SHIRA

Me and Lynn have done this a hundred times, so it doesn't take us long to finish. We don't talk while we do it, which I am fine with. It’s always strange when talking to Sober-Lynn, so I am more than happy to work with him in silence.

Lynn might not be the oldest of the gang, but he wears age worse than the others. He sleeps a lot, and drinks too. None of us sees him unless he is working or drinking, since he always hides in his room. It was worse when I joined the Organization in 2000, but Morrigan and Adi, who are the only ones who was there when Lynn himself joined the Organization, both say that he is still not the same. I can't imagine how he was back then. Morrigan told me that he was friendly if a bit shy, that he liked things and he liked people. Adi told me that he used to visit the workshops and laugh.

Then I guess he got tired, like most of us are bound to do. It's not easy living as long as we do, it's not natural in any sense. I am lucky that I am still young. It's been twenty two years since I was born, which means my family is still out there. Which means I still have to be careful when traveling, that people might still be looking for me.

We parted ways as soon as Lynn and I are finished and I’ve thanked him for the help. I head take the Elevator all the way up to the Second floor. The numbering of the Pyramid doesn’t make any sense. The highest floor is the first floor, and the lowest is the fifteenth. In defense of the building, it was constructed hundreds of years ago, when most buildings weren’t even two stories tall.

Camilla is sitting all alone, and she looks is already looking at me when the elevator doors open.

“Hey,” I grinned, jogging over to her. I didn't expect her to answer, and continued. “Ready for your tour?”

“Where is my stuff?” She asked instead, her hands stuffed in her pockets and her eyes on the elevator.

“I dropped it off on the fifth floor, that's where the majority of rooms are located”

“Then lets start there” Camilla got up and headed straight towards the elevator.

“Not so fast,” I exclaimed, jogging up to her. “We take the tour one floor at a time.”

“I want my stuff” Camilla just said, looking at me like her glare might make me give in. It didn’t

“You’ll get it.” I told her, stepping closer and looking at her, a smirk on my face that I didn't bother wiping away.

“Are you challenging me?” Camilla asked calmly.

“Don’t be absurd.” I said, patting her on the shoulder. “The quicker I show you the next two floors, the quicker you’ll get get your stuff.”

She jerked her shoulder away from my hand and headed for the elevator. I couldn't help but smile as I followed her down to the third floor: Formal Dining.

It's never in use. Adi told me it used to be filled all the time back in the days, back when there were more members of the Organization. There are only about fifteen registered Tethered on the planet. Our kind is either dying or maybe we’ve gotten better at hiding. I hope it's the latter, because the thought of the former makes me feel depressed.

The doors open and I show Camilla around. There is one long table in the middle. The room is golden and red carpets cover up most of the glass walls, expect for a few spots. Camilla looks at it briefly, uninterested.

“We hold dinners in here when someone has a birthday or when we are celebrating something. We also use it sometimes for holidays, but those times are not as nice. There is still a lot of debate on if we should celebrate human traditions like Christmas and Eid. Adi thinks it's pointless, since it's the celebration of the human’s gods, which he believes doesn't exist, but some of us are religious, so we still hold those kind of feasts, even if they do go a little stiff”

“Adi.” Camilla says, tasting the name. “That’s your leader, right”

“Yes” I tell her as I follow her to the elevator and watch the doors close again. “He is the oldest, born in the bold year of 1770.”

“Shit,” Camilla cursed. “That’s old. I thought… I don't know. When Erika said you guys lived long lives, I thought she meant you were all like forty but looked twenty”

“Nope” I said, popping the p. “She meant what she meant. She always does. Erika is the most honest person I’ve ever met.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Camilla raised an eyebrow at me, clearly sceptics. “I can’t believe that” She said as if it was a fact, as if she was politely declining my offer.

“Then don’t” I told her, equally polite. The doors opened. “This is the fourth floor: Kitchen and Common Room.”

Camilla went in ahead of me and looked around. “It smells”

“Yeah, it always does,” I said sniffing the air. “It's hard to expect anything else when you have an entire floor dedicated to making food and watching tv, especially when the only inhabitants are young adults with too much free time.”

Camilla poked her head inside the cabins, and I couldn't help but smile as she took out a chicken wing from the fridge and devoured it.

“Hungry?” I asked teasingly.

“Don’t say anything” She grumbled with food in her mouth, and I was reminded of Erika telling us that she had been homeless for a long while. I wondered how kind the Danish people were to their homeless, properly kinder than the Americans.

“We have lunch in here every day at twelve o’clock,” I told her. “It's the only time where we are all together and we usually use that time to update everyone on what's important”

“But the kitchen is always open?” She asked, stuffing her pockets with carrots.

“The kitchen is always opened” I confirmed.

Camilla shouldered past me as she headed for the elevator. “Good to know”

I got in beside her. As we went down, I couldn't help but look at her. Erika had taken the time to warn me that she properly wouldn’t like me, but it still hit hard now that I realized Erika had been right. Camilla seemed like she couldn’t care less about me, like she didn’t respect me. I would just have to try harder at befriending her.

CAMILLA

I don't know why, but Shira is the only person so far that I actually respect. She feels more real than Erika, more peaceful than Zeph, smarter than Aiden. She just shows me around the place and provides me with stupid yet helpful chatter.

The doors open again and I step out before her. I won't ever tell anyone, but I am terrified of elevators, of confinement, of the thought of suddenly falling and not being able to stop falling. Every time I’ve stepped out to a new floor, it's been like when I first came into the pyramid and suddenly learned that I had been breathing wrong.

“This is it,” Shira said from behind me. “The Fifth Floor: Housing.”

In front of us was a long hallway with doors on either side. I walked over to the closest door and read in blue-green letters: Lynn, Number 56.

“Mostly everyone lives in one of these rooms.” Shira continued, walking down the hallway. I followed behind her. “You have a room too of course. You’ll find your stuff in there.”

She opened a seemingly random door and I stepped inside. The room was bigger than I expected. There was a king sized bed propped up against one of the walls, it looked old with it’s dark wooden frame and silk pillows. On the floor was a thick, gray carpet that I knew from just looking at must be softer than anything else in this room. The wall on the other side of the room was glass from top to bottom, and looked out into the sea. It was darker now than it had been when I was in the lobby, and I did not know if it was because of how deep we had gone, or if it was because of how late it must have gotten. My limited knowledge of geography told me that I was closer to the equator now than I’d been in Denmark, which must mean the sun set later in the day.

All my stuff was was placed in the middle of the room, and I was just about to go through it all when I noticed that Shira was still standing in the doorway, now with a big book in her arms, that I didn't know where came from.

“It's a nice room, isn’t it?” Shira said as she sat down on my bed. “Nice, if a bit blank. You’ll let me know if you want my help decorating” It wasn't a question so I didn’t bother with answering.

She opened the book and motioned for me to sit down beside her. I sat down reluctantly and looked. Shira had opened up to a page with a photo of her in one corner, and different boxes of information, presumably about her.

“This book has been passed down through centuries,” She started. “From one rookie to another. Everyone who has ever been a part of the Organization has their own page in it.” She handed me the book and I looked at it. It didn't feel old, the leather around it was still a bit stiff and the paper was white and clean, with only a slight coat of dusting on the cover.

“I’ll have a page in it.” I realized aloud.

“Of course,” Shira said as she took back the book. “I’ll even help you make it tomorrow, but now we have to finish the tour. There are still ten floors left”

“No” I said, trying not to fidget with my hands. I didn't want Shira to see how nervous I had suddenly grown.

“What do you mean no?” Shira laughed. “Of course there are ten more floors left”

“I don't want a page in your book” I said, getting up from the bed. I couldn't explain why the thought scared me so much. I guess it’s all the years of trying to erase myself from the world, all the years of hiding and running.

“Oh,” Shira simply said. “Well. You have to. But it’s not, you know, like we are going to be writing down all your deep dark fears. It's only statistics. They help Adi when he has to choose people for missions.”

“I don't care, I don't want my name in your book”

“It's just a name” Shira said, voice small.

I stuffed my hands in my pockets to keep them from shaking, then left the room. “Okay.” I said, my voice louder than intended. “I’ll just go find Erika or who ever Adi is and tell them that I will be leaving”

“Wait,” Shira yelled, going after me as I left the room. “Let’s figure something out tomorrow, please?”

“I won't promise anything” I said as we went into the elevator again, going down.