“Tell me one thing,” Michelle said. “Why are there books blocking the doorways? I get that there’s not enough shelf space, but don’t you stack them out of the way whenever you go anywhere?”

“I do,” said Sue. “And every time there’s an earthquake, they fall over and the doors autoclose. Believe me, it annoys me more than it does you.”

They were sitting on a heavily patched couch in a room tilted forty degrees. The books had all fallen to bury the far door; the Chipros men were busy clearing them out and stacking them on either side of the door, but it looked like they’d take a while. The task called for a skip loader. The entire area had partially collapsed and spilled down into the floor below; Sue assured them that it was a shortcut.

“And this room was knocked over by an earthquake too, I suppose?” Michelle asked. “Is this place going to collapse around our ears?”

“It’s had pretty much no maintenance for a very long time,” Sue said, “but it’s held up pretty well for all that time. So I guess I’ll pencil in ‘probably not, unless someone does something stupid like spraying it with bullets, or not letting the mechanic work on it’. I’m sure there’s a sick burn in there somewhere, but danged if I can –”

The PA interrupted them again, and this time the old man was clearly panicking. “Attention, please. We need a mechanic in Engineering immediately, repeat, we need a mechanic in Engineering now. Please respond.”

Sue looked at the soldiers and their guns and sniffed. “Speak of the devil. And speaking of burns, sick and otherwise, I smell smoke. Will you let me see to it yet?”

“Why should I?” Michelle asked, but her voice was uneasy. “If we become immortal, it won’t even matter if the Library burns down. Will it?”

Sue balled a fist. “You’ll be beyond caring, sure, but I won’t be.”

“Once I get the book, you can do whatever you like. So it’s in your best interests to cooperate and get it to me quickly.”

“I see the door!” called a soldier. “Give me a moment –” He tossed a few more books aside, then put his boot to the door.

“And speaking of stupid things,” Michelle undertoned, just before he broke through the door; the books still pressed against it promptly fell through, and all the books lying on them fell after, and a moment later the soldier had been pushed through and buried under an avalanche of books. The other men rushed through to clear them off him. Michelle and Sue ignored them to press forward.

The next room was full of computer servers and unidentifiable machinery, all covered with intricate glyphs like a sorcerer’s tower, all lit by dull red emergency lights. Sue made her way over to a bank of computers, then reached under and pulled out a cardboard box. From it, she pulled a thin hardcover book.

“Here it is,” she said. “The book that tells you how to live forever.” Michelle approached; Sue handed it over and bent back over the box.

“Aaand it’s in the unreadable language,” Michelle said, annoyed without being surprised.

“One of my best friends came with me, back when I first arrived here,” Sue said. “We had the same problem. Eventually, we found a local and persuaded them to give us a translation.” She straightened, holding a book the same size, this one titled, Immortality for Dummies, and handed it over. “It has everything you need. One final warning, though … you haven’t been asking the right questions. Why are you confident that it has anything you want?”

“This is the book of immortality, isn’t it?” Michelle asked, getting annoyed.

“Yes.”

“Well, I want to become immortal, don’t I?”

“Do you?”

“Shut up or I’ll have Aaron shoot you.” Michelle opened the book and began reading. “?” She looked up at Sue. “This is just a whole lot of blueprints.”

“Did you want to be told to eat well and get regular organ transplants?” Sue asked, ignoring the threat. “It tells you how to build a machine that will make you immortal.”

“The building is on fire,” Michelle said. “I don’t have time to do that.”

Sue tutted. “You really should read through it, but if you can’t be bothered, there’s a working model right there.”

She pointed to a huge, boxy machine standing a few paces away. It was mostly covered with chromed stainless steel, with the exception of one panel that had been prised away, revealing innards of glittering jelly. On the front was a large red button.

“Optical gel circuitry,” Sue said proudly. “The technology here is amazing. I tried taking it apart a while back, but even with the schematics, so much of it goes over my head. Yes, it still works,” she added, reading Michelle’s expression, “I put everything back where I found it. Optical gel is a lot more resilient than electronic circuit boards.”

“So … I just push the button? Don’t I have to enter any input? Or, I don’t know, turn it on or something?”

“There’s this old joke,” Sue said. “In the future, computers will have only one button, and it’ll be labelled: do what I want you to do. Press it, and you’ll become immortal. This is the point of no return. Last chance.”

Michelle set her jaw, walked over to the machine, and hit the button.

She fell to the ground like a ragdoll.

Aaron had his revolver on Sue in a heartbeat; the other soldiers fanned out, levelling their guns. “What just happened? What did you do to her?!”

“You’ll see.”

A few machines along, a printer hummed to life and began spitting out paper. The tray fed into another machine that clacked quietly for a moment, then a conveyor belt presented a bound hardcover book, the same style as the thousands underfoot.

“I can’t read the title,” Sue said, “but I can guess what it says. ‘Michelle Bright: a biography.’ The people who lived here valued knowledge above all else, so they tunnelled across to other worlds to learn about their technology and cultures. When they found one whose people had figured out how to transcribe a human – every detail about their mind, body, soul, their history and relationships, everything that makes you who you are – and put it into a book, where they could be reprinted infinitely even if their body were destroyed, and every iota of information about them would be perfectly preserved forever … well, it’s not surprising that there aren’t any of them left. Jason and I figured that out the hard way, too.”

Aaron was breathing hard, his grip on his gun shaking. “You killed her. Murderer.”

“I gave her every warning I could,” Sue said coolly, “and more than I was supposed to. I’m a guest here; I have to follow their rules, and one is that you can’t be spoon-fed knowledge, you have to –”

There were four sharp retorts. She blinked and followed the trajectory of the shots, her hand instinctively moving out to trace the path from his gun into her stomach. Her fingers came away red.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Oh,” she said. “That’s …”

She swayed, then stepped over to the immortality machine and stumbled. She managed to slap her hand onto the button, and collapsed on top of Michelle, trailing a red handprint down the machine’s shell. There was a moment of silence, and then the printer began whirring.

Static fizzed and the old man came onto the PA again, his voice resigned now. “The Library is closing in fifteen minutes,” he said sadly. “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.” It clicked off.

There came a clatter from the doorway. Aaron and his soldiers whirled: Roger and Jill stood staring at the two girls, where Sue’s blood was soaking them both and the books underfoot.

“Wait,” Aaron began, lowering his gun and raising a free hand placatingly, “it’s not –”

Roger didn’t wait for him to finish; without a word, he grabbed Jill’s hand and they turned and sprinted away, books flying away underfoot. One of the soldiers took aim.

“Forget them,” Aaron snapped, shoving the man’s gun barrel upward. He sniffed twice: smoke was thick in the air now. He clicked his gun’s safety on, holstered it, threw Sue’s book out of the binder and onto the floor, took Michelle’s, and tucked it under his arm. “We’re leaving, now!”

Roger and Jill ran for it. They reached the vault hall, practically flew up the ladder, over the gatorcar chamber while it chomped angrily at them, through to the room just past where he’d met Jill, through the security station and flower room and another room full of ships in glass bottles, then into a final one with a lot of beanbags. On one was his sister, Charlotte. She lay on a beanbag, her face scrunched into her elbow. She wore jeans, a pink shirt, and tennis shoes, all noticeably scruffy.

“We meet at last,” Jill murmured. Roger kept moving and knelt beside his sister.

She stirred and looked up at him. “Rog, my head is killing me,” she moaned piteously. “Is that smoke? Where were you?”

“We ran into a Chipros unit and took ages losing them.” She sat up in alarm, then reeled and clutched at her temples. “Yeah. We’ve got to get away from them.”

“My head hurts …”

“I’ll find some medicine, but we’ve got to move.”

The door they had first come from, before meeting Jill, was thick oak. He had of course cleared it of books then, but he’d closed it behind them so that Charlotte might have a moment to hide if she heard someone on the other side, so he ran over and yanked it open. This was a mistake, because the opposite side was an inferno.

He staggered backward, slipped on a book, and fell; the fire sucked air out of the room and their lungs, creating a pressure drop that, luckily, wrenched the door shut. Unluckily, it slammed forcefully enough to knock cracks into itself; more oxygen was sucked in through the holes, and smoke blown out, where it formed little wispy spirals that slowly flowed away into ceiling vents.

Roger dry-heaved, gulping for air. Jill hurried over and turned him onto his side. “Are you hurt?”

He coughed. “No, just … winded. I’ll be fine.”

She looked at the door. The air and smoke exchanged were not a problem, not as long as the vents could deal with it; the fact that the door was being destroyed was. Every room in the Library was overflowing with books, which were made of paper, and they wouldn’t be able to stay ahead of the fire if they had to clear out every doorway. They could try hiding in Sue’s vault, or atop the tower, but those would involve going back toward the Chipros men, who’d just shot Sue and Michelle.

“The shrine,” she said. “I saw an oxygen tank near it, and there are no books inside. If we hide behind the altar and take turns with the tank, we’ll have a chance.”

Roger thought. He really didn’t want to take Charlotte there, and the fire might make the room collapse. On the other hand, a stalker was about the least dangerous thing left in the Library, and if the building did collapse, they were probably dead no matter where they hid. He nodded.

He went to Charlotte and took her hand, and the three of them ran off, slamming each door behind them to hopefully buy a few more seconds. They passed through one room after another, then ran up the spiral stairway. Roger grabbed the scuba tank and mask as he passed, and they made it to the shrine.

The hunchback was still in there, biting his knuckles. He looked up as they entered. “This really isn’t supposed to happen,” he said.

“Yeah, you’re telling me,” Roger panted, setting the heavy scuba gear down. Charlotte sat down beside it, swaying from dizziness. “Everyone inside, and let’s lock the door. Sis, try not to worry about the photos. We can –”

“Room for one more?”

They turned. There was a newcomer behind them, a girl in a white knee-length gown and a pair of sandals. She looked about ten, had black hair in a pixie cut, fair skin, and warm honey-coloured eyes, but her most unusual feature was a pair of diaphanous wings on her back like a dragonfly’s. For some reason, the hunchback took a step backward, and Jill moved closer to Roger.

“Of course,” Roger said, standing aside to let the girl in, then shutting the door behind her. From behind, he could see that her gown was backless, tied at the nape of the neck; her wings sprouted directly from the skin around her shoulder blades. “Cool wings.”

She ignored him, approached the hunchback, and smiled. “You know what I am, right. Want to do this?”

He backed up until he bumped into a wall. “I – no! Heck no. I just want to leave.”

“You want to go out?” Roger said. “Of the room made of stone and not full of kindling? You know it’s on fire outside, right?”

“I’ll take my chances!”

“Leave?” repeated the winged girl, tilting her head to the side. “You aren’t thinking of telling the guardian on me, are you?”

“I – n-no, of course not!”

Roger couldn’t tell whether he was lying badly, or was just too terrified to keep his voice steady. He looked over at the girl, trying to work out what had the hunchback so scared, but she didn’t make eye contact. Maybe he was just weirded out over the wings; old people often reacted badly to even piercings and tattoos, so perhaps he was just unsettled over whatever sort of body modification that was.

She shrugged and turned away, her expression suddenly bored. “Man, whatever. Like he’d get here in time even if you did. Go on.”

“Thank you …”

He hobbled around the edges of the room, pushed the door open, and ran for it. Roger watched him go, still not understanding, but he shut the door once he was gone.

Jill was staring at the girl with unblinking intensity. The girl had given her a moment’s look before becoming bored and looking up at the ceiling. Roger tried to catch Jill’s eye to figure out what was up with her, but no luck.

Without warning, Charlotte collapsed. He ran to her and cradled her; she was clutching her head and sobbing. “Sis! What’s wrong?”

“Hurts … burning …”

Roger squeezed her hand, trying to think of something to do. “Do either of you know first aid? Or have any medicine? Anything?”

Jill looked from the two of them to the winged girl. “You,” she said, hesitated, and pressed on. “Wouldn’t happen to know anything about the old woman on the lookout tower, would you?”

The girl blinked slowly and fixed her gaze on the stained glass wasp on the ceiling, not interested or inclined to talk.

Jill set her mouth into a line. “You might know something about who sabotaged the sprinklers and lit the fires, too.”

Roger looked up at the winged girl. She was still pretending not to hear Jill, but her eyes were suddenly very sharp. It suddenly struck him that her wings were fused, more like a wasp’s than a dragonfly’s.

“I think you know more than a little about what’s wrong with her. And I think we both know who took all these photos.”

The winged girl took a little skipping step and landed atop the altar. She snapped her head around to lock eyes with Jill, then yawned and gave a lopsided smile. “Man, you talk a lot. Are we going to have a problem?”

Roger gently set Charlotte down on the ground and rose to his full height. He was much bigger than the girl. “You’ll have a problem with me,” he said, “if you can fix her but don’t. What’s going on, what’s happening to her?”

She tilted her head again. “So much for hoping I’d be able to do this without killing anyone else. Well, whatever.”

A fire axe appeared out of thin air to her side. It floated unsupported for a moment, before spinning forward and thudding into Roger’s chest. He stared at it in shock, then coughed blood and fell.

Jill shrieked and stepped backward. The axe twisted itself free of him, spattering blood, and turned to face her and shot forward; she dodged and grabbed it by the handle. It tried to wrestle free of her grasp, but she held on with both hands, and after a moment it stilled.

The winged girl frowned, puzzled. “Hey, what are you doing? That’s cheating!”

Jill panted. Her gaze swept around the room, from the bloody axe in her hands to Roger’s unmoving body to Charlotte to the girl. Her expression hardened. “I’m hard to kill,” she said, widening her grip for combat. “And I really, really don’t like you right now.”

The winged girl folded her arms and pouted. “Hmph. Aren’t you just a human?”

“Yeah,” Jill said. “And I can tell you’re not. What are you?”

The girl tsked. “Whatever. Guess I’ll just have to kick it up a notch, then.”

Circular saws a metre wide materialised and span forward. Jill barely had time to jerk her axe down in a clumsy parry; one saw ricocheted off the axe handle and buried itself in a wall, but the other only glanced off and went clean through her right side, cutting almost to her navel with a spurt of blood. She fell.

The winged girl looked from Jill to Roger to Charlotte. Roger was still; Jill was still moving, barely, feebly trying to hold the mortal wound shut; Charlotte’s hands were around her head, but she had stopped moving.