Jason Luthor - Floor 21

Hah. Yeah, there are more than a few perks to being a Scavenger.

About the only concern I have with marching every hallway is the fact that it’s so drawn out. The first day of the Scavenging is basically a marching show through those halls so other people can see us. I mean, of course, we don’t do it after Floor 11, but marching around seven floors on this parade wipes out nearly the entire morning. We don’t usually get to the Floor 12 checkpoint until the early afternoon, and then, before we can even think about proceeding, we’ve got to make sure with Security that we’re all who we say we are.

Again, for the record, why? It’s a complete waste of time. But Tower Authority wants it, so of course, we do it. Authority knows why it does what it does, and our job isn’t to question. Our job is to follow our instructions. Still, by the time we’re actually proceeding on from Floor 12, it’s well into the afternoon. Then, of course, we can’t actually just go straight down into the Creep. There’s always the checkups we have to do.

Floor 12’s where you start to first see the signs of it, the small growths on parts of the wall or along the floorboards. It’s Floors 15 and 16 where things get disgusting. The stuff looks like it’s taking over the walls. I wonder why we just don’t take a flamethrower to it down there, but no, I’m not stupid. I know using it at these levels would just instigate an incident like we had last year, when we provoked the Creep into raging up the stairwell. Anyway, we document the growth level as usual. Of course, our presence serves double duty. On the one hand, we get to see what the Creep is looking like on the lower floors, but we also get to chat with the locals. That’s a lot more important than younger Scavengers realize. They think it’s a waste of time, but in reality it’s an important part about being a member of our order.

An important part that Commander Abbott doesn’t care about, but again, that’s off the record.

Being a Scavenger is about more than just finding new materials for the Tower to use. It’s also about being an inspiration to people that sometimes find their lives hopeless. Yes, I understand that everyone above Floor 11’s relatively okay, but you can’t afford to lose the support of the people on the lower levels. Lose them, and you lose the people that work as parts of Cleanup, Maintenance, Service, and all sorts of other things. These people only get to head up to the upper levels when they’re working, but, you know, sometimes it’s just getting out of the Creep that helps you preserve your sanity.

Especially since, by Floor 16, you start to see them—the Demons. Don’t get me wrong, the fear and paranoia you start to feel on the lower levels can be a mind-killer. Still, you can adjust to it. You start finding ways to compensate. Still, there’s no compensating for the shadows you start to see. On Floor 12 they start appearing, but they look like tricks of your environment, as if the lights in the hallway are flickering in places. It can catch you off guard, but it’s nothing you can’t deal with.

By Floor 16, though, those same shadows are taking shape. Not quite human, but… something. I’m not sure whether it’s worse when they disappear or when they stay put. There are times you could swear you’re looking at a shadow person down the hall, and the person just stares back at you. It’s really unsettling the first time you hit the lower levels. At least most of the time you catch these shadow people in the corner of your eye, so it’s not so bad.

On the record, I find it worse when they just stand there. Not all my men agree, but for me there’s nothing worse than seeing a shadowy figure just looking at you.

Then they move. They walk toward you. If you don’t stand your ground, get control of your mind, well, I’ve seen men lose it. Worse, I’ve had to put down men that panicked and started firing blindly into the air. Firing off your rifle like that can get the entire team killed. As much as I hate to say it, it’s better to just take out one panicked man than put the entire group at risk.

We do as much training with new Scavengers as possible to prevent this, of course. We’ll take them into the lower levels without weapons and teach them how to maintain discipline, control their breath, and lower their pulse. There are a lot of things you can do to help keep yourself cool. Because of all that training, most of the time we’re able to calm a panicking man down.

If he starts pulling that trigger, though… well, you only have one option.

At any rate, that’s why we document those hallways. Not every single one of them, of course. That would simply take too much time. But we do patrol enough area that we get to talk to the local people, hear their concerns, and give them some promise that we’ll be heading down below to find stuff that they can count on to arrive in their food boxes. You know and they know it won’t be much, but it’s the promise of something coming, the promise of something to look forward to, that makes them happy.

You would be surprised how powerful hope is on the human mind.

The funniest part about passing through Floor 16 is definitely the story. Creepy Sally. I know the administrators on Floor 1 don’t particularly care about the legends down here, but the story of Creepy Sally is told throughout the rest of the Tower. It’s powerful, and it makes kids think twice before touching the Creep.

I’ve been scavenging for six years now, and I’ve never seen her. I’m not saying she doesn’t exist. I’m just saying that I, personally, have never laid an eye on her.

Still, the locals are pretty insistent about saying she exists. Normally you brush off this kind of talk because locals on every floor tell stories about someone they know or saw that got taken by the Creep. The thing is, we know what the Creep does to a person if they get trapped in it. They don’t change, they don’t get warped, and the stuff doesn’t grow on your skin. Again, six years of doing this, and I’ve never seen anything like that.

Now, I’m quite aware that it will lash out at you. It’ll even engulf you, and at that point, you’re almost guaranteed to die unless you survive the flamethrower we apply to get your body out. If so, count yourself lucky. People who get trapped in the Creep when it gets agitated normally suffocate.

What the Creep doesn’t do is grow on you. It doesn’t infect your skin or get into your blood. Of course, I’ve never chosen to barricade myself inside an infested room and waited to see if it’d attach to me, but we come across people on the lower levels that spend their lives in moderate Creep conditions.

No. They are most definitely not showing any signs of the Creep covering their bodies or any of that nonsense. Still, the people on Floor 16 are particularly insistent that Sally does exist. And I will admit, they have some rather interesting proof. In particular, the far western halls are littered with Security gear. Vests, clothing, gloves, that sort of thing. Security doesn’t simply take their clothes off to dump it in the hallways, and yet Tower Authority refuses to send a Cleanup crew to remove all of it. So, does that make me suspicious?

Well… slightly.

Of course, the stories of Creepy Sally are old. They were old, apparently, when I was a kid. Even my father remembered hearing them when he was young, so that means they go back at least three generations. Stories like these mean a lot more to people like me that actually had to grow up in the lower levels. I lived on Floor 16, so I knew more about Sally than most people. I knew you didn’t go into the west wing unless you wanted her to eat you alive.