by Ben Farthing
"Sure, but if this fella is walking around down there, it means there's floors. Maybe there's another stairwell-"
"We'll look for it on the blueprints." Chris's prybar slipped and clanged to the floor.
Leon picked it up to hand it back. He led the way up the iron staircase.
Chris focused on keeping his balance, between carrying four rolls of blueprints, his prybar, and aiming his flashlight at his feet.
The walls were blank, none of the usual exit signs or stencil-painted floor numbers.
Leon whistled. "These stairs are killer. I need to hit the gym."
Chris grunted. He wanted to look back, make sure that they weren't being followed. But he couldn't risk dropping the blueprints and having to go back down for them.
They rounded one landing. "That'll be sub level two," Chris said. His thighs burned.
"I know urban exploration isn't everybody's thing." Leon's voice was farther ahead than Chris realized. "But I do think you gotta appreciate this experience. Life comes at you, and what can you do but pick a point and head for it?"
Chris hurried to keep up. "I don't need a shrink." He almost bumped into Leon.
Leon panted. "I know, my bad. That's some serious shit you're going through with your wife."
Chris's thighs screamed at him now to slow down the pace. He glanced over his shoulder, but couldn't point the flashlight back without rearranging his grip on the blueprints. The stairs behind him were vague outlines. "My wife can jump off a bridge. I'm worried about getting out of this basement, finding my son, and getting the money to keep our home. In that order."
"Sure, sure," said Leon. He went silent for a moment, then said, "I really forgot how amazing this feels. After today, I'm getting back into this. I'll hack every building in Richmond, then go up to D.C. I could get back to being the best in the world. I'm destined for great things. That's a weird thing to say, isn't it?"
Chris laughed. "No kidding. What are you smoking?"
He shined his light up from his feet to the stairs above. The dull iron steps soaked in the light, but the white LED was enough to see up this flight and the next. Untouched gray walls enclosed this neglected artery. Chris squeezed the blueprints until they wrinkled.
He jerked around, pointing his light back the way he'd come. More of the same dull stairwell.
Leon was gone.
22
The tower's weight compressed the air of the stairwell. It draped heavy on Chris's shoulders, dripped thick down his throat.
"Leon?" he called.
No echo. The architecture snatched sound waves and clutched them tight. Chris considered that maybe these outer spaces weren't designed by an amateur, but that they'd been designed for a purpose Chris hadn't yet considered: to isolate.
The flashlight and prybar grew slick in his sweaty grip. Every shuffling step sounded a sharp staccato.
He was alone, over a story beneath the earth.
He shined his light up to the next landing, between sub basement levels one and two. No way Leon could have sprinted past there. Chris had just bumped into him.
Back the way they'd come was the same. The empty landing of sub basement two. Leon would have had to push past him.
Chris leaned over the railing. He couldn't imagine Leon falling without making a noise. His flashlight beam didn't reach the concrete floor of sub basement level three. That wasn't right. The bottom should be only three landings down. Chris counted. Five, before the light couldn't reach anymore.
"No," he whispered. He couldn't look away from the depths of the hollow stairwell. It was impossible. Three minutes ago, there'd been a solid floor. He thought of Leon falling, flailing, tensed for an impact that never came.
"That didn't happen," Chris told the darkness. "I would have seen his flashlights thrashing around."
Then where was he?
Chris inspected the wall, but found only smooth concrete. The steps didn't even rattle under Chris heavy stomps.
"He must have switched off his lights and sprinted ahead." His voice hung dull, echoless. Chris bit his tongue. He didn't need to hear that again.
Nothing to do but head up. Maybe Leon would be waiting for him in the courtyard.
A soft thud on a step far below.
Chris leaned over the railing once again.
The noise repeated.
He jerked his flashlight across the gap, along the sides, everywhere below.
Louder. Closer.
A thud, then a quick dragging. Like shoving a kitchen table across a linoleum floor.
Chris climbed to the next landing, still balancing the blueprints and pointing his flashlight down. He couldn't spot the source of the noise.
A mental image of the sound clicked into place. The drag, thud, drag played in time to the lurching figure's movement.
Not thirty feet below him, come up from a staircase that didn't exist five minutes ago, the thing came for him.
Rational thought fled. Chris crushed his bundle against his chest and dashed up the stairs. He fell twice. The second time, after the closed door of subbasement one, he cut his shin open on the iron step.
As he turned the final corner, fear screamed in his head that the stairwell had stretched itself downward, and so it must have done the same upwards. There would be no courtyard door, only an eternity of basements, where he'd be chased by the lurcher until he took his own life by diving down the open maw in the center of the stairwell, falling, falling, until he caught up to Leon, whose starved corpse would break apart from the force of their eternal terminal velocity.
Sunlight.
Under the door on the next landing.
Chris yanked the door open to barge into the blinding glow.
23
He let the blueprints and his prybar fall to the tile floor.
Chris staggered away from the stairwell door, which shut firmly behind him. It was next to the elevator he and Leon had gone down. They'd been more turned around down there than he realized.
The sun through the windows above the pond warmed his face. He squinted from the brightness.
The stairwell should have taken him up through the pond, but somehow he'd ended up right where they'd started. If he'd taken that same elevator back up instead, where would he have ended up?
He looked around, hopeful, for Leon.
Instead, coming out of the wooden igloo, into the checkerboard pattern of grass planters, were Roberts, Micah Rayner, and Dr. Terry.
"Did you see Leon come through here?" he asked.
Dr. Terry, who was last to emerge from the igloo, adjusted his thick glasses atop his bulbous nose. "Were you chasing him? Heavens, boy, you look like a wild man."
Chris couldn't spare the effort to care about Dr. Terry's pretentious barbs. Although he hoped Leon was okay for Leon's sake, the bigger issue was determining the danger inside this building. Something had chased him up those stairs. Leon had disappeared. How much danger was Eddie in?
Micah approached, arms crossed over her slender chest. Her expression was impossible to read. "I told Leon to stay with you. Where is he?"
"We were headed back upstairs, and something was behind us... no that happened afterwards..." Chris tried to gather his thoughts, but all he could think of was that black maw inside the stairwell, reaching deep into the ground. He purposely bit his tongue. "We got separated."
Micah raised an eyebrow. Her stoic expression shifted to one of bemused judgment.
Chris still needed them to help look for Eddie. And he wanted her money. He couldn't confess what he thought he'd seen. He'd sound crazy, and she'd dismiss him.
"He must have ran up the stairs faster than I realized."
Micah exchanged a glance with her heavyweight personal assistant. Roberts did a poorer job of hiding emotion. His eyes widened.
Chris wondered what had passed unspoken between them.
"You just missed him," Roberts grunted. "He came through before you and headed on outside."
"The baseme
nt must have spooked him," Micah added. "What did you find down there?"
"Now hold on," Dr. Terry removed his tweed jacket. "I didn't see Leon."
"You were still in the telephone room." Roberts gestured to the igloo with a huge thumb.
Dr. Terry furrowed his brow and tilted his head. "I suppose I was." He turned around to snap photos with his phone, and write in a small leather notebook.
Chris caught his breath. The pond caught his attention. Its soft waves offered a welcome calm. "Leon passed through here?" It wasn't possible that he could have lost sight of Leon in the stairwell. But Micah's explanation was better than the alternative.
Micah helped pick up the blueprints. "Not sixty seconds before you showed up. He's just a little quicker than you."
"And he left?" Chris sat on the edge of a planter. He dropped his backpack onto the tile floor. Waving grass tickled the back of his neck.
Roberts squeezed the creases out of the rolled-up blueprints that Micah handed him. "Leon only planned on working a few hours. He's gotta get back to his main gig."
Micah's cheeks tightened. The movement barely visible, but Chris caught it.
Chris looked from her to the giant bodyguard. Roberts was avoiding Micah's glare. He'd picked up on her frustration with his claim about Leon.
It was a lie. An obvious one. Chris spoke before thinking, "Leon was having the time of his life down there. Never checked his watch once. I practically dragged him up."
Micah handed the last blueprint to Roberts. She folded her hands in front of her waist and locked eyes with Chris. "You found the blueprints you promised us. We should take a look. It might be enough to write you that check."
Chris understood how Micah Rayner could command a boardroom. Her angled features were like a hatchet wielded. Her voice evoked memories of every teacher, boss, and authority figure he'd ever feared. She exuded intelligent confidence. She didn't need to make threats because to oppose her will was to invite retribution on yourself.
But she was lying.
And she wasn't even trying to hide it.
The hubris of it stunned Chris.
He desperately wanted her to be telling the truth. Leon had sprinted ahead. But that's not what happened. Leon was there one moment, talking about his big plans to get back into building hacking, and then he was gone. And then the floor of the stairwell was gone, and something was lurching up the steps.
That had happened.
It meant this building contained something strange and dangerous. New technologies he couldn't understand.
It meant Eddie was in more danger beyond a breaking-and-entering charge.
Micah still stared at him, daring him to challenge her lie.
The question was how to best get her help to find Eddie. The $200k had taken a far back seat to that.
Chris broke eye contact. He looked at the pond, its gentle waves, and the illusion of an ocean horizon in the wall's reflection. He squeezed shut his eyes and looked away.
He didn't need calm. He needed focus.
The best way to get Micah to continue helping find Eddie was to continue helping her. Rich people like her saw every relationship as transactional. He could play that game.
"I'll show you what we found. Let's lay out the blueprints. And you'll want to see what I've got on this camera."
24
Chris watched Micah watch the video.
The older woman sat on a planter, her wiry shoulders hunched over the digital camera. Roberts stood behind her to provide shade from the late morning sun that poured through the glass above the pond.
Dr. Terry still paced the courtyard, writing in his vain little notebook, as if the leather cover allowed the recording of more prestigious thoughts. He glanced their way every few minutes. His graying mustache twitched, and he did a poor job of hiding his jealousy that Micah was paying attention to Chris.
Chris stuck his tongue between his molars to avoid grinding his teeth. Eddie was probably on his way to the sixth floor. And when he didn't find any treasure, he'd head up to the thirty-first floor. If Chris remembered the video game correctly.
He wanted to dash up after him, but this building was too big. Better if Micah's group was looking for him, too. And that meant giving Micah what she wanted. "Make sure you watch that thing moving in the last doorway, when the camera's coming back up."
"I see it," Micah said. "What do you think it is?"
"Hydraulic lift of some kind." Chris didn't believe that, but he thought it was closer to what Micah wanted to hear.
"Hmm." She tapped at the camera, replaying the video.
Chris didn't like the hesitation in her voice. She wasn't satisfied. "I have to go upstairs to look for my son. You'll keep an eye for him, too, right?"
Micah kept watching the video. She replied, distractedly, "Not yet. Let's see if there's schematics in those blueprints."
Chris gauged whether their help was worth delaying another minute. He decided it was. He started unrolling blueprints. Roberts crouched down to help.
The breeze in the courtyard ruffled the wide blue paper. They used supplies from Chris's bag to hold down the blueprints.
Within minutes, they'd laid the papers out between the planters. Over thirty sheets, held down against the wind by flashlights, spare batteries, a roll of duct tape, adjustable pliers, and everything else Chris had charged to Sherri's card this morning.
They were missing the two rolls of blueprints that Leon had taken with him outside.
That's not where he is.
Chris ignored the thought. He didn't know where Leon went, only that Micah was lying about him leaving. He couldn't do anything about that right now.
He jumped from blueprint to blueprint. Micah wanted more proof of the emptiness beneath sub basement three. Maybe even designs for the lift system.
Roberts was staring down at a single blueprint. "You can read these?"
Chris thought he found what he was looking for, but then realized it was the open space of the courtyard. "I've drawn similar ones myself. I'm an architect."
Dr. Terry scoffed. The old man still scribbled in his journal, but he'd moseyed closer to the blueprints to peek. Arrogant prick.
"Keep it to yourself." Chris turned his back on him. "Unless you've discovered something more helpful than video and blueprints. What are you even writing? Your grocery list? An acceptance speech for the awards you'll win after stealing work again?"
Behind Chris, Dr. Terry sniffed indignation. "You used to be a competent assistant. What happened?"
"I got screwed over." Chris spotted another blueprint. A cross-section like the one of the courtyard. Roberts must laid it out--Chris didn't recognize it.
"You embarrassed yourself with your thesis." Dr. Terry was still still talking. Chris didn't care. He'd found what he was looking for.
He snatched it up, held it against his chest, away from the wind, and took it to Micah.
Dr. Terry had pocketed his notebook. "Miss Rayner, isn't it time you cut this amateur loose?"
Roberts lumbered over next to Dr. Terry to rest an arm on the old man's tweed jacket. "Take it easy, huh?"
Chris spread out the blueprint in front of Micah. She lowered the camera, which she'd continued to watch on repeat. "I don't think you recorded any sort of lift. Whatever it is appears to be moving."
"That's probably just the light playing tricks." Chris hoped he wasn't wasting time, but he could take one more swing at recruiting her help. "Look at this."
The drawing showed a narrow rectangle in black, but instead of a bottom line, there were three small arrows indicating that the drawing continued on another page. In blue, two parallel lines bisected the rectangle. Chris pointed to them. "That's an elevator shaft."
"This is the whole building, then?" asked Micah.
"It's way weirder than that." Chris pointed to more blue lines at the top of the rectangle. "Those indicate HVAC ductwork. It's only above ground. And this is the empty space beneath the building."
Dr. Terry barged over. "You're reading that wrong." He leaned over, hands on knees, and chewed on his lip. "Well, I'll be. The drawing is simple enough for an amateur to read."
Micah looked at Dr. Terry. "You agree with Chris's assessment."
"A broken clock is right twice a day. The boy's right. There's no labels on the paper--which is unusual--but it fits what he says he saw downstairs, and what the video shows."
"That should be enough, right? There's evidence pointing to how they built this overnight. It wasn't overnight. They built it underground, and then raised it up." Chris asked. He immediately knew he'd played his hand too soon.
Micah raised her eyebrows. "Eager, aren't we?"
"I told you, my son's in here somewhere. I'd like help to find him. But if you're still dragging your feet, I'm done. I'll go after him myself."
"Aren't you curious about who built this tower? And why?"
"Sure. On another day, when my wife hadn't just left me with our newly adopted son, and he hadn't just wandered off into whatever the hell this place is." He motioned to the courtyard around them.
The sun had reach higher into the sky, shining down against the pond at a sharper angle. The bottoms of the skybridges above glowed with sunlight. The odd image relaxed him. He'd find Eddie. It'd all be fine.
"But I can't afford curiosity right now." He waved his phone between them. "I'm going to step outside to get service, and make sure my son hasn't texted me. When I come back, I'm going upstairs. I've given you proof on how the building got here, so I'll expect that check, too."
Micah raised a hand to quiet him. The authority of such a small motion impressed him.
"I don't see any lifts," Micah said. "Nothing to raise it up. You haven't proven that the building was built underground and then raised up. Only that there's an open space below."
Chris squeezed his fists. "What else would that space be?"
Roberts patted Dr. Terry's shoulder. "There's an interesting question."
"You may have pointed us in the right direction," Micah said. "And if we find some sort of lifting mechanism, then that'll mean you've met the contract."