The Debt Maker(Peter Pertroski) and 4 other men entered the Cornerstone agency lobby. It was empty. Peter was dressed in the attire he wore back at the insurance agency, while the 4 men dressed similar to contractor’s. As they walked to the Front Desk the Debt Maker spoke to the men, “Are you all ready to pay your debts?”
The men walking with him nodded, as they approached the front desk, the receptionist noticed them and said, “Welcome to the Cornerstone agency, how may I help you?”
“Help us?” Debt maker smiles, “I think we ought to help you.”
“Excuse me?”
“Humans have this strange tendency to embrace debt. They sell themselves over to banks and debtors and in exchange they indulge in luxury and temporary satisfactions. It's so disgusting.”
The woman gazed at the Debt maker and then the other men, she became suspicious of their strange behavior, "I'm sorry wh-?"
“My mother was like that, but she learned her lesson, and I hope you do too, in hell.”
"I'm going to have to ask you to leave if you intend to waste my time."
"Are you asking your master to leave? Don't you plan to pay your debt?"
The woman raised her head slightly, her face lacked character and her eyes became red, "I do."
"Good." The Debt Maker replied. He reached into his pocket and took out a gun and handed it to her, “If you want to repay your debt, then kill the guard at the door.” He pointed at a guard who was on the floor leaning against the door sleeping, the debt maker continued, “Then you are going to close the door and lock down the building. Afterward, shoot yourself in the head.”
After saying that he left the front desk. The other men followed him, as they walked towards the elevator. When they entered the elevator one of the men stepped forward and clicked the -20 button and they started to go down.
Meanwhile, the woman in the lobby walked up to the guard that was sleeping and shot him in his head. His body ran cold, his breathing became rapid and his veins became dark blue. It remained that way until he died. She proceeded to close the door to the building. Afterwards she clicked a red button that was on the wall.
This caused the metal coverings that were folded up above the windows and doors to begin unfolding. They slowly moved across the windows and doors until any view of the outside world was cut off. Upon seeing this the woman held the gun to the side of her head and pulled the trigger. She fell to the ground and a pool of blood formed around her, then shortly after she died.
Meanwhile down stairs Noria and the others are standing in a partially lit room. The emergency lights provided them with enough light to see each other. Noria, now concerned about the situation, said, “This can't be good.”
“You think it's the debt maker?” Amelia asked
“I'm sure it's him, but I'm curious as to how he shut off the lights.” Turnner added.
“We can consider that after we restore power to the building.” Noria replied.
“How are we supposed to do that?” Lucas asked
Trent responded by saying, “If the electricity shuts off, then something must have happened in the control room. Perhaps we should go there to see what's the issue.”
“Correct, Amelia, Lucas. I want y'all to accompany Trent to the Electrical room.”
“Alright.” Amelia answered, as they left the room. Noria then looked at Four contractors that were in the room and said, “I want you all to go to communications, you’ll have to take the stairs. Once you get there, lock yourself in and when the light comes on send out a distress call to the other departments; to alert them of our situation.”
“Got it.” One man answered as they exited the room.
Noria finally turned to Tokito, Turnner and 2 other contractors and said, “I want y'all to stay here and protect Turnner until i return.”
“I don't need protection.” Turnner protested.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
“I know you may not like this Turnner, but we can't risk you getting killed. You agreed to accept our protection right? Therefore Disregardin-”
“I get it.” Turnner interrupted.
“Good, I'll be going. I hope to find you all here when I get back.”
“You will.” Tokito replied.
Meanwhile, Amelia and Lucas walked down an unusually long hallway, At first it was normal then books started appearing on the ground. The amount of books increased as they walked, until the books towered above them. She noticed this and said, “Something ain't right, You seeing this?”
“Yea, where did Trent go?”
“I can’t tell you, but my guess is that at some point we were trapped by a God or a contract ability.” As she spoke they arrived at the end of the hall, before them was a double door. Amelia opened the door and entered a massive room. It was a library.
In Front of them were what looked like an endless amount of bookshelves. Each aisle of books seemed to go on forever without end. Additionally there were different floors above them and when they looked up, more bookshelves peek over the railings. The railings and the floors also seemed to go on forever in each direction.
Lucas looked around in awe and said, “I didn't know the agency came with a Library.”
“It doesn't…. Like I said something's off.”
Just then a man’s voice answered, “Perhaps it is your urge to gain knowledge.”
Amelia and lucas’; attention shifted to the voice. They looked around to see who or what spoke, then Amelia asked in a loud voice, “Who said that?”
The voice replied, “I did, you see my contract with the Book God makes gaining knowledge a lot easier.”
“Really, is this why you have such a large library?”
“Yes, Humans are always on a quest to gain knowledge so I decided to provide you with this service aren't you thankful?”
“Sorry but we aren't in the mood to read right now. We have a job to do, so we’ll be leaving.” Amelia looked back expecting to see the door they entered from, but instead she was met with an aisle of books and once again to her left and right were aisles of books. Anger flared up in her as she turned around in a tantrum and said, “I dont know what bull shit is going on here, but we would like to leave.”
“Oh dare, you’re leaving so soon??”
“Yes we have to go so please let us out.”
“I will don't worry, but you must do something for me before you go.”
“What?”
“The books in this library are a direct representation of all the information in this world, therefore I’m asking you to read every book in this library, then I'll reveal the exit to you. Goodluck.”
“”
“Are you crazy? We can’t read all the books in this library.” silence filled the room, as she continued, “Hello!” She looked around frantically hoping to see a way out, “Shit we need to get out here.”
“It's no use.” Lucas said, as he walked up to a bookshelf, “Can't you see what's going on here? He has us trapped in some weird mind control.”
“I thought of that, but maybe there's an easier way to escape.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I'm saying is there are around 300 million books in the world right?”
“Something like that yea, what are you suggesting?” Lucas replied as he took a book off the shelf. it had no cover or information on the back. In Fact all the books had no front or back cover.
“Since there's a limit to the amount of books then there must be a limit to the size of this library. So I was thinking that if you took off in that direction.” She pointed to the left and I took off in that direction. She pointed to the right, “We should finally arrive at the wall of this place. Then we can use our strength to destroy it.”
“Sounds good, but how do we know he ment information limited to books? What if it represents all the info in the world?”
“We're going to have to hope it's not.”
“Fine then” Lucas answered, then he darted off in the left direction.
Amelia turned and said, “This better work.” and she too darted off. After running for a while she stopped and began walking then said to herself, ‘I feel like I've run the distance of Newyork end to end three times and yet still I haven't reached a wall. I'm going to stop here. I don't wanna waste anymore of my XP.
After saying this Amelia sat and reseted her back against a bookshelf. She became depressed as she thought, ‘Maybe Lucas was right, this place represents all the information in the world.’ Then she looked to her side and noticed a book laying on the ground and continued, ‘I guess my only option is to read until I die’ So she took up the book and began to read.