by Ben Farthing
Wavering colors that pulsed like meditation video aids.
A miniature sun that sure as hell felt like real sunlight.
A gut cleanse.
And hadn't he felt calmer in the rooms? He'd seen Dr. Terry immediately relax and reevaluate himself.
They didn't all add up--the pulsing surfaces weren't like the binaural beats videos he'd found to help with meditation--but it was possible the builders knew more about manipulating the human brain than current psychologists.
There was a thought he hadn't considered since earlier this morning.
The builders.
Micah spoke through calmly clenched teeth. "What's the purpose of this tower?"
Chris said it out loud. "The peak of architectural psychology. It's psychotherapy packed into a box."
Roberts whispered in awe. "That's why it brought us all together in cities."
Chris nodded. "To fix our brains."
46
"Is that enough, Micah?" Chris asked.
As they stood in the elevator lobby of the tower's 86th floor, between two hallways that extended farther than was physically possible, outside a gymnasium-sized room with a floor that was one big treadmill, Chris couldn't believe that he'd fanboyed over this selfish, stubborn woman only a few hours ago.
Micah leaned on the glass doors, eyes closed. Her lips moved silently.
Chris looked to Roberts, who held up a finger. Give her a second.
Chris was out of seconds. "That's your answer. Everything in here is designed to fix neurotransmitters. An hour a day in here, and I bet anyone with anxiety or depression would pop out cured." He realized he believed that this building could cure his lifelong anxiety. But instead of relief or hope, it made him uneasy. This building was not benevolent. He'd spent years managing his problems. Just switching it off felt unnatural.
"No no no," Micah whispered. "Glass panes, iron frames, air conditioning designs, indoor plumbing. It's one breakthrough at a time. I'm going to take the next one breakthrough and apply it universally. I can't put these mental obstacle courses inside every residential and commercial building."
"It's still amazing," Roberts said. "Think of how many people we'd help. A building like this in every major city. Several thousand people a day could go through. We could end mental illness."
That thought sent a shiver through Chris. Eddie in here was bad enough. But thousands of people, in a hundreds of cities, every single day. Better to trudge through therapy than risk whatever this building was.
"There are a hundred twenty floors of this," Micah said. "How much time and money to reverse engineer each of them? To develop the technology and build it?"
"So we start with a dozen or so floors," Roberts said.
"Regardless," Chris raised his voice. "There's your answer. Both your answers, actually. How was it built? Underground, and then lifted up."
"We don't know that," Micah said.
Chris ignored her. "Why was it built? To end mental illness. I've done my part. I'll take that check now, and then I'm finding my son."
"How do you intend to leave?" Micah asked. "The elevator only goes up."
"Roberts fixed the wiring for these two floors. He'll fix the button for the courtyard."
Roberts shrugged. "It could work. But what about Leon and Dr. Terry?"
Chris shoved down his guilt. "I'm not a cop. Or a scientist, or a priest, or whatever it would take to help them. I'll help the authorities however I can to rescue them, once I've got Eddie outside."
Roberts waved him off. "Not that. Of course we'll help them if we can, but..." he pointed at Chris's missing little finger. "What I mean is, why did the building take them? What does that have to do with fixing mental illness?"
Chris hung his head. This was too much. His explanation of the tower's purpose didn't answer most of the more pressing questions. How was it lifted out of the ground? What were the lurchers? What had taken Leon and Dr. Terry, and where did it take them?
And most pressing of all, how could they leave?
"Let's ponder the tower's motivations once we're outside," Chris said.
He led the way back to the elevator.
"We have to see what's on the top floor," Micah said. The button for the hundred-twentieth floor still glowed.
"This building wasn't that tall," Chris said. "Not from the outside, anyways. I don't want to know what's up there."
Roberts reached behind the button panel. "There. Did that work?"
None of the other buttons lit up. Chris tried the bottom floor buttons anyways. Nothing.
Micah lunged for the button panel. Roberts caught her and walked her back to the corner of the elevator.
"You're fired," she yelled.
"We'll chat about that outside," Roberts said. "Now here's what I'm thinking. Chris, you kept talking about what the building looked like outside. Well, I saw windows from the roof to the ground. And I haven't seen a single window in here. What's that tell us?"
"Space is acting weird," Chris said. "Like the hallways being too long, and suddenly round."
"No, you gotta bend time and space to get that answer," Roberts said.
"And that's an issue? Have you not noticed the lurchers appearing and disappearing? Or Leon and Dr. Terry half out of our dimension? His finger got stuck in mine!" Chris held up his four-fingered hand. "I think we're pretty far into bending space."
"The simpler answer," Roberts continued on, as unstoppable in reasoning as he was physically, "is that these outer hallways aren't the outermost hallways, know what I mean?"
Chris pictured the ground floor. He and Leon had entered through a vestibule between the outer doors and the courtyard. He tried to remember how deep that had been. Leon had stopped to look into a vent, and there'd been plenty of space between them and the doors on either side. At least ten feet both ways.
The elevator banks were all inside the courtyard, twenty or more feet from the outer walls.
So Roberts had a point.
"Maybe there's stairs in that direction." Chris pointed to the back of the elevator.
"A useless proposition," Micah said. "We haven't seen any doors on the outer walls of the hallways. And if we tried to force our way through, those things you call lurchers would return."
"If we got through quickly enough," Roberts said, "they'd probably ignore us to fix the wall."
Chris thought of what Leon had said down in the basement, when he'd been excited to start building hacking again. "There's always a way through." He pointed at the ceiling of the elevator.
There was a hatch.
47
The elevator shaft was a vertical wind tunnel.
Chris dropped his backpack, put his flashlight in his teeth, and climbed Roberts' shoulders to reach the top of the elevator car.
A steady downward draft whipped his hair about and cooled his scalp.
He clicked on his flashlight. The walls were dull steel. The elevator rode tracks on either side of the shaft. A pulley system of steel cords hooked to the elevator and disappeared up into the darkness.
Chris leaned over the bright square of the open hatch. "What if we unhooked the cable? There should be brakes to stop us at the bottom, right?"
Micah laughed.
"It hasn't come to that yet," Roberts said. "I don't trust this building to have those failsafes."
It was an extreme idea, but Chris wasn't totally convinced it was the wrong one.
He went back to inspecting his surroundings.
Above, every fifteen feet, were sliding double doors. The flashlight illuminated five of them before the dark took over.
Chris turned around.
For every set of doors that led to an inner floor, another set of doors was in the opposite side of the shaft, facing the outer edge of the building.
"I'll be damned," Chris said. "Roberts, you were right!"
Roberts pulled himself up to stick his head through the hatch. "I should have realized it earlier. But this will be ea
sier than I thought."
High above, the elevator motor kicked on. The steel cable creaked. The elevator started moving up.
Roberts cursed and dropped back down.
The elevator was flush with front and back walls, but to the sides there was a gap wide enough to fall through. The car's movement quickly made Chris aware of the unevenness of the roof. It was pitched toward the drop-off.
Chris clung to the cable, focused on not looking at the gap.
He moved for the open hatch, but then hesitated. If Roberts couldn't get it stopped again, they'd go straight to the top.
This tower was not benevolent.
Chris didn't want to know what was up there.
As they passed the next floor, Chris got a close look at the doors on the outer wall of the shaft. A tiny sliver of light shone through the center. Sunlight.
Hope sprung to life.
The elevator gained momentum.
In a few moments, the elevator would be moving too quickly for Chris to do anything but crawl back below.
He had no time to mull over a decision, so he acted.
At the next floor, he threw himself at the outer door. He pressed his cheek and his gut against the cold metal. The sunlight from the other side shined directly in his eye.
The elevator car scraped his heels. There wasn't enough space.
He jammed his fingers between the doors. The elevator crushed his leg against the outer door. Muscles stretched. The top corner of the car caught his buttocks and lifted him.
His head hit the top of the doorframe. The elevator kept moving. His neck turned at an unnatural angle. Nerves protested. His shoulder touched the top of the doorframe, and he felt his spine compressing.
His pants ripped. The top corner of the car moved past his buttocks to scrape his back, his neck, his ear. Then he was squeezed in between the doors of the car, and the doors of the shaft. The six inches felt like a ballroom.
He jammed his fingers back in between the doors.
The bottom edge of the car moved up. It'd be one more crushing moment, and then an open drop into the chasm below the tower.
The doors inched open.
The bottom edge of the car brought his knees up to his waist.
Chris worked his flashlight between the doors to pry them open.
The bottom edge of the car pushed up past his ankles.
No time left. He yanked on the flashlight as hard he could. The doors opened four inches.
Chris reached in, forced his shoulder through the gap, widening it another inch.
The elevator car squeezed his calfs, his knees, his thighs.
He wriggled against the doors. His ear pressed against the cold metal.
The car squeezed his hips, but moved past without forcing him upwards.
Empty air felt cool on his scratched legs.
He jackknifed his elbow to bring his hand back around and grip the doors. He pushed. Another five inches, enough to get his head through.
The elevator car passed by. Then metal screeched above, and the car stopped.
Chris dangled over the open elevator shaft. The steady downward draft became a pressurized burst, as the air squeezed past the elevator car. Chris swung his other arm around, grabbed the doors, and pulled himself up.
He collapsed onto a cold floor.
His legs stung. He thought he was bleeding on his upper thigh. His ear was numb. He'd strained a muscle in his neck. But he could move. Nothing broken.
Except his flashlight. It wouldn't click on.
Not that it needed to. Sunlight filtered through gray clouds gray poured through a wall of windows.
Chris sat up and looked around.
48
Eddie and Cam didn't find an elevator the next floor up.
Not on the one after that, either.
In fact, the next eight floors were dark, trashed offices.
In the ninth trashed office, they found a water cooler on its side. After Cam sniffed it and tasted it, they gulped it down.
It was the best tasting drink Eddie'd ever had. That solved his being thirsty, but he was pretty sure lunch would have been over an hour ago. His stomach growled.
Still they kept climbing.
"Two weird things I noticed," Cam said between sharp breaths. "First, where the hell's the windows? Second, don't these offices seem smaller than the building looked outside?"
Eddie wasn't sure.
"I mean, this building is most of a block. The offices aren't a quarter that size."
That made sense to Eddie. "So what's that mean?"
"I don't know if we're seeing the whole floor."
They reached the next landing. Another dark, trashed office.
"You want to explore inside?" Eddie asked, hoping she'd say no.
"Thing is, there's no windows in there. These offices must be on the inside. I think we're missing something on the outside. Except the only doors out of this stairwell face into these offices."
"In Treasure Hunter X, after the office building level, it's a haunted mansion. The treasure's in the attic."
Cam raised her eyebrow, but Eddie talked faster.
"There's a bunch of ways upstairs. A secret tunnel, stairs, a ladder, a dumbwaiter. They don't connect to each other. But they all connect to the big room in the attic."
"Ah, I get it. We can't get to the elevator from the stairs, but maybe we can from in there." She pointed her flashlight into the office.
Eddie's gut twisted. He'd rushed to share a helpful idea, and now he'd given them the perfect reason to explore the dark office.
He peeked through the door. The little flashlight revealed a row of flipped desks and busted chairs. A cubicle wall had fallen onto a potted plant, shattering the fake clay and spilling real dirt onto the carpet.
Cam took his hand. Her fingers were warm. "We'll follow the wall around. If there's no elevators, then we'll search the middle of the room."
Halfway around, they found a tall bookshelf had fallen through the wall. No boards or metal to hold it up - it was just drywall.
"What kind of shitty construction?" Cam stepped around the shelf.
Curiosity got the better of Eddie. He poked his phone's flashlight and his head through the hole.
The space was like an empty closet, except as big as a basketball court. With the short reach of his light, he couldn't be sure the far wall was blank.
"We should check in here," he said.
Cam stuck her head in beside him. Her hair tickled his cheek. "Reminds me of my high schools old gym, but less dusty."
They dragged the bookshelf back and stepped through the hole.
The floor looked to be the same drywall material as the walls. As thin as the walls were, Eddie stepped carefully. It held firm.
"Looks empty," Cam said.
They walked towards the end of the room, flashlights up.
The far wall was bare. The only interruption in the empty room was the hole where the shelf had fallen.
"No luck." Cam patted Eddie's back. "But I wonder..."
She kicked the wall. Her foot went through the drywall.
Together, she and Eddie peeled back the crumbly wall. This section had skinny steel beams holding up the drywall. And on the other side, a flat metal sheet.
Eddie touched it. It chilled his fingers. "I think this is the outside wall."
"But it was windows everywhere," Cam said. "Do they put fake windows on skyscrapers?"
Eddie shrugged.
Cam kicked another hole in the wall, ten feet away. They peeled back more drywall to find more steel studs and blank metal sheets.
Cam's shoulders drooped. "Nothing. Let's head back."
Eddie's cell phone dinged.
A flurry of text messages appeared, all from Dad.
"We must have finally got service this close to the outside," Cam said, checking her own phone.
Eddie read his texts. His heart sank. "He told me not to come. He sounds angry."
"Easy there
," said Cam. "Remember, people get angry and yell, and it don't mean nothing. Sometimes families gotta yell at each other. Work things out."
Eddie nodded. When Mom and her old boyfriend yelled, it wasn't to work things out. It made things worse. But Eddie liked Cam's ideas. And Chris was more like Cam than he was like Mom.
He kept reading the texts. "He said he was coming to find me. Then he texted when he got here to say to come outside."
"Think he's still out there?" Cam asked.
Eddie shook his head. "The last text said he's coming inside."
His mind raced. This was it. Chris was going to find him. He wouldn't see how helpful Eddie was trying to be. He'd be furious. He'd call the social workers, and they'd take Eddie back. They couldn't send him back to Mom, so he didn't know where he'd go.
"Hey, look at me." Cam was crouched down in front of him. Her breath was warm on his face. "Inhale. Exhale. I don't know why you're freaking out. You're worried about Chris not thinking you're helpful. Well, look at these texts." She took his phone. "'Please come home.' 'Come outside and we'll talk.' 'I'm coming in with you.' Your dad isn't angry, he's worried about you."
Eddie inhaled. That made sense. If - if - Cam was right about not needing to be helpful.
"Maybe we should head back to the lobby. You send a text while we still have service. Once it gets through, he'll know where to find you."
It sounded like a nice idea. Except what if Cam was wrong? Maybe Chris was just hiding his anger. Now he'd seen how unhelpful Eddie could be, and he'd changed his mind about being a family.
Eddie laughed. That was stupid.
It was scary to imagine, but it didn't make sense. Cam was right about Chris's text messages--they sounded worried. Mom had never texted him when he explored the woods all day. Chris worried about him, which meant he was thinking about him and it had nothing to do with whether Eddie had done enough chores.
Probably. Could he risk leaving without the treasure?
The chance that Chris would get tired of him was low, but the consequence of that chance was too much.
"Not yet," Eddie said. "Let's not leave yet."
"I'm telling you," Cam said, "he's more worried than mad. I wish my mom would care where I was right now."