You close your eyes, willing the nausea to wash away like the sea of blood gushing through the drain. Pretend the sound of scarlett water is the lapping of waves on a distant beach, the shredded corpses sundried driftwood, and the shards of glass discarded beer bottles, and you can almost ignore the crimson that sneaks its way beneath your eyelids. Almost. But not quite.
The elevators are silent, but the four of you gasp like divers from the depths, the wheezing betraying your shock.
“Breathe,” Mr. Aspen says, laying a hand on your back.
When you inhale, the thickness of blood weaves itself into your being. When you exhale, your eyes flutter open and meet his. They’re the softest pale blue, crowned by eyebrows arched high.
“I’ll be ok.” Your voice is hoarse. You turn away, hoping that he won’t know you’re lying.
Jack lets go of you, and you sway for a moment before regaining your balance. You search for the words to convey what you saw, but they’re lost somewhere under the pile of glass at your feet. Jack, always the faster tongue, speaks for you.
“It’s not possible. Miles Dane can’t be a machine. I mean, he’s been around for decades. We’ve seen him on TV all this time. He has to be real, right?”
“I don’t think that was him,” Mr. Roots says.
Mr. Aspen nods. “We should leave. It’s not safe here.”
Jack’s jaw is clenched, and in his eyes you can feel a metallic sharpness that tells you that he doesn’t agree. “I’m going to stay here,” he says. “We need to figure out what’s going on.”
Mr. Roots shakes his head. “With all respect, you’re just kids. People have died here. It’s too dangerous. This is a job for the police.”
Your head’s still swirling, but the word police nags at you. “The police? Why aren’t they here?”
“It seems like no one’s able to contact the outside.” Mr. Roots holds up his phone, which has no signal. “Everything’s blocked. We need to go outside to report this to the authorities.”
Jack looks at you, waiting for your decision. You bite your lip, letting the sting ground you. This game is dangerous, sure but part of you craves the danger. Part of you is curious to know how much more is out there, and part of you wants to prove you’re worthy. All your life, you’ve been waiting to prove yourself. Always second best, always the shy one, always waiting for the chance to prove what you really hope you are: worthy of something more than the quiet little life you’ve been given. Maybe this is your time to shine.
Jack understands. He knows you’re staying with him. And when Mr. Aspen and Mr. Roots see the triumph in his eyes, they know it too.
Mr. Aspen pretends to be displeased, but the wistfulness of his gaze gives him away. He was a little like you when he was younger. He ran away, hitchhiking the country, and once, so the rumors go, chaining himself to railroad tracks to protest predatory company practices.
Mr. Roots begins to speak, but Mr. Aspen’s silence stops him. Mr. Aspen does something you never thought he’d do. One by one, he undoes the buttons on his lab coat. You hear the clink of metal on metal in the pockets as he slips it off his shoulders and holds it out to you. The pockets bulge, weighed down by the tools inside, ever so slightly distorting the embroidered gears on the breast pocket.
“This comes back to me,” he says. “Whether you live or die, this comes back to me.”
You bow your head, feeling the weight and smoothness of the silk in your hands. When you raise your eyes, he’s smiling. You can’t help but return the smile.
Mr. Roots reaches to his help and unclips something from it: a length of rope with a water bottle flashlight, and climbing harness. He holds it out to Jack, who cradles it like a newborn.
“Thank you,” Jack says.
Shoulder to shoulder, Mr. Roots and Mr. Aspen exit the mall, and disappear into the mid afternoon haze.
“They look like they belong together,” Jack says.
You punch him playfully. “Shut up.”
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The elevators, still stationed at the far end of the atrium, are silent. You try every button — and not a single one lights up. You press your ear to the crack between the turquoise sliding doors and you hear nothing. Finally, you search within the lab coat and find two flathead screwdrivers in the inside right pocket, which you use to pry the doors apart. There’s no turquoise box to greet you, but instead a dark and empty shaft that plunges into the ground below you, and stretches for what seems to be a mile above. The elevator is a little speck of turquoise, no bigger than the gem set on a necklace hanging from the neck of a woman in the crowd.
Red, angry water rushes past you and into the darkness as you pull the screwdrivers away and let the doors slide back shut.
From the other side of the atrium, Jack calls your name. “I found the emergency staircase,” he says.
You scramble after the sound of his voice, pass a blank blue door, and find yourself in a concrete stairwell illuminated by the stairs themselves. Each step is a clear sheet of glass, illuminated from within by tiny LEDs. Once Jack sees you, he begins scrambling up them, the glass shifting to an opaque turquoise momentarily as he steps on them. His steps are as sure as a panther’s, but you feel more uneasy, having no handrail to hold onto. You follow him one step at a time, less surely.
After a dozen steps, you hear a crack from beneath you. You force your eyes downwards, trying your best to ignore the ground and your growing vertigo, instead focusing on the glass plate. It’s paper thin and littered with fractures. You try to lower your foot to the step below you, but you nearly lose your balance as the glass shatters under the slightest tap. You fall forward, and watch as the cracks spider outwards, until you scramble forward on all fours and the step gives out beneath you, leaving your torso sprawled a few steps higher, and your feet dangling in thin air. Too shaken to get to your feet, you continue on all fours
Jack’s footsteps echo from somewhere far above you. Though you try to lift your head, it only makes your mind spin more. You try to call his name, listening to the echoes fade away, but there’s no response. You swallow your fear, breathe, and try to ignore the way the ground sways beneath you like a ship in a storm.
You take a step.
And another.
And another.
Just three steps before the first floor landing, some fifty feet up, you hear something crack, and then the tinkling of glass hitting the ground. You hold your breath, and scan the plates you’re on. The one beneath your hands is fractured, and one edge has chipped off. You lift your right hand, and try to move it up to the next step, but as you do so, your other hand plunges through. Glass shards lacerate your left hand and your forehead collides with the edge of the step above you as you flail for the higher step with your right hand. You scream. Stretched between two sheets of glass, hanging over the void, you listen to the tinkling of glass mix with the patter of the blood that comes from your hand in thick, heavy drops.
Then you grit your teeth, doing your best to ignore the pain that gnaws at your left hand, and drag yourself over the gap and onto the first floor. You scramble away from the edge and huddle in the corner, biting your tongue to keep yourself from yelping as you pull a shard of glass from your hand, and use the antibacterial cream in his lab coat to disinfect the cut. When you’re done, you find a pocketknife in the lab coat, flick it open, and, trying not to imagine Mr. Aspen’s wrath at you mutilating his lab coat, tear off the hem and use it to bandage your hand.
You rest there, in the stairwell that has gotten a little darker since some of the steps fell, and then get to your feet, brush yourself off, and, with your good hand, open the door that leads to the first floor.
You’ve seen the glass gardens of the atrium, the endless halls of the clothing department, and the lights of the stairwell. But this -- this is something altogether different. And utterly beautiful.
You stand on grassy plains, where the air is heavy with the scent of dirt and rain. The ground beneath your feet is springy, dotted with buttercups. Moths flutter upward with every step. There aren’t humans here, but something else: the feeling of a world so full of hidden life that you seem to breathe vitality. The drone of bees, and flies, and crickets is a symphony, the play of sun rays through the clouds a spotlight, the whisper of the grass a poem. On the horizon perches a ring of monoliths capped by more enormous rocks — it seems that even here, humans have made their mark.
You start to walk towards the stone ring, but within a few steps, the world shifts. The breeze stills, becoming foggy, and the grass beneath your feet is replaced by layers of leaves and rotting logs that infuse the air with a muggy stench. The air fills with vines and smooth trunks and the rare shaft of green-tinted light that manages to sneak in between the branches. Parrots caw, and flies drone, and somehow you know that behind you, a leopard stalks its prey. Behind the screen of trees, you glimpse a pyramid of rough-hewn stone, and the barely audible chant that mixes with the sounds of the jungle. You try to step back to where you came, but instead…
You’re in the desert. The thousands of stars overhead are brighter than streetlights, and antelopes dance across the shifting dunes in a ballet. The air is brisk and cold, and wind rolls across the landscape unimpeded, carrying the scent of spices. You lie on your back, letting the residual warmth of the ground seep into you.
Then your phone buzzes.
It’s a pop-up that doesn’t come from a recognizable site. It looks like game rankings, except the title says “The Great Mall Mirage,” and the rankings aren’t rankings, but levels. You scroll through the list, and find your name:
Level 1, Prehistory: Empty Quarter.
You find Jack, too:
Level 5, Industrialization: London.
You try to text him, but the message bounces back: unable to deliver. The same happens with everyone else you try to contact -- your parents, Mr. Aspen, and Mr. Roots. Something’s been blocking the signal.
You’d figure it out, but the peace of the desert is eating away your consciousness. You close your eyes, and within moments, you’re asleep.