by Ben Farthing
"What'd you find?" The man shook Cam by her shoulders. "How's it work?"
"How's what work?"
He threw her to the floor. He put his boot on her stomach. "If you got the email from Micah, then you know. I can't find shit in here, but I'm not walking out empty-handed."
Eddie wanted to run. But Cam was nice. He had to do something.
He knew the only way to calm down an angry adult:
Be helpful.
He stepped through the doorway, into the office. "I can help you."
The man looked Eddie up and down. At least, his head made the movement. His eyes couldn't stay still. "This place isn't for you."
That was the same weird thought he'd had earlier. Chills chased away the butterflies. The building didn't feel so empty anymore. Something here didn't want him here. No, that wasn't quite it. The building didn't care about him.
That didn't make any sense.
While the man waited for Eddie to respond, Cam quietly scooted away.
"I can help you," Eddie repeated. "But you can't hurt Cam."
"How can you help if this place isn't for you?"
Cam crawled to her feet. "The fuck are you talking about?"
The man whipped his head around. "How'd you get so far away? Come back over here and tell me what you've found. I can't make heads or tails of it."
Cam was only a few feet away. Eddie realized the man might be on drugs. When his old mom's friends were on drugs, that was when it was most important to be helpful.
"I'll tell you all the hiding places," Eddie said. "But then you have to leave us alone."
"What's in these hiding places? Blueprints? That'd be enough for Micah, I bet. But I want to see footage of the construction."
Cam carefully walked over to Eddie's side. He liked her hand on his shoulder. This guy was bad news, but Cam was practically an adult, and she saw how helpful Eddie was, which meant she'd protect him. "I don't think he's looking for treasure," she whispered.
"Treasure?" The man scratched his cheek.
Eddie nodded. "I know all the hiding spots. It's not in the same place every time."
The man raised one finger. "You get it! This place is too many places at once. Not the same place."
Eddie wrung his hands. He was trying to be helpful, but something was wrong with this man. Maybe more than drugs.
"So tell me the hiding spots with the secrets."
"On floor six, behind a painting in the third office from the door. On floor nine, in a safe in the floor under the rug, right in the middle of everything." Eddie kept listing off the hiding places, even the ones they'd already checked, even though he knew this building wasn't exactly like Treasure Hunter X.
"You're very helpful." The man's eyes finally stopped their frantic movement. They focused on Eddie. His gaze was like being smothered by a blanket. "You'll come with me."
He reached for Eddie, gnawed fingernails filling Eddie's vision as the man somehow reached from ten feet away, fingertips about to brush Eddie's nose.
"You can fuck off." Cam yanked Eddie behind her, putting herself between him and the man. Eddie fell onto his butt. Cam threw a chair at the man, then dragged Eddie by his shirt back through the door. His collar scratched his neck.
The man rolled on the floor, holding his knee and cursing. He went still. He locked eyes on Eddie again. "Are you helpful?" he growled.
Cam slammed shut the door.
She pulled Eddie to his feet, then towards the stairs going down.
That was the way out. Eddie wanted to run away. Downstairs, out the door, and back home. Back to Chris. Dad.
But if he didn't find the treasure, there wouldn't be a home. "No. We haven't found the treasure yet."
"That guy's dangerous." Cam pointed to the closed door. "Did you see his eyes? And how'd he reach you like that?"
Eddie didn't want to think about that. It wasn't even that something weird had happened when the man grabbed at him. It was that Eddie was being helpful--the man said he was helpful--and it still wasn't good enough. If being helpful wasn't enough for one adult, would it be good enough for Chris?
It had to be. He wanted to stay with Chris.
He pulled Cam toward the stairs leading up. "I have to find the treasure for my dad. You hurt that guy's leg. He can't follow us upstairs."
Cam sang a nonsense tune to herself, deciding. "You're crazy. But I need that money, too. Okay, let's go. But we find different stairs on the way back down."
They headed farther up.
Eddie tried to see on Cam's face if she was mad at him. "I tried to be helpful. He was still mean."
"I told you about that already," Cam said. "There's you, and there's what you can do for other people. And those aren't the same thing."
"I'm sorry." He didn't say it, but she was wrong again. You did have to be helpful. He was sure of it. But now he'd done his best, and it didn't matter.
"Quit thinking about that. Let's find your treasure."
Even though they were going up, Eddie had the distinct thought that they were getting deeper.
Their footsteps echoed in the cement stairwell. Eddie's head was starting to hurt from being thirsty. His legs felt tight.
He could be strong. Once they found the treasure, everything would be okay.
And maybe Cam was a little bit right. Maybe sometimes, or for some adults, he just could never be helpful enough. And maybe that meant being helpful wasn't the most important thing.
That same weird thought came into his head. This place isn't for you. This time, it was followed by: But it could be.
The building didn't feel empty. Not full, either. It just was. Exactly what it was meant to be.
33
Chris sat in the corner of the elevator. He had nowhere to run, and if he was honest with himself, he was curious. He couldn't explain the swirling surfaces of the office bullpen. He couldn't explain how a sixty-story building could be supported by an empty pit. Or what he'd seen lurching in the basement and office.
Or how a skyscraper had appeared in a residential neighborhood overnight.
He could do nothing in this moment to get out and find Eddie.
So with his main goal temporarily thwarted, he leaned into curiosity. Maybe something they told him would help him escape.
Micah stood in the opposite corner of the stopped elevator, arms crossed.
Roberts tied off the rag around his head. He winced. He pulled an iPad from his shoulder bag, unlocked it, and handed it to Chris. "Let's talk about your thesis."
"Dr. Terry said you agreed with it. That the Flatiron building wasn't the first steel-framed skyscraper."
"The architect, Daniel Burnham, had recently returned from a trip to Vietnam, or French Indochina, which it was called at the time. A rural highland area called Da Lat. In 1895, its population was less than a thousand. One hundred seventy miles of dirt mountain roads to get there. But somehow, there was a steel skyscraper on the edge of town. The locals couldn't explain how it got there." He pointed to the iPad. "Look in 'Files,' then 'Flatiron.'"
Chris navigated to an image. It was a scan of a faded charcoal sketch on yellowed paper. The sketch showed a triangular building, at least fifteen stories. Around it were homes on log stilts, braided branches for walls, and roofs of thick bundled grasses. Someone had drawn the Flatiron building in an old Vietnamese village.
"This would have helped in my thesis. Who drew it?"
"My great-grandfather," Micah said. "He'd been searching, the same way I've been searching. But where he was hoping for another step on the journey, I knew I'd find the journey's culmination."
"Granddaddy Rayner showed his sketch to Daniel Burnham," said Roberts, "and Burnham happily took credit for designing the first steel-framed skyscraper. It changed everything. Cities could now expand upwards, instead of just sprawling outward. That development did more to tightly pack people together than anything else in history."
"How do you know this is real?" Chris asked. "You'v
e got more detail than I ever found, but I thought all this was proven to be a hoax. Anyone could have sketched this."
"I still have the original," Micah said. "We've dated the paper. It matches my family's claims."
"And we're just getting started here," Roberts said. "Look for a folder labeled 'Advancements.'"
Chris found it. More images.
"Two more requirements before cities could become as dense as they are today."
"Air conditioning and plumbing," Chris said. "You're telling me the Larkin Administration Building was a rip off? Frank Lloyd Wright was a fraud?"
"His aesthetic designs are his own," Micah said. "But the concept of designing a building around air conditioning--which skyscrapers need for their top levels to avoid getting superheated by the sun--that was stolen from a building that appeared overnight in rural Idaho."
"Air conditioning already existed. It was only a matter of time before someone stuck it in a large building."
"True," Micah said, "but the Idaho building made it happen quicker. It helped man's natural development hurry past the trial-and-error phase."
Chris opened an image labeled, "Tremont."
He recognized the sketch. Tremont House, a four-story hotel in Boston. It was a neo-classical manor, with columns supporting the porch roof. The first hotel--and building of its size--to feature indoor plumbing. But the sketch wasn't in Boston. Sand dunes surrounded the hotel, instead of Boston streets.
"And where was this one?" Chris asked, more skeptical by the moment.
"The Sonoran Desert," Micah said. "This one is an artist's recreation after interviewing men who claimed to have seen it."
"Let me guess," Chris said. "Somehow, one of those men was connected to the Tremont House architect." Dr. Terry would have known his name, but Chris didn't.
"Bingo," Roberts said. "One played cards with Isaiah Rogers."
That name sounded familiar.
"Again," Micah said, "this advancement would have happened eventually. But this overnight appearance quickened it."
"So what are you saying?" Chris asked. "Skyscrapers were a gift from God?"
"Perhaps something akin to that," Micah said.
"Skyscrapers are only the newest examples of this phenomenon," Roberts said.
Chris said, "Dr. Terry mentioned the Tower of London and ancient Roman greenhouses."
"Correct," Micah said. "Historians credit the Romans with creating the first greenhouses. A major step in allowing the centralization of food cultivation. Not to mention the large plate glass that was also essential for modern urban buildings. But my family has uncovered writings that mention greenhouses in Carthage, ten years before Rome's. And while western records show the Tower of London as being the first medieval castle, my private library holds records describing a similar structure in northern Scotland, ten years before construction began in London."
"Sometimes historians mess up," Chris said.
"Patterns denote intention," Micah said. "Mesopotamian smokehouses appeared too suddenly in history. If it had been natural development, meat would have first been smoked in caves, or pits."
"Can you prove it wasn't?"
Micah ignored him. "Even simple Native American palisade designs, I have evidence that they found this style of construction and then replicated it."
Roberts motioned to the iPad, where Chris found notes on Cahokian walled cities.
Chris asked the obvious problem that'd been bothering him. "So where are they now? Where's this Scottish Tower of London? That's stone, it should still be there. And where's the evidence of Carthage greenhouses? Or what about the hotel in the Sonoran desert? That was only two hundred years ago. Can we go see it? And what about Frank Lloyd Wright's supposed inspiration in Idaho? Or the Flatiron original in Vietnam? If what you're saying is true, where's the buildings? That's why my thesis destroyed my career--there's nothing there!"
"They don't last," Micah said. "The tower in Scotland appeared to be stone to everyone who explored it. And for the builders who inspected the design, it was everything they needed to learn how to do it themselves. But it crumbled within months."
"That's insane," Chris said.
"Crazier than that Picasso room?" Roberts pointed at the elevator wall.
"The same with the air conditioned building in rural Idaho. It stood long enough for men to make notes of the airflow system. Then it fell to pieces, which dissolved in the rain. The same in Vietnam. And in the Sonoran Desert, except there it was swallowed by the sand."
"There'd still be records," Chris said.
"There are. You have scans of them in front of you."
"These are amateur sketches and notes from lunatics."
"Sane men are labeled lunatics when they witness the impossible," Micah said. "These events never made it into history books, because the solid evidence disappeared. It was simple to ignore the claims of the uneducated locals."
Chris shook his head. It was impossible. Except, he was sitting in a building that didn't exist yesterday.
Roberts said, "All this has made us better, as a species. These jumps forward in construction, it's all let us live in larger groups. Growing and storing food, walls to protect from marauders, and then the technology to live hundreds of feet above the ground, so we can fit even more of us. It's all been about bringing society together, and moving us forward."
"And the men who've claimed these advancements for themselves have all become wildly successful," said Micah. "That's why we're here. Something in this building is new. It's waiting to propel society forward. And I want it. I won't make my ancestors' mistakes of giving the secrets away. I've built a construction empire for the sole purpose of being ready for this day. Whatever we find here, I can roll out rapidly. And it'll be mine."
Roberts looked uncomfortable. "But it will be an advancement. Sure, we'll get richer, but so will mankind."
"That's what you mean when you say 'purpose,'" Chris said. "What new advancement is hiding in here. Probably to let people live even more on top of each other."
"Exactly," Micah said.
Something else was bothering Chris. "That's a neat history lesson, but it doesn't explain all this. That dizzying room? Whatever took Dr. Terry? The open pit beneath the basement?"
"The pit confirmed that this building fit the pattern," Micah said. "Adjacent vacant spaces have been noted in each instance. In Vietnam, a cave in the mountainside never before noticed. In Idaho, they said it was a lava tunnel they'd never seen before. Your discovery of the pit beneath us made absolutely sure that this building was one of ours."
"Yours?"
"I told you, whatever we find in here belongs to me."
"Does your family library explain what the hell happened to Dr. Terry?"
"There are accounts from Sonora and Idaho of limping strangers. But no details. Nothing like what we witnessed in the hallway."
Chris thought of the lurching movement in the sub basement and behind the frosted glass. A scared explorer might call that "limping."
"And nothing like that swirling craziness," Roberts said.
"So maybe that's your purpose," Chris said. "That's what's unique here."
"But what is it?" Roberts asked. "What's it doing? How does it help society like the other buildings?"
"We'll find more answers upstairs," Micah said. "I can feel it."
34
Chris's curiosity about Micah's motives was satiated.
And while what mysterious purpose this building might have was intriguing, it wasn't worth his life. Maybe if Eddie weren't in the picture, Chris could gamble on helping find the next leap forward in architecture and construction. A permanent gig with Micah's companies would be life changing.
But something had burst from the wall and swallowed Dr. Terry.
Chris's top priority still had to be escape, and finding Eddie.
The elevator moved again.
Micah stood next to the buttons, hands crossed over her waist.
Roberts stood over Chris. The blood stained rag tied around his head made the giant bodyguard even more intimidating.
Chris could run once the doors opened, but that hadn't worked before. There hadn't even been any stairwells.
He could try jumping back into the elevator after they all got out. Unlikely that Roberts would let that happen.
No choice but to keep an eye open for another opportunity, and stay as far away from walls as possible.
The upside was that Roberts seemed to be calming down from the stiff, angry man he'd met at the restaurant that morning. He was getting excited about helping society, and those positive thoughts were making him more forgiving. Hell, Chris had just smashed open the man's head, and he didn't retaliate. That meant Chris could make further escape attempts without fear that Roberts would hurt him.
Micah, on the other hand--Chris was glad she'd only been carrying a taser. He had no doubt she would shoot him if he got in her way.
The elevator stopped at floor fifty, according to the LED numbers above the door. Judging from the height of the building outside, that meant they were only ten floors from the top. But from the buttons in the elevator, and the directory they'd found in the courtyard, they weren't quite halfway up.
"How high do you think we are?" Chris asked. "The tower looks sixty stories maximum from the outside, but that says we've got seventy more to go." He pointed at the wall of numbered buttons.
Micah wrinkled her eyebrows.
Chris heartbeat picked up. He'd plucked her curiosity. "Let's find a window and see," he suggested.
Roberts eyed him suspiciously. "What's your play here?"
"It's not jumping out a fiftieth story window."
Micah shook her head. "We explore the floor. Find what we came here for. If we happen upon a window, then I'm as interested in the mystery as either of you. But it can't become the priority."
Chris felt hope seep away. He'd have to get them as far from the elevator as possible in another way.
Still, as the doors opened and they walked out into the lobby, Chris jammed a screwdriver into the door's latching mechanism. It should be quicker to open when he came sprinting back to it.