by J D Jacobs
“What do you mean?”
“There’s thirteen floors on this hotel, I counted them. Multiple times.”
“Well, I only counted twelve rows of windows.”
“Yeah, there’s twelve rows. The top of the hotel looks like it’s a floor that doesn’t have any windows.”
“Who cares? What’s the big deal about thirteen floors anyway?”
“Dude, can’t you see they’re hiding something from us?”
“Good lord, not everything is a conspiracy theory.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what they want you to believe.”
I sit up on the bed, as getting rest clearly isn’t an option anymore. “Okay, Scooby-Doo, what’s the mystery? What are they hiding from us?”
“I don’t know, but it’s too obvious that they’re hiding something.”
“Obvious how, exactly?”
“C’mon. There’s thirteen floors, but she said there’s twelve. Then she says that they only use the twelfth floor for new people. If that’s the case, why are we on the sixth floor? Wouldn’t it make sense to put your new guests on the only empty floor in the entire hotel? The floor that they specifically keep empty for new guests?”
“You’ve got a point,” I admit as I begin changing out of my suit, “but I’m sure there’s a reason behind that.”
“The reason is because they don’t want anyone even close to the secret thirteenth floor. If people lived on the twelfth, they may be able to hear whatever-it-is that they’re doing on the thirteenth floor.”
“Now you just sound stupid,” I tell him. “Jesus, there’s no reason this hotel would be hiding a thirteenth floor in the middle of broad daylight for anybody to see and question. You’re not the first person who can count to thirteen, so I’m sure somebody else has already seen the rows of windows on the building and thought the same things you’re thinking.”
“Cool, whatever. Be the sheep that they want you to be.” He then walks out of the bedroom.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m gonna see what happens when you press that emergency button on the elevator,” Cody calls back to me as he pulls the door handle to the room.
“What do you think it does? Bake you a cake? It does exactly what Ian said it does.” I catch up with him as he walks across the sixth floor to the elevators.
“It won’t hurt to try, will it?” I answer him with a shrug, and he hits the button to call for an elevator.
A cab arrives almost instantly, and we both get in and examine the rows of buttons to all the levels. Numbers 1 through 12 are all displayed, and the button right next to 12 is red and reads “Emergency.”
“That’s the first obvious reason right here,” Cody says, pointing to the emergency button. “They literally took out the 13 button and replaced it with this button so nobody would press it. Why else would the emergency button be so close to the 12 button?”
“Press it then.”
Cody pauses for a millisecond, but presses it before he has time to rethink himself. At first, nothing happens. The elevator cab itself hasn’t even moved since we got in, and we’re still on the sixth floor. I begin to tell Cody I told him so, but before I open my mouth, a speaker inside the cab turns on.
“Grandsmont emergency service. What’s your emergency?”
Cody and I simultaneously throw each other “now what?” looks. I give out a line of “uhhm”s to give us more time to think of a legitimate excuse.
Finally, Cody calls out to the hidden elevator operator. “Sorry, we pressed the wrong button. We meant to press twelve.”
My eyebrows nearly lift off my head as a way to telepathically call Cody a dumbass. We just got through talking about how the hotel has a secret reason for not wanting people on the twelfth floor. It would’ve been better to say we were trying to get to the imaginary thirteenth floor than to say we wanted on the empty one.
“That floor is currently unavailable. What business do you have there?” the operator asks us in a very masculine voice that makes me not want to see if the face matches.
“He meant the eleventh floor,” I call out. “Sorry, we’re new. This is our first time here. My friend thought our room is on the twelfth. He didn’t know that the twelfth floor is unused.”
Shut up, Jaden, I tell myself. Shut up, shut up, shut your stupid mouth. I’m just rambling on and making things worse.
“No problem,” the operator tells us. “Just be careful with the buttons next time.” And then we immediately fly up to the eleventh floor.
Cody and I exchange looks from the corners of our eyes. We don’t know if the guy can see us or if he can still hear us, but we remain completely still in case we’re being watched. Once we reach the eleventh floor, we walk out and down the hallway, pretending like we’re looking for a specific room.
“I swear to God, Cody, you almost blew it in there. First you were wrong about the button, then you told him we wanted to–”
“Pull the panties out of your crack, we’re fine,” Cody says as he investigates every room number as if the operator is still spying on us. “The guy is an elevator operator meant to respond to emergency calls. What was he gonna do, climb up the elevator shaft and beat us to death?”
“So what’s the plan now, Scoob? We gonna split the gang up or come up with a trap?”
“Simple,” he confidently responds. “We make it to the end of this hall and go up two flights of stairs. Sure beats going up seven flights.”
I’m glad he has such a profound plan. I’m still not convinced that there’s even a thirteenth floor, but I suppose there isn’t anything else better to do than snoop around. Wait, what am I saying? I could be taking a nap right now. That sounds so much better.
We make it to the end of the hall without running into anybody, which makes me think that this floor is empty, as well. If Cody’s theory is true–that they keep the twelfth floor empty so people don’t hear what’s happening on the thirteenth floor–maybe they do the same for the eleventh floor.
We approach the door of the stairwell and open it. The inside of the stairwell matches the hallways we just exited, with the same cerulean wallpaper taking over the column walls and crimson carpet covering the stairs. The descending set of stairs are untouched, but the stairs that lead up to the next floor are roped off, with passage blocked by a velvet rope with a metal sign hanging from the center of it:
-STOP-
-AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY-
-EXCEEDING BEYOND THIS POINT WITHOUT
PERMISSION WILL RESULT IN PROSECUTION-
“Looks like our journey has reached an impasse,” Cody sarcastically declares. “What do you think, Jaden?”
“We’ll have to go back. It’s our only choice. The prosecution threat sounds serious.”
“I agree,” Cody says as we both step over the rope. Not a very effective way to prevent people from coming through.
We make our way up the set of stairs to the twelfth floor, but that’s all there is. No stairs leading to a thirteenth. “See? There can’t be a thirteenth floor if there isn’t a set of stairs to it. I told you that you were overreacting.”
Cody tugs on the doorknob to the twelfth floor but it’s locked. He takes a step back, then promptly turns to me. “Oh yeah? What’s that up there?”
I follow his finger to where he’s pointing. About twenty feet directly above the door leading to the twelfth floor hallway is another door. I can see the outline of where there were once stairs leading up to it.
“There were stairs leading to the door,” I tell him, pointing to the outline. “They must have taken the stairs out to prevent anyone from going to the thirteenth floor.”
“That’s why they roped this section off,” Cody adds on, “because they don’t want people to even know the door is there. They don’t want people to accidentally come across it.”
“But I don’t know, Cody. You sure it doesn’t just lead to the roof? If they didn’t want anyone to discover a mysterious door, w
hy wouldn’t they just take the door out and put wallpaper over the opening? If they went through the effort of taking the stairs out, it wouldn’t be that much more effort to cover up any trace of a door ever being there.”
Cody nods as the plot unravels in his head. “It’s simple: because there’s somebody else up there. There has to be someway of getting on that floor. I bet they have a ladder behind that door that a guy lets down to allow people to climb up. That has to be it. We just have to get the guy’s attention somehow.”
Cody puts his foot against the railing of the stairs and begins taking his shoe off. “Uhh, are you sure about this?” I ask him. “Let’s say you’re 100% right and there’s a guy up there that’s sole job is to drop a ladder for people to climb up. What makes you think he’ll drop it for us? You’ve seen the looks we’ve been given; the people here don’t know us. You read the sign; they don’t just let anyone up on the twelfth floor. Who knows what their way of ‘prosecution’ is here! Let’s go back.”
I begin walking back down the stairs, hoping that he’ll follow, but instead I hear a thud from the shoe he just threw against the door.
“Cody, did you not hear me?”
“You go back, if you want. I want to figure out why this thirteenth floor is a secret and why nobody has noticed it by now.” He walks over to pick up his shoe and tosses it up at the door again.
I remain standing halfway down the stairway, wanting Cody to walk away but also curious to see if his assumptions have any truth to them. Right before Cody throws his shoe for a sixth time, he pauses. “Hear that? Footsteps! Someone is coming.”
“If you want to make friends with this mystery guy on this mystery floor, that’s all you.” I go down two more steps, enough for me to see what happens all while staying hidden from the guy if he opens the door.
The door suddenly swings open, slamming against the wall high above us. A giant of a man–almost too tall to stand in the doorway and with tattoos and muscles that suggest he’s not looking for friends–appears, looking below and angrily eyeing Cody. “Who the hell are you?” the man asks him in a terrifyingly deep voice.
“C-C-Cody.” Cody is petrified, his theory being right but in the worst way possible. While Cody stands immobilized by fear, this is when I notice a strap running diagonal down the man’s chest.
“Cody,” I whisper to him, “he has a gun. Run.”
My suggestion tackles Cody to his senses, and he takes off down the stairs as fast as he can. The man takes Cody’s action as his cue, and he pulls an assault rifle from behind his back and pulls the trigger, spraying a trail on the wall just behind Cody.
Cody dives down the stairs and out of the man’s sight, breathing heavily as the man bellows above us.
“We need to get the fuck out of this place.”
14.
We hurry down the stairwell, jumping five stairs at a time. The man hears us running but remains laughing at the top. His laugh seems to get louder the further we get from it.
We make it to the sixth floor and sprint out of the stairwell and to our rooms. Even though I know the man isn’t chasing us, I furiously rush to get the key out of my pocket. I finally get the door open, and Cody and I slam the door shut and deadbolt it.
“What the hell, man!?” Cody yells. “Why would they have a gunman on that floor? What’s so special about that floor, man!?”
“I don’t know, but the last thing we need to do is ask anyone who might know.” I try to stay calm, but a part of me wants to run across this city and get back in the helicopter.
“WHAT!? We have to find out what’s on that floor!”
“The only people who have answers to that are people like Mrs. Margaret and Ricardo, and we don’t know if we can trust them. Mrs. Margaret already didn’t want us to know certain things about that Solomon guy, plus she was trying to hide the thirteenth floor altogether.”
Cody walks over to the living room and sits in a chair, digesting what just happened and what I’m telling him. “You’re right, but I almost got killed. This place isn’t safe for any of us.”
I walk over to the kitchen and prop up against the refrigerator. “All we have to do is be quiet for two days, then we’re back in Tryton, where the existence of a thirteenth floor is irrelevant.”
There’s a soft knock at our door that startles both of us, but Stewart’s faint voice eases our fear. I go over and unlock the door for him.
“Everything okay in here? I heard you two run across the hall and start yelling.”
“We’re fine,” Cody begins, “but it’s…” Cody looks away from Stewart and looks at me for approval. “He can know, can’t he? He’s one of us. We need to tell somebody, and better him than Jenkins.”
I consider it a second, but then realize that if I don’t, Stewart is still going to know something incredibly suspicious is up. “You can’t tell anybody this,” I sternly tell Stewart, “not even Jenkins. Not a word. Okay?”
“Okay.” He seems reluctant on whether he wants to know what I’m about to tell him or not.
“Cody was right. There’s a thirteenth floor. We found it, and some guy on that floor shot at us.”
Stewart looks back and forth at our facial expressions, seeing that we’re dead serious. “Shot at you? With a gun? Why would he do that?”
“Look, we don’t know what is up with this place,” Cody tells him, “but there’s something secretive and dangerous going on on that floor.”
“What do we do?” Stewart asks us. “Should we tell Jenkins and leave Avvil?”
“Jaden thinks we will be fine as long as we don’t let anyone know that we know about it.”
“But you just said that someone shot at you two. Didn’t he get a look at your faces?”
“He saw Cody’s, not mine. And we saw his face, too. We think he’ll stay on that floor, guarding it. As long as we keep our mouths shut and don’t ask anymore questions, we should be safe.”
Stewart swallows hard and rubs his head. “Okay, I won’t say a word. But you two need to get ready, I got a phone call a couple of minutes ago saying Mr. Ricardo is on his way here.”
“Oh, great,” Cody starts, “how are we gonna keep our mouths shut with him breathing down our–”
Knockknockknock. “Mr. Foxx, Mr. Goodwin. It’s Miguel Ricardo. May I come in?”
His voice alarms me. Does he know already? Is he here to finish what the man on the thirteenth floor couldn’t do? I assume there’s only one way to find out.
“Hey, Mr. Ricardo!” I put on a happy face as I open the door. “Hope you and Mr. Jenkins didn’t have too much fun together.”
“Oh, we tried to,” he tells me with a friendly smile. “Talking policies isn’t always as entertaining as we wish, but it’s rewarding. We have a promising plan for the future of our cities, isn’t that right, Harrison?”
Ricardo turns to his left, and I take a step to see Jenkins standing beside him. The gleam in Jenkins’s eye that made him so confident and demeaning has vanished. He looks different. Either a shell of who he once was or an amplified version, I can’t tell. “Absolutely, Miguel. We have a bright future for all of us.” Even his voice doesn’t sound the same; sounds more spiteful.
“You two come on in!” I tell them. “Cody, Stewart, and I were getting ready for y’all to come back.”
“Take your time, we’re not in any rush.” Ricardo takes my puzzled look as a sign for him to explain where we’re going. “Sorry, Mrs. Margaret should’ve called you earlier. I wanted to treat my guests to dinner tonight at our best restaurant, then I’d love to give you all a tour of our research facilities. Does that sound good?”
“Absolutely! Guys?” I call to the two in the room, and they nod their heads, even though they probably don’t even know what they’re agreeing to. Stewart and Cody come out of the room: Stewart trying too hard to act like everything is normal, Cody giving no attempt in trying to look pleasant. We begin walking to the elevator, Ricardo and I leading the way.
&nbs
p; “So, how do you like Avvil so far?” Ricardo asks me as we wait for the elevator cab to reach us.
“Beautiful. Everything really is splendid here.” I’m brown-nosing, I know, but maybe Ricardo won’t hurt us if I shower him with compliments. “The glass sky itself is so… interesting. Mrs. Margaret and Ian told us about it, about Mr. Solomon creating this city. Avvil is well-constructed, I must say.”
“Ahh, yes, Britt Solomon,” Ricardo says with a twinge of nostalgia. “He and I were good friends back in the day. He and my father graduated college together. I was a young man myself when he began building Avvil in the nineties. I loved the idea of Avvil, thought it was cool that I knew someone wealthy enough to afford a sanctuary of a city. He got plenty of negative backlash, so I made sure to tell him my thoughts. And me doing so saved my life.”
All of us squeeze in the elevator cab once it reaches, and everyone remains silent for the duration of the ride.
“Did he really refuse people for things they said twenty years before?” I ask Ricardo once we reach the bottom.
“Absolutely,” he answers, leading us out of the hotel and lowering his voice. “Mr. Solomon was, how you say, sheltered. He wasn’t used to any form of negativity, so it affected him when people he knew for years as close friends decided to call him a fool. He wrote the names of everyone who ever said anything bad about him and those who said good things about him. The bad names filled two notebooks; the good names covered two pages.”
“He had enough time to do that? To check the names of everyone who came to Avvil and begged to get in?”
“Britt was more crazy than he was clever. He had time and money, a combination that invokes hobbies that others deem absurd. His hobbies were keeping records of those who laughed at his work. Have you ever read the story of Noah’s Ark in the Christian Bible?” I nod my head. “Britt told me once that he viewed himself as both Noah and God in that situation. Britt believed he was the man giving orders, the man building the refuge, and the man denying those who doubted him. A mentally stable man doesn’t refer to himself as God so casually.”
