Jason Luthor - Floor 21

The only places I’ve seen a blue sky are in the movies we watch on our free time. It doesn’t really exist in our world.

That’s not the part that really amazes me, though. I mean, yeah, it does, but it’s not the only thing. What’s really amazing to me is what’s directly in front of me. All those boys I heard are running again, down the edge of a swimming pool. Now, I talk about swimming pools. We know what they are from movies. Until now, though, I’ve never seen one. Water’s too scarce, you know?

For the record, every drop of water we use gets recycled. Dirty bathwater? Recycled. Water in your toilet? Recycled. The Tower barely wastes anything. Can’t afford to, right? The rest of the water we get from the filters on the rooftop. Anyway, ’cause we can’t afford to waste water, we don’t have stuff like swimming pools.

At least, I didn’t think we did. Not until now.

I see a pair of doors on the opposite side of the room slide open, and a man all in white steps in. I’m not gonna lie; this man is gorgeous. He’s got a comic book chin and hair you could have ripped off the cover of a cheap romance novel. Yeah, and a chest as broad as a barrel.

That’s not a man you’d want to get into a fight with.

Anyway, he calls out to the boys, and they gather around him. For a second they talk, but from my place, I can’t really make out what they’re saying. Whatever it is, the boys run out of the room a second later. Mr. Fabulous Hair over there hesitates at the doorway before pulling some sort of small bottle out of his pocket. It’s hard to say for sure, but it looks like he pops out a few pills or something. I see him tilt his head back to swallow whatever that stuff was, and then he wipes at his mouth for a few seconds before walking out of the room.

For a moment I wait at the vent, my hand trembling by my waist. I reach for the wrench in my bag, but I know I can’t stop here. I have to keep going. I have to find… well, I don’t know what I have to find. But I have to find something before I go back. Something that tells me what’s really going on in this tower. So, as much as I want to dive into that pool and wash this sweat off of me, I continue into the darkness.

Crying fills the tunnel as I move forward. The stinging scent of the pool is gone, and I kinda miss it, but I continue. Still, I slow down a bit as I do. Don’t want to make too much noise, you know? Anyway, I keep going, moving toward the sound of this woman. She’s really cutting loose, almost screaming. It’s… it’s hard to hear that stuff. Same way with Receiver Garry; I feel this tightness in my chest as I get closer to the grate.

I find myself staring into a room. It’s an apartment, yeah, a lot like mine. Just, it definitely looks a lot bigger and a lot cleaner. I think it’s the bedroom, but a door is open and looks out onto what I think is a living room. The color in here is red. Not just red, you know, but like this deep scarlet. There’s a woman sitting below me on a bed, leaning over with her hands and cradling her head. As her crying gets softer, I start to hear the sounds of, I dunno, I think it’s a violin, playing softly in the air. There’s no way to tell where it’s coming from, but it’s got a slow pace. A few other violins join it as they swell together in one high moment.

At the same time, a man screams from outside, scaring the woman. She nearly jumps out of the bed as he suddenly stumbles into the room, his fist pounding the wall.

“Stella,” he shouts, grinning at her as he runs his meaty hand through his wave of blond hair. “Stella, stop the crying! For heaven’s sake just stop the crying!”

“Stop it, George!” she screams back, turning and walking away before he jumps over to her. He grabs her with both his hands, this mad smile across his lips.

“Just take your medicine, Stella; it’ll make you feel better,” he says.

“I don’t want to feel better,” she replies, crying again as she shakes. “What’s the point? Why am I even trying?”

“Stella, if you don’t take your medicine, I’m going to report you to Security. What do you think will happen then?”

“You wouldn’t. You can’t. You know! You know what will happen.”

He’s breathing really heavy as he leans in to her, and I can barely make it out, but I hear it clear enough. “That’s right. They’ll put a needle up your vein and make sure you’re topped out with Creep. You want that, Stella? You want them to fill you up with it?’

What… the… hell?

She pushes him off with her hands, and he slams into the wall, his eyes wide with madness. “Time to take your daily, Stella. Time to take your daily.”

She breathes really heavily for a second, staring at him. Then she nods, walking to the nightstand. From the top shelf, she pulls out a bottle, tapping out two blue pills. For a second she stares down at them in her hand, then glances back at him. “A daily will do you.”

“That’s right,” he agrees, shaking his head as he smiles. “A daily will do you.”

Stella nods, then tilts her head back and pops the pills down her throat. For a moment nothing seems to happen, but George is waiting, the two of them staring at each other. Then Stella leans forward, letting out this huge wail. It’s like she’s about to start crying again, but it turns into this long, insane laugh. The sound of it bounces off the walls and through the vents, echoing over and over again until it’s rattling inside my eardrums. I cringe as it soaks into my bones, watching as the two of them stumble into each other’s arms, laughing like maniacs as they collapse into the bed. They lie there just laughing and laughing, like they’re not going to stop.

I can’t take it anymore. I start crawling away. Whatever they’re feeling, it’s too strong for them to notice any noise I might be making.

I’m starting to think that I was wrong about Sec Tech.

I’ve always assumed that the really supersecret technology they find below Floor 21 had something to do with whatever was outside the tower. I thought it might have been, I dunno, like, secret military stuff that was full of ways to fight the Creep. Or something.

Yeaaaah, well, maybe not.

I’m sitting here, and I watch these guys in the hallway. As they walk by, a screen just flares to life overhead. Except, the thing is, there wasn’t a screen there before. Images just start showing out of thin air, and everybody passes by like it’s nothing. It looks like some sort of commercial, with a bunch of ads for stuff like watches and decorations for homes. You know, the sort of things we can’t have down below unless they find it during the Scavenging.

About the floating screen. First of all, what? We’ve got nothing like that on any of the lower levels. I’ve never even heard of technology close to that, so it’s got to come from somewhere else. Only thing I can think of is that it’s technology they brought up from way down in the Deep Creep.

Situation number two. I watch and see one person kinda just walk up to the wall and touch it. That’s all it takes for it to light up with a screen and all these buttons. Then she just talks to it, like it can hear her.

Thing about it is, it does.

Out of the wall, I hear the words, “ Whose location would you like to know? ”

She says, “Timothy Dalton, please. Authority number 1178.”

It doesn’t even take a second before the wall responds, “ Timothy Dalton is located in the library of hallway 15, east wing .”

“Thank you.” Then she turns and walks away as the screen fades out. The wall’s white again, so you can’t even tell that there was some sort of control system there just a second ago. Things are literally popping out of nowhere on Floor 1.