by Ben Farthing
35
This lobby faced a bare cinderblock wall.
Warmth emanated from the wall in front of them. Or from whatever was on the other side.
Hallways extended in either direction. They looked the same as the ones below.
Chris felt like he was repeating the same things, only last time it had ended with Dr. Terry getting swallowed by the building. There were only three of them left. Chris didn't like those odds.
As curious as he was about this building's purpose, he couldn't risk his life. Not when Eddie needed him.
If he couldn't run from or fight against Roberts, then he'd approach escape from another angle.
"That whole story you just shared made me think of something Leon and I saw in the sub basements."
Roberts and Micah were peering down either hallway. Micah shrugged, motioned to the right, and Roberts gave Chris a gentle but firm shove. They were making him go first.
Fair enough, after his attack with the prybar, which Roberts now carried.
"Let's find a way into the center rooms," Micah said. "We may find our purpose there."
Chris kept his eyes straight ahead, his shoulders as far from the hallway walls as possible. He couldn't help but imagine what had happened to Dr. Terry. Was the old man wandering the floor beneath where he'd been swallowed? Were his molecules bonded with the tile? Had he been yanked away to wherever these buildings came from? Or was he eaten, digested for energy?
If Roberts was right that these overnight buildings were to benefit mankind, then how did he explain Dr. Terry and Leon? Were they the broken eggs necessary to make an omelette? The next step beyond indoor plumbing and air conditioning couldn't possibly be worth the lives of two men.
He pushed aside those thoughts. He needed to focus on getting back downstairs. "We didn't know what we were looking at down in the basement, because you didn't tell us about the other buildings. If we'd known we were looking for some new purpose, we'd have paid more attention."
"What'd you see?" Roberts asked.
"At first we thought it was HVAC units. Whatever you call the part that goes inside."
"The air handlers," Micah said.
"Yeah, that. But Leon pointed out they weren't vented to anything but the floor. And this was sub basement three--nothing but that pit down below it."
"What do you think they were?" Roberts asked.
They rounded the corner. Ahead, orange light bathed the hallway, coming from glass doors to the center rooms.
Micah said, "Most likely, part of the HVAC system. If Chris doesn't know the name for air handlers, then we shouldn't trust him to recognize every existing model."
"I'm an architect, not a mechanical engineer." He shouldn't care about stupid insults when his life was in danger, but he did. "Leon didn't recognize them, either."
They approached the orange light. The temperature rose rapidly. Chris's cheeks and fingertips grew warm.
"A more efficient heating system?" Micah wondered to herself.
"I'm telling you, the answer may be downstairs." Chris walked deeper into the heat.
The glass doors came into view.
On the other side, a planetarium. Instead of a projection of stars, a burning orange sun in the center of the dome. Instead of theater seating, beach loungers.
"It's a giant tanning booth," Chris said.
Micah and Roberts caught up. Roberts peered around the room, searching for possible threats.
Micah squinted at the sun. "What's powering it?"
Chris wished he'd brought tinted glasses. The sun was its own smaller dome, inverted and extending downward from the peak of the planetarium ceiling. Its surface roiled, sunspots growing and shrinking, flares swinging out in burning loops.
"Is that our answer?" Roberts asked.
"It could be," Micah said. "Depending on where the power's coming from, how much it's using."
"As an architectural breakthrough, more efficient heating isn't really on par with the first steel structure," Chris said, "or indoor plumbing or air conditioning. Shouldn't we be looking for things we've never seen before?"
Roberts tapped on the glass. The mini-sun burned. "You've seen a lot of those?"
"I've seen heaters, yes." Chris motioned to the beach loungers. "And I've seen tanning booths. But neither me nor Leon had ever seen anything like those metal boxes downstairs."
"I want to get up there." Micah pointed to the sun. "I don't see any sort of attic access, do you?"
Roberts shook his head. "Maybe through the floor above?"
"That's what I was thinking."
Roberts turned Chris by his shoulders. "Lead the way."
Chris walked back toward the elevator lobby. He quickly found himself missing the warmth of the mini-sun. It was only November, but winter had come early, and he did much better in the warmer months. His problems always felt more conquerable in the sunlight.
"I'm telling you," he tried again, "the new thing is downstairs. We should check that out."
Frustration entered Roberts voice. "Give it a rest. You're a shitty con man. You're too obvious. We take the elevator to the basement, and you've got a maze to escape into, and plenty of stairwells to run back to the courtyard."
Chris bit down on his tongue. He was an idiot. He should have tried the deceptive approach before attempting to stab Roberts with a prybar.
"It's possible you're on to something with these metal boxes," Micah said, "but you've made clear that your primary intention is to leave. And so we'll investigate the sub basements with you, after we've explored these higher floors."
They reached the elevator lobby.
A tall figure hunched over the elevator door.
36
In the fluorescent glow of the lobby's overhead lights, the thing hunching over the elevator door looked a pale yellowish bone color.
Chris could see the shape of a head and shoulders, but it was wearing a cloak or had wrapped itself in a blanket, and he couldn't tell where cloth ended and flesh began. Its legs were wrapped tightly together.
Chris backed into Roberts, who was just as frozen.
"What is it?" the big man whispered.
Micah shushed them.
It was like the thing was standing in shadow, difficult to see detail, except everything around it was in perfect view.
It hunched over, leaning close in to the elevator doors. It pressed its face--or the area where its face should be--against the crack between doors.
A screwdriver fell out, bounced on the tile floor, and rolled to the center of the lobby.
The hunched figure turned toward Chris.
His heart dropped to his gut.
Still hunched so its face was hidden, its off-white covering--or loose flesh--raised and jolted with its movement. The thing lurched at them.
Chris leapt away, ready to flee, no longer worried about the hungry walls, but about the lurcher, it had found him, caught up, and now it wanted him.
Roberts iron grip closed around Chris's elbow.
Micah exhaled a noise between fear and pleasure.
The lurcher hopped and slid. Its bone color blurred to match the painted white cinderblocks behind it. The shiny elevator doors warbled as the thing moved.
And then it was gone. The patterns of its clothes or flesh disappeared into the patterns around it.
Chris's lungs burned. He gasped for air. He felt his pants to make sure he'd kept control of his bladder.
Having his understanding of the world attacked was one thing. A building going up overnight. A huge pit atop which the building floated. The shimmering surfaces of the bullpen, or the mini-sun of the planetarium. But none of those had been following him. None of them had lunged for him.
Through him.
"Is it invisible?" Roberts whispered. "It went all camouflaged there, didn't it?"
Chris grunted agreement.
Micah strode forward, waving her hand like checking for spiderwebs. "It's not here. It slipped away. Back to where
ver this building came from."
"Some kind of angel," Roberts said to himself, but he didn't sound convinced.
That thing hadn't been a religious emblem to emulate, but something wrong and intrusive.
Micah picked up Chris's screwdriver. "Was this another poorly thought out scheme to run away?"
Chris only glared at her. She was supposed to be this world-changing billionaire, and here she was, threatening brute violence if he didn't play along in her attempts to claim more wealth and power. She'd just seen something impossible. Some creature, terrifying, but amazing. And she was still focused on Chris's role in her plan for more power.
"Don't convince yourself to hate me," Micah said. "Or cling to any fantasies that you'll run off, and then I'll be arrested and you'll be a hero. The only thing I might be charged with is trespassing. But considering no one owns this building, even that charge is unlikely."
"Your bruiser here won't let me leave. That's some kind of kidnapping charge."
"I owe you enough money to change your life forever. What would it take for you to drop those charges? Paying in cash instead of a check? Including a 'good faith' bonus?"
Chris realized she was right. If they all made it out of here alive, and she was still willing to pay, Chris would take the money and forget what she'd done. He had no choice. He couldn't afford a legal battle--not with Eddie depending on him.
He was ashamed to back down, but he had no other choice. He couldn't run. He couldn't fight. He couldn't trick them into letting him leave. He couldn't bully her with legal threats, even when she was clearly guilty.
The only way he was getting free and finding Eddie was to first help Micah find her answer.
"Alright, you win." He'd felt dejected before, in his years-long job search. But complete defeat in this moment felt even worse. "Let's go upstairs. Maybe the wiring for that little sun is the next leap forward in construction. Let's avoid whatever the hell that lurcher was, though. I don't know why it cared about my screwdriver, but I'd rather learn as little about it as possible." He took his screwdriver back.
"Agreed," Micah said, "on all counts. Roberts, hold on to that crowbar. I imagine we'll need it to pry up the floor to get to what we're after."
Chris walked back into the elevator, his own shoulders hunched over. He hoped Eddie had found his own way out. But now, if Chris made it out of here, after giving in to Micah's every demand, what kind of father would he be? Weak, dejected?
The doors slid shut. Chris could deal with that later. He needed to get free, and the only way to do that was to solve this mystery.
37
One floor up, the outer hallway now felt familiar.
Chris led the way between dull cinderblock walls, around the corner and to the glass doors to the center room. He walked briskly to avoid thinking about what might burst out of those walls to drag him away.
They reached the glass doors.
Inside was a cafe, everything white.
Ivory bar-height tables placed in a grid atop wood floors painted white. Globe light fixtures hung from the high ceiling. On one side of the room was a wall with doors that were marked as bathrooms with the stubby silhouettes of men wearing pants and women wearing skirts.
The mundaneness of the bathrooms struck Chris as out of place with the absurdity of what he'd seen below.
Roberts opened the door. Warm air drifted into the hallway. Likely a byproduct of the mini-sun below them. "Go on in to make sure it's safe."
"You're the bodyguard," Chris said.
"That's why he's staying out here with me," Micah said.
It didn't matter if he resisted. Roberts would throw him in, or Micah would convince him that he had no real choice.
Chris walked inside. It was like a sci-fi doctor's office, all the bright white. Atop each pedestal table, a little porcelain bowl and a shot glass. The glasses held water. The bowls held two capsules each.
Chris walked to the bathroom doors. He prepped himself to sprint away, if he found the the lurcher on the other side. He pushed open the first door.
It was a bathroom. Toilet, sink, paper towels.
Chris laughed. In the building that appeared overnight, they'd stocked the paper towels.
He checked each bathroom to find the same thing.
There was nothing else to search in the room. He waved Micah and Roberts inside.
The two cautiously entered.
Roberts looked around, slack-jawed. "It's peaceful."
Micah scoped out the center of the room. She pushed a table aside. "The heat source should be under us, right here."
Roberts nodded, but closed his eyes and inhaled.
Micah cleared her throat. The body guard exhaled, and then joined his boss.
While they inspected the floor for a crack to insert the prybar, Chris fiddled with one of the capsules in the porcelain bowls. "If we're looking for a single purpose of this building, then what's up with the different floors? Trippy flashing lights, a mini-sun, now these pills?"
He popped open the capsule. Dried green plant fibers and minuscule beige beads. "These look like laxatives. I guess that makes sense with the bathrooms."
Roberts smashed the prybar into the floor. "Hey, do you have a hammer in your backpack?"
Chris took off the backpack, laid the rolls of blueprints on the table, and dug through the pockets until he found his claw hammer. The orange Home Depot sticker still stuck to the handle.
Micah held the prybar in between floorboards while Roberts swung the hammer. The sharp clangs echoed off the high ceiling.
"Seriously," Chris repeated, "what's up with all the different floors? All the other buildings you described had one new thing."
Roberts swung the hammer again. Wood splintered.
"Yes!" Micah cheered.
Chris touched the spilled powder to his tongue. Bitter. As far as he could tell, it was a laxative. Or at least a fiber supplement. And those little beige beads looked like probiotics. The purpose of this mysterious tower included regular, smooth bowel movements.
He chuckled at the thought. Sherri would call him immature for laughing at poop jokes. Eddie would be giggling hysterically.
Roberts heaved at the prybar. Wood cracked and a floorboard raised.
Pieces started to come together in Chris's mind. Pulsing colors and patterns, then warm sunlight, now a gut cleanse. It was all vaguely familiar.
Roberts worked the floorboard free and tossed it aside.
Micah shined a flashlight into the gap. "The heater should be right here. Where's the wiring?"
"Stand back," Roberts said. "I'll break through the next level."
It was a list of tasks, that Chris was trying to remember, that the different floors were reminding him of. Not chores that Sherri had given him, but maybe something his therapist had once referenced?
Roberts swung the prybar like an ax.
Chris's mind churned.
Micah gasped, jerked around, then staggered backwards into Roberts.
Chris looked up.
Lurchers, their hunched, pale forms like bent-over men in head-to-toe straitjackets, pressed against the glass doors.
38
Chris scrambled for the doors opposite the approaching lurchers.
He found more of the things lunging through the glass. The glass stayed solid as the first passed through. In the same way that Chris's gaze couldn't focus on it, couldn't tell where cloth ended and flesh began, the glass didn't accept the lurcher's physicality, didn't notice that it should have shattered the pane.
Three more crossed through.
Chris stumbled back towards the bathrooms. Roberts and Micah followed, knocking aside tables with the prybar.
The lurchers' movement jerked. They moved faster than in the subbasement, or by the elevator.
The majority headed for the broken floor. Two locked onto Roberts and charged with their unearthly hopping and sliding.
Micah threw open a bathroom door and dashed inside.
Even in his panic, Chris refused to corner himself. He ran along the side wall, toward the glass door to the hallway.
Roberts made himself into a barrier between the lurchers and Micah, blocking the door. The first lurcher fell forward and launched itself at Robert's knees. The bone-white, wrapped head--where a face would be if Chris could focus on it--opened. The covering lifted like a garage door. Finger-length tentacles wriggled forth.
Chris froze at the sight. He pressed himself harder back against the wall. The exit seemed impossibly far away.
Roberts swung the prybar. It connected with the diving lurcher's head. A tentacle was knocked loose, and skittered across the floor. The lurcher crashed into the wall, denting the drywall then dissipating through it.
Before Roberts could bring the prybar back up, the second lurcher, face lifted, tentacles exposed, latched onto his hand. Roberts screamed.
The big man's howl of terror and pain pierced Chris and broke him free of his paralysis. But if he ran again, he might draw the attention of the lurchers and those unnatural tentacles. He inched towards the exit, watching the lurchers that crouched over the damaged floor.
Roberts punched the attacking lurcher with multiple tight body blows. It sounded like punching a heavy bag, and had as much effect. The thing's head enveloped his other hand. Dry, cracking tentacles felt their way up his wrist.
The lurcher ripped itself away. Roberts' hand hung limp, empty, and without the tips of three fingers.
Chris was halfway to the exit.
Roberts threw a wide punch at the lurcher, but it moved away and blurred against the white room until it vanished.
The lurchers hovering over the damaged floor swung around, one-by-one, to hop and slide out of view.
Where before the floor had been cracked and pried up, now it was returned to smooth, white wood.
Chris's chest heaved. This pristine room was as dangerous as any other. Nowhere in this building was safe. The walls closed in. The sterile lights grew blinding.
