way," Leon said.
Chris c
inched up his backpack, adjusted his grip on the prybar, and headed for the receptionist desk.
Someone shouted down at them from above.
17
"Up here!"
A gravely voice. A man leaned over the railing of the highest skybridge.
Chris's stomach flipped at the risk of it. If he slipped, it was thirty stories down to land on the cold tile floor.
Leon craned his neck to peer up. "Think that's redhead's boss?"
"Must be," Chris said.
"Ain't nothing you want down there!" shouted the man. "Take the elevator. It's rejuvenating. Or the stairs too. More direct!"
Chris's heart sunk. They'd been beaten to the prize.
"He's drunk," Leon said.
Chris shouted up to him. "What'd you find?" He wanted to ask about Eddie, but if the man hadn't run across him, Chris didn't want to give him any ideas.
"Come and see!"
"If he's giving away the farm," Leon said, "you'd be a fool not to take it."
"He can't be. Not if he set a guard to keep us out."
"Unless he's drank too many breakfast beers. Maybe he's a generous drunk."
Chris look over at the pond. Just the glance relaxed his shoulders, slowed his breathing. He shook his head. "Something weird about it."
"You mean this guy giving away information that could be worth 200k? I'm telling you, he's on drugs. Let's go up and take advantage."
The breeze picked up. It was softly warm, a comforting feeling after being outside. The pond lapped more loudly at the tile floor.
"No," Chris said.
The air stilled. The pond quieted.
"Let me show you!" called the man from above.
"If he's found something, he's found it," Chris said. "That's not my top priority anyways."
Still, he led the way to the wooden igloo.
18
They walked behind the receptionist desk and through the igloo doorway.
Chris paused to let his eyes adjust.
The breeze of the courtyard whistled past the igloo's windows. Light shone through the windows, and from globe light fixtures.
Half-circles of desks lined either wall. Atop each desk sat a telephone, a pen, and a pad of paper. Twelve workstations in all.
Leon flipped through one pad, then picked a phone up off the hook to listen to it. "Dead. You think this is going to be a call center? Operator station for the building?"
"Twelve operators?" Chris tested one of the pens--it worked--then pocketed it.
"Hey, check this out," Leon said. He'd opened a desk drawer and pulled out a laminated brochure.
Chris found an identical one in another desk.
It read "Directory" across the top.
A surge of hope flashed inside Chris. It quickly died.
Below the headline was a list of numbers without description.
Starting at B3, counting down to B1, then up from 1 to 120.
Leon tossed his aside. "What kind of directory just has floors? Shouldn't it be office suites?"
"There aren't 120 floors in here," said Chris. "From outside it looked like around sixty."
"Let's go see what the elevator says," Leon suggested.
"Hold on." Chris opened the rest of the desk drawers, but found only 12 copies of the useless directory. Nothing else in the room. "Okay, let's go."
They'd wasted less than a minute, but come up empty handed. Time to search the basement.
They walked across the courtyard to the elevators. Chris pressed the down arrow button.
A bell dinged, a light above the doors switched on, and the doors slid open.
They stepped inside. Chris kept his hand on the door to hold it open.
"There you go." Leon pointed to the wall of buttons. "One hundred and twenty. Plus the three sub levels."
Chris poked his head out of the elevator and looked up. Around thirty open floors. Four bridges across the open space. The ceiling was a smooth surface, probably plastic with a textured paint.
He stopped to remind himself there was no way that could have been constructed in one night.
"You can't see all hundred and twenty floors from in here," Leon said.
"I didn't see that many outside, did you? I was guessing 60. Maybe 70."
Leon shrugged. "I didn't count. We could go to the top, see how high it is."
"No, let's search the basement first. That's where my son would look for treasure first. And it's my best guess for finding the blueprints."
"Fine by me." Leon pressed the button B3.
"Wait, let's take the stairs." But the door was already shutting. Chris tried to hold back the door. It didn't give. He pulled his hand away before it was crushed. He mashed the open doors button. No response. "I guess we're taking the elevator."
Somewhere below, a motor kicked to life. The floor juddered, and they descended.
19
The screen above the door displayed a red LED "B1," then "B2," then "B3."
The elevator stopped. The motor below them stopped humming. Its last breath echoed deep beneath.
Chris pressed the open doors button.
"What if they built it underground," Leon suggested, "and they raised it overnight?"
"The neighbors would have noticed the sixty story pit. Or hundred and twenty story. Whichever."
"Unless it just looked normal up top. They kept the top layer of dirt."
"Aren't you a structural engineer? I'm sure you could name a thousand reasons that wouldn't work."
Leon shrugged. "I'm just thinking. We're in the bottom subbasement. But..." He stomped his foot. The noise echoed beneath them, repeating increasingly softly as the sound waves fell away. "That's some empty space down there."
This whole thing was getting out of control.
But he had to admit, the strangeness of this building was a fantastic distraction from the disaster this morning.
Chris only needed a simple answer, or something that could lead Micah to an answer. So far he'd only found more proof that the impossible building was impossible. Now he had another mystery.
"It could be your answer," Leon said.
"My answer? What about you?"
"I'm getting my paycheck either way. I'm having fun."
Chris tapped the prybar on the floor. Again, the echo repeated and then faded. If they found an empty space beneath the building, that would be an answer for Micah. "Alright, after we look for my boy, we'll see if the maintenance room is down here, and see if there's a lower subbasement. Maybe a different elevator."
"Sounds like a plan," Leon said. He pressed the open doors button.
The doors didn't respond.
Chris's heartbeat picked up. He didn't wait for claustrophobia to set in. He jammed the prybar in between the doors and wriggled it until he found purchase, then pulled hard.
"Whoa," Leon said.
Chris's shoulders strained, and the doors creaked open. Light from the elevator spilled into the darkness beyond.
A concrete floor. Exposed ceiling with pipes and conduit.
"Hope you brought a flashlight," Leon said.
Chris rummaged through his backpack for the flashlight he'd bought. He put batteries inside, and switched it on.
The hallway outside the elevator was cramped. Pipes and conduit lined the walls as well as the ceiling. They narrowed the hallway even more with jagged geometric patterns.
Chris couldn't imagine Eddie exploring down here by himself. He was strong-willed, but he was still nine.
Leon switched on his own lights, a headlamp and a heavy police baton flashlight. He whistled. "It's gorgeous. Used to be, if I could find a hallway like this, it would take me anywhere in the building. Or at least the surrounding floors." He stepped through the elevator doors.
Chris followed. Leon's attitude bothered him. The courtyard had been relaxing and happy. There was some architectural psychology going on up there with the open air and the simulated beach. Sub level 3 wasn't quite that feeling's opposite--
moreso its absence. There were no architectural decisions made down here. Pipes, ducts, and wire conduit took their own paths.
If they ever found the designers, Chris felt confident the designer of the courtyard would be someone he followed on Twitter, and the designer of the sub levels would be an engineer.
Leon shone his lights around the elevator door. It took up the entire end of the narrow hallway. "No stairwell," Leon said. "Let's send the elevator back up and keep the doors wedged open. Get a look at how far down the shaft goes."
"Hell, no. Not until we find the stairs."
"Chicken?"
"Call me what you want, I'm not getting stuck down here." Chris would bet dollars to donuts that Eddie came down here, got spooked, and headed back upstairs to search the next hiding spot in their video game. But there was still a chance. "Let's explore a bit. Find the maintenance room."
They walked down the hallway, shoes tapping on the concrete floor. Chris stayed in the middle of the walkway, trying not to think about being buried alive. The air was still and dry. Their flashlights lit up thirty feet of hallway as bright as upstairs, and another thirty feet in gray shadow.
Chris called Eddie's name. It echoed dully.
"If your boy is wandering around down here," Leon said, "then he could be a killer building hacker one day."
"One thing at a time." Chris adjusted his backpack straps.
Leon peered behind conduits and ducts. "No closets, no nothing. What's on the other side of these walls?"
"Probably dirt."
A low chugging of HVAC equipment grew louder as they walked. They reached a crossroads. The same hallway in four directions.
Chris called for Eddie again. Thick echoes from each hallway. No response.
"He's not down here," Leon said. "Let's check out the maintenance room. My money says it's nearby all that racket."
They went towards the HVAC noise.
After three minutes of walking, Leon asked, "Are we still under the building? I think we've walked too far."
"Probably just feels that way because it's so claustrophobic in here."
