Sometimes, finding the stairs in an unfamiliar parking garage is annoyingly convoluted. You’ll finally spot a sign that points toward the exit, only for it to be the car exit, not the people exit. Or maybe it’s an exit out of the garage, not into the building. Or maybe there aren’t any signs at all, and you end up following a row of doors into an oversized garbage room.

Well, let me tell you, it’s much more annoying in the dark. All we have are the lights of Luci’s and Elias’ cellphones to guide us. I didn’t leave my apartment with my own, which I’ve been regretting for a while now. Worse yet, there’s this cloying, humid heat building in the underlayer of the Lookout Towers. I don’t know if it’s just the lack of air flow or something else, but it’s gross and rather uncomfortably damp.

We’ve only been down here a few minutes, though that’s a lot of time to spend wandering aimlessly around a stifling, pitch black parking garage. I don’t like wandering around in the dark in the best of times, and I’m certainly not a fan when there could be a colony of flying piranhas dangling unseen above our heads.

“I found something!” says Luci.

Sadly, it’s not the stairs.

Illuminated in the pallid yellow glow of her cellphone’s flashlight is a pillar of thick, ropey vines exploding out of the pavement and straight up into the floors above us. The vines are rich with thorns about as large and pointed as shark teeth. Little leafy tendrils snake out from between the cracks, flowers speckling the vines. They’re rather gross, their mottled clam-yellow petals curling away from cushions of powdery pollen. They emit a sour, earthen odor, like fruit you forgot in the back of the fridge.

Ignoring the part where this jungle monstrosity is in a parking garage, the whole thing doesn’t look right. It’s not just the flowers. The vines are desiccated, all withered and shaded like a yellowing bruise. It appears to be dead. Still, I can hear it rustling, as if it’s growing directly beneath us.

I try to examine it like I did with the other monsters but nothing comes up. Must be more of an environmental hazard than an enemy then.

“Careful, chispita. Stay back," says Elias.

I can almost hear Luci roll her eyes. "I'm not going to touch it."

"This could be the infestation they spoke of,” Elias says.

Luci moves the flashlight, its glow passing over the vines, and that’s when I see it. Where the light touches, the vines are still. But just outside the halo, in the liminal space between light and darkness, the vines undulate like tangled snakes slithering towards freedom. Towards us.

Something tickles my foot.

“Back up, back up!” I say, shuffling backwards. “Point the phone down. At our feet.”

She does. A dozen thorny vines wriggling towards us suddenly freeze.

“Oh my god, they’re moving,” she says.

Nope. No thank you. “We need to find the stairs.”

With newfound urgency, Elias waves his phone around the garage. “This way,” he says. I don’t know if he’s found something or is just making an executive decision, but so long as it’s away, I’m all for it.

As we charge across the lot, Luci keeps flashing her phone behind us, warding off whatever vines may be following. I don’t see any. It doesn’t stop the paranoia though. Every crack in the pavement becomes a vine, every shifting sound a warning that it’s coming. I don’t even know what the vines will do if they reach me, only that I won’t like it and I sure as hell don’t want to find out.

Finally, Elias’ light catches a glass wall. Behind it sits a pair of elevators and a stairwell door. We rush toward it. Elias leads the way, ushering us inside.

The second the door swishes closed, I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. Elias pans the flashlight across the glass and out into the garage.

For a split second, I swear I spot one of those piranha monsters tangled in a vine, pale petals pinned on its teeth. It wouldn’t surprise me, that the bats are attracted to the plant’s putrid blossoms. But the light passes over it. There’s nothing more to see. Just cars.

“Come on!” says Luci, opening the door to the stairs. There’s a pad for the keyfob, but luckily the lack of power has rendered it useless.

We head inside.

Luci immediately charges up the darkened stairwell, her light bobbing up and down with each step.

“Luci, slow down! I can’t see you,” calls Elias as he mounts the stairs at a much more cautious pace.

“Aw, come on. Can’t catch up, Tío?”

“We don’t know what’s up there.”

She leans over the railing and pouts at him. “Fiiine.”

Inside the stairwell, the heat from the garage has dissipated. It’s cool and airy with a faint garbage-y smell. Like rotting fruit. Whatever those flowers were, they let off a hell of a stink.

One staircase up, there’s a door leading to the lobby and a sign labeling this stairwell as the “West Tower.” I glance through the window into the lobby, but I can’t see anything.

Something rumbles above us. The stairwell quakes. I latch onto the railing as flecks of dust drift down from the ceiling.

After a few seconds, the tremor settles.

“Um…”

“Was that an earthquake?” says Luci, waving her light around.

“Chicago doesn’t have earthquakes,” I reply.

“That’s not entirely true,” Elias says. “Although there are no fault lines beneath the city, we often get seismic activity from fault zones to the north and south. The quakes just aren’t significant enough to feel.” He pauses. “Nothing earth-shattering.”

I stare at him. “Really? Puns?”

“Oh he hasn’t even started,” Luci scoffs.

Before he has a chance to reply, Luci takes off up the stairs again. With a shrug, I follow. Between creepy plants and a giant bat matriarch, I’m okay with chancing a quake or two. So long as the building doesn’t collapse on top of us. Or plummet off the side. Or buckle beneath a coil of constricting vines.

“How many stories is this building?” I ask after another flight up. I’m just a few steps in front of him, my body casting a long shadow in the halo of his flashlight.

“I’m unsure,” answers Elias. “I recall a billboard boasting about its height. The next tallest building is thirty stories, so I would assume it’s at least a little more than that.”

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

It shouldn’t take too long then. The less time we’re here, the better. The countdown, which now sits just under 17 hours, is largely useless. According to Elias’ calculations, the zone will collapse in just under three hours, however the Lookout Towers have even less time than that. If we can’t spot the portal station from up high… I don’t know. As my fiancé would say, it doesn’t bear thinking about. He was weirdly formal like that. A proper English guy. I wonder what he’d say about all this. I wonder what he’d say about me.

A few minutes later, we’re already on the ninth floor. My muscles are stiff - more from tiredness than any level of exercise. Thank the system for high dexterity. I should be sluggish. Instead, my feet are fast and sure.

Luci’s about a floor ahead of us. She keeps scampering ahead, her head off in the clouds. So far, we’ve seen no sign of the vines. We still keep checking behind us, just in case.

Luci yelps.

“What, what’s happening?” Elias says, bounding up the stairs.

I race after him to find Luci standing by the door to the tenth floor, her light directed at her feet. The door is just barely ajar, held open by a bloody lifeless arm.

Elias pushes his niece behind him. “Careful.”

“I’m fine. It just surprised me.”

Grasping the railing, she begins to head back up the stairwell.

“Don’t go too far,” Elias warns.

“I won’t,” she calls.

Once she’s a few steps up, he flashes his light in the gap of the door, illuminating the hallway. I can’t see from my angle.

“More vines,” he says quietly. “A lot.”

“Bodies too?”

He swallows. “It’s difficult to count.”

“Shit.” I sigh. “Well. Onwards and upwards, I guess.”

“You want to keep going?”

“What’s the alternative?”

He shakes his head, his face knotted with concern. Luci is already a floor ahead again, though the light on her phone seems to have a slightly more frenetic weave to it. With a deep breath, Elias gestures for me to move on.

We climb. One flight. Then another. Just as our nerves begin to settle, the building quakes. The stairs jitter under our feet, then quickly still.

“Luci?” Elias calls.

“I’m okay,” she echoes back.

I glance at Elias, predicting another bout of protest, but he doesn’t say anything more. There’s simply nothing left to say. Every hour is a new horror. First Chicago floats away, then a voice tells us the world is ending, then looting, then monsters, then shrinkage, then man-eating vines, then earthquakes - all the while, a countdown we can’t trust ticks toward our impending doom.

Our choices are few: Give up or press on. So up, up, up we climb.

I can’t say I’m not worried. We’ve seen so much death already. More than I’ve seen in a lifetime. I’m not young or egotistical enough to think I’m invincible. All I can do is hope I’m lucky. And if I’m not lucky, I hope it’s painless. Perhaps a graceful swan dive off the face of the earth. Better than anything with teeth.

Until then, I just need to bury the fear. Bury it deep. I’m good at that. I’ve had practice. For years now, I’ve been carried by that pesky little will to survive. What’s another few hours?

Do we even have a few hours?

Opening the map, I check to see where the perimeter is. The zone is definitely smaller now, with the Lookout Towers just short of a mile from the eastern edge. To the south, I can see the street where Luci’s house is. It’ll probably be swallowed by the end of the world within the hour. Whether or not our vantage point from the top of these towers will actually point us toward the portal, it’ll definitely be a view to remember.

And if we do see the portal? And we make it? Then what?

“Hey. Elias. When you killed that piranha, did you get any discovered classes?”

"I’m sorry?”

“Discovered classes. Do you get any?”

“Oh. Uh, yes. I did. I discovered ‘Varangian Guard.’”

“Yeah? What’s it say?”

He takes a moment to rifle through his menus. “They’re ‘booze-soaked, swaggering Vikings with an affinity for axes.’ It appears to be a ‘tank’ class.”

“Huh. What’s the class bonus?”

“It’s called ‘Palace Pillager.’ I earn 20% more coins from fallen enemies, given that I’m intoxicated.”

“Damn, really? We gotta get you drunk.”

I glance back at him. He does not look amused.

“Okay, got it, no liquor then. Luci, how about you?”

“Huh?” She stops, turns, and hops down the steps to meet me, her flashlight swaying into my face.

I shield my eyes. Just twenty minutes ago, the girl vomited. How does she look so glamorous? Did she reapply her lipgloss again? And mascara, by the looks of it. When did she even do that? Man, I must look like an utter mess in comparison. Me and my ‘Nice Snatch’ shirt.

“Have you discovered any classes?” I ask.

“Oh! Yeah, totally. I got a support one for helping you. It’s healing-based I think. The bonus is that if I use some kind of healing thing on you, it works faster. And I got a ranged class before that. ‘Iron of Scythia.’ The bonus is I do more damage from a distance. It’s pretty basic. But wouldn’t it be cool if I got a bow and arrow? Like Katniss!”

“I’m into it,” I say. “You might want to experiment a little. See what other classes you can get.”

“Gotcha,” she says, picking up the pace again.

Once she’s solidly ahead, Elias comes up beside me. “Are you sure now is the appropriate time to experiment?”

As if to emphasize, he flashes his light behind him, checking the stairs. The vines still haven’t penetrated the stairwell. Not yet anyhow. I can hear them though. Just phantom noises, my concerns mimicking what I fear.

“We don’t really have a choice,” I say. “I think, at least according to the descriptions we’ve gotten, we choose classes after we go through the portal. So the more options we have by then, the better. Plus those discovered class bonuses are clutch.”

The building trembles again. I can’t help but think we’re running out of time.

Elias shakes his head. “I don’t understand how you’re adapting so well. You and Luci.”

“We get the rules, I guess.”

"No. It's more than that."

"Maybe.” I glance up the stairwell, tracing Luci’s steps.

“Go on. What are you thinking?”

“Well. People react to chaos in different ways, I guess. Some shatter into a million pieces before shit even gets started. Some stay in denial. Some slow-burn their way through, working through each part step by step until they make it to the end. And some compartmentalize and have a big ol’ breakdown later. You seem like a slow-burner. You’re steady. We're bright and beautiful flames that’ll explode later.”

“That’s certainly not the analogy.”

“Yeah, well.”

“I don’t know what Luci is,” Elias says. “She always handled her brother’s leukemia so well. Perhaps that prepared her.”

Or she’s just good at covering. But I keep the thought to myself.

We pass the fifteenth floor. Almost halfway there. As tired as I am, it’s astounding how easy it is to soar up these stairs. For the first time, I’m not entirely upset that I’m combatting the apocalypse in yoga pants.

A new notification flashes into view.

Title(s) Earned:

Stair Novice: Climb 200 steps.

Reward: (1) Lesser Stamina Draught Voucher

Oh look, my own alien Fitbit.

“Will Luci…” Elias lowers his voice. “Will Luci be okay?”

I sigh as I dismiss the notification. My attention turns to the staircase, the shadows playing on the wall. This is not a conversation I want to have.

The poor guy. He’s just as in over his head as I am. Only Luci isn’t my niece. I can bail whenever I want. For Elias, if Luci’s parents don’t make it through whatever zone they’re in, he’s on the hook. Possibly for life.

So, will Luci be okay? I think about our interactions, her expressions, her clothes, her humor, the gun, the vomit, the fighting. It depends on the definition, I suppose.

I know what happens when the world breaks around you. When everything you believed your life to be crumbles into unrecognizable pieces, and all you can do is fall apart with it. When you try to put yourself back together, but you can’t scrounge up all the fragments of the person that you once were. When you finally glue all those fragments into the shape of a person, but it’s not the person you wanted to be. And everyone around you keeps wondering when you’re going to be whole again, and you can’t explain to them that this is it. This is you now. There’s nothing more to glue together.

And there’s that pesky anxious heart, tick tickin’ away again. Just need a few deep breaths… Steady goes it…

Damn, this day is really getting to me.

“Tío Elias, Helen, there’s a problem,” Luci shouts as we reach the seventeenth floor.

We rush up the steps to meet her. There, the stairs stop. There’s nothing but a heap of rubble, just chunks of concrete in an impassable pile. I don’t see a way through.

“What do we do now?” she says.

I pat the knives in my makeshift sheath. “Guess we’re taking a detour.”