by Jakob Tanner
Casey nodded and looked around.
“This is the outer-rim, huh?” said Casey. “Looks pretty similar to the tower-zone.”
“It’s pretty much identical,” said Max. “Well, except for all the magic, but that’s pretty much it.”
They stepped out of the alleyway into broad daylight. The giant wall of Zestiris loomed in front of them.
“This is so weird,” said Casey.
“Stop saying stuff like that,” said Max. “You’ll blow our cover.”
They grabbed an outdoor table by a café and ordered two coffees.
The next phase of the plan was to hang out near the wall and wait until one of the tower-zone garbage trucks emerged and then to follow it to see where it went.
A waiter brought them two mugs of coffee.
Casey and Max thanked the man and each took a sip, keeping an eye on the wall ahead of them.
“I know you told me to stop saying this,” said Casey. “But it’s so weird. I’ve seen this wall all my life and yet I’ve never seen what it looks like on the other side?”
“And?”
“It looks exactly same,” she said with a smile.
Growing up, Max had always been so fearful about the world beyond the wall. It was a world of mystery, where magical beings and demons lived. No one fully understood it completely, but it was a place walled off from the rest of the world, because it was simply too dangerous. The monsters and even the climbers were a threat to the balance of the world order.
“I was always taught to be fearful of the tower-zone,” laughed Max.
“Interesting,” said Casey. “We were taught the opposite, about all the brilliant advancements that existed in the tower-zone that the rest of the world lacked. Manatech, healing magic, and more. We were meant to feel bad for those who weren’t allowed to live on our side of the wall, but part of me always thought that was hogwash, you know? So what if we had manatech and magic? Everyone else beyond the wall could go on a holiday to Hawaii or Paris and explore the world. Meanwhile, those in the tower-zone were not allowed to leave. Or, at least, not easily.”
“I guess the grass is always greener on the other side, wherever that may be,” said Max. “All I wanted was to get closer to the tower-zone and the tower itself. To its magic. To its power.”
“Well, you’ve really taken in the tower-zone Kool-Aid haven’t you then?” said Casey. “This might be the furthest vacation I ever get in this world, so don’t ruin it while it lasts.”
Max couldn’t ruin it, even if he tried, for at that very moment, an armored garbage truck emerged from the tower gates.
They no longer had any time to waste.
Max put some money down on the table, probably more than the coffees actually were, but they had to move quickly.
The cash was the same money he’d brought in with him on his first day in the tower-zone.
Casey hailed a yellow cab and the two student climbers jumped in the back seat.
“Will you follow that truck, mister?” asked Max.
The cab driver took in the fact that it was coming from the tower-zone.
“I don’t want any trouble,” he said.
Max materialized a gold coin from his pouch. “This is rare tower-zone currency, which will fetch you a very high price from black market collectors. This could potentially feed you and your family for years. What do you say? Will you help us follow that garbage truck?”
The man gulped and took the coin and then turned back to face the street. The driver put his foot on the gas peddle and they began to trail the garbage truck from the tower-zone.
Agent Paul watched the two student climbers get into the taxi cab.
He watched it all from inside a nearby telephone booth.
I’ll have to inform the higher ups, Agent Paul thought to himself, pulling out a cell phone.
The kids were impressive. They had broken through one of the sewer wards and were now tracking a tower-zone garbage truck. Agent Paul was impressed but also confused. What exactly did these two kids want?
He placed his cell phone to his ear as he rang his boss.
“They haven’t spotted me yet,” Agent Paul said to his superior. “I’m following them now. I’ll do as directed.”
71
Sakura sat in the lobby of the top floor of the climber’s guild.
She tapped her hands on her knees nervously.
“He’ll be right with you,” said a secretary from behind a desk. The woman went straight back to whatever else she was working on. She had done her job to assuage Sakura’s concerns about the meeting running late, what more could she do?
Not much, Sakura figured. Still, she didn’t understand why she had been called here in the first place.
The top floor of the climbers guild belonged solely to the climber president. There was a lobby the elevator opened up to and then a doorway to a large open office where the climber president resided.
Was she being promoted? There was only one job higher than her own...the presidency itself...and she really didn’t see the climber president retiring any time soon. He loved the job too much.
The secretary picked up a phone and then placed it down again.
“He’ll see you now,” said the secretary.
Sakura stood up and strutted into the climber president’s office.
The man sat behind his desk, leaning forward with his elbows on the wood, fingers steepled together. He had a grave expression on his face.
“Good afternoon, Sakura,” said the climber president. “I have much I need to tell you.”
Max and Casey sat in the back seat of the cab watching through the window as the garbage truck from the tower-zone drove through the traffic-filled streets of the outer-rim.
They were in the southern part of the city now, often referred to as the greater outer-rim area. It was hardly a city now, more like a suburb bordering on farmland. Far in the distance was the second wall—the wall that separated the entirety of Zestiris—both outer-rim and tower-zone—from the rest of the world.
“Still want me to keep following?” asked the cab driver, loosening the collar on his shirt.
Max could tell the driver was getting anxious. Following a garbage truck from the tower-zone was already a sketchy thing to do, but now driving this close towards the second wall. The man clearly didn’t want to get himself into any major trouble and this was the kind of job that had trouble written all over it.
The second wall was very far in the distance, it looked almost like a mirage or the seaside from a great distance away.
Much closer though was a large impending mound of garbage.
The dump was in view.
A good distance ahead of them, the garbage truck from the tower-zone stopped in front of a barbed wire gate.
After a few moments, a partition swung up allowing the garbage truck to drive through.
“I don’t know if they’ll let me pass,” said the cab driver, nervously.
The garbage truck was getting smaller and smaller as it went deeper into the dump. If they didn’t continue after it soon, they might lose it forever. Their whole high-stakes mission down the drain.
“You know what,” said the cab driver, throwing his hands in the air. “I can’t do this. I won’t drive you two any further. Please leave.”
“Are you kidding?” said Casey, getting frustrated with the man. “We gave you a gold coin.”
If that was the man’s decision, thought Max, so be it. They didn’t have time to waste arguing with him. The garbage truck from the tower-zone was getting away.
Max opened his door and pulled Casey along with him.
“What are you doing!?” squirmed Casey. “Let me go!”
“C’mon,” said Max. “We don’t have time to waste.”
Max quickly turned his head to the cab driver and thanked him once more.
He drove off a second later, leaving Max and Casey conspicuously standing at the side of the dirt road.
Max took in the
dump in front of them. He didn’t see how it would be possible to enter through the official front gate, but the good news was: the piles of garbage were so high, they spilled over sections of the barbed wire fence.
“Looks like we’re climbing garbage,” said Max.
He got up onto the mound of junk and started climbing up over busted refrigerators, air conditioners, and black bags of stinky garbage.
Casey followed behind him, squirming and grumbling about the sudden gross turn their mission had taken.
“I mean, we already went through the sewers,” said Max. “How’s that any different from climbing a pile of garbage?”
“I guess the grossness was monotonous in the sewer,” said Casey. “Whereas now I have to face a new gross thing every ten seconds. Like look at that—it’s a maggot filled teddy bear.”
Ugh, thought Max.
He tried to pay as little attention to the garbage as possible and stay focused on just climbing it. They were high enough that he could see the route the garbage truck had taken through the different mounds of garbage that made up the outer-rim dump.
Eventually, they climbed so high they were over the barbed wire fence and could descend out of sight of the security gate.
They rolled down the hill and were now on the streets of the dump.
They spotted the garbage truck and hurried after it.
They ran down the gravelly road of the garbage dump, tailing the truck.
The truck eventually stopped.
Max and Casey hid behind a discarded bathtub, using it as cover.
For a brief second, Max wondered why the truck had stopped, but when it started to dump out all the tower-zone’s garbage, he remembered the explicit reason the truck was here in the first place.
But why did they need climbers to escort them on a trash delivery?
Max expected the garbage truck to turn around and start heading back towards the gate, but once it was finished dumping all its garbage, it continued forward deeper into the refuse facility.
“Why are they going further?” asked Casey.
“I’m not sure,” said Max. “Let’s find out.”
Perhaps it was wherever they were going next that required the need for official city climbers.
They followed after the truck, making sure to stay a good distance away so they remained out of sight.
The truck turned a corner, then another, weaving through the gigantic mounds of trash.
Eventually, the truck stopped once more. This time in front of a large warehouse with men guarding the entrance.
Not only were the men security guards, they had copper colored badges.
They were climbers!
But what were tower-zone climbers doing all the way out here in the outer-rim?
What the heck was going on?
72
Hiding behind an old rusty washing machine, Max and Casey watched as the climbers escorting the garbage truck swapped places with the climbers who’d been guarding the large warehouse.
“What are we going to do, Max?” whispered Casey beside him.
Max didn’t understand what he was seeing.
People in the tower-zone were never allowed to enter the outer-rim. Those were the rules. That was the law.
And yet, here were climbers actively working a job here in the outer-rim.
What was inside that warehouse?
Whatever it was, it had to connect back to Samuel Archer and whatever devious plans he was cooking up.
“We have to find out what’s in that warehouse,” Max declared.
They waited for the garbage truck to leave before enacting their plan.
They snuck up closer to the entrance. Once there, Casey threw a paper airplane and manipulated the wind so that it flew over the guards and caught their attention.
“What the heck is that?” said the climber guarding the entrance.
The man followed after the paper airplane while Casey and Max slipped in through the door.
The warehouse was empty except for a strange glowing light at the center of it.
As Max took a step forward towards the light, he took in the rest of the warehouse. It was empty. There was nothing suspicious or threatening in here, so why were there climbers guarding it?
It started to dawn on him more as he got closer to the light.
The light looked familiar, like he’d seen something similar before.
“Is that a—”
Casey’s words were cut off.
“What were you about to say?” said Max, too afraid to voice what he was bearing witness too.
He turned around and saw Casey sprawled on the floor, unconscious.
“What the—”
A hand overtook his mouth. The other hand snapped its fingers and Max felt his whole body begin to feel drowsy until he was fast asleep.
73
Max’s eyes twitched open.
He stayed motionless, recalling what had happened before he’d fallen asleep.
He heard a familiar voice saying, “Thank you, Paul, you may go.”
Max had been put to sleep against his will, so he didn’t want to let his captors know he’d awoken. He needed to buy as much time as possible to figure out where he was and to make a plan to escape his captors.
“Don’t worry,” said the familiar voice. “I know you’re awake.”
Max stayed frozen.
“C’mon now, don’t treat me as a fool,” said the voice. “Open your eyes.”
Max opened his eyes and found himself in a large room, surrounded by tall glass windows. The sky outside was an orange dusky sunset. The tower of Zestiris loomed nearby.
Standing across from him was none other than the climber president.
The old man smiled.
“Surprised to see me?” he said.
When Max had woken up, his immediate thought was that he’d been captured by the Archer family. To see the climber president—one of the strongest climbers in the entire tower-zone—was indeed quite the surprise.
“Where are we?” asked Max. “Where’s Casey? What’s going on? What was that in the warehouse?”
The climber president laughed.
“Alright, settle down,” he said. “That’s a lot of questions. Let’s deal with the easy ones first. Where are we? We’re in my office. What’s going on? One of my agents, Paul, got wind of you two trying to sneak out of the tower-zone and followed you. He caught up to you and brought you here. We dropped Casey off at home, so she’ll have questions for you when she wakes up in her own bedroom, confused.”
So that man who put them to sleep worked for the climber president and not the Archer family?
“That man’s trait is that he can put people to sleep?” asked Max.
“Precisely,” said the climber president. “Pretty nifty ability, huh?”
“And about that warehouse?” asked Max, now sitting upright at the side of the bed.
The climber president sighed. “Now, we get to the difficult part. Are you sure you want to know what you saw? Both you and I will be breaking the law by doing so.”
The climber president looked Max directly in the eye with a very serious expression.
The man was not kidding around.
Max took a deep breath. There was so much he didn’t understand about Zestiris, the outer-rim, the tower-zone, and the tower itself. The answers to these questions would only help in his overall goal to find his sister. He couldn’t let himself miss out on an opportunity like this.
“Go on,” said Max. “I want to know everything you’re willing to tell me.”
“You’re just as Sakura had described to me,” smiled the old man. “A keen bean. Well, then. What do you think you saw in that warehouse?”
There was only one thing that the glowing light in that warehouse reminded him of. He had been afraid to say it out loud when he first saw it, but he wouldn’t be afraid any more.
“Was it a...teleporter?”
“Yes,” said the cli
mber president.
“But wouldn’t that mean—”
“Exactly what you think it means,” said the climber president. “The tower-zone, the outer-rim, all of Zestiris exists on a floor in the tower itself.”
The information felt like a punch to the gut.
“How is that possible? What about the rest of the world? Europe? Asia? All of Earth?”
The climber president sighed once more.
“Earth was destroyed decades ago.”
74
“But I thought—”
“You thought the tower emerged in 2045 and ten years later Zestiris was formed to protect and regulate those who went inside the tower?” said the climber president. “You’re mostly correct in that assumption. There’s a key part of the true history missing though. Those first ten years after the tower first emerged were an incredibly volatile and destructive time. Psychotic climbers went on rampages killing thousands of people. Geopolitics became the entire world versus the United States and its super-powered soldiers. After ten years, it all came to a head as psychotic climbers laid waste to entire American cities, the monster waves increased in power, and the rest of the world attempted to nuke the tower. The world crumbled, destroying itself. The entire planet was on fire, turning into a monstrous hell scape.”
The climber president took another deep breath, before continuing.
“Humanity had no hope of survival left on Earth. A plan was formed amongst some of humanity’s strongest S-rank climbers. They would do a re-do in the tower and so that’s what they did. They shepherded as many innocent people as they could through the lower-levels of the tower until they reached floor-4 where we are now.”
Max shook his head.
“How is any of that possible? Is it actually 2085? How could an entire North American city be recreated on a floor in the tower? And surely there must be people still alive who remember this exodus—how is this not more widely known? How does this secret survive unknown amongst so many?”
The climber president nodded his head.