by Dylan Steel
Like so many times before, Ms. Ashton marched up to the front desk to speak with the women behind the counter. She left her wards waiting by the door until they would be joined by an employee temporarily masquerading as a tour guide.
Nearly every place they’d visited in Eprah had the same entryway layout, though some were larger than others. Of course, the obvious exception to the welcoming foyer was the Institution itself. There would be no point. The Institution didn’t get visitors. It was too busy training future citizens, and current citizens were too busy making themselves useful to waste time visiting children.
The clacking of heels on the marble floor snapped Sage from her thoughts. Her palms had already grown sweaty being stuffed into her jacket, and the book slipped slightly. She grimaced and tightened her grasp on it, hoping her vice grip wouldn’t damage it somehow.
“We’ll begin at the top floor,” a nasally voice wheezed.
Sage looked up to see a tall stick of a man standing beside Ms. Ashton. He looked like he’d graduated no more than a couple years earlier, his youthful energy a stark contrast to the instructor’s reserved manner.
“Typical,” Ms. Ashton muttered. Sage wondered whether she was referring to starting on the top floor or the fact that they’d once again been assigned a tour guide she couldn’t stand.
“My name’s Theodor Ladd, but you can all call me Theo.” The tour guide’s voice scraped against Sage’s ears as he addressed the students before inevitably heading toward the Transfer in the hallway behind the front desk.
Shifting the weight of the book inside her jacket, Sage pulled her fist out of her pocket and grabbed Darren’s hand before the room launched upward.
Theo led them through a maze of corridors and offices, explaining the unique model at work. Apparently, Beautification’s leadership was one of the more diverse government organizations in Eprah. Rather than all the authority being centrally held by one leader who reported to the Quorum of Five, a supervisory network convened regularly, updating one another on the current state of affairs in the divisions that they oversaw. The leaders of that network took turns bringing reports before the Quorum.
“Because of the final nature of Beautification,” Theo explained. “It would be unwise to concentrate that power too strongly.”
His explanation was all a bit convoluted and confusing to Sage. In one sense, she agreed with Theo’s assessment—concentrating power seemed like a bad idea. But it seemed that Beautification had very little actual power to begin with. After all, they were glorified trash collectors. Of course, the trash they collected was, in large part, people who had lost all their Chances. Perhaps Eprah just considered it a harmless way to perpetuate the illusion that the citizens had more control over their lives than they actually did.
Whatever the reason, there were tons of glass-walled offices on this floor. It wasn’t even necessary to enter the rooms to see everything on the level. The only touring they really needed do consisted of weaving through the hallways to get a closer look at the individual rooms. Not surprisingly, glass offices tended to blur together. They weren’t particularly unique or exciting, and Sage was grateful that none of her peers volunteered to ask questions and prolong their stay on the top level.
When the Transfer stopped at the next floor, Sage relinquished her hold on Darren again, shoving her hand back into her pocket to reinforce her grip on the book.
The rooms here were less transparent—literally. Sage thought it was odd that Theo brushed past a row of closed doors without explanation, only walking them inside a few standard rooms that every building seemed to have. A meeting room with a large table in its center, a decked-out tech room filled to the brim with technology, a dining area that also served as an employee break room—nothing out of the ordinary. Her suspicions that Theo was hiding something from them fizzled out as they visited one uninteresting room after another.
Theo’s eyes twinkled with the hint of a secret as he led them back to the Transfer. “What you’ve seen so far today is pretty typical of most public buildings, I’d imagine. That is, if I recall my own time in Travaes well enough.”
Ms. Ashton raised an eyebrow skeptically. “You were in Travaes?”
He nodded. “Obviously, you weren’t the instructor then.”
“Obviously.”
“That’s beside the point,” he added quickly. “I’m just saying I remember how boring these tours could get.” He grinned. “Which is why we’re going to skip ahead a bit in the tour. The above-ground floors aren’t where the most interesting things happen.” His hand swept over the wall in the Transfer. “So we’re going underground. To the basement levels.”
Sage looked up at Darren nervously. He offered her his hand, which she took readily after shifting the book inside her jacket one more time.
Her stomach lurched as the Transfer shot down below the main level. She could feel the cooler air from the basement slide across her small frame before the door rolled open. For the first time today, she was glad she was wearing a jacket.
“This way.” Theo motioned for them to follow.
They quickly abandoned the long, straight stretch of hallway, ducking inside the first room they came across. The lower levels of The Office of City Beautification were a bit different than what Sage had gotten accustomed to seeing. One room stretched into another and then another, creating an intricate labyrinth that mandated their guide’s expertise in navigating.
One of the first spaces they walked through was quite unusual. It was filled with shelving that held row upon row of steel canisters, capped tubes at least four feet tall and about a foot at their widest part.
“This is our interim storage room,” Theo said. “Once we’re through with the units, whatever remains of them is moved in here for temporary storage. The contents are discarded at a specified location outside the city biweekly.”
Ms. Ashton stretched her neck upward, nostrils flared as she looked down her nose at the large cylinders.
Sage choked back her disgust. A unit. In other words, a body. A dead citizen. And he spoke about it flippantly, clinically, as if people dying at one another’s hands were the most natural thing in the world. Because in Eprah, it was.
For a moment, she forgot that she was trying to keep a tight hold on the book inside her jacket, and she instinctively reached for Darren’s hand as her stomach twisted, threatening to betray her again. His eyes dropped to hers, meeting them with a quiet reassurance. She took a deep breath and fixed her eyes on the floor in front of her, not looking up again until they’d moved on to the next room and Darren had squeezed her hand lightly.
As they maneuvered their way deeper into the basement, Sage noticed each successive room was getting warmer. Her jacket was gradually becoming bothersome, more so than it had been when they’d been in the main levels above ground.
Sage wasn’t the only one dealing with an uncomfortable warmth. A glance at the sweaty brows of her peers confirmed that the increasing heat was due to more than her nerves.
Grinning, Theo led them into another room. It quickly became apparent that it was the source of the higher temperatures. A dozen doors glowing at their edges lined opposite sides of the room, each one flanked by a short steel table.
“This is one of our crematoriums,” he said. “The fires are always going to maintain the high temperature required, so it’s great in the winter.” He shrugged apologetically. “Not as great in the summer.”
“It… smells terrible in here.” Ms. Ashton sniffed the air with a look of disgust.
“It’s unavoidable.” Theo gave her an odd look. “It’s where we convert units into the smaller, more manageable forms that we saw earlier in the interim storage room.”
Sage’s eyes fell on the layers of canisters piled beneath each table. She sucked in her breath. Darren winced, and only then did she realize that she was practically crushing his fingers. She forced herself to loosen her grip a little.
There were at least four such f
urnace rooms strung together. But once the group had made their way through the section of human ovens and had traipsed through a few more less noteworthy rooms, the temperature began to fall rapidly, dropping lower than it had been when they first stepped off the Transfer.
Sage shoved her fists in her pockets again, finding it odd that she was shivering again. Her fingers closed around the journal’s spine. She desperately hoped they would have time to visit some of the upper floors again. She was pretty sure that the drop location was above ground, not in the basement, and she was more than ready to unload the cumbersome book that she’d been carrying all day. And she didn’t want her mission to be a failure—not since she seemed to have regained Mr. Walsh’s trust somehow.
An explanation for the dramatic temperature shift soon became obvious. Theo led them into a room that looked eerily similar to one they’d visited before. The room was shaped more like a long hallway, and like the crematorium, doors lined both sides of the room. But these doors were metal and crowded together, and each appeared to be locked with a palm scanner, much like the ones in the hospital basement.
Clamping down harder on Darren’s hand, Sage smashed her lips together tightly. She tried to slow her breathing, hoping that would help fight off the wave of nausea that was washing over her.
The glimmer in Theo’s eyes made her nervous. Rightfully so. She could easily have predicted the next words out of his mouth.
“Anyone want to see a dead body?”
“We don’t need to do that,” Ms. Ashton snapped before he could place his hand on one of the locks. She eyed Sage warily. “We’ve had… some issues with that on another visit.”
“Oh. Ok.” Theo didn’t bother hiding his disappointment as he followed Ms. Ashton’s gaze to Sage’s green-tinged face, but he didn’t push the issue further. “I guess we’ll just skip it this time.” He motioned for them to continue following him through the rest of the rooms.
After trudging through an impossibly long series of chambers, they finally drew to a stop in a room that didn’t have a door at the opposite end of it. They must have reached the underground boundary of the Office of City Beautification.
Sage breathed a sigh of relief. It looked like they’d have time to revisit the upper floors after all. She shifted the weight of the book in her hands, careful not to let it slip.
“That’s pretty much it. Any questions?” Theo looked over the faces of the students expectantly.
“Uh, yeah. I know we’re at the Institution most of the time, but I’ve never seen anyone taken through the front doors,” a boy in the back piped up. “Well, no one who’s used up all their Chances, at least.”
“Ah, yes,” Theo squeaked excitedly. “That’s not just because you’re usually busy in class. There are drop points throughout the city,” he explained. “Whenever there’s a unit for disposal, our crews bring it to the nearest drop point, bringing the unit underground almost immediately.”
A look of pride spread over Theo’s face as he grinned widely. “It’s incredibly efficient and presents minimal disturbance to our productive citizens. Practically the entire city is linked through these tunnels, and most people have no idea. Well, at least not while they’re alive.” He chuckled at his own morbid joke.
From the back of the group, a girl cleared her throat daintily as she got ready to ask another question. Sage gritted her teeth in frustration. She couldn’t afford all these delays if she wanted a chance to make the drop.
A high-pitched wailing suddenly pierced the air, reverberating across the room, shaking the floor and walls, and echoing throughout the building. Sage looked around in bewilderment. None of her classmates looked like they had any idea what was going on either. Several were covering their ears to shield themselves from the ear-splitting volume of the siren.
Theo’s face was ashen. “A-attack!” he cried. “Someone’s attacking the building! We need to move to the nearest safe zone now! We have to get to the lobby!”
“What in Eprah’s name are you talking ab—”
“Now!” he screeched, cutting off Ms. Ashton’s question. He grabbed at her arm awkwardly and began pulling her along after him. She only dragged her feet for a moment. The stampede of footsteps thundering through the surrounding corridors quickly convinced her to follow the young man’s lead. His grip on her arm loosened within seconds as he had clearly decided not sacrifice the speed of his escape in order to help someone else.
“Hurry!” Theo swiped his hand clumsily toward the herd of students. He didn’t slow down to make sure they were following. “Lockdown’s started!”
The heavy groaning and clanging of metal resounded behind the wall. Doors were slamming shut automatically as the building began sealing itself off from whatever had threatened it.
The group raced through the hallway, trying to outrun the lockdown.
“If we can get to the stairs, we should make it to the lobby!” Theo wheezed as he led the charge forward.
Ms. Ashton running in heels was quite a sight—one which might have elicited laughter from the whole class at any other time, but everyone was too consumed with fear and adrenaline to pay much attention to her rushed peacock waddle.
“What’s… happening?” Ms. Ashton gulped out between breaths.
“Lawless!” Theo hollered over his shoulder. “We were… told they… might… attack!” he wheezed. “We’ll be… searched and… cleared… once we get… to the… lobby!”
As her feet pounded the ground behind the rest of her class, Sage felt the edges of the book slipping through her fingers. A different sort of panic seized her as she realized the weight of his words. We’ll be cleared in the lobby.
The relic. She couldn’t be caught with it. She had to find a way to hide it.
Sage wrested her hand free from Darren’s grasp. He glanced back at her, confusion flashing across his face as he reached for her hand again. She sidestepped his grasp and ignored his inquiring expression as she stopped abruptly in the middle of the room and pulled the book out of her jacket. His eyes grew wide, but she couldn’t worry about what he was thinking—she’d just have to deal with his questions later. Hopefully she’d be able to convince him to keep her secret.
After all, there was no way they would be able to simply waltz out of the building freely at the end of all this madness. With such a major threat shutting down the whole building—especially if they thought it was the Lawless—it was practically a guarantee that they’d be searched before they would be allowed to leave. And if she was caught with the journal, she’d be outed as Lawless for sure, and that would almost certainly draw attention to Mr. Walsh. That couldn’t happen. She wouldn’t let it.
Glancing around desperately, Sage spotted a desk in the corner of the room. It had a small drawer, just deep enough to fit the relic. She’d just have to tell Mr. Walsh where she’d hidden it later. She took a step toward the desk.
“Sage, look out!” Darren yelled.
She looked up in surprise. She’d expected him to leave her behind and join the rest of Travaes in fleeing the threat. It immediately became obvious that his presence wasn’t her biggest concern.
A man wearing dark clothing and a graphite mask was thundering up behind her, running full speed at her.
There was no way for her to outrun him with how close he’d gotten. Sage shrieked and dropped to the ground, collapsing into a tight ball. Her instinct to duck worked. The man couldn’t stop himself, and he barreled straight into her. Pain ripped through her leg and shoulder as his shin landed against them. The man went flying, landing in a groaning heap against the wall.
Darren was already at Sage’s side, pulling her to her feet.
“We have to go—come on!”
Sage staggered to her feet before the man had a chance to recover. An agonizing throbbing in her leg slowed her down, but she managed to start rushing toward the door again. She adjusted her grip on the book. There was no time to find a safe place for it now that there was someone after
her.
To her dismay, the man recovered quickly. He was less than a full room behind her now, and he was gaining ground fast. A primal growl escaped his throat, sounding dangerously close to Sage’s ears. It drowned out the echo of doors slamming shut behind them.
Sweat dripped into Sage’s eyes, blurring her vision. The heat and roar of flames told her they’d made it to one of the crematoriums—only about halfway back to the Transfer, which she hoped was near the stairs. But she had a sinking feeling they might not make it before getting trapped behind one of the rapidly-closing doors. And at this rate, they’d have some unwelcome company.
“Sage, faster!” Darren called behind him as he tugged her forward.
A heavy weight landed on Sage’s shoulder. She stumbled backward. The book flew across the room, landing on the edge of the table just in front of one of the open doors. Her eyes widened in horror. It was inches from the opening. Flames licked at the doorway, flicking dangerously close to the relic.
“No!” she screamed.
She managed to squirm free of the man’s grasp and tried desperately to run and grab it, worried even in the midst of the attack about the damage that amount of heat could do to the delicate pages—worried that her mission would be a complete failure, that her actions could hurt the Lawless instead of Eprah.
“Sage, whatever it is, leave it!” Desperation flooded Darren’s plea as he stopped just past the doorway.
“Go!” she yelled back at him.
He hesitated, looking back and forth between her and the masked man who was still at her heels.
She lunged for the book, scooping it up and darting back in the direction of the door. Once he was sure she was following him, Darren took off running again.
Before she could make it out of the room, the man’s arm wrapped around her torso, pinning her arms to her side and arresting her forward momentum abruptly. A sudden, sharp pinch in the side of her neck made her cry out, but the sound was muffled by the rough hand now covering her mouth. She flailed her legs and kicked at the man with all her strength. The man grunted but didn’t release her.
