by Ben Farthing
"No!" Micah yelled.
"Look at it!" Roberts cried.
Through the pain, Chris looked at his little finger.
He now shared it with Leon's index finger.
Starting at the second knuckle, his finger merged with Leon's. Chris's skin, red from exertion, speckled Leon's gray flesh. Chris's fingernail was buried somewhere beneath that sickly color. The tip of Leon's finger extended out from Chris's finger below the knuckle, at a downward angle.
Panic prompted flailing, which closed Chris down to everything but the pain.
"Do it!" Micah shouted in his ear.
Chris felt his hand smash against the tile. A second flavor of pain torrented into his finger, sawing, clawing.
His arm whipped free. He fell backwards. Micah grunted as she absorbed his fall.
Then Chris was in the air, bouncing away from the crawling gray man. Drops of blood floated in Chris's wake, splattering Micah's shirt as she followed.
43
Adrenaline again won the battle against pain. It was easier now that the pain had subsided to mere agony.
Chris wriggled down from Roberts' shoulder.
They ran down the hallway, opposite the side they'd entered the white room.
Roberts' bulk took up Chris's view ahead. Behind him, Micah ran, watching back over her shoulder.
Behind her, sterile light through glass walls illuminated the cinderblock and tile hallway.
Leon howled haunting gibberish that may have included the word, "help."
Something wet dripped down Chris's hand and wrist.
He looked down as he ran. His little finger was gone. All that remained was a tatter of flesh and sinew, where Roberts must have given up on cutting and torn the rest off.
Micah handed him a handkerchief. "Don't bleed out. We won't carry you."
Chris wrapped it around the stub and held it tight. "I can't tie it myself."
"We get to safety first," Roberts said.
Chris applied pressure to where his finger should have been. He knew there'd be consequences from this. Everyday life made more difficult. But right now, he wanted to get as far away as possible from the pain he'd felt before Roberts cut him free.
They reached the corner of the hallway. Roberts waved them to a stop. He peeked around the corner. "Looks clear. Stay away from the walls."
They hurried to the elevators.
Micah pressed the up button. It glowed.
"No." Roberts pressed the down button, but the up button stayed lit. "This is too dangerous now."
"I'm in charge," Micah said.
"I keep you safe. I'm taking you back down. I'll return with a trained team."
Micah tied off Chris's handkerchief. "I hired you because you're the best. You'll keep me safe because I'm paying you a fortune to keep me safe. Do you need a whole team to do your job?"
Chris winced at the pain.
"I'll find the breakthrough and bring it to you," Roberts said. "After you're outside the building. The architect is right, this isn't like the others."
"Don't doubt the work," Micah said. "We've seen the same overnight appearance, the same nearby open space. The answer is here."
A howl from up the hallway. Leon was still following them.
"I have to find Eddie." Chris's purpose came back through the pain. "He can't be in here."
"We're in over our heads," Roberts said.
"Don't be selfish," Micah said. "What about the good you want to do? We'll make the world a better place."
Roberts exhaled.
A second howl, from the other direction.
They all turned to look down the hallway. In the far corner, shadows moved as someone drew near.
Two elevators dinged. One up-arrow illuminated, and one down-arrow.
The up elevator opened first.
"We're not done yet," Micah said.
Chris squeezed shut his eyes. He resisted the urge to lay down and sob until Leon caught him. Then he realized, Micah couldn't keep him here. Roberts was the physical threat, and he was no longer convinced. "I'm going home."
He stepped in front of the other elevator. The down arrow glowed like a lighthouse in a storm.
The doors opened.
A black horizon in the distance. Rocks and dirt, low crumbling walls coated in green dust.
Dr. Terry crouched next to a stone wall.
Reality shifted, and Dr. Terry was squatting in a plain elevator car.
He made the motions of shelving books, but his hands were empty. He patted the ground next to him, not looking, until he found his invisible target. He picked it up, and then carefully turned his head to look, slowly opening one eye like a child afraid of a jack-in-the-box. Whatever he saw wasn't what scared him. His shoulders relaxed, and he shelved his invisible book.
Chris backed away.
Leon howled again.
Dr. Terry's head whipped around. His wrinkled cheeks were now gray. His tweed blazer hung in tatters, and his beard and mustache were caked with green. He locked hollow eyes with Chris.
His mouth opened, and a tired wail came out. His words slurred but were more intelligible than Leon's. "You can still help me! The temperature hasn't dropped yet!"
Chris wanted to run. There were elevators on the opposite side of the building. There had to be stairs somewhere.
Leon screamed, turned the corner. He dragged himself by his arms.
Another howl from the other direction. Another gray man. Chris thought he recognized him as the man who'd yelled down from the skybridge in the courtyard. That felt like ages ago.
Micah tugged Roberts toward the empty elevator with the up arrow illuminated. "It's the only option now."
Dr. Terry shook his head. "Don't leave." He patted the wall where he'd been shelving something. "It's not that bad. Most are blank. They require almost nothing."
The old professor took an awkward step towards Chris.
Chris's finger throbbed, the pain a fraction of what he'd felt before.
He fled into the empty elevator. Roberts and Micah entered close behind.
Chris mashed the "close doors" button. As the doors slid shut, Dr. Terry hobbled into view.
Chris pressed the "L" button, and far above, a motor kicked on.
Downward pressure on his body as the elevator headed upwards.
"Why won't it go down?"
Roberts pointed to the bank of floor buttons, and for the first time, Chris saw fear in the large man's expression.
The topmost button was lit up. 120.
"Who pushed that?" Chris demanded.
"You'd have seen if we did it," Micah said. "Someone called it up."
44
The LED numbers above the door ticked upwards.
Chris mashed the STOP button.
The elevator continued. The motor above thrummed.
The glowing button labeled "120" taunted him. He tried pressing other floors, to at least give them a chance to get off, but no other buttons lit up.
"We have to get back down," Chris said.
"Don't interfere," Micah ordered. Her blouse was wrinkled and splattered with Chris's blood, but her expression remained resolute. "We're going to the top and finding answers."
The LED numbers ticked past 40.
Chris looked to Roberts for support. The bodyguard avoided eye contact with Micah, and tried the STOP button. It still didn't work. "We can't use what's in here to change the world if we're dead. You can't get richer if you're dead."
"This isn't about money," Micah said.
"Money, power, your face on Time Magazine, what's the difference?" Chris reached his left hand into his backpack, fishing for a screwdriver. "It won't protect you from Leon and Dr. Terry."
"Or what happened to them," Roberts added. He felt around the panel that housed the floor buttons.
Micah stomped her foot. "You won't stop this elevator."
Chris found his screwdriver and handed it to Roberts. "How do we protect ourselves from them? The
lurching things don't want us to damage the building. Fine, we won't pry up any more floors. But Leon wanted our help." Chris saw Leon's pleading face, his desperation to escape from whatever he was dragging. "We should try to help them."
"You touched him and cried like a stuck pig," Roberts said. "We're not in a position to rescue anybody." He worked the screws that held in the button panel.
The LED numbers ticked passed 60.
The elevator rattled. Chris felt a hum in his feet that worked its way up his bones.
"If you leave now," Micah said, "you'll be abandoning them."
Chris felt like a coward, but Roberts was right. He couldn't rescue them when he didn't understand what was happening to them, and taking the time to understand would risk that extreme pain again.
Or what would have happened if Leon had kept crawling over him? Would they have meshed fully? Maybe Leon was dragging others who'd tried to rescue him.
Chris dug his fingers under the loosened panel to yank it off. It came free, exposing buttons and wires.
Roberts fumbled behind the STOP button. "The wiring's loose. Depressing it doesn't complete the circuit. But if I hold this like... there, hit the button."
Chris pressed it.
The elevator continued.
Micah scoffed. "You're not stopping it. We're going to see what's at the top."
"Try the same thing with the next floor."
The LED lights approached 80.
"Fix the wiring for 85."
Roberts felt behind the buttons. "Good call. All the wiring's loose back here." He stretched and reached, and then hit the button.
"85" glowed yellow.
The elevator slowed.
Micah lunged for the buttons. Roberts held her back.
As Chris waited for the doors to open, and held his throbbing hand, he remembered, "The building was only 60 stories. Where are we?"
The doors opened to the 85th floor.
45
This time, the glass doors to the interior space were right in front of the elevators.
Which was helpful, because the outer hallways extended at least two hundred yards before they curved out of site.
"You see that, right?" Chris asked.
Roberts shook his head. "That's not possible. The building took up less than a block."
Micah whispered to herself as she peered down the hallways.
"Anything like this in your family history books?" Chris asked.
"This could be the breakthrough," Micah said. "Fitting more space inside a building. The last three breakthroughs were about extending living and working space upwards. Now we're expanding in new directions."
Chris shook his head. "The other weirdness has been in the center rooms. This hallway trick feels more like a side effect."
"Now you're offering your opinion?"
"My opinion is we should leave. We try the other elevator, or we find a stairwell."
"What about the building's purpose? What about in there?" Micah pointed through the glass.
Chris realized he'd been avoiding even looking inside.
The central room was dark, lit only by purple neon. A freestanding staircase rose twenty feet, and then a smooth, curved ramp led back down. The edges were lined with pulsing purple neon.
There were three similar structures in the room, each higher than the last. The tallest stood at least fifty feet high. Chris couldn't see the ceiling.
"That light is moving at the same pace as the swirly stuff in the LSD room," Roberts.
He was right. The lights brightened and dimmed in steady waves.
He'd seen something similar before, but still couldn't remember where.
It didn't matter, because those staircases didn't go down. The exit wasn't in there.
Chris tried the second elevator in the lobby. He pressed the down button, and it lit up, but the elevator didn't respond. "Roberts, try your hotwiring trick again."
Roberts inspected the panel. "I can't. There's no exposed screws. We'd have to pry it off."
The thought of the lurchers finding them again made Chris shiver. Or maybe that was the blood loss. He squeezed his hand. It had clotted, so he was okay for now, if a little light-headed. "Alright, then we find a stairwell." He started down the stretched-out hallway.
"Is this the best idea?" Roberts asked, walking behind.
Micah quickly caught up to walk by Chris's side. "We're looking for the mechanism that allows this spacial extension."
"Yeah," Chris said, "either that, or stairs down so we can get the hell out of here."
Micah pursed her lips.
They walked briskly between cinderblock walls. Chris cradled his hand against his gut. The relief that he'd felt at escaping that extreme pain was fading as the constant ache of his missing finger persisted.
They found no corners, but after twenty minutes of a gentle curve, they reached another lobby. Elevators to the left, the central room to the right.
Neither elevator responded to the buttons.
Chris continued on. Another twenty minutes, and they returned to where they started. One elevator remained open.
"Now what?" Roberts asked.
"We go up a floor at a time," Chris said, "until we find a way back down." He couldn't think too closely about it, or panic welled in his chest. It wasn't Micah or Roberts keeping him inside now--it was the building itself.
He stared at the purple neon through the glass. The pulsing was relaxing, in a deep, subtle way.
"These buildings want to be found out," Micah said. "I suspect the way back down will reveal itself once we've discovered what we're meant to know."
"In the others," Chris asked, "were there any reports of people getting trapped inside?"
Micah avoided eye contact. "No. But as you've pointed out, those discoveries were much simpler. It's possible those men never had a chance to realize they were being kept inside before they found the building's purpose."
"Bullshit," Roberts said. "If I didn't know you, I'd think you were losing your mind. I almost wish you did have some brain imbalance, because the alternative is that you're more obsessed than I realized."
Micah responded with venomous fury, but Chris's mind had spiraled down a rabbit hole, chasing a thought triggered by Roberts' anger.
Brain imbalance.
Ideas fell into place, but he had to be sure.
He opened the glass door and walked into the dark room.
Roberts called, "hey!" and then the door shut between them.
A high pressure silence pressed inside Chris's ears. In the dark, purple neon pulsed in a calming rhythm. He picked the highest platform and hurried up the stairs. His thighs ached. He felt his heartbeat in the nub of his missing finger.
The top felt impossibly high, far higher than the fifty feet it'd appeared from below. Micah and Roberts' flashlights were pinpricks below him.
He wasn't sure what to expect. He took a tentative step onto the ramp that curved downwards, between two strips of pulsing purple.
Frictionless, the floor yanked him to his rear. He plummeted down the slide. Air rushed past his ears and the chilly barrage forced his eyes closed. His skin pressed upwards, his thighs pressed up into his hips, and his gut pushed heavy into his chest. He held his hands across his stomach until the raw force of the fall flung them above his head.
Still he fell, sliding down the smooth ramp, until the shock faded and he was only in this moment, the rare, exhilarating sensation of free fall, faster than terminal velocity.
He forced his eyes open. The edges were banded by the purple neon tubs, but otherwise without protection. Chris didn't know what kept him at the center of the ramp, only that if he slid off, he'd fall straight down to the solid floor below.
It reminded him of the first time he'd ridden a jetski at age 11. His dad had ignored the rental company and allowed Chris to ride on his own, chasing his parents' pontoon boat. Barely in control of the machine, he'd decided to jump his parents' wake. With only ninet
y-seven pounds to weigh it down, the jetski had flown above the waves. That loss of control had terrified him, but as he landed, bounced, then managed to keep hold of the handles, he'd felt amazing.
That same adrenaline surged through him now.
The slide spat him out on the ground floor.
Roberts stood over him. "What the hell was that?"
Micah's neck stretched backwards to look up at the slides.
"I think I know what this is," Chris said. "But I'm not sure yet. Let's go up one more floor."
They returned to the elevator, and once Roberts rigged the wires to light up the button for 86, they all got on.
Floor 86 had similar extended hallways to floor 85. Chris ran up to the glass doors to look into the central room.
The whole floor was a treadmill.
"That's it. I don't get it, but that's what this is."
"Quit playing coy," Micah said. "What do you think you've discovered?"
Chris thought of where to begin.
Years ago, during the first session of therapy for his anxiety, his therapist had given him a faded photocopy of a brochure. She dipped into a rehearsed explanation.
"Anxiety and depression are physical ailments. We're talking about chemical imbalances in your brain. You're either creating too little dopamine and serotonin, or they're not getting to where they need to be. But I promise, this is good news. In addition to our sessions where we'll talk through specific worries and learn positive self-talk, I also want you to pick three of these items to focus on. Think of them as physical therapy for your brain. Just like stretching or small exercises can help muscles heal, these activities can help your brain heal. They've each been shown to help the production or absorption of serotonin or dopamine."
The photocopy had a bulleted list.
Journaling
Exercise
Meditation
Sunlight
Eating fewer processed foods
Visiting friends
It went on for three columns of mundane activities that this university or that research center had found to balance dopamine and/or serotonin.
As Micah and Roberts watched expectantly, Chris thought of what he'd seen in the building so far.
