Tradewinds 09: The Building Is Hungry by shadesmaclean
Summary: Wherein our intrepid adventurers face unknown perils as they challenge the twisted depths of the Harken Building…
Categories: Non-Naruto Fiction > Original stories, Non-Naruto Fiction Characters: OC
Genres: Action/Adventure, Dark, Fantasy, General, Horror, Sci-Fi
Warnings: Dark, Death
Challenges: None
Series: Tradewinds
Chapters: 39 Completed: Yes Word count: 55705 Read: 20118 Published: 21/12/12 Updated: 09/02/13

1. I by shadesmaclean

2. II by shadesmaclean

3. III by shadesmaclean

4. IV by shadesmaclean

5. V by shadesmaclean

6. VI by shadesmaclean

7. VII by shadesmaclean

8. VIII by shadesmaclean

9. IX by shadesmaclean

10. X by shadesmaclean

11. XI by shadesmaclean

12. XII by shadesmaclean

13. XIII by shadesmaclean

14. XIV by shadesmaclean

15. XV by shadesmaclean

16. XVI by shadesmaclean

17. XVII by shadesmaclean

18. XVIII by shadesmaclean

19. XIX by shadesmaclean

20. XX by shadesmaclean

21. XXI by shadesmaclean

22. XXII by shadesmaclean

23. XXIII by shadesmaclean

24. XXIV by shadesmaclean

25. XXV by shadesmaclean

26. XXVI by shadesmaclean

27. XXVII by shadesmaclean

28. XXVIII by shadesmaclean

29. XXIX by shadesmaclean

30. XXX by shadesmaclean

31. XXXI by shadesmaclean

32. XXXII by shadesmaclean

33. XXXIII by shadesmaclean

34. XXXIV by shadesmaclean

35. XXXV by shadesmaclean

36. XXXVI by shadesmaclean

37. XXXVII by shadesmaclean

38. XXXVIII by shadesmaclean

39. XXXIX by shadesmaclean

I by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
front door follies
“This is it?” Kato demanded. “Why didn’t you just go in and get ’em?”

They stood in front of a blocky red brick building occupying one corner of the block, with a narrow alley running between it and its neighbor. Four stories of it, though fairly modest compared to some of the buildings marching down the street toward this side of town. Chiseled into the entrance were the words:

HARKEN BVILDING


“That might be easier said than done,” Max told them, pointing to that unremarkable entrance. “The guy who told me where your friends went” (whom he noticed, was no longer about) “also warned me that some also call this place the Never-Ending Building. He said that those who go in are never seen again.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard,” Justin commented, almost laughing. Even as bottomless as Tranz-D had seemed, he was still certain there was an end to it, and this place looked small enough for a squad of TSA guards to lock down in short order. “Don’t those fools know you can just come back out through the front door?”

“I’m not so sure…” Shades, of course, now had experience dealing with places that were easier entered than exited. And that name, Harken, so old-fashioned sounding, yet strangely foreboding, gave him a bad feeling in spite of its mundane appearance. “Don’t forget the curse.”

“Yeah,” Max echoed, though he sounded rather preoccupied.

“Bullshit,” Justin sneered. “There’s no such thing as curses.”

“Don’t be too sure,” Shades warned him, wishing he knew how to convey the ordeal they had endured, wondered if he would be more likely to listen to Max.

“So what now?” Max asked abruptly, turning away from the building to his companions. He could tell Bandit didn’t like this place any more than he had the first time they came here.

“We go in,” Kato told them. If nothing else, she was going to kick Chase’s ass when she found them, or at least give him a piece of her mind. “We go in and we find them. I’m not goin’ anywhere without my crew.”

“Are you nuts?” Justin asked, for a moment recalling that weird feeling he got at Obscura Antiques and wondering why this of all places would make him think of it. “I mean, how do we even know they went in there?”

“That guy I talked to,” Max explained. “He told me that the building was endless. He also told me that he made a bet with two guys who looked like her friends,” (to which Kato muttered, “That’s why I never leave him with all of our money…”) “and the one guy was really interested in seeing the place for himself.”

“He would,” Kato confirmed. “That definitely sounds like him. Chase has always had an obsession with weird shit.”

“Okay,” said Justin, “so they went in there. Then what are we waiting for?”

“I think we should make a plan.” To Shades, this whole scenario was starting to feel less real by the moment. Before them stood this old-fashioned style building that was supposedly bottomless, and here they were debating whether or not to go looking for someone in it. Part of him expected the two in question to just walk out, and the other part pondered what sort of mess he was about to get himself into, trying to resist the draw of the Unknown already tugging at his feet. And so soon after his last brush with paranormal peril. “How do we know what’s going on in there?”

“We’ve all got weapons,” Justin pointed out. “Whatever’s in there, we can handle it.”

“But what if it really is endless?” Max pressed. “I think we should try to find that guy I talked to and see if he knows anything else about this place.”

“I’m with him,” Shades agreed. “I don’t know how to explain it, but I’ve just got this feeling, like we should try to find out more about this place, from someone who knows what they’re talking about.”

“I still think you’re being a dumbass,” Justin told him.

“Justin,” Max said, not sure how exactly to put it, “I’ve seen Shades when he has feelings about things, and—”

“Go, if you’re going to,” Kato cut in, turning and striding up to the door. Whatever the deal was with this building, she was going in after the only people she ever cared about. “I’m not gonna stand here all day listening to you guys talking while my friends might be in danger. If you aren’t going to help me, then just wait there.”

And with that, she entered the Harken Building, slamming the door behind her.

“Wait up!” Justin called, heading for the door.

“You wait.” Shades grabbed Justin’s shoulder. “Think about it. Do we really want to run into another maze?”

“Well,” Max mused, “we did promise her we’d help her find her friends…”

“I’ve had enough of your crap!” Justin batted Shades’ hand aside, starting for the door again. “I’m not gonna lose my shot at finding that treasure.”

“Is that all he cares about?” Shades asked Max, turning to his friend.

“Fuck you,” Justin said before Max could reply. “What do you know? I’m goin’ in there. And if nothing happens, I’m gonna kick your ass when I catch up with you.”

And on that note, Justin Black entered the Harken Building, as well.

Max and Shades simply stood there.

Neither was really sure what to say. Shades was once again struck by how things were done in the Sixth Dimension. The sign above that door, along with everything they had heard so far, gave it all the appearance of some ominous tourist attraction. He had a bad feeling about this, and he could tell Bandit seconded the motion. Even Max seemed perturbed.

The numbers kept marching on Shades’ watch display, but he was no longer certain they meant much here. He suspected that days were not necessarily twenty-four hours in this world, and before long, his watch reading would be utterly irrelevant to what time of day it really was. Assuming it wasn’t already. Five, ten minutes, and he watched Max keep glancing from the door to the alley where the words The Building is hungry! were slashed on the wall, before either spoke.

Shades tried to act nonchalant, but there was something about this place that was getting to him more and more by the minute.

“So, do you think we should go in there and help ’em out?” Shades finally asked. He was trying to be a smartass, lighten things up, but somehow it just didn’t quite come off right.

“Yes,” Max replied, and Shades was taken aback at how serious his friend sounded. While they stood outside, the words of that graffito-tag, which had bothered him since he first laid eyes on them, finally rang a bell. From the start, he had a gut feeling he should know this place, and it finally came to him. “Trust me, they’re gonna need our help.”

“What do you know about this?”

“Just Outlanders’ stories,” was Max’s opaque reply.

As they stood there, Max recalled part of a tale he wasn’t meant to hear. His parents seldom spoke of this incident, but the longer he repeated those words in his head, the more certain he was this was the very place they had spoken of. It was an account he had found more than a trifle unsettling when he overheard it as a child. So much so, he had largely managed to bury it in the back of his memory.

Only to be remembered now as he stood before this place.

Both he and Shades seemed to realize that there wasn’t much of anything else to be said about it, so they stepped up to the door. Though Shades was more concerned than ever, he could see Max’s growing resolve to help his friend, and remembered that not long ago he himself had said that any friend of Max’s was a friend of his. Even if he was being an asshole. Bandit gave them a look that seemed to say You guys are nuts, followed by a look of exasperated resignation, then followed.

And the three of them entered the building.

Shades, startled by how loudly the door slammed shut behind them, yelped in spite of himself. Startled as he was, he as much more alarmed— yet not overly surprised— to find the door tightly locked. Now he had a very bad feeling about this; in the last month or so, he had developed a rather understandable wariness of places more easily entered than exited. He also had a feeling, a strong feeling, that guy Max met probably knew more about what he was talking about than he let on.

“Max, I don’t like this.”

“I guess we just have to find the exit.” Max shrugged. He then reached into his jacket, pulling out his power pistol. Handing it to Shades, he said, “Here. Take this. I’ve still got my laser sword, so now we both have an energy weapon.”

“Thank you,” Shades told him, hoping desperately that neither of them would need to use either weapon. Reassuring himself that Max’s laser sword could take down that door anyway, he tried to tell himself that it was too late to chicken out now.

Before them was a door on the right-hand wall. A stairway leading down. A stairway going up. And the entrance to a hallway on the far left.

And not a clue as to where either Kato or Justin, or Chase and George, went.

Deciding that Max would search for Justin, and Shades would try to find Kato, the two of them split up. Max deciding to look in the basement, start from the ground up. Shades, deciding that he didn’t want to see what the basement of a place like this was like, took the hall.
II by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
Shades ponders architecture
At first Shades tried not to think too much on what he and his friends were doing. At first it was easy. The place looked so normal, so mundane— it was hard to imagine it as dangerous in spite of Max’s ominous remarks. Then, he could still hear his friends’ footsteps on the stairway as they made their descent.

Now, though, he could hear nothing but the lights buzzing overhead. Now that he had traversed a series of twisting, turning switchback hallways and blind corridors, he found himself feeling more than a little disoriented. Now the blend of bland, institutional hues and nonsensical meanderings of the level were beginning to make him wonder if this place really could be haunted.

Now he couldn’t help but think about what he was doing here.

He knew he was helping a friend, and in spite of how rude and antagonistic the guy had been, he found he hoped Justin was alright. Though he still hadn’t made up his mind about this Kato, he decided to stay true to his advice to Max and give her the benefit of the doubt. He was sure he could learn more about her when he met her friends.

If I meet her friends.

The very thought itself almost seemed to pop around the corner of his mind. He told himself it was simply the architecture. All these blind corners. No way to see very far ahead; anything could be lying in wait. Found that the power pistol he was previously holding at his side he now kept trained ahead of him. Found he was instinctively taking each corner as wide as he could so no one could get the drop on him.

In the course of his martial arts training, Master Al had given his long-time students an overview of firearms, doing a spot of target practice in the woods with some of the guns from his collection, yet aside from that, Shades had little acquaintance with guns. Still, combined with seeing the fireworks against NK-525 back the library, it was enough for him to know what he held in his hand was no toy. In spite of this, his awkwardness was quickly tempered with the growing suspicion that he would do well to start packing in this world, as all of his companions already did, but for now he just hoped it wouldn’t come to that in here.

Even so, this much he had already resolved: he didn’t care how hungry the Harken Building was, it wasn’t going to snack on him or his friends. After his fun stay in that twilighty place that masqueraded as a mall, he had no intention of letting himself be trapped like that again. His time there already felt like some kind of Karmic payback for losing John, and now that he was free, he wanted nothing more than to catch up with his old friend.

And Amy. Definitely Amy, too.

His original plan was to only search one floor, then catch up with Max, but now he was beginning to reconsider. Wondered why precisely he had agreed to split up in the first place. That feeling from the night of the Flathead Experiment was creeping up on him.

I was too tired and confused and out of myself to be as scared as I should have been…

Fearing that he might be repeating that dangerous mistake, like a character in some horror flick, Shades decided to double back and try to find Max and Bandit.
III by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
Max descends...
Max and Bandit continued down the stairs and turned at the next landing. Around the corner were more stairs. Just like all the levels above him. While Shades wandered off down the hallway near the entrance, he headed downstairs to explore from the bottom up.

As he made his descent, he found a few minutes to think about recent events. He was still taken aback by that scene at the entrance earlier. By how much Justin and Shades argued with each other from the moment they first met. At a total loss for what to do about it. That last argument still ringing in his ears. Shades had once told him that his old friends, John and Tom, never really got along with each other.

Yet both of them were friends with Shades. He wasn’t sure he understood how they could all still be friends like that, but Shades had also told him about the one time he actually got the two of them to truly work together, and he wondered if he couldn’t figure out a way to do the same. Yet all he was drawing was blanks. Felt sure his friend cared about something, but Justin just wasn’t sure what yet. He would have to figure out what both of his friends wanted, hopefully before things got any worse, but at least for now he still had Bandit for company.

All this time, he had envisioned the three of them becoming the best of friends and traveling all over the world…

Of course, on the subject of things that would take some getting used to, he still couldn’t shake off his misgivings about Kato. Even with Justin’s endorsement and the fact that she so disliked the TSA, even having no association with Layosha’s old enemies, he found he still didn’t like teaming up with a Cyexian. More than that, Bandit also seemed to disapprove of her.

He just kept telling himself that Justin, who had also had nothing but bad luck with Cyexians, saw fit to trust her. Still, Shades was always telling him don’t judge a book by its cover, and at the library, had told him, Let’s give her the benefit of the doubt. We can learn a lot more about her by the company she keeps. And, now that he thought about it, he remembered out of the blue that Mom and Dad did have Cyexian friends along the way. From many years ago, Mom’s voice drifted back to him, reminding him not all of them are like Slash, don’t forget… Shades’ words especially, though, made him feel ashamed of his enmity towards her.

Unity. That was what Shades was always saying. Maybe he would give it a try. If nothing else, Kato wasn’t like any other Cyexian he had ever encountered.

He turned the next corner and started down another flight. So far, he had found only locked doors at each landing, so he doubted any of them had gone those ways. Figuring this place couldn’t go too much farther down, he resolved that if he didn’t find something soon, he would double back and try to catch up with Shades.

Beside him, Bandit acted more nervous than Max had seen him since they went to Tranz-D, something he honestly didn’t like.
IV by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
Justin, up the downstair
Justin was starting to wonder if perhaps the stairs weren’t such a great idea.

When he first entered the building, his ears were still burning. Is that all he cares about? And not even to him, but to Max. He wasn’t sure what pissed him off more, this Shades guy’s speaking as if he wasn’t even there, or being lectured by someone who obviously never had to live in a hole, steal for a living, scurry and hide in fear of military police… What the fuck does he know? What does Max see in that asshole?

Yet he was still a teeny bit leery of “underground” places after his time in the mines and Tranz-D, so when he spotted this ascending stairway, he decided to search the upper floors first. The fact that he couldn’t tell which way either Kato or her friends had gone only added to his irritation. Though he was angry enough to start with, the climb had cooled him off some. By now his legs were burning even more than they had in any of Max’s training runs.

In fact, he was starting to wonder what the hell was going on. He had lost track of how many flights of stairs he had climbed, but he was fairly sure this place had only three or four floors, five tops. Yet he could see at least three or four more flights looming above him.

And he couldn’t even see the bottom anymore.

From the start, he figured Kato’s friends weren’t hiding or anything. It would only be a matter of time before he ran into them. On the outside, this place looked like it could be explored in a fairly short period of time. Much to his dismay, he was growing increasingly certain that he had already walked up through the top of the building somehow, and his anger at Shades had begun to dissipate as he started to seriously wonder just how much higher this stairway could possibly go.

At last, shaky-kneed and almost totally out of breath, he pushed open a door at the top of the stairs, the first one he’d found that wasn’t locked. One that someone might actually have passed through recently. His relief at not having to chop it down, though, was brief, for when he saw the long, dimly-lit room before him, he found himself terribly disoriented. The grey concrete walls, floor, even the ceiling, all looked like the stuff of basements to him.

After all, he had lived in one long enough to know one when he saw it.

As he staggered into the cool, damp-smelling corridor, it struck him that this was probably what the Works looked like before the Authority reduced it to the Ruins. The thought spooked him enough to make him draw his power pistol, the one that still had ammo left, as he wandered into what looked more and more to him to be an underground complex. Fluorescent light panels hung from the ceiling, though only about half of them were on, and between the massive square pillars, some sections were caged off with floor-to-ceiling bars.

Ordinarily, Justin would be curious enough about what was locked away in there to cut out the bars, but all he could see in these sub-rooms were shelves of books and binders and dusty boxes. Nothing of interest, in other words. That, and the fact that his path shifted left and right in squarish sections, the backs of the far cages partially shrouded in shadows beyond the light banks, he was starting to get the eerie impression that, rather than intruders being locked out, something might be locked in.

In that moment, he remembered that strange “warded” box from Obscura Antiques, and shuddered as that creepy shopkeep’s cryptic words (locked out, or locked in…) crept into his head.

Found himself reaching into his pocket and taking out that curious figurine the shopkeep gave him, looking over the stark runes carved into it and wondering if it really was a good luck charm. Not that he had ever put much stock in luck, certainly not any trust, at any rate. Worried that if there was such a thing, they may have used it all up before ever setting foot in here…

He shook those thoughts off as it dawned on him that the farthest portion of this basement that he could see should have been at least a block or two beyond the edge of the Harken Building. And above it, at that. It was the same dizzying disorientation he had experienced in Tranz-D, and he was beginning to suspect that bastard Shades may have been on to something.

That only made Justin mad at him all over again.
V by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
Kato schemes
Kato stepped out of the livingroom set, furnished with accoutrements that she could hardly dream of owning herself.

And into a similarly pricey-looking dining room.

After twenty- or thirty-odd livingrooms that all looked like they belonged in the same stuck-up neighborhood, this was something of a relief. She increasingly found herself wondering exactly what the hell kind of outfit this Harken Building was supposed to be, as she could see no plausible use for so much superfluous furniture. Something about this whole setup struck as totally unnatural, making her wonder if Chase’s insatiable nose for trouble hadn’t just found them another fine mess. She had been going in circles ever since she took that door beyond the entrance, which had shut and locked behind her. Figured her power pistol would make short work of such a simple lock.

If she could just find her way back.

She was increasingly certain she had more than covered the ground floor of this building. Earlier, she could think of nothing more important than rounding up her crew and taking the next step in their quest. In her haste to catch up with them, she rushed into this without really considering what to do if this place was for real. Wondered if maybe this Shades guy wasn’t on to something.

Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing to have had some kind of plan.

Though this approach was nothing new to her, she was getting an increasingly ominous feeling, especially in light of her recent experience in Tranz-D, that perhaps she had bitten off more than she could chew. She wondered if it wouldn’t have been more prudent to actively enlist the aid of her new companions instead of berating them as cowards. They had seemed willing enough in spite of their initial misgivings. Now, of course, it was too late; no matter what the building threw at her, she would not let it stand between her and her aim.

Kato had gone this far. She was not turning back.

Given this place’s apparent size, all she could do now was hope Chase and George had the sense to stick together in here. Though she figured that since Chase was well armed, he could probably hold his own against most threats, she seriously worried about George. The kid wasn’t much of a fighter, and next to useless with guns, his mysterious knack with machines and electronics being his chief asset, but on top of that, he was also prone to wandering off on his own. And Chase was prone to simply letting him. To make matters worse, George also had no voice with which to call for help if he was lost or in some kind of trouble. Whereas Chase’s itchy trigger-finger and lack of finesse would ensure plenty of commotion if he was in danger— probably even if he wasn’t.

As she crossed the threshold into the next section of this winding maze, she found herself in another fancy-shmancy dining set. The next room looked different, yet fundamentally similar. So did the next room.

And the next room.
VI by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
Shades vs the empty room
There was a point at which Shades was sure Max would hear him if he called out, but now he was not so sure even Bandit would hear him.

He originally intended to explore each fork before, yet had already covered more floorspace than this building could possibly occupy, at least based on its exterior. Now, as he made his way back to try to catch up with Max, his ordinarily keen sense of direction deserted him as he tried to navigate his way back past all the forks he had passed on his way. At first, he kept telling himself it was just the architecture, but he was increasingly certain that he had never seen some of these forks before, blind corners or no blind corners. That, and though the Harken Building had an abundance of windows on the outside, he hadn’t seen a single one in here.

It was starting to remind him of the Mall. He had encountered a similar phenomenon there, but nothing on this scale. That, and that sense of being boxed in by walls, both visible and invisible; he was beginning to fear he understood why people who entered never came back.

“Some rescue this turned out to be…” Shades muttered to no one in particular, not liking the sound of his own voice breaking the silence. Not that there was anyone around to hear it. Who’s gonna rescue us?

To think he had felt such an enormous sense of relief to no longer be spinning his wheels in that mall. Out of one maze and into another… Exactly what he was afraid of to begin with. And as far as their chances of finding and helping one another in such a vast area were concerned, they may as well have waited outside.

He could just about scream. This place was about as much as he could handle as it was.

Just kept telling himself it was simply the way it was designed, but that failed to dispel the feeling that he was not alone in here. And that wasn’t counting those he knew had entered the building lately. It didn’t help that he kept spotting hitchhikers out of the corner of his eye, just like the one(s?) he saw that fateful night.

“You’re messing with my head, aren’t you…”

Talking to the building. This place is getting to me. He wasn’t sure he wanted to believe he had actually said that out loud as he wondered what he had gotten himself into.

This was like wandering through one deserted building after another, surely much bigger than the entire block the place sat on. It made him uneasy, more so the longer he kept on. The more unreal it felt. The how and the why of a place like this, he suspected, were probably irrelevant on this plane.

At last, he gave up on trying to find his way back to the stairs, or the entrance for that matter, and concluded that he would have to focus on finding his own way out. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he just couldn’t shake the sinking feeling that no matter how far back he went, that entrance would no longer be there waiting for him. Just couldn’t help thinking that this maze of hallways was somehow rearranging itself behind his back.

At first, he tried comparing it to the Mall, but the more he saw of it, the less similarity he found. For a while, he was at something of a loss for anything to compare this to, out of all the bizarre tales he had read years ago. Until he remembered the Winchester Mansion. A house that was never finished, its owner adding on new rooms for some reason he couldn’t quite remember.

Then it hit him: evil spirits. He had once read of houses with doors and stairways leading nowhere, purely for the sake of confounding ghosts and evil spirits. This place had that same haphazard feel to it, of rooms and halls and levels tacked on, seemingly at random. He had no clue if it was of any use against spirits, but he had to conclude that it sure as hell seemed to work against the living.

Had to admit that he was totally confounded.

For a little while, he thought about putting on some tunes. But each time he raised his headphones, it dawned on him that even though it would drown out the subtle noises of the building, he would also not be able to hear anything else that might be going on around him. Felt an inexplicable urgency, a need to catch important sound cues, though for what, he had no idea.

His current hall ended in a door that opened on what appeared to be a cafeteria, dimly lit by the failing, guttering light of dying fluorescents. A line of coffin-like tables folded up neatly against the wall gave this chamber all the feel of some institutionalized mausoleum. Reminding him of childhood and adolescent conversations, deals, threats, and other transactions. Off ahead and to his right, his eyes stopped at the fading gloom behind the lunch counter, to the dark kitchen beyond.

I don’t like this…

His first impulse was to turn around and walk away, but something inside of him refused to back down from an empty room. He could feel unseen eyes following him as if he were a new transfer student or something as he made his way through. Strode quickly, but purposefully. Never let yourself look lost… he remembered Master Al saying on the subject of self-defense. Sensei’s voice carried on: …Not in a place like this. It can play terrible games with you, man…

Shades, of course, already knew the kind of games public schools could play.

Trying not to think about how this expanse of floor could seem so exaggerated just by his unease. Kept telling himself that now was not the time to be creeping himself out. Yet he found he just couldn’t help it; all that came to mind was pictures he had once seen of the Winchester House, or else of one of those places built to ward off evil spirits, images of spectral figures wandering lost among passages leading nowhere…

His footsteps echoed all too loudly for his taste, he just never dreamed that a short walk of twenty or thirty paces could seem so long. When he reached the door on the other side, he kept his sigh of relief as silent as he could. If it had been locked, he concluded as he pushed it open easily, he felt that would have been a sure sign of a trap.

Shutting the door solidly behind him, he wondered what had made him think of traps. Were there any traps in here? As he walked down the next hall, he figured there had to be some reason why all those people checked in and never checked back out. Perhaps they simply lost their minds or something after wandering around long enough.

Once he was farther away from that dark room, he felt safe. Relatively safe. Yet away from that eerie cafeteria, where all those nonexistent students’ presence still lingered, he felt increasingly ashamed of his own nervousness in there. He was sure Max wouldn’t let it bother him. His friend, though younger than himself, displayed a stoic courage, and an enthusiasm that gave him his mysterious ability to walk into unknown circumstances with a confidence he had never seen in anyone else.

Along with an immense sense of relief at having helped himself, and his friends, with their comeback against NK-525, he had also experienced a sense of victory, a rush that almost perfectly resembled what he imagined it would be. Hardcore. In spite of the fear clawing at the back of his mind like an alarm, it made him wonder if maybe he did have what it takes to be one of Max’s tribe. To still feel a desire, deep down, to face the challenge of the Unknown. Just as Max seemed to have been doing since…

Since when?

That was a good question. He vowed that someday he would get Max to tell him about his past.
VII by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
...to the roof, Max perturbed
Max had succeeded so thoroughly in turning his thoughts away from this place that he was genuinely taken aback by what he saw when he pushed open the first unlocked door he found, about two dozen flights down.

The vista before him gave him an even greater dose of vertigo than the door back at the Centralict Library. Walking down all these steps had somehow brought him to the roof. Or at least a roof. He looked around, seeing that he was surrounded by walls and drop-offs leading to an uneven patchwork of rooftops on various levels for as far as the eye could see.

Behind him was the stair landing.

That was when he remembered where he was. He had been quietly hoping he was mistaken as he passed all those landings, but now he had undeniable proof. This was the place Mom had spoken of years ago, shuddering in spite of her own reputed courage and fortitude. The bizarre maze he had had nightmares about for weeks after he overheard their tale.

He knew it was also too late to double back and try to warn Shades, and now he wondered what had possessed him to let each other split up in the first place. As large as this place was, it was very possible he might never find Kato and her friends. Or Shades or Justin. No way back, Alida said, in the life he left behind, and somehow stumbled back into again. From here, he would have to be prepared to defend both himself and Bandit from the dangers of this place. As he looked out over this jagged roofscape, he turned his mind to trying to remember as much about that account as he could, knowing that even the most minute detail could very well make the difference between life and death.

For both himself and Bandit, as well as for the others, if he found them.

Arming his laser sword, he set out, jumping down to a roof one level below him, Bandit hopping down to a rooftop vent unit, then to the roof. This area was completely surrounded by higher rooftops, so he started up a fire escape stairway, working his way to the highest point. From up there he could see that this was by no means the highest level in this place.

In spite of the rooftops stretching as far as he could see— or perhaps because of them— he had the distinct feeling he was somehow still inside the Harken Building. Though he was not sure why. He just knew. And not even the overcast sky above could dissuade him of that much.

When he first met him, after his escape from Tranz-D, the librarian told him that there were many strange places and things in the Sixth Dimension. Since his unexpected departure from Paradise, he had seen some things that seemed to confirm that assertion. Of course, the librarian already had him with his stuff about Tranz-D, and then there was his own experience with the Mall itself, as well.

After surveying the surrounding landscape, he concluded that it didn’t really matter which way he went. It would be nice, he decided, if he had some way of telling direction. He wondered if the others were having the same kinds of problems he was.

When he climbed down to the next level, a piece of paper blew down from some level above him, floating down to his feet. From the ragged edge, it appeared to have been torn out of a book. He picked it up and started reading:

Enter ye the Spooky Door, step beyond the lantern’s beams, ancient dark corridors to explore where nothing’s what it seems. Don’t get lost upon thy way, the path of nightmares and dreams, in this old place, the games it can play. Skeleton key in hand, the silence screams.

The path looketh calm, but beware: tho all is silent in the Halls of the Dead, the Machines That Make Nothing wait there until a blinking green light turneth red. Halls of locked doors, hidden danger; let not the lost child lead thee astray, to the wrath of the Phantom Stranger, ‘For we are many!’ the voices say.

Dead words drift across the page, the wisdom of some ancient sage, echoes of a long-forgotten age, but arcane verse doth set the stage:

Behold the Sweet
Lady of Twylight— tattered shadows billow from her mast, in the sea fog’s shimmering light, ’tis an eerie spectre of the past. The derelict adrift in the Misty Main, shades of men seem to man the decks, a ghost ship that’s the traveler’s bane, on a journey—

And that was where the page ended. The other side appeared to be some writer’s interpretation of something that must have been written on a previous page, because it seemed to have no bearing on the passage he just read.

On one hand, he was left scratching his head. On the other, those ominous words also worried him. Reminded him that he faced a grim fate indeed if he couldn’t find a way out. He absently folded up the page, tucking it into his pocket as he continued on his way.

After ascending several more levels of this fascinating structure, Max stopped and rested for a long moment, just letting the breeze blow through his hair as he thought. Just as he used to in Paradise. Just as he used to back in the Islands. Thinking of all the places his father had been, all the places he would someday be. Or dreamed he would be.

A whole world out there he had always wanted to see, and now he was out in it.

Or at least he had been. And he knew that if he was going to get back out into that world, he would have to find a way to escape from this twisted maze. He was beginning to suspect that he could wander around out here forever and never find an exit.

As he started back down, he found he had gained a whole new appreciation for just how big this place really was. At least, according to Shades, the Mall’s interior was proportionately matched by its gargantuan exterior. All he could picture of this building was a box with more space on the inside than it occupied on the outside.

It was starting to hurt his mind.

So he decided to take some of Shades’ sage advice.

Just try not to think about it.

But it was hard not to.
End Notes:
AUTHOR'S NOTE: The verse Max stumbled upon is from Chapter 11 of The Book of Spooky Doors, from The Book of Hondo.
VIII by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
Justin's first vending machine
After a while, the cages began to give way to higher ceilings, cavernous chambers full of machinery whose exact purpose he was uncertain of, but Justin didn’t consider it much of an improvement.

For starters, he was just starting to get used to the silent cages when he pushed through a set of double doors leading into these massive rooms of machines. Though these machines were dusty but otherwise apparently functional, they still reminded him of the creaky hulks of the Bone Yard on Benton Island, left to rust in peace after a life of slavery. Much like those diesel dinosaurs, he could all too easily imagine these dully gleaming collections of conveyor belts and gears and other, more specialized, equipment grinding back to life…

He was alarmed to realize how jumpy he had become in here.

Along the way, the path forked in several directions. He made up his mind to go back and explore the other ways when he had checked this section, but so far he had yet to find the end of it. On top of the feel of all that dormant equipment, he was beginning to accept the possibility that he might be lost. There was also something about the black-and-yellow stripes marking parts of the walls and floors in places that felt like some kind of warning; he avoided those areas though he knew not exactly what danger he was averting.

At one point, he stopped to notice that his other hand was still in his pocket, nearly clutching the figurine from Obscura Antiques. Fetching it from his pocket, he examined it again for a moment, deciding that the thing had a stern, somber look to it, and he honestly wondered again if it was really meant to bring protection or good fortune. Putting it away, he pulled his hand back out of his pocket, concluding that it seemed too much like something from an old seafaring legend, too good to possibly be true.

Too good to be real.

Of course, he had heard of some pretty weird shit back in Benton, and when he was running around in the depths of Tranz-D, he thought he had found something that would turn those traveling braggarts’ hair white. Now he had the sinking feeling Kato’s friends had just found him another one. This procession of concrete chambers was beginning to seem, for lack of a better word, endless. Just thinking about it gave him a creepy feeling, complete with raised hairs on the back of his neck, that there was more to this “Never-Ending Building” business than he had wanted to believe. That he had just walked into another nightmare.

He decided if he ever caught up with him again, he was going to kick Shades’ ass even though it was real, or rather, because it was real.

At least being mad at Shades helped him take his mind off how eerily quiet this place was. He couldn’t quite pin down precisely what it was that irritated him. Something about how he couldn’t see the guy’s eyes bothered him. He also couldn’t help thinking this Shades didn’t really like him.

Or was it that he didn’t like Shades?

Perhaps a little of both, he decided. Part of it was that he was so easygoing, like Max. That it came so easily to him, that the two of them got along so naturally, while he just couldn’t lighten up. Much as he wanted to.

Maybe hanging out with Max in Paradise was starting to have an effect on him.

Lost as he was in this place, he felt sure that Max, at least, would risk coming in here looking for him, even if Shades didn’t. And for some reason that thought made him feel bad. Justin knew he was taking a risk joining Kato, given his luck trusting Cyexians. Had even talked Max into taking his risk. Yet after keeping each other’s back in Tranz-D, he was confident she would hold up her end of the agreement. Still, he worried that Max didn’t like being dragged into her business.

But we’re partners, right?

As he began to look around among these post-industrial artifacts, he wondered if Max really would come in here. Or if Shades would somehow talk him out of it. Then again, Max had been willing to risk returning to Tranz-D without even knowing whether or not he was still alive anymore. As for Shades, mad as Justin was, he found himself hoping the guy didn’t come in, too.

Max can take care of himself, but I don’t think Shades has the balls for this.

Justin glanced to his right and spotted his first vending machine. It took him a moment to figure out what this strange new machine was all about, but he recognized the way the contents looked like fancied-up ration packs, and decided to stop for lunch. Since his harrowing escape from Tranz-D, he hadn’t had a free moment to sit down and eat all day. Though there was some food in the pack Max and Shades had prepared for him, he decided to save it for later, to take advantage of this opportunity for a free meal.

In all his life, Justin Black had never had exact change, but his laser staff did the trick. Cutting away the glass panel gave him access to all he wanted. Mouth watering, he tore open one of the packages and took a tentative bite of it.

The brown bar melted in his mouth with a sweet flavor that Shades (and now, thanks to him, Max) would recognize as milk chocolate. It didn’t quite look like a ration bar, but it tasted infinitely better. Chocolate… He had heard of it, and now that he finally got the chance to try it for himself, he at last understood what everyone else got so excited about. He looked among the labels, though, and found he had no idea what some of the other ingredients were. Nou-gat? Pea-nut but-ter? But he suspected that they would probably taste good, too.

When one of the bags of chips fell out of its slot and plopped into the bin below, he jumped back from the machine with a sharp cry of alarm. Survival instincts honed against two weeks in hell made him hear alarms for a moment that weren’t actually there. Followed by the distinct feeling that, in his hunger, he had been too careless. Leaving the candy bar he was eating lying on the floor as he about-faced, wondering in stark horror what could possibly have possessed him to come so far into this place to begin with.

Power pistol in one hand, fresh chocolate bar in the other, he headed back the way he had come. Kato largely forgotten. Now he quietly hoped Shades had talked Max into waiting. If he could just get back to the entrance in time, he might be able to prevent another pointless nightmare expedition.

He just hoped he wasn’t too late.
IX by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
Shades hits a dead end
After all these convoluted hallways Shades had passed through in here, it seemed to be a common— or, as his old friend Arthur used to say, monotonous— phenomenon. There was an aura about this place that lost didn’t even begin to describe. Made it hard to concentrate on what he was doing. Dazed and inexplicably drowsy in spite of his nerves, he had to keep reminding himself what he was doing here.

Originally, to help find Kato’s friends, of course, though rescue them was starting to sound more like it. He found it easier to focus on his friends, just to take the edge off. Especially Kato.

On one hand, she seemed pretty up-front about the whole Tri-Medal business. He would be lying to himself if he said he wasn’t excited about the chance to finally find out what that strange medallion he had worn since he was a kid really was. Yet he was not entirely sure he could trust her.

He kept telling Max not to be so hasty to judge, in spite of the earful he had gotten about Cyexians for it, still he felt he would have to keep an even sharper eye on her once she had her friends to back her up. Max could be fairly naïve, but he felt he could count on his friend to do so as well, yet Justin worried him. And not because they had such a harsh argument; Justin apparently had his own share of troubles with Cyexians, but right now Max’s friend definitely had dollar-signs in his eyes. Especially when looking at his own, and Max’s, Tri-Medals.

I’ll definitely have to keep an eye on both…

For all his efforts, though, he was never able to keep his mind off this place for very long. And he was starting to wonder if maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. Now that he was used to the hum of the lights in most places, he found that the building made odd sounds from time to time. He was never able to pin down a direction, and that only made it harder to deal with.

Always indistinct. Mumbling? Coughing? Laughing? Crying?

Despite being alone every step of the way, there were parts of this building that felt far from empty.

It all put him in mind of something he hadn’t thought about in years. Something that happened to him in the eighth grade. Though he had been digging up tales of the Unknown since he was in grade school, he had only a handful of experiences that even resembled those accounts, and this one was the most unsettling.

Mostly because it might actually have been real.

In the double-wide trailer his family had lived in since he was in the third grade, his mother’s room was at one end, his own at the other. Though he actually slept on a fold-up couch in the dining room, he did have a desk in the room itself. Kid-size, but suitable for his purposes.

On the night in question, he was working on a mock term paper, the Bermuda Triangle Mythos one, quietly listening to one of his mix tapes. Mom kept complaining, in spite of being at the other end of the place, so he kept turning it down until he could barely hear it himself. By then it was after midnight, and he could barely keep his eyes open, but he pressed on, deadlines looming perilously close on the horizon.

It was in the midst of this work that he heard it. Someone stomping on the other side of the trailer. At first wondering what Mom could possibly be mad about now, but as those heavy steps advanced across the length of the house, he was increasingly certain they did not belong to his mother.

Gripped by an inexplicable urge to hide in the closet, he managed to hold his ground as those footfalls drew nearer. Those steps were so hard, he kept expecting whoever made them to knock things down, but it didn’t. It just got louder and louder, closer and closer…

When that tide of rage actually reached his room, he honestly expected it to knock the door right off its hinges, but it just stopped. It took an effort of will not to huddle in the corner, for some reason picturing himself as a little four-year-old boy, but he waited. And waited. For how long he stood there, he had no idea.

Eventually, he summoned the nerve to go open the door. Sure that Mom would have knocked, even if she was upset. But when he opened the door, he found that the short hall leading to the dining room was dark, yet empty.

After that, he locked the door for the rest of the night.

Later, he remembered something one of the neighbor kids had told him years ago. About how the last man to live in that trailer was an alcoholic, and one prone to violent outbursts when intoxicated. This Shades didn’t doubt, recalling as he did that half the pictures and wallhangings in the place were simply there to hide holes that had been punched in the walls and doors before they even moved in.

And that a little boy— the man’s son— used to sleep in that room.

Thinking about that experience could give him a chill even in broad daylight, but in this place… He didn’t have to think about it for long to decide that this was neither the time nor the place to be thinking about such things. A real-life spook story that might have been fun to tell Amy.

If I ever see her again…

If he was going to have any chance of seeing her again, he understood, he would first have to overcome this obstacle.

When he came upon a vending machine around the next corner, he decided to take advantage of the situation. There was enough food in his pack for nearly a week-long expedition into Tranz-D, yet he figured he might as well see if anything was edible in here; as enormous as this place was, he might need every morsel he packed before he got out of this twisted maze. He wasn’t completely sure he trusted the food in this place, yet he knew he couldn’t keep up his strength for too long without something to eat.

Shades was just about to plunk in some spare change when it dawned on him that this entire place was empty. It presented him with an opportunity to do something he had never done before. After years of paying ever-escalating prices, he wondered if he would ever again get the chance to sack a vending machine without anyone coming down on him.

Carefully aiming Max’s power pistol at the lock, he blew it off with a couple clean shots. Still surprised at how energy weapons had no “kick” like firearms did.

He was about to give the drink machine next to it the same treatment, then thought better of it. Max didn’t give that to you to break into vending machines. He gave it to you to defend yourself. That, and even Max wasn’t sure how much juice was left in the power clip. So far, he had encountered no one and nothing threatening, but he feared he might yet need every shot to get out of here.

Instead, noticing that this machine had an older lock on it, he decided to try a different approach. Remembering something he read in a magazine back at the Mall, he decided to put it to the test. He dug in part of his homemade lockpicking kit, producing a ballpoint pen with the tip removed. According to the article, many locks on older model vending machines were changed because of a design weakness that allowed them to be cracked by the very implement he currently held his hand.

Sure enough, it took very little effort to open the lock and grab himself a can of Cam’s Cola. It was one of those “otherworld” brands he had come across in the Mall, and much like certain brand names back on Earth, he found he just wasn’t that terribly shocked to see it in here, either. Everything turned out to be fresher than he would have suspected, and nothing tasted unusual, so he decided that it was safe.

After grabbing some grub, Shades continued on his way, munching on this and that, and wondering why he was beginning to feel so sleepy. While this delectable surprise helped take the edge off this place a little, it left him with an unsettling insight into just how thoroughly conditioned he had been back on Earth.

As he made his way, he continued to puzzle out why he felt so guilty about scoring free food in a place where there was no one around to “steal” from. He reminded himself that there were presently plenty of people wandering around here with energy weapons. But do they all have candy bars in their backpacks? Thinking of Justin, and Kato, at least, he was sure he wasn’t the only one.

Of course, it was strange being left completely to his own devices after a lifetime of being herded around by society at large; he suspected he was going to have to re-evaluate a lot of his ideas in order to survive in this world.

But before he could do that, he would have to find a different path to take, for the room he entered was a dead end. Even as he turned to try a different hall, though, the door clicked shut behind him. And it only took him a moment to figure out that his troubles were just beginning.

Much to his dismay, the door he had entered through had no handle on this side.

No other doors, no windows. Only a tiny vent that seemed to mock him with its rabbit-size opening. And of course, the door itself wouldn’t budge, no matter how hard he tried to pry at it.

“Shit. Dead end.”

As he stood there, trying to figure out what to do next, even with his experience with the Mall he was sure he had never fully appreciated simply being able to walk in and out of a building the same way until now.

He had no intention of sitting and rotting in this room. A thought he didn’t particularly relish without ever having seen Justin’s closet-dwelling friends back in Tranz-D. And he had it on good authority that this Sixth Dimension was full of exceptions to the rules he was familiar with; all he had to do was find one. Again, he reminded himself that this business was supposed to be risky.

After all, that’s what makes it an adventure…
End Notes:
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Due to circumstances beyond my control, I won't have any regular internet access for a while, so I am going on hiatus until I can regain home internet. Fortunately, I have already posted the complete Tradewinds series (thus far), on The Rabid Reader, Naruto Forums (where I go by "neko-sennin") and Equestria Forums, so anyone who wishes to continue reading the series in the meantime still has options. My apologies for the inconvenience.
X by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
Kato stops for lunch
By the thirty-somethingth maddeningly familiar dining room, Kato had long since lost count.

She now wandered among the kind of kitchens that are always seen and never used. After a while, she just shrugged her shoulders, deciding not to make such a big deal out of it, but it was getting on her nerves. Though she was beginning to realize that this place was a lot bigger than she expected, she had heard of things like this before. Had lived in this world her whole life, while Max and Shades seemed to gawk at everything like a child, Shades tried to act cool but kept hinting that he was from someplace else, and Justin, who came from the same neighborhood as she, seemed to have lived under some rock all his life.

Still, she was beginning to wonder if she hadn’t underestimated this place. Not so much that the building was real— her search for the Tri-Medals had taken her to some strange places— as it was that she had to be prowling around such a place at all. She tried to focus on her search for Chase and George, but now she began to wonder if she wouldn’t have enough on her plate just dealing with her own situation.

Still, she would want her crew with her when she made up her mind how to proceed. The Triad— she had concluded, just thinking about the name— was a very exclusive trio, and she had no serious plans for adding new members. Especially not the Layoshan, for she was strangely certain that was what he must be, whom she believed would be nothing but trouble in the long run. Though she was accustomed to prejudice in most realms, the fact that he so disliked her simply for being Cyexian was enough for her. Combined with being too naïve, too innocent for his own good, as well as stronger than any of her own crew, he was a threat. Nor was she too enthusiastic about Shades, who never seemed to listen to her, and, she feared, might be the first to catch wind of it when she decided to make her move. He was an unknown quantity— to begin with, she couldn’t see his eyes, probably where he got his name from, and she wondered if he let anyone see them. On top of that, he didn’t seem as interested in getting rich, more likely the type who would just as soon see the Tri-Medals stuck in some museum somewhere.

And after she had gone to so much trouble to liberate hers from such a place.

Justin, on the other hand, was more her type. Like Chase, he was quick on the draw— she would be curious to see who was quicker— fast on his feet, streetwise, and had a common point of reference with Chase and herself. Then again, that opportunistic edge also worried her; as long as he had treasure glittering in his eyes, she was pretty sure he was the least likely to suspect her in spite of his ordinarily untrusting nature, but she had no way of knowing for sure that he didn’t have plans of his own. Unlike the other two, she believed he wanted the whole pie, not just one slice.

The more she thought about it, the more she suspected these newcomers could be trouble.

In the end, Kato would do what she always did. What she had to. If she had to team up with these new guys for now, so be it. In the end, though, she would stick with her own crew. At least she knew she could trust them. For the time being, she needed their Tri-Medals, but if they, like the proverbial fool and his money, could be parted…

As she strode into the next six-figure kitchen, she spotted a can of Cam’s Cola sitting on the corner of the counter.

“Cola on the house…”

Looking around reflexively to be sure no one was about, she decided that Finders Keepers was the most applicable rule here. She examined the can, seeing that it had not been tampered with, popped it open and took a sip. Tasting nothing unusual, she started drinking the rest of it as she walked into the next room. The sweet taste served to remind her of how hungry she was, how long it had been since she and Justin shared that ration bar in Tranz-D. She was sure Max and Shades had food in those bags of theirs, but things had gone so fast since then. Now she really wished she had thought to order something at that café before questioning that stuck-up waiter.

It was as she entered what at least felt like her thousandth room that it dawned on her that she was wandering through a maze of kitchens. All of them equipped with expensive-looking refrigerators.

She opened the one in this room, seeing that it was full of real food. After digging out and inspecting a few items, she found them to be edible, much to her surprise. After wandering more hungry than not for as long as she could remember, Kato had hit the jackpot.

“Score!”

Grabbing some dishes and such from throughout the display, she fished an assortment of stuff out of the fridge. This time, she would have her cake and eat it too. Making up for all the missed meals of a wanderer. She just hoped her friends would also find something to eat in this crazy place.

And so Kato took a lunch break, wondering offhandedly how Chase and George were faring, and hoping, for the sake of all that was holy, that those two were smart enough to stick together in this bizarre maze.
XI by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
Chase's creepy tour
Chase Spencer had seen a few things in his wanderings, but this was completely outside his experience.

According to his own chronograph, he had been inside the Harken Building for almost twelve hours, yet it somehow felt like more. He had stopped and rested at several benches along the way, but didn’t like it when he found himself starting to nod off, so he always got back up again. When he first got bored waiting for Kato to finish screwing around in the Centralict Library, he would never have suspected he would find a place like Obscura Antiques in this mundane town. Then again, he wouldn’t have guessed this sleepy island concealed anything like this, either. In his peculiar conversation at the shop, he was told that this building housed some ancient and secret treasure that even the wizened old shopkeep knew little about. Later, when he met the stranger outside, the one with whom he made the bet about the building’s dirty secret, he figured there had to be some kind of trick, and so he came in ready for action.

Kato had done a pretty fair job describing him to Justin and party, nailing the important details perfectly. Medium-height, medium-build, average and nondescript in aspect. It was his taste in clothes that stood out. Decked out in the same long coat Kato had described, his reddish-brown hair mostly concealed by the wide-brim hat he had picked up somewhere along the way, and had never really let go of.

What would likely hold most people’s attention, though, would be the sawed-off double-barrel disrupter rifle he now carried as he strode through yet another corridor.

After all, when told that no one ever came back out of the Harken Building (the Never-Ending Building, the man called it, as if imparting some great secret), combined with what the shopkeep had told him about a hidden secret, he figured something was up. Had originally expected the stranger to have a few friends lying in wait or something, but in all these hours, every place he went was completely deserted. Had hunted and prowled around for a while, but after a couple hours, had begun to wonder if that stranger wasn’t on to something about the never-ending part.

By now he knew something was afoot.

Even going upstairs, or, for that matter, downstairs to multiple basement levels, let alone staying on one floor, he had long since exhausted this place’s apparent floorspace. The architecture of that last section was very convoluted and repetitive, and Chase had wandered in circles for a couple hours before he finally found a side passage leading out. Before that, he had toured what appeared to be a gallery or museum of weapons from many places, mostly ancient and primitive.

Even so, that hardly stopped him from equipping himself with an exotic-looking knife whose listed name he could not pronounce, adding it to his coat of arms. And had certainly contemplated adding more if he wasn’t already outfitted with a full arsenal. As Kato noted, he found guns fascinating, and weapons in general, especially ancient ones.

Though he honestly never would have guessed it would take nearly this long to explore; this was even more bizarre than he expected.

He still remembered standing out in front of the building. She can hang out in the goddam library all she wants, but I’m going to find something real, he had told George. As far as he was concerned, Kato had gotten entirely too scholarly in her approach to their search lately. With all due honesty to himself, he had to admit he had been looking for a little action. That was the main reason, he supposed, he had checked this place out, Tri-Medal research aside. After all, a normal building wouldn’t be nearly as exciting.

Now he wondered if he hadn’t gotten more than he bargained for. Was frequently haunted by the feeling that he was being followed, but he never found anyone. Earlier, Chase thought he’d seen a little boy in a striped shirt wandering around the section ahead of him, but by the time he could get to that section, there was no one. The kid had somehow given him the slip, assuming he had been there in the first place.

He liked the atmosphere of this building less and less the more he wandered around. At first he thought it was just that perpetually itchy trigger-finger of his. Had originally gone in carrying his disrupter in case that guy he made the bet with was up to some kind of shenanigans, and later kept it handy as a training exercise. Now he realized that, at some point that was lost on him, he had starting thinking of it as more than just a precaution. For some reason, that strange kid gave him the creeps, and so he kept telling himself he only thought he saw the kid. Telling himself that kids— especially dumb-looking little kids— don’t stalk people.

At least he was fairly sure they didn’t.

Speaking of dumb little kids, he had told George not to wander too far, but at some point in his browsings, the little bastard had ambled off somewhere. What he really needed to do was find him, he decided, increasingly bothered by just how easily he had allowed himself and George to get separated. No telling what kind of trouble that mindless, overgrown child of a hacker may have gotten himself into. A few times, he had called out to his friend at some junctions, yet he got the strange, inexplicable impression that no one would hear him beyond his immediate area.

Though he originally set out to kill a few hours, hopefully until Kato grew bored with book research, now he couldn’t even find his way back to the beginning of the gallery where he left George, let alone the main entrance. This place was just too weird and convoluted to let him do that. No matter which way he went, he seemed to just end up deeper inside.

As far as he was concerned, the Harken Building was beyond paranormal, the word barely seemed to describe it.

Occasionally, he reached into his pocket and examined the silvery key the shopkeep had sold him. It was an old-fashioned skeleton key, a little over two inches long, with an oval-shaped ring for a handle. The old geezer said he’d give him a discount on it because he seemed the type who could use a thing like this. At first he wasn’t sure what that meant, but now he was starting to think that guy was better at gauging people than he would have guessed. Combined with the nature of that mysterious shop, he was starting to get an idea of what this little trinket might do, and was now about half certain he might end up using it before he got out of here.

Still, based on all he had heard and read along the way, such items were said to be very rare in most realms, and he was loathe to part with it too easily. Making up his mind to use it only if he had no other choice, he moved on.

Around the next corner, Chase found himself in another large room. This one was filled with glass displays containing fully constructed skeletons. Some human, some animal. Some he could not identify by their frames alone.

At first Chase didn’t think much of it, as there were also a few skulls and such in that weapons gallery earlier, but once he stood completely in the midst of this skeletal host, he found he didn’t like having all those empty, not to mention unblinking, eye sockets gazing upon him.

Quickening his pace, but trying not to look like he was in any hurry, he moved on to the next room. With every step wondering why even skeletons would make him this uneasy. The only answer he could come up with was that it was just the atmosphere; he had seen a few eerie places along the way, but this one was utterly unlike any of the others. And it was starting to get to him.

The next room was also an extension of the bone gallery, and somehow he wasn’t overly surprised, given the last section he passed through. Even as he thought about the fact that he was now surrounded by the damn things, he heard a strange clacking sound, and snapped his disrupter to bear purely on reflex. He just about squeezed the trigger before seeing that the skeleton on the far side of the room really wasn’t about to attack him.

Some joker had rigged one of its arms so that it was raised in a jaunty gesture. A look around revealed that the same prankster had messed with most of the skeletons in this room. One looked like it was scratching its head, another held its hands behind its back. Three more sat side by side in an almost comical see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil pose. Some manner of quadruped cocked its head at him in a way that might have been cute if it still wore its skin and fur. From its glass prison, a monkey flipped him off while sitting on a branch. Chase returned the gesture with his free hand, just as George had done to that stuck-up waiter back at the café, before he spotted something out of the corner of his eye.

Another skeleton, something reptilian by the look of it, standing on hind legs, with sharp fangs and claws, standing almost his height. Underdweller, the label read. Lurking right next to the door, and he had walked right past it.

He kicked the thing, sundering it to a jumbled pile of bones, then pressed on to the next room. This one contained bigger skeletons, one of which looked to him to be the remains of a warthog. The room was arranged with tables and chairs, centered around the warthog display. Wondering what else he would find on this creepy tour, he skirted the table and moved on.

Clack, clack.

Chase yelped in spite of himself, nearly pulling the trigger yet again. He then froze, listening. A couple seconds later, he spun on his heels, turning back to the other room. Everything was still.

He let his eyes go partway out of focus, looking at nothing in particular. An old trick he had learned for spotting things, but nothing appeared to be amiss. Still he wondered what was making him so goddam edgy.

As he pushed open the door to the next room, he figured it out. Part of it, at least. It wasn’t just the skeletons, it was the stillness. The fact that they just stood there.

Like they were waiting for something.

Still a little spooked, but resolving not to let a bunch of bones get to him, not to rush his pace unless something actually happened, Chase pressed on. Wanting to get the hell out of here, the sooner the better.
XII by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
George and the phantom carnival
The one his companions called George continued to prowl the outskirts of the thirty-foot-high perimeter wall that seemed to surround him on all sides, looking for a way to proceed.

Bounded on all sides by this massive wall was a carnival. Ordinarily, he would consider this a good thing, but the whole thing stood empty, deserted, defunct. And he wasn’t sure what it made him feel more, sad or spooked. The dormant bulbs, dim, muted colors, dirt and garbage strewn everywhere, the sense of utter abandonment, haunted him.

Though increasingly uncomfortable in this bizarre place, George still looked out at it with those same staring brown eyes, that same dull expression, that caused most people to conclude that he was retarded or something. As with Chase, Kato had been right on the mark. Just an inch or two taller than Justin, with short, uncombed brown hair. He was indeed unable to speak, for whatever else had happened in his childhood, the one thing anyone knew for sure was that somebody had cut out his tongue to keep him from talking about it.

While Chase dressed with melodramatic flair, George dressed rather plain, in jeans and a dark blue windbreaker. The only thing on his person that would stand out was the “armtop” computer that currently hung slung over his shoulder. Ordinarily strapped to his right arm, for he was a southpaw, it was the tool of his trade. His most prized possession, the only thing he had that the others didn’t mess with. After he sabotaged both Chase and Kato’s attempts to play video games on it, at any rate. But primarily because he was the only one who could really put it to good use. The compact, fold-up unit was a little heavy, but George had long since grown used to it.

After Chase wandered off, he had waited for a while, but had felt more and more insecure in that quiet lobby the longer he stood there, wondering vaguely when his friend was coming back for him. Eventually, he decided he couldn’t take that ill-at-ease, nervous feeling anymore, and went off looking for Chase. And quickly discovered his friend was wrong when he scoffed at the man he made that bet with about the Harken Building only hours before.

Very wrong.

Of course, George had seen the exterior of the place when they entered, and it was getting to him even more than his nerves in the lobby. Had tried to tell Chase not to leave him there, just as he had tried to tell him not to blow the money Kato left them on that bet. But his companion only seemed to understand him when he felt like it. In the meantime, he had wandered through blocks and blocks’ worth of empty rooms.

Had only been a little hungry when they went to the café earlier, where Chase failed to score them a free bite with his usual diplomacy. When the snooty waiter started talking back, George had beaten Chase to the punch and gave him the finger, much to his friend’s amusement. Now he was really getting hungry.

When he wandered into this place, the door slammed behind him. Much to his dismay, the door he pushed open had no knob or latch on this side, so he couldn’t get it open again. Couldn’t go back. So now all he could do was walk the edges of this eerie walled carnival trying to find another way out.

As he walked along, George wondered what this run-down fair might be like if somebody fixed it up and got it going again. Kicking scraps of trash and litter aside, and hearing that was the only sound to be heard, he sought to calm himself by picturing all three of them at a real carnival. Though he knew Chase would sneer and Kato would try to act like she was too old for such things, he was sure they would all have fun once they were all there together.

So lost in his visions of cotton candy and carnival rides was he, that when loud, lilting carnival music started blaring from the far side of the grounds, he turned and almost ran right into the wall. Dark clouds were slowly gathering around the area, such that he didn’t realize how much dimmer it had gotten until he turned back and saw the many-colored lights dancing in and out of sight behind a couple rides. Even as he tried to figure out what was happening, more lights came on near the first set, and a moment later another, adding their movements to the growing dance of lights at the far end of the enclosure. Adding their own blaring music to what was fast becoming a carnival cacophony of jumbled notes and chords.

And underneath it all, the rumble of long-dormant machines waking up.

After a moment, George realized that the rides and other attractions were turning on in two’s and three’s. Starting at the far side of the field, and moving toward his end. In the midst of all of this, though, he was dismayed to see no one in sight.

Even before this picture of events had fully formed in his mind, he was already moving in the opposite direction as fast as his feet would carry him, scrambling along against the wall. No matter how fast he ran, though, the mass of awakening machinery was spreading toward him even closer. Every time he looked back, he could see it advancing on him, and even though he had no idea what he thought was going to happen if it did catch up, he ran on anyway.

When it finally overtook him, he veered a little farther over, grinding and stumbling against the wall with a barely audible exhaled grunt as he nearly fell.

George leaned against the wall, huffing and puffing as he took a frantic look around. Only moments before he was wishing he could see all of this running, now he took it back, every thought. Though everything had ground back into motion, it was still all dirty and grimy, weirdly aged, and, worst of all, he could see that every single ride was empty.

Somehow, it was all even creepier than before.

George fled along the wall, frequently glancing warily at this reanimated carnival. He thought he was looking for a way out, but would later realize that if he hadn’t banged his hand against the handle, he would have run right past the door without even seeing it. Though it stung like a sonofabitch, he reached out with that same hand and turned the handle.

He pushed, but the door wouldn’t budge. Unlike the door he came in through, at least this one had an outside handle, and he was sure it must open. But when he threw his full, if not exactly hefty, weight against it, it wouldn’t give an inch. The more if refused to move, the more frantic he got.

It was only when he rebounded from his hardest effort yet, hand still gripping the handle, and the door flew wide open, that George realized the reason for his previous difficulties.

Sheepish, yet hardly unmindful of the unnerving spectacle unfolding behind him, he ducked through the door, pulling it shut behind him. Even with his heart thumping madly in his ears, he could still faintly hear that inane, lilting jumble of tunes back there. The thought of all those deserted rides just going their merry way outside was enough to set him back in motion. When that chirpy yet hollow racket began to increase its already manic tempo, he got the sense of everything going faster, probably faster than any of it was made to go, and quickened his own pace in time.

Before him was a long hallway with double-doors at the end. Much to his relief, those doors opened without any fuss, and he proceeded into the next section of what appeared to be another nest of hallways and corridors. With every step he took, the musical babble of the ghost carnival grew fainter until he could no longer hear it anymore.

And he finally allowed himself to relax.
XIII by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
The Book of Fate
For Shades, minutes stretched out like hours as he paced the room; even stopping for a brief bite from his backpack bounty did little to calm him.

Ever since he first faced up to the grim ramifications of his new life, he had started putting together a personal lockpicking kit, for Arthur had loved to tinker, and his old friend had shown him a few tricks. Though in the intervening years he had perfected a few techniques of his own, the door’s very design, with a metal plate, prevented him from using any of them. He tried shooting the plate, the hinges, the place where the lock was supposed to be, but his shots left only black scorch-marks, causing no real damage.

Though he doubted it would work against something solid enough to shrug off laser fire, had even tried kicking the door with his best back-kick, and hardly even rattled it. That same technique put multiple holes in the walls, but beneath the sheetrock was always stone wall on all sides. Once he had seen Master Al, and other, more advanced students, bust cinder blocks with their fists— could even break a couple himself with a good kick— had even seen one accidentally damage a brick wall in a demonstration, but the stones of this room looked as thick as castle walls. There was no furniture in the room, so he had no way to get at the ceiling.

All the while, wrestling the irrational idea that heavy footfalls, like the kind that had spooked him that night working on the Bermuda Triangle paper, were going to come barging in and when it did, he wasn’t going to like it one little bit…

For a while, it got so bad, he whipped out his Cam-Jam and listened to some music for a while in the dead-end room to calm his nerves. He had lots of different playlists for different occasions, and had selected one consisting of more mellow, relaxing tunes, the kind of thing he might listen to back at the Mall in order to help him go to sleep.

Only to find, when he dozed off for a little bit, that it had worked a little too well. Even leaning up against the wall next to the door— the side the door didn’t open on— power pistol in hand, so he would have the drop on anyone who barged in, catching them from behind before they could turn on him, he was still alarmed that he had fallen asleep so easily in this place. After that, he got back to his feet and started pacing to wake back up again.

As he listened to the hollow thump of the floor as he stomped back and forth, it occurred to him that perhaps the answer to this dilemma was right under his feet. Starting at one corner, he began tearing up the carpet with his pocket knife. The carpet was tacked down well, so it was slow going at first, but after a few minutes, he had pulled up the greater portion of it, revealing a wood-paneled floor.

And, upon closer inspection, a trapdoor hatch.

“Gotcha!” Shades hissed.

Much to his surprise, after everything else, the hatch wasn’t even locked. Not that he was complaining. The trapdoor itself weighed more than he expected, but he was able to heave it up.

Below was a narrow stairway. He had to admit, it looked pretty spooky down there, but this looked like his only chance. Starting down, and trying to pay no mind to how much the steps creaked, he whipped out his flashlight and descended into the darkness below.

It was a long trip to the first landing, and the whole way there, he tried not to think too much about what he might find at the bottom. This whole business reminded him of the basement of an apartment they lived in for a while back when Dad was stationed in Alaska. There was a big, white door at the bottom, and when he was a kid, all he could think about was that spooky door from The Twilight Zone. The other kids in the neighborhood used to dare each other to go down there.

At the bottom was a door, and though it wasn’t white, it still reminded him too much of that door for his taste, yet he opened it anyway.

Beyond were more stairs. Nothing to do but proceed. After what he guessed was a comparable distance, he found another door. Where the first one had been plain wood, this one was blue. It was beginning to look, he reflected bitterly, like he was going to end up seeing the Harken Building’s basement anyway.

Wondering just how deep these stairs went, he came upon a green door. He was beginning to wonder if this was some bad campfire joke when he reached a yellow door. Deeper and deeper he went, past an orange door, then a red door, then a purple one, then black.

Still more stairs. The farther he descended, the more he thought about that door, the door none of them ever accepted the dare to pass through alone when they were children. Realized that he felt as if he were seven years old again, trying to figure out why he was so nervous. He got his answer when he found a door at the bottom that looked nothing like the others.

This can’t be good…

Unlike before, this door was taller and wider than the others, and the landing more than just standing room. The whole thing made of dark wood planks, with fancy black metal bars. Across the top-most strip, something was ornately inscribed, but it was too swirly for him to make out.

“Abandon all hope?…” Shades trailed off, deciding that his last crack wasn’t very wise, or very funny, in this place. He had no more idea what it was supposed to say than he knew how far down he had gone by now. Having nowhere else to go, he took a deep breath, then got it over with and opened the door.

He had read of so many eerie experiences over the years, his imagination was running wild in the couple seconds it took to push the door open. He wasn’t sure exactly what he expected, but what he got was a large, stone-walled chamber. The room itself was bare, save for a massive podium, with a pair of tall candelabras topped with candles burning bright green.

Now he knew he had truly stepped out into the Unknown.

That color alone made him want to search for another way out. Yet upon the podium sat a book. A very large book. Helpless against his own fascination, he crossed the room for a closer look.

Up close, the book was even bigger than it appeared, nearly three feet wide, four feet tall, and well over a foot thick. Making it the largest book he had ever seen. Something, perhaps morbid curiosity, compelled him to open it.

The cover was totally blank, and on the front page was printed a strange symbol, or rather a bizarre, eye-bending melding of symbols that didn’t quite sit flat on the page. Just trying to look straight at it hurt his mind in a way that was hauntingly familiar, like something half-remembered out of a dream. There was something he seriously didn’t like about it, so he quickly turned the page.

On the next page was a single word: FATE.

No author, no table of contents, no foreword. He flipped to the next page to find that this volume got right down to the point. The format was simple: a list of names, accompanied by a short blurb about how they were supposed to die. They all seemed totally random, listed in no particular order that he could discern. Incredulous, he rifled through several pages, hoping not to see any names he recognized.

But he did. On one page:

BLACK, JUSTIN— will die impaled on a stick (Murder / Revenge)

“Gotta warn him…” And then wondered how. First, he would have to find him in time. He didn’t have to think about it for long to be vexed by the book’s format; it never mentioned when these people were supposed to kick the bucket.

Unable to stop himself, he read on, flipping to random pages. Along the way, he found some names that jumped out at him. As if some unseen hand had guided him to them…

AREMAC, ALEXANDRA— will die from falling a great distance (Trap / Sabotage)

CLEO— will be killed by an old friend (Accident / Death By Misadventure)

VANDENBERG, MAXIMILLIAN— will be killed by a formidable opponent (Fatality)

Could that be our Max? Shades wondered.

TRYON, JASON— will be eaten by spiders (Trap)

ERIX— will die from falling a great distance (Death By Misadventure)

Shades was struck by the fact that this fellow apparently had only one name, just like Max. And, as if pondering such things somehow summoned it:

MAX— will die by the hand of an unknown enemy (Assassination)

“So he really doesn’t have a last name…” Not that he had ever really doubted his friend, but it was just strange actually seeing what appeared to be independent corroboration like this. Shades wondered what manner of unknown enemy the passage was referring to. And assassination… meant that someone would be hired to kill him? Does he even have any old enemies? Or is this somebody we have yet to meet?

Just one of those times he wished his friend would tell him a little more about himself, he concluded as he read on.

FLETCHER, JESSE— will be killed by an old friend’s old enemy (Murder / Mistaken Identity)

In the midst of his bleak ruminations, he happened upon the worst possible name he could.

DOE, JOHN— will kill himself (Murder)

“Not you…” Shades whispered, feeling the full weight of the guilt and shame of that night. Even as he despaired over what he could possibly do to save his old friend, he was struck by one odd point of that entry that confused him. Will kill himself… and murder… How could it be murder? Shouldn’t it be suicide? Not that either possibility appealed to him. Is this a riddle or a typo?

Still he read on, fearing what else he might find.

SPENCER, CHASE— will be killed by a hungry mob (Ambush / Murder)

And somehow, he was pretty sure that was Kato’s Chase that was written of. Wondering if it mentioned George or Kato anywhere, he read on, hitting on a name he never would have dreamed he’d come across, and a grim conundrum almost as baffling as John’s entry.

ADAMS, CARLOS— will never wake up (Nightmare)

Archenemy or not, he found he still didn’t wish any such thing on him. That, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know how a nightmare could kill someone. It set his mind on a less than reassuring track for the next name he spotted.

O’CONNOR, AMY— will wake up dead (Trap)

“Please, no…” In spite of his unsettling dreams on the subject, he had kept trying to tell himself that she at least was alright. Safely back in Lakeside, and either pissed off at being stood up, or worried sick about his disappearance, he would gladly settle for either one. This worried him greatly. Not knowing where she was, or what was happening to her, any more than he did John, only made it worse.

Yet he found he still could not stop digging.

BERKOWITZ, GARY— will get run over (Ambush)

QUINN, ASA— will be eaten alive (Prey)

MacLEAN, DEXTER—

“Don’t call me Dexter!” Shades muttered at the book, already dreading its pronouncement.

—will die a terrible death (Torture / Punishment)

That’s it. I’m outta here. At first it seemed that he might keep hunting for every name he knew, but the chill that ran up his spine at this final listing, of actually seeing his own name, was enough for him. Shades took a deep breath and closed the book. This is creepin’ me out…

His thoughts ground to a halt as he turned to leave, seeing something that chilled him still more. He was not sure how long he had been reading, but the chamber had changed drastically since last he looked up from the book. Now moss grew in every corner of the room, the stones of the walls appeared aged and slightly rusted, cobwebs draped from the ceiling.

Now there were skeletons leaning against the walls in chains.

“You have read from the Book of Fate…”

The disembodied voice’s words were a statement, not a question. Only a few paces in front of him, a spectral flame materialized.

“…And you shall spend eternity here for it, Interloper…”

As the voice continued, it coalesced around the growing flame. And as it expanded, it began to take the form of a blazing figure. In light of the flaming ghost’s words, Shades couldn’t stop thinking about those skeletons, perhaps others who had dared to read of the book?

“You cannot escape—”

“Oh-no-you-don’t!” Shades bolted for the door, seeing it slowly closing out of the corner of his eye. He barely slipped through as it slammed shut solidly behind him.

His sigh of relief was brief, though. Even as he searched for a lock or a latch of some kind, a transparent flaming hand reached right through that ornate door as if it didn’t exist. It nearly grabbed his shoulder before he took off again.

He raced back up the stairs, slamming the black door behind him. For all the good it did; the flaming ghost passed right through it, as well. Shades didn’t even bother wasting time or energy on the other doors as he came to them.

Purple, then red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and wood. The flaming ghost, so slow-moving at first, was picking up speed. It was only as Shades began to tire that he remembered that at the top awaited a dead end.

He was still wracking his brain trying to figure out how he was going to deal with it when he reached the trapdoor. Only now it opened into a wide spiral staircase. His legs were beginning to feel like stretched-out rubber bands, and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep this up. And to make matters worse, the flaming ghost was catching up, slowly but surely; it seemed that the harder he ran, the closer that fiery hand came to him.

Shades very nearly stumbled when he abruptly came out on level ground. A few steps later, he instinctively ground to a halt, feeling his feet curve over an edge. Ahead he could see nothing but pitch-blackness.

And the flaming ghost behind.

“You have an easy choice, Interloper…”

Shades wheeled around, nearly losing his balance on that precarious precipice, to see the flaming ghost just a few paces from him. Glowing red eyes gleaming with a hunter’s satisfaction. Cornered, he nearly fumbled his power pistol bringing it to bear against the burning apparition.

For all the good it did— as he feared, his shots passed harmlessly through it.

“You can either go back with me…” the flaming ghost continued, unfazed by Shades’ attacks. Then looked beyond him, into the darkness. “Or you can take the easy way out…”

“Look…” Shades began, trying to figure out precisely where to begin, “I didn’t know the book was forbidden—”

“The easy way out is not as easy as it looks…” it said as it took a step toward him, gesturing to the void. “It is bottomless…”

“And what if I don’t want to go with you?” Shades demanded. “Can’t we talk this out?”

“You have no choice…” was the flaming ghost’s toneless response. “Only cowards take the easy way out…”

Took another step toward him.

“Come, we can work something out…”

Advancing a step at a time.

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“Exactly what I said. What part of the word ‘no’ don’t you understand?” Shades didn’t trust this creature, not after reading that entry in the book. And he was not about to let this mysterious being take advantage of him. That was exactly what Max— and Master Al before him— had warned him about, what he had been doing all this time. Frozen on the spot. “You can call me a coward all you want.”

“Come…” the flaming ghost said menacingly, moving closer, closer. Reached out for him with a wildly burning hand. “Before I take out that option, as well…”

With the thing’s hand almost upon him, there was no time left to decide. As they had done so many times before in his life, his feet decided for him. Before the flaming ghost could catch him, he reflexively stepped back.

And fell into darkness.
XIV by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
Justin in frozen storage
Justin was lost.

He was finally forced to admit it when he discovered that he had no idea which way he came from. His path had by no means been direct to begin with, but he was still taken aback by how many branches he encountered on his return trip. Of course he tried his best, yet after walking farther than he remembered coming, he still couldn’t find the stairs.

Instead of the double-doors leading back to the caged rooms, he found himself wandering among metal-walled rooms lined with shelves. The shelves were all loaded with boxes. It took a while to notice it at first, but the place was getting cooler the farther he went.

The idea had occurred to him to turn around and go a different way— several times— but he was so worried about being followed that he didn’t dare. Even though there were no alarms when he broke into that vending machine earlier, he still feared he had gotten something’s attention. Hated to admit it now, but he was too afraid to double back, for fear he would be intercepted by some new enemy. On top of that, he was fast becoming certain that if Max or Shades had decided to come in after him, they surely already had by now.

For a moment, he thought about going back and marking the ways he had already gone, but he didn’t dare. Back in Tranz-D, he was pretty sure that NK-525 was reading his marks and using them to track him. He didn’t know for sure if anyone or anything actually was after him, but giving any potential pursuer even the slightest clue to his whereabouts struck him as too great a risk.

Just simply not knowing if he was being followed was starting to get to him.

When he first came in, he was so angry at Shades, and to a lesser extent at Kato for not leaving him a single hint as to which way she went, he hadn’t really given much thought to it. But the longer he wandered around in here, the more this place kept his trigger-finger constantly itching. How all these “belowground” places reminded him of the Works, the mines, and worst of all, of Tranz-D.

His ears constantly straining for even the faintest sound of tracks rolling.

To make matters worse, the farther he went, the colder the chambers got. Max at least apparently remembered that it could be a little chilly in Tranz-D, as he and Shades had the foresight to pack him a jacket in their rescue preparations. Which Justin pulled out of his pack and donned against the growing cold. By now he could see his breath, and felt a chill deeper and harsher than any he could recall from even the coldest morning in the Ruins.

After not too much of this, he finally decided to go back, pursuers or no pursuers.

Yet on his way back, he again found more twists and turns and forks than he remembered. Though his heart continued to hammer harder than he wanted it to, in his head at least he had become more confident that he wasn’t be followed. When he first started walking around, he would never have dreamed this place could possibly be such a maze. If Kato went a different way— to say nothing of her friends— she would have to find her own way out, and so would Max and Shades.

In the meantime, he would have to figure out his own way out. Though he quietly hoped to catch up with any of them, he didn’t want to be alone in here.

Justin found he was shivering in spite of himself, but it was when he slipped on a patch of ice that he truly realized just how cold it was in here. The rooms he passed through now were crammed with tall piles of frozen boxes. The lights fewer and farther between, frigid air blowing on him from every vent he passed. His nose and ears were starting to hurt, and his fingers were going numb on him.

When he walked into the next room, though, his body’s growing numbness took a back seat to the sight before him. It was the largest room he had seen in a while, and every bit as frigid as what he had passed through of late. What held his attention, though, were the masses dangling from the ceiling.

Back in the marketplace in Benton, he had seen skinned pigs and chickens on display, some even on ice, but most of what hung on these meathooks were too big even to be wild hogs. As he made his way along, he tried not to touch them, brick-frozen though they were. Especially after he caught sight of something stuck on one of those hooks that didn’t look like an animal to him, not at all.

There were several of these disturbing butchered shapes hanging around, and Justin tried hard not to let his eyes linger on any of them as he hastened his steps.

Again he found himself reaching into his pocket for that runic figurine, feeling what felt like a carved ice cube, as seemingly frozen as everything else in here. Cold comfort, in light of what he was seeing around him.

Unlike any of the other doors he had passed through thus far, he shut the door to this room firmly behind him, having no interest in coming back this way again.

The thoughts inspired by what he had seen, or at least thought he’d seen, chilled him more than the dropping temperature. Had no idea what all was in there, but in addition to what to him looked like sides of human torso, there were also things in there that his mind could not match to any creature he had ever seen or heard of. Frozen trigger-finger or not, he kept his guard up, having no intention of joining those macabre meat slabs back there.

After slicing the padlock off a massive metal door, Justin finally emerged from the dark frozen storage area. Not wanting anything to come after him without his knowing, Justin piled some metal shelving parts he found lying in a corner against the door after he closed it. Figured they would make enough noise for him to hear if that door opened again. At least until he was a long way away.

Blowing on his hands to warm them up again, Justin continued on his way.
XV by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
Kato vs the elevator
“Shit! Finally!” Kato muttered as she left the round-and-round menagerie of showroom bathrooms behind her.

She was beginning to see where the Harken Building got its infamous nickname. After what had to be her best meal in weeks, she had wandered through some more kitchens, then that long chain of bathrooms. This place was so big, yet seemed so small, she was beginning to fear she would never find her friends in here. Resigning herself to the likelihood that Chase and George would have to find their own way out, she would have to focus on getting herself out of this mess. But she was still sure she would come up with something.

She always did.

Her confidence, though, took a bit of a dip when she spotted bleached bones lying on the floor.

What looked like it was once a human hand, and lying next to it, a device. A device that looked similar to Justin’s laser staff, but with subtle differences. Trying as hard as she could to ignore what she was sure was once the hand that held it, she picked the object up for a closer inspection.

It may have looked a lot like Justin’s weapon— even the controls were similar— but when she activated it, the bright purple “blade” hung down in coils like a shimmering, fluid neon rope. She flicked it a couple times to test the “beam’s” flexibility, finding it as pliable as any cable she had ever seen. Clearly built with technology more sophisticated than either Justin or Max’s weapons, not even the mercenaries in the Triangle State ever brought something like this, of that she was certain.

A laser whip?… It was the best thing she could come up with to call it.

Clearly a treasure to lose, but much like her meal earlier, she didn’t see anyone around to object to her taking it, so she did. The only place she could figure out to carry it was in the long thigh pocket of her pants. Their bagginess even helped conceal her new weapon, so she felt less conspicuous about carrying it around.

The hand itself bothered her, though, begging the simple question of where it came from. Who it used to belong to. How it came to land in the middle of the floor in the depths of the Harken Building. And why the owner of that hand was apparently wielding a weapon in this silent room.

That part she found less surprising the more she thought about the vibe in here, combined with the fact that, beyond the endless display rooms was a short, dim hall with an elevator at the end. Feeling that she must have already covered the building’s entire floorspace, and then some, just searching this floor, she concluded that she was probably well past the point of no return. As she traversed the hallway, she found herself thinking about things she hadn’t thought about in a long time. Things, she figured, her chance meeting with Justin Black, streetrat fugitive from her former home in the Triangle State, had likely prompted.

Kato. Alexandra Aremac. And one name she would never know.

Along the way, Kato had learned of the naming customs of her Cyexian clans. Had learned that, though often Cyexian women bore intimidating, masculine-sounding public names (like a hard, protective outer shell), each was also given a hidden, secret name, often otherwise known only to their mother. Unfortunately, Kato’s mother died when she was still a baby— died, she later learned, trying to escape back to her clan— and Kato’s true name died with her. Only from one of her father’s servants had she learned of the name Kato, a secret passed from one mother to another, and she kept that moniker as her handle because it at least sounded Cyexian. And because she abhorred the name her father gave her, what it represented. It didn’t matter how much money they had, how big the house was, there was no freedom, it was not a home.

No matter what anyone else called her— or thought of her, for that matter— Kato, like her mother before her, was nobody’s “pet” Cyexian.

Yet, much as it vexed her, she had little idea how to be a Cyexian, just fragments of her own original culture, and no experience among real Cyexians. Just acting tough and working hard to keep her act together seemed enough to convince Chase and George, but she always found herself wishing she knew more. Wishing she really was as tough and resourceful as Cyexian wanderers and warriors were reputed to be. Anymore, she could make herself believe it when she needed to, but this place seemed to be draining her confidence as much as her spirit.

Bringing to the surface not only her own edginess, but insecurities she didn’t even know she still harbored anymore.

Not wanting to dwell on such things, and wishing this place didn’t call them to mind so readily, she turned her focus back to the situation at hand. That hand had alerted her to the very real possibility of previously unimagined threats. Anyone or anything that could take a person’s hand off was nothing to take lightly, and the more she thought about it, the more one other aspect of that scene bothered her. She wasn’t terribly experienced in dealing with corpses, but it seemed to her that those bones had achieved a peculiar state of decomposition for an indoor environment, as if something had picked them clean or something…

As there were no other doors in the hall, she entered the elevator with these thoughts in mind. The elevator itself was small and cramped, its walls painted a harsh institutional yellow-orange that cast a sunset light which almost made her stop in spite of herself. There was something about that light that felt like a warning, in some way she wished she understood, yet wondered if she really wanted to know.

When she saw the triple row of buttons on the elevator controls, she felt a sense of vertigo akin to what she experienced seeing that unreal entrance to Tranz-D. She could picture all these levels underground, yet she could tell from the display above that this was one of the middle levels. The dozen or so levels above her hurt her mind in a way not unlike the inexplicably agitating light in here.

She jumped in spite of herself as the door snapped shut in front of her.

After a couple seconds, she regained her composure. The place had been gradually getting to her with every room. Her wonderful meal made her forget for a while, but being cramped in this excitable space made it all catch up with her at once. Deciding that she wanted nothing to do with the basement levels of a place like this, she pressed for the top floor.

Though she was starting to get the idea that it didn’t matter which floor she picked anyway.

Kato watched quite possibly meaningless numbers climb up the display. So far, nothing here was like anything she would have expected, or even imagined would be inside. That she could only guess what she would find on a floor at least ten levels above where the building was supposed to end.

Her vaguely anxious speculations were interrupted as the elevator slowed to a halt several levels below the top floor.

She stood there for a moment, trying to figure out why she was dreading the moment the door opened, but that moment never came, the door remained shut.

“Hey!” Kato snapped, jabbing the “open” button several times.

Still the door stayed shut.

“Open up!” she shouted, pounding the emergency button with her palm several times, to no effect.

Fearing that she may have been somehow diverted to this level, though she had no idea why she thought this, she hit the button for the top floor again.

At last the elevator started moving again— going down.

“Hey!” she cried, surprised at the strain in her own voice. She started pounding on the button even harder, screaming, “Give me goddam fucking twenty-six!”

Still the car descended.

“This is motherfucking twenty-six, you piece of shit!”

That last scream hurt her throat, but at least it did the trick; the elevator started going back up.

Or it did for about five or six floors. Just when she was starting to relax, telling herself that it was only a malfunction— for a moment the hope crossed her mind that perhaps that might have been Chase or George trying to summon the same elevator— it stopped and started going down again. The little light for each floor seeming to wink at her as it went.

Let me the fuck off!” Kato shouted. (At the Building? she wondered.) Max had mentioned that graffito-tag, and now she wondered if there was anything to that whole The Building is hungry! bit. By now she had switched tactics, banging on the emergency button over and over.

She watched the numbers slide back down again. Then, just when she thought she would have to face the bottom floor anyway, it stopped a couple levels from the lowest, just for a couple seconds, almost toppling her off her feet, before starting back up again. She steadied herself against the wall, finally realizing what it was about that hue of light in here.

It made an already small elevator somehow feel even smaller.

Kato jerked her hand away from the wall with a horrified hiss. Even the feel of moving machinery on her hand, along with a thin film of dust, was more than she could stand. The car rose about a dozen levels, Kato banging on the controls all the while, surprising herself by not screaming.

As the elevator went up and down random numbers, sometimes pausing briefly between floors, the indicator lights blinked at her.

Laughing at her.

“No… no…”

Kato watched the numbers shift back and forth, feeling the car ascending then descending, lurching a little more violently each time, and starting to wish she hadn’t eaten so much back in that kitchen. She had traveled on the high seas since she was girl, and was by no means prone to seasickness, but this was starting to do the trick. At first she had no idea what to do, just stood there, wanting off. Finally she brought out her new laser whip, resolving to tear down the door. As the car hit each level, she would break down the outer doors until she at last had a way off.

No longer cared what level it was, she just wanted out.

Just as she was about to make her move, though, the elevator came to a halt, and the door popped open.

Wasting no time, Kato seized her chance, springing outside before the door could snap shut on her again. She leaned against the wall near the door, trying to regain her composure. Beyond was a long, dimly-lit hallway. The walls were grimy, the floor under her feet gritty, and she was pretty sure everything would be dusty.

She had almost decided that perhaps this wasn’t the best level to get off on, when the elevator door slid open again.

There was something about that shaft of dusky-orange light thrown out across the linoleum, radiating her own spindly shadow out of that open door, the irrational fear that there might be something bathed in that unhallowed light that wasn’t in there a moment ago, that was just a little too much for her.

She took off down the hall with a panicked yelp, refusing to even look back into that creepy light.
XVI by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
Chase vs "them"
Chase thought more than once about going back, but he knew he wouldn’t.

He had managed to get through the rooms of skeletons without losing it, even as the clacking noises became a more frequent phenomenon, and he was still no closer to figuring out what the hell that was. The last few of those rooms contained piles of bones and partially constructed skeletons, and in the last one, the lights were off, so he had to fumble on the wall for the switch. Of course, he had a couple flashlights stowed in his coat, but given the sheer size of this place, he didn’t want to use the battery power unless he absolutely had to.

In the end, nothing happened, but it was still a spooky experience. Since leaving that section, he had found no forks, unlike before, yet he still didn’t want to double back. Just to move on to whatever lay beyond.

And whatever lay beyond that.

And beyond that.

That was the problem with this place. It was a broken record. A repeat-loop that somehow managed to put a myriad of different faces on the same message.

The Building is hungry…

To think he originally found that spray-painted message amusing when he first saw it. A little dramatic touch, he figured. Most likely added by that weird guy who bet him he and George couldn’t find the exit.

Bastard’s probably laughing all the way to the bank…

Right now, though, he wasn’t so much concerned about blowing the money Kato left him so much as he was bitter about the bastard in question apparently being right. And he was worried about George. Even as the place was getting to him more and more with its eerie depths and unsettling noises, he also found he was starting to nod off at random moments. Beginning to dawn on him just how long it was since last he slept, how long it would likely be until he would get to sleep again.

Sure as hell not in here, though.

He found himself wondering if Kato would ever even find out what happened to him. All the same, he found he was increasingly glad she would never have to find her way into this warped maze. He knew Cyexian chicks were tough, but he himself was having a hard time in here, and he wasn’t so sure she could handle it any better.

Especially since she had come to seem less and less her usual bold self in recent months. Of course, he knew she was about that age all girls seemed to go through where she always worried about looking fat, and what to wear, and if her hair looked good— well, more so than before— and seemed to spend more time on her appearance than she used to, but he always thought Cyexians were immune to that. Over the past year, she had increasingly hid underneath baggy clothes, even though as far as he could tell, she hadn’t gained an ounce. Was afraid to speak of it around her, even accidentally, for fear she would bite his head off about it.

Chase shook his head. Right now he had more urgent matters to worry about; he could do nothing about her girlish adolescent fixations, but keeping her from worrying about himself and George was something he could do. Hopefully.

Earlier, he had gone down some stairs, walked some mostly blank halls that should have led him in a circle, but instead came out here. When he first saw the dimness beyond that lone door, he almost did decide to double back to the skeleton section, but again resolved not to be pushed around by childish fears he felt he should have outgrown by now. Yet this place was proving quite effective at invoking and provoking childhood fears, primal fears; had managed to convince himself the area didn’t look that spooky when he was standing in the doorway.

Now that he had ventured beyond the outer edge of this dimly-lit series of office cubicles and actually walked among them, he armed his sawed-off disrupter again, keeping a flashlight in his free hand, hoping not to have to use either. Found that he just kept thinking, When the lights go out, that’s when the attack’s gonna come, and wondering why he was so sure it would come hard and fast when it finally did…

As Chase wandered among the cubicles, it didn’t take long for him to figure out that it was even more of a maze than he originally thought. Not that the rest of this place wasn’t. He wasn’t ordinarily claustrophobic, but this setup was starting to make him feel that way.

With the skeletons, he kept telling himself that trying to watch all directions at once was just a training exercise, to keep from losing his edge, but here he found himself peering around every corner, wary of every cubicle opening. Edging past another one, he peeked inside, noticing that the computer on the desk was on. Now that he noticed it, he was aware that only a little of this area’s scant lighting came from the handful of guttering fluorescents overhead. The rest from the bluish glow of computer monitors. This bothered him because he wanted to believe that they had been on all along, but another little voice in his mind was pretty sure they had somehow switched on when he wasn’t paying attention.

The screensaver didn’t help things, either. Just a scrolling marquee. And though the words themselves didn’t surprise him too much, they still chilled him just a few degrees.

The building is hungry!…

Over and over.

“Like a broken record…”

Chase really didn’t like this. It was bad enough there seemed to be no end to the Harken Building, but the fact that this message was also in the depths of this place— not just slashed on the wall outside— was much worse. That someone, or something (he may as well be thorough as well as pessimistic), perhaps some other unfortunate soul had lost his mind— he looked at a couple other monitors— and put this disconcerting screensaver on every single computer here?…

More than at any other point in this creepy tour, he wanted out of here.

Maybe the skeletons weren’t so bad after—

So fixated was Chase on those eerie marquees, that he failed to catch sight of something falling headlong out of a door along the edge of the cubicle maze, knocking over a section of the walls. Before his eyes could track what came in, the disrupter was knocked from his hand by a falling section of divider paneling. Though he tried to backpedal out of the way, it still caught his foot, tripping him.

As Chase scrambled to his feet, he saw what looked like a pair of legs scissoring out from underneath one of the panels, a hand reaching out from under it, as well. What really bothered him, though, wasn’t just the eerily sluggish movements of this newcomer, but also its unintelligible grunting that he thought was somehow supposed to be speech.

Again, he was so focused on this spectacle, which was already raising the hairs on his neck, it wasn’t until a second, third, even a fourth, figure stumbled out of the same door, from what appeared to be a dingy alleyway, that he noticed a couple more following them. Walking into the area, muttering and mumbling things Chase couldn’t interpret, and was fast wondering if he really wanted to know. All six of them were garbed in rag-tag grey military uniforms of unknown design.

Chase wheeled around as if shot, liking this less and less by the second as they shuffled his way with their glazed eyes and dazed expressions.

He fumbled for a long moment for something to say before finally coming up with a lame-sounding, “Who… who the hell are you?…”

But at least it did manage to pause the coming onslaught for a moment.

Now that he had a second to look over his assailants more clearly, he wished he hadn’t. Though they had a desperate look about them on the surface, and smelled as if they hadn’t showered in even longer than they had slept, he found he was drawn to their eyes. All had deep circles under them, as if they had set some kind of record for going without sleep. So hollow, so vacant. He figured they had been wandering around in here longer than he cared to know.

It showed.

Chase was increasingly certain these guys had gone beyond reason. Hardcore paranormal freak though he was, he found his desire to know wavering. Had no idea what they had seen, what they had been through. Yet their minds had clearly come unhinged, possibly even broken.

And all he had to fend off these half-dead-looking bastards was an aluminum flashlight. He tried not to think about his fallen disrupter, for fear his eyes might betray him. Dared not draw anything else from his coat of arms, dared not take his eyes off these guys for a second, lest he give them an opening. Hoped in spite of his doubts that they could perhaps still be reasoned with after all as he stared them down.

Silence.

“I’m not your enemy…”

At his words, they paused again.

“The building is hungry, you know…” one of them said dully, pointing to the screensaver, as if for emphasis.

The others nodded with solemn grunts.

Then, like the others, the first one fell back into mumbling unintelligible gibberish under his breath. Chase braced himself as they started shambling toward him. While his attention was focused on the others, the creepy degenerate on the floor crawled partway out from under the panel, grabbing him by the ankle.

But even with his rifle out of reach, Chase was quick on the defense, giving the gibbering creature a vicious kick to the head, then stomped on one of his hands. Even as he stumbled back from his attacker’s loosened grip, the others, like rabid dogs, tried to rush him. Staggering into one of the stalls, Chase shined his flashlight right in their faces, causing them to draw back. Stuffing the flashlight in his pocket, he took this opportunity, grabbing a chair from the cubicle and swinging it at the first one in line, toppling the others behind him like dominoes.

Chase was about to make a break for it, then wondered where he was going to run to in this random maze of divider walls. Like the rest of this place, he suspected it consisted mostly of dead ends. Slow though these fellows were, he still pictured them catching up with him…

Then he remembered his fallen disrupter rifle, spotting it out of the corner of his eye, even in the gloom. Dodging the fallen one, whose movements were quicker now that he was no longer half-buried under divider paneling, he lunged down and snatched up his weapon. His hat fluttered to the floor as he sprang to his feet.

And those creepy degenerate humans were almost back on theirs. Shambling toward him with a speed greater than he would have attributed to things that looked so much like walking corpses. He felt his ordinarily talkative trigger-finger clam up for a moment, as it dawned him that he could see primeval murder in their otherwise empty eyes. That there would be no reasoning with them.

The Building was hungry, indeed, and it had found itself a little snack.

At the last possible second, breaking his moment of paralysis, he shot them several times before realizing that he was still in stun mode. This forced them back, but didn’t faze them as much as he would have expected. One of them, possibly on some lingering reflex from when they were still themselves, reached down for a sidearm Chase just belatedly noticed was holstered at its side. Its draw was slow, halting, fumbling, but Chase could no longer afford to take any more chances with so many mindless, murderous foes.

Before the creature could firm its grip on the weapon, Chase switched to full power and mowed them all down, lighting the dim chamber with strobes of red-orange fire.

As he watched those sickly creatures collapse into a writhing, groaning tangle on the floor, falling silent in an alarmingly short span of seconds, Chase reflected that what just happened to them was a pathetic end. The more he would think about it, the more he would conclude that he had put them— and himself— out of their misery. He had no idea what happened to those people— if they could be called such anymore— before he met them, but he was damn sure he didn’t want to find out.

Feared he would find out if he stayed in the building long enough.

“Shit!” he hissed. “I’ve gotta get out of here…”

Snatching his hat back, for he felt naked without it anymore, Chase simply stood there, drenched in his own sweat. Realizing now that he had been so freaked out about those creatures he had made the mistake of tensing up the whole time, wasting energy and making his moves more awkward than they should be. The whole experience left him weak in the knees, odd given that he had fought more battles than Kato and George combined. It was a weird fight, but he still felt that was no excuse. Although her help would have been useful, he was glad Kato wasn’t here to see this.

He felt like a damn civilian.

Yet he didn’t linger for long, wanting badly to get away from these freaky corpses. Which he was afraid might… Might what? he asked himself. Get back up and attack him, of course. Had contemplated taking their guns, but unlike in Justin’s case, Chase didn’t trust them to do what the dead should… that is, to stay dead. Pictured a cold, clammy hand clutching his even as he reached for the gun…

They did, after all, look like the living dead even before he “killed” them. Looked way too much like ghouls from the world’s darkest legends for his taste. And those hollow eyes, that seemed somehow sightless yet weren’t, as if something primal and hungry were looking out through them…

Nobody’s home, he thought, wanting to burst into fits of giggling.

After all, a laugh in the dark always helped.
XVII by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
Gary Berkowitz
In one of the Harken Building’s many institutional gold halls, George slept near a t-joint between hallways. Near that point was a nook with a couch and a small table. George lay sprawled out across it, left arm dangling to the floor, a thin trickle of drool slipping from the corner of his mouth.

Such a vulnerable position for such a dangerous place as this.

The faint squeak of a lone uncooperative wheel tugged as his consciousness, joined by a light jingling sound, and soft footfalls. After a moment, George opened his eyes, blinking away at the inexplicable drowsiness that had been pulling him down even before the carnival incident. Just thinking about that snapped him awake several more notches. On one hand, seeing his current surroundings calmed him somewhat, but the fact that he only vaguely remembered falling asleep here in the first place bothered him greatly.

It was seeing the figure pushing the cart, and remembering his sense of not being alone anymore, that reminded him of why he woke up in the first place.

The cart was of the janitorial variety, with shelves and racks loaded with cans and spray bottles and other cleaning items, a space on the front occupied by mop and bucket. The young man pushing it wore baggy cargo jeans, an untucked t-shirt, and a cap that, George saw as he drew nearer, read
Harken Facilities Services. Casually chewing gum, the young man stepped in time to whatever played on the sleek, compact earphones he was listening to. Next to a flashlight on a strap, a foot-and-a-half of chain dangled from his belt, ending in a knot of keys.

Which George now realized was the source of that jingling sound.

Upon seeing George sit up, the custodian stopped in his tracks. He blinked, but didn’t jump, didn’t seem as alarmed as George would have expected. Instead, he pulled off his earphones, hanging them around his neck.

“Um… hi…” the custodian said.

“Hi,” George replied, his voice quiet and even, strangely incongruous with his childish appearance.

“So what’s your story?” the custodian asked, with a sigh that sounded exasperated but not at all unfriendly. “Way too many doors in this place to check ’em all… I wish the department heads could just lock up after themselves every once in a while…”

“Well…” George hesitated, thinking for a moment that there was something wrong with this picture, but, being unable to figure out quite what it was, he continued. “A friend of mine came in here, and I went along with him. He went off on his own, and now I can’t find him anywhere.”

“Doesn’t sound like much of a friend to me,” the custodian remarked. “And who might you be?”

“Well, my real name is Gary Berkowitz,” he replied, again pausing with that sense that something was amiss, then resumed, “but my friends call me ‘George’. I try writing my name on a piece of paper,” all the while trying to remember why he would need to
write it, “and they just ask me, ‘Who the hell is Gary Berkowitz?’ And then they laugh. I can’t even tell if they’re being serious…” He sighed. “But I guess we get along okay most of the time.”

“That’s good,” the custodian said, “though you do kinda
look like a George…”

Then he turned to the restrooms across the hall from them. Between the two restroom doors was a closet. The custodian looked at his keys— and George was certain they had changed while he wasn’t looking— with a slightly befuddled look, then brightened as he found the key he was looking for.

As the young man opened the custodial closet and started restocking his cart, George asked him, “How can you work in here? Aren’t you scared of this place?”

“Yeah, I was,” the custodian replied. “Sometimes I still am. Even before I started, I was told it was going to be a big, spooky old building. Most of the time, I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in here, but I just remember what my supervisor told me.
Don’t let the building overwhelm you.

George had no reply to that. The idea this man put forward was overwhelming in and of itself.

“It’s good advice, Gary. Keep it in mind.”

“I’ll try,” George, who was once Gary Berkowitz, told him.

The custodian, meanwhile, had finished resupplying whatever he needed, having donned rubber gloves, and proceeded to enter the men’s room holding a small bucket in each hand. “Scrubby for sinks and scrungy for toilets.” Raising each one in turn. “ ’Fraid I’ve gotta get back to work, my friend. You’re really not supposed to be here, so please find your buddy and be on your way. Good luck.”

George was left just sitting there, wondering how he was going to do that.
XVIII by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
Max meets "them"
Max had started to relax in spite of himself up on the roof, even stopping for a long while and splitting a meal with Bandit.

He knew he shouldn’t feel as at ease as he did, but it was hard to keep his guard up when there was nothing to be on guard against. His parents’ accounts of this place were filled with dread and haunting images, yet, beyond the strangeness of the place itself, he had seen nothing of the sort. Was starting to wonder if he should perhaps go back inside, if he might find something more useful than this endless maze of rooftops.

Following the stairs and other ways that were available to them in this direction, Max and Bandit soon found themselves walking through a narrow stretch between the walls of higher sections. In the shadows of these walls, everything was drab and gritty. Trash littered the corners, as well as stacks of boxes and crates, and some areas were barred by sections of chain-link dividers bearing WARNING! and NO TRESPASSING! signs.

Earlier, he may have had trouble keeping his guard up, but in this area, he found himself unable to remain at ease as he had up above. That creepy poem kept sneaking back into his head, especially the part about the Sweet Lady of Twylight, the whole passage seemingly describing a certain ghost ship he once told Shades about, one of the eeriest tales of the sea. And worse, the path of nightmares and dreams sounded so much like a description of the place his parents barely escaped from all those years ago. Halls of locked doors, hidden danger… This was what awaited not only him, but his companions, as well.

Even Bandit was getting edgy again, more so than at any point since they first entered the building. He guessed his companion was starting to see the side of this place his mother had spoken of in what felt like another life. His grimy, dingy surroundings certainly looked more like it than anything else he had seen so far, and he wondered why it hadn’t seemed so foreboding when viewed from above.

Now he kept his laser sword handy as he walked; much as he wanted it himself, he was now glad he had talked Shades into taking his power pistol, that at least neither he nor Justin went unarmed in this place of unknown peril.

Max was just about to turn around, having decided to try a different path, when Bandit froze in his tracks, sniffing the air more closely. Clearly having caught wind of something he seriously didn’t like. After a moment, the big cat turned back toward the way they had just come and started growling, low and soft but menacing.

Even as Max turned to see what could have so upset his friend, they both heard a loud squalling sound, a metal-on-metal grinding that made him almost drop his blade to cover his ears, so alarmed was he.

A moment later, they saw what happened as a gate in one of those fenced-off sections swung open on rusty hinges, becoming visible from his position around the corner. Before Max could give any thought to what might have caused this, a figure stumbled into the alleyway. In spite of Bandit’s freaked-out reaction, for a second he still held out some hope it would be one of his missing party members.

Unfortunately, the figure that lurched around the corner wasn’t any of them, not even bearing any resemblance to Kato’s descriptions of her friends, either. Dirty and disheveled, but dressed in street clothes similar to that of those worn by most people at the Mall. This might have been somewhat reassuring if not for the man’s blank, staring gaze from deeply sunken, dark-ringed eyes. The pallor and overall stung-out appearance he instinctively disliked. He smelled wrong, even to Max’s nose.

More than anything, though, it was the blood-stained clothes that did it, the certainty that most of that blood was not his own.

This newcomer ground to a halt at the sight of Bandit, gawking at the panther in slack-jawed puzzlement, possibly even fear. Which was good as far as Max was concerned; he still couldn’t tell if his feline friend was about to attack or run away.

He finally got his answer when several more of those very unhealthy-looking folks came shuffling around the same corner. Something about these guys bothered him deeply, and it apparently bothered his friend even more, for Bandit simply bolted at the mere sight of them.

“Hey! Bandit! Wait up!” Max almost called his companion a coward, but after thinking it over for all of about a second or two, he decided he was with Bandit on this one. “Wait!”

But Bandit was clearly unhinged by these new arrivals, and now was running for real. Even as Max took off after him, he looked over his shoulder to see that the first of these assailants had regained the initiative now that he had his creepy companions to back him up. The others staggered into motion again, and Max was thankful that he could move a lot faster than them.

And he had to run as fast as he could just to keep Bandit in sight in the increasingly narrow and twisting alleyways.

Then, just when Max thought the situation couldn’t possibly spiral any further out of his control, he came around another corner and found himself at a fork in the path. He skidded to a halt, unable to tell which way Bandit went. When he heard the mumbling and shuffling feet of his unsettling assailants, he was forced to pick a way and hope it was the same path his friend took.

After a couple more twists and turns, things got worse still.

At the end of the alley was an open area with scattered junk lying about. A cursory look around failed to reveal any other exit; a dead end. It also failed to turn up any sign of Bandit in that dead end, either.

“Bandit!” he cried out as he turned to go back and take the other way, already regretting shouting and giving away which way he went.

Max stood there for a long moment, trying to decide if he could make it back to the fork before his pursuers. Kicking himself for not going the other way. He was about to risk it when he realized he would have been too late.

For whatever hunted him, they were not quite as slow as he originally thought. Max retreated deeper into the little courtyard as he watched several of those sinister strangers come shambling around the nearest corner. It was hard to reconcile their tottering steps with how quickly they could really move.

Deciding to take one chance at being reasonable before resorting to violence, he asked them, “Who are you? My name is Max…”

And they continued to lurch forward.

“Look, if I intruded on your territory, I’m sorry…”

This only caused them to pause for just a moment, but in that time Max got a good look in their eyes, seeing, much to his horror, that there was nothing left to reason with. Even as they resumed their advance, Max fired up his laser blade, and resisting the nearly overpowering impulse to back into a corner, he prepared to break through their ragged ranks and try to catch up with Bandit.

As he moved within a couple paces of them, the first two fell upon him with a jarring burst of speed. But Max was quicker; having given himself over to combat mode, he struck both of them down in two bright green arcs. Striking a third, he made a bee-line for the entrance to the alley.

Seeing one of the next two in the alleyway clutching a tire iron, Max instinctively sidestepped this one— as the alley was too narrow to get all the way around, he kicked off the wall, catching his opponent from an angle, kicking off of him to launch his attack at the other.

Just as he had done to the trees for years back in Paradise.

Before he even reached the next turn, though, a whole glut of new enemies crowded into it. Spying a ledge a couple levels above him, Max sought to avoid being forced back into the dead end by jumping back and forth between the two walls. Unfortunately, the walls were just a little too far apart, the ledge just a little too high up, and he ran out of upward momentum before he could reach it. So he was forced to rebound back down in order to avoid injury.

When he reached the bottom, he was dismayed to see that the enemies he had struck with his stun blade were already swaying to their feet. Combined with those pushing and shoving their way around the corner, he would soon be trapped with them in this confined space, so he forced his way past the other two and back into his dead end. Thinking as quickly as he could under such harrowing circumstances, he made for one of those automobile things he had seen outside the building, this one parked in the middle of the space.

It was blue and corroded, its windows shattered, tires (some other components, as well) long-gone. The rusty hulk, all fins and lines that would make a classic car nut weep, creaked and groaned as Max leapt up onto the hood. A sound that complimented his dire foes more than he cared for, he reflected, as he stepped up on top. Years ago, Robert taught him that one of the best strategies for dealing with multiple opponents was to back into a wall or a corner, to keep them all in front of you, and none behind, but Max didn’t like the idea of these fellows backing him into a corner. Here, he would hold the high ground, another classic strategy, and with it, a fuller view all around him.

Meanwhile, his attackers made their way into the courtyard, began to surround the car. And thus Max. Who observed that those he had stunned, while not comatose, did move more slowly than the others. Cold comfort, in light of the growing numbers he was facing. Though he was certain now that they meant to kill him, still they wore human faces, so still he refused to use the cutting blade.

There was no cue to start this battle; they came at him at random, and he was forced to meet them in kind. With downward strokes and sweeping kicks, Max forced them back, forming a circle around himself, an imaginary line he refused to let any of them cross without paying the price. All told, Max marked at least twenty of them, and he knew this tactic relied on him outlasting every single one of them.

These creatures were clearly not going to retreat, so Max knew, much to his dismay, that he would have to beat them all down.
XIX by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
Shades and The Easy Way Out
For a time, all Shades knew was freefall. Freefall and darkness.

Bereft of any point of reference, he had no more idea how long he had fallen as he did how far. It could have been half a minute, it could have been half an eternity. His only guess about speed was that he was moving so fast he could hardly keep his breath.

His terrified thoughts were interrupted by a flash of light, enough to blind him for a moment after all that pitch-blackness. Before he could see what he was doing, he landed in something cold and wet with a loud splash, fast muffled underwater. It only took him a couple seconds to hit the bottom, then he kicked off, his only thought of air.

Though glad that he had reflexively held some of his air after he hit, he was still gasping for breath when he surfaced. He hovered there for a moment, blinking away at the bright and the chlorination, before he got a good look at his surroundings. A swimming pool, as he somehow suspected.

The pool itself was fairly large, contained inside a high-ceilinged room of grey brick walls and dark wooden rafters. Small round windows punctuated the walls at regular intervals. Off to one side was a small, shallow pool, and at the other end was a raised area with three hot tubs. The edge of the pool dotted with occasional patio tables and chairs.

A high ceiling, he noted. As if he had just fallen out of thin air.

Shades just drifted there for a long moment, wondering at how he had managed that landing without any injuries. Certain there had to be more at work here than meets the eye. He had no way of knowing for sure exactly how far he had fallen from, but even from a few stories’ height, a ten-foot-deep pool, he noted from the depth marks on the side of pool, should not have been enough to cushion him from slamming against the bottom. From higher than that, the impact itself should have been bone-shattering. All he could come up with was that perhaps the darkness and free-fall were all just some kind of illusion or something.

Damn…

After another moment, he glided over and climbed out of the water, his clothes dragging at him even more once he was out of the pool. Sopping wet, he pulled off his backpack. A quick look revealed that most of the food was ruined. Muttering to himself about how much this situation sucked, it didn’t take long to weed out what was no longer of use to him.

“Fuckin’ Flaming Ghost…”

Even as he uttered those words, he realized that the had all but forgotten about why he ended up falling that way. The Flaming Ghost. The Book of Fate. He looked around frantically for a moment, seeing no sign of his spectral pursuer. Even so, he decided to beat a retreat for the nearest door.

He froze in his tracks as he opened the door and saw a descending flight of stairs. Very familiar-looking stairs. Which he saw, upon kneeling and staring straight down, led to a white door.

“No…” he hissed, closing the door as quickly, and quietly, as he could. Racing back across the pebbly stone floor, he tried the men’s locker room.

And got some more stairs, leading down to a blue door. He tried the women’s room to find them again. Only this time they led to a green door.

He quickly shut that one as well, backing away with a yelp. A yelp he hoped the Flaming Ghost didn’t hear. Just stood there listening to his heart drum in his ears, looking very pale. He was beginning to grasp the full extent of what he had done when he read from The Book of Fate.

By doing so, he had altered his own.

Was beginning to see what the Flaming Ghost meant by bottomless. Perhaps the easy way out was not as easy as it looked.

After a minute or so, he pulled himself together. Figuring that if the Flaming Ghost was going to come after him, it would have already, and noting (much to his dismay) that his wet, dripping footprints would give him away for a time no matter which way he went, he sat down in one of the chairs. And saw that he had been overlooking the ridiculously obvious.

Towels. Draped on the backs of several of the chairs near the pool. Finding them dry, he used them to dry off his sunglasses, then the rest of him, as much as he could, as quickly as he could, not wanting to catch cold in a place like this.

Commenting, “Apparently, my towel knows where I am…”

On the other side of the pool, he then spotted a series of sliding glass doors, one of them opening onto a large grassy courtyard. Walking around the pool, he approached the opening. Closed his eyes as he stepped through.

And was relieved to find himself standing in the grass. Had half expected to find himself back on the stairs. That part came when he tried the door on the other side of the courtyard.

This one leading down to a yellow door.

The doors would just keep bringing him closer to the Flaming Ghost. He looked around, seeing no other doors. Bastard doesn’t even have to chase after me…

Just when he wasn’t sure he could stand that trapped feeling anymore, Shades happened to spot a fire escape ladder running up the grey brick wall. It took several attempts, but with a running jump he managed to scramble partway up the wall and grab onto the bottom rung of the ladder. With a final effort, he hauled himself up, struggling until his feet reached a decent purchase.

After hanging there for a moment to catch his breath, he started climbing. At the top, he found that the roof was enclosed by walls without fire escapes. The only way he could find to go was an open skylight dropping into another hallway, much like the ones he had already seen.

All I’ve gotta do, he thought dryly, is just keep avoiding doors…
XX by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
Justin wanders the halls
After the frozen storage areas, Justin’s explorations took him through long cinder-block hallways and more basement rooms similar to the ones he had passed through earlier. Sans the cages. Instead, these rooms were mostly empty, aside from the occasional stack of boxes and such, and the halls were lined with doors, and banks of windows looking in on darkened rooms. He couldn’t quite decide which windows made him more nervous, the ones with blinds drawn, or the ones that opened on these shadowy rooms.

In one uncommonly bright hallway, he had paused and upped the nerve to peer into the dusty darkness beyond. At first all he saw was his own reflection, double-barrel power pistol armed and ready. Once his eyes adjusted to the gloom, and the somehow unsettling layers of dust, he saw more of the same. Metal shelves, and what appeared to be boxes of documents.

Yet there was something about how simply mundane this scene was that made him shudder in spite of himself. That all he could see through these portals was only the murky outlines of what was inside as he passed each one. There was one window he specifically walked on the opposite side of the hall as he passed. Something about it, the way the area inside was so black against the bright white of the hallway.

Kept getting the irrational idea that something was going to reach out for him out of that blackness…

What the fuck is with this place? he wondered as he warily watched what at least should look like just an ordinary room. Found his memories switching back and forth from his early days hiding from the ghosts of the Ruins in a manner he would now consider childish, to his more recent nightmare experience in another dimension full of real monsters. Just let there not be anything in that room…

This he thought, to any gods that happened to be in the neighborhood, though he was beginning to understand that this place was devoid of gods. A place the gods had forgotten.

This he thought, opening his hand to find he was gripping that figurine again. And had no memory of even taking it out. After that inexplicably creepy room, he no longer cared if this thing was real or not. Perhaps protective talismans weren’t such a bad thing after all, he concluded as he pressed on. Decided that if he actually survived this place, he would be sure to thank that crazy old man if he ever met him again.

It wasn’t until he had put a lot of distance between himself and that hallway that his nerves began to settle down somewhat.

He was beginning to wish he had dragged Max in with him after telling Shades off. Then he took it back. Whatever happened to himself, he found he hoped Max never had to see this place. Still, he knew his friend was no coward, and he was horribly certain Max would come in looking for him. After all, he was willing to tempt Fate going back to Tranz-D. Yet he was fast reaching the point that he would even travel with Shades rather than be alone in here.

When he stepped around the next corner, taking it wide as he had most of the previous turns, Justin stopped in his tracks at what he saw beyond the double-doors only a stone’s throw ahead. It was easily the largest room he had ever seen; even in that scant lighting, he could barely see the other side of the cavernous chamber at least two- or three-hundred feet beyond, the ceiling a staggering height above him. Everything cast in the harsh glare of arc-sodiums the like of which he had never seen before but already decided he didn’t like. All this space— enough to build a ship, by his reckoning— and so little in it, just a few vehicles parked at random along the sides.

“Kato!” Justin called out, wondering now why he hadn’t thought to try that when he first came in. “Chase! George!… Max!… Shades!…”

His voice echoed grandly, but hollowly, as if in mockery of his hopes. Much like the atonal coldness of the Ruins, he reflected. As the chamber returned to its former silence, he began to think that perhaps calling his friends wasn’t such a bright idea. As if he had just told the whole place he was here. Hoping he hadn’t just given himself away, thought to exactly what, he wasn’t certain, he quickly traversed the floor.

At the far end of the enormous hangar was a massive garage door. There was a padlock slapped on it, but Justin Black was not one to be stopped that easily; two clean shots blew it off. Then he wished he hadn’t done that. Not only would his staff had gotten the job done without wasting ammo, it also would’ve been a hell of a lot quieter.

Beyond was a large paved tunnel of monolithic concrete walls. Occasional arc-sodiums gave dim illumination. From where he stood, he could not see the end of it.

He was about to head out when he got an idea. If these tunnels were as extensive as everything else in the Harken Building, this could be a very long walk indeed. After the distance he had walked so far— what felt like miles— by his calculations, he was pretty sure he shouldn’t even be on Centralict Island anymore. Yet this passage was easily large enough to accommodate any of the vehicles behind him. He wondered vaguely if any of them had owners as he turned back to examine them.

If they did, tough shit.

There was a boat on a trailer. Like a fish out of water… A dump-truck. Looks like it belongs in the Bone Yard… A red semi cab. Weird… A camouflaged tank. Armored, and I love that gun, but it’d probably cause a cave-in… A motorcycle. Looks like fun… A big black truck with jacked-up tires. A definite possibility… A twin-engine airplane. Can that thing really fly?… he wondered. A yellow Beetle. Looks kinda cramped… A flatbed trailer. Useless… A car marked taxi, resting on cinder blocks without any tires. Even more useless…

And made up his mind.

The tunnels might get smaller, and he wanted room to maneuver, so he checked the motorcycle first. At first he kicked off, taking a couple tries and almost giving up before he started to gain his balance. Back in the Triangle State, he had seen patrols cruising the coast on things that sort of looked like this, only made for water, so he was certain he could ride it.

After he got it down, he tried starting the engine. The keys were in it, and it started easily, still he was surprised at first at how loud the thing was. But after revving it a couple times, he decided he actually kinda liked it.

All the same, years of instinct told him he was making too much noise, and decided not to linger as he headed off into the tunnels.
XXI by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
Kato and the abandoned wing
Kato ran all the way around the corner from the elevator before she realized what she was doing.

Even hearing nothing, she still decided not to go back; for now, just seeing the last of that freaky elevator was enough for her. When she heard the elevator door hiss shut again, eclipsing the hellish light spilling into the hall, she jumped in spite of herself. She peered back around the corner for a moment, seeing the elevator door just sitting there.

Looking so innocent.

But Kato didn’t buy it. Putting away her new laser whip and drawing her power pistol, she set out to see what this level had to offer. In her haste to get off that godforsaken elevator, she hadn’t even bothered to see what floor she got off on. Then again, she doubted it mattered.

Turning her attention back to the situation at hand, she took a closer look at the hallway itself.

Everything was rendered in the drab remains of institutional colors, further dulled by the scant light that shone in through the grimy windows of the occasional room on either side. Everywhere she looked, she saw cobwebs, unpainted drywall, exposed wiring, missing ceiling panels. Her footsteps echoed just a little too loudly on the floor, it was so quiet, announcing her presence more than she wanted. The whole place appeared to be abandoned.

Just like the elevator, she wanted out of here, seriously wanted out of here. Pistol first, she stepped into one room, feeling her hopes for an easy escape crumble as she looked out the window. The first window she had even found in this place, at that. Several floors down to a courtyard completely enclosed by the same building all around. Even though she had her own suspicions about what she would find, she crossed the hall and looked out the window on that side. Another courtyard, the same building.

The same Building, she now understood.

Realizing that she had no choice but to seek her exit elsewhere, she continued on her wary way through the Harken Building’s abandoned wing, one of which she feared would be many.

For some reason, Kato found herself thinking about the night she and her friends liberated their first Tri-Medal. At least that was what the museum they had stolen them from called them; she suspected that their real name was buried in the sands of time. The Centralict Museum of Antiquities was in the same district as the Centralict Library, so despite the fact that that incident was at least three years ago, returning to Centralict Island was still something of a risk because of that. She remembered them running all over the museum, Chase covering her, George covering the security system with that inexplicable precision that never ceased to amaze her. Using the same point of entry as their escape route like the amateurs they were.

The Triad had come a long way since then— or at least she had come to think they had until the day before.

As far as she was concerned, this time Chase had gone too far. If they made it out of here, she was going to buy him a leash. Nearly all of their adventures started out as her idea, but (her recent excursion into Tranz-D aside) when Chase and George started anything, they had a way of landing her in the strangest places. Even so, this had to be some kind of record.

For a moment, she thought that the only consolation she had was that they were in the same boat, but quickly took that thought back; no matter how angry she was with them, they were the only friends she had, and she would not abandon them in such a dangerous place. After all, something had to have left that severed hand— she was pretty sure the things didn’t grow on trees— and she kept picturing it emerging from that damnable elevator. Tall, lanky, reptilian, tail dragging quietly behind it…

She shook her head, wondering why that “Underdweller” exhibit from the Centralict Museum came to mind after all this time. Thing gave her the creeps, just like this place, that was probably why.

Wondered why she couldn’t shake the image of the godforsaken thing outrunning her every time… All she could think of was how fast she could run as a kid, and the gnawing doubt about her speed now. Even the fact that the she managed to outrun everything she needed to so far felt like little consolation. It had seemed so easy back then…

It just served to make her wonder what the hell was up with this; until recently, she never used to worry about such things.

The hoodie. The baggy pants. The feeling of hiding herself from the world. Found she feared that she at least looked fat in anything anymore. Somewhere along the way, she had heard some middle-aged guy remark, When you stop growing up, the only way left to grow is out, that long-forgotten remark echoing back to her and lingering increasingly these days. In the years after she stowed her way out of the Triangle State, she had grown like a weed. Over the past year or so, though, she had scarcely grown an inch. Was forced to admit she had probably filled out a little, as often as she didn’t get to eat…

Feared she would probably just drive herself crazy if she had a scale. Which again only made her wonder why she worried about it so much. It all seemed very unbecoming of a Cyexian.

Little realizing that her thoughts were now going in circles, she concluded that while she may have been able to eat whatever she wanted when she was a kid, now, much as she resented it, she suspected she was going to have to work to stay in shape. And not just appearance-wise, but in terms of ability. She was pretty sure even that shrimp Justin was actually running faster than her, and she was beginning to think she was taking her abilities for granted…

She was jolted out her spiraling thoughts by an indistinct noise from one of the rooms up ahead.

Or at least she thought it came from up ahead. Here— unlike the last level— being devoid of carpet or furniture, or much of anything else that would absorb sound, the faint echo made it hard to tell for sure. The hallway going from the elevator led to a t-joint, and she could see, even from here, that the other end of the hall was a dead end.

Meaning the only other way for her to go was back to the elevator.

She froze up for a moment, wondering how she could get so hung up on something so irrelevant to what she was currently doing. A repeat-loop, a broken record. Began to fear that this is what happened to other of the Building’s victims, getting hung up on the same thoughts over and over, driving them to distraction.

Reminding herself that something had left that skeletal hand behind, she snapped out of it, resolving to keep her guard up; after all, years as a wanderer had taught her that the best way to outrun anything was to see it coming from far enough away to get a good head start.

That made up Kato’s mind. Trying to look both ways at once, she advanced, poking her gun into each room as she went. Every one of them empty, yet her experience with the elevator had left her a little shaken. She didn’t know quite what she expected, but she kept expecting something.

“Alex…”

The voice, which sounded to her like that of a little girl, issued from the room behind her, across the hall. Where she just checked a moment ago. Whispering so softly she could barely make out what it said.

“Who are you?” Kato turned her power pistol on the door, angry at herself for being afraid of such a weak-sounding voice, but even more furious at its owner’s choice of handles. “Where did you hear that name?”

The voice only responded with a faint giggle. From the next door down. It seemed to echo down the hall.

Kato saw that that room, which she was just about to inspect, was also empty.

After a long moment of just standing there, trying to look in all directions at once, trying to figure out if what she had heard was even real, that cute-little- girl voice whispered again.

“Alex…”

“Alex…”

“Alex…”


Each Alex… mocking her from a different doorway. And that cute yet somehow disconcerting titter seemed to cascade up and down the hall, making it impossible to pinpoint.

“Where the fuck are you!?” Kato demanded.

The abandoned hall only answered her with maddening silence.

I’m definitely going to kill Chase when I find him… If I live long enough to find him…

Being unable to think of any other course of action in this bewildering hallway, Kato took off down the hall, looking for a way— any way other than that horrible elevator— to get the hell out of here.

And, she reflected bitterly, even in the midst of her near-panic, maybe get in a little exercise before she caught up with her friends.
XXII by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
Max vs "them"
Max knelt atop the rusty blue car, panting for breath, unsure how much longer he could keep this up.

He had lost track of how long he had been fighting, but his results hardly seemed proportionate to the effort he was exerting. Though he had stunned several of them into twitching heaps, and the others had been slowed noticeably, there were still about a dozen more or less still on their feet. And even if they weren’t as fast on those feet as they used to be, they were still every bit as inexorable as before, bruises, scrapes and all.

This is crazy, Max thought as he lashed out at another one. Every move taking its toll. Don’t they feel that at all?

If these were ordinary people, they would all be done by now. And if this kept up, he doubted he would last more than a couple more minutes before he collapsed. Or made a fatal mistake. Then again, if he unleashed the full power of his energy blade, they would all be finished by now…

Max immediately shunned that line of thinking. Even as he worried about his own life, he was haunted by images of Ron losing his all those years ago. No matter how inhuman his assailants seemed, he found he just couldn’t do that to anyone else. Yet he feared he might, just as he had come frighteningly close to doing to that Security guard who tried to kill Shades the other day.

At least that NK-525 thing was a machine…

And the thought of machines reminded him that his laser blade, though a pulse weapon whose power regenerated when not in use, would only run for twenty to thirty minutes at a time, depending on the power setting. He had lost track of how long he had fought, still he knew time was running out. And when the juice ran out, he would be reduced to hand-to-hand combat against these foes, a grim prospect even starting out fresh.

Even with an energy weapon, he knew he wouldn’t last much longer like this, exerting himself more than all of them put together, his body beginning to feel strangely heavy…

As Max dealt another round of punishment, wondering how much longer he could keep it up, his eye lit on a stack of boxes. Right underneath what appeared to be a metal stairway. Leading up the side of the building.

Seeing his only chance, he turned to make a break for it, but just then a hand grabbed his ankle, causing him to fall on his face on top of the car. Much to his horror, one of the sluggish adversaries had crept across the trunk while he wasn’t looking. Max started kicking at the thing’s withered, crazed face, only to find his assailant unyielding, wouldn’t even loosen its grip no matter how hard it was hit. Still he struggled, even as some of the others started back to their feet, while he remained pinned down.

Drawing closer. Closer.

And that was when the thing actually tried to take a bite out of his ankle. Feeling those teeth clamp on to his boot, Max’s exhaustion vanished in a blast of adrenaline, and he found the strength to struggle with even greater vigor, smashing the thing’s nose with a shriek of pain and raw horror. It only let go for a moment, then chomped down again, a little higher, and this time he could feel those teeth sink into his ankle, piercing the fabric of his boot, pressing against his flesh. Then, switching tactics, and hoping it wasn’t too late to think of it, Max started hitting its arms over and over with his stun blade, until that deathgrip finally slackened.

One last blow to the face caused those jaws to snap open, and with a final kick that made the creature’s neck pop in a way Max couldn’t help but wince at, he finally freed himself. Unfortunately, he also struck his leg with the stun blade, making it go numb, all pins and needles.

Rolling off the top of the car, Max landed on his feet just in time to meet the others on this side, as they were nearly upon him. And nearly fell on his face again as his stunned leg tried to buckle. Lunging from one foe to the next to knock them back, he made his way over to the stairs. Limping, and trying hard not to wonder how he was even staying on his feet, he reached the boxes and started climbing, then grabbed the lowest part of the railing, a whole level above the ground.

As he pulled himself up, the whole thing swung down, turning it into a stairway leading up and down. Max crawled up the steps as fast as he could, thinking only of escape. The steps started to swing back up as he reached the upper stretch.

At least until they started sinking back to the ground again.

Max looked over his shoulder as he climbed around the corner to see one of them clinging to the bottom steps. For a moment, he thought of firing up his laser blade to attack, but he could see that still others would reach the steps before he could force that one off. And without the cooperation of his leg, it would be too dangerous to chop down the stairway below, to risk falling back down into their murderous midst…

The only option left was to keep climbing.

His leg was still numb, so it was awkward going. On top of that, that first freak on the steps held it down long enough for others to start climbing as well, just as he feared. Reduced to moving at their pace, by the time he had ascended three levels, there was a growing line climbing up after him. He risked a glance below to see that even the ones he had succeeded in stunning earlier were stirring once again.

Max now worried that even making it to the roof wouldn’t offer much chance of escape; just being able to jump or climb one level would probably allow him to lose them altogether, but with his leg, he wasn’t sure if he could run, even on level ground.

He wasn’t sure how much longer he could stay ahead of them, when he found an open window. After hauling himself through, Max leaned against the wall and slammed it shut behind him for good measure. The place he found himself in was a long hallway. Having no time to take further stock of his surroundings, he set out staggering, hoping to find another obstacle to throw at them. To stall for time, at least.

Such was his haste, he didn’t even see the figure that stepped out of the nearby doorway until it was already upon him.

“Who the hell are you?” demanded the young man as he fumbled his broom. “What are you doing here?”

He completely lost his grip on the broom when Max fired up his laser sword.

“Dude!” the young man managed. Wearing baggy cargo jeans, an untucked t-shirt, and a cap that read Harken Facilities Services, his headphones dangled around his neck, playing loud enough that he could surely hear his music without them on. The foot-and-a-half of chain dangling from his belt, right next to a flashlight on a strap, swung sharply with his abrupt movement, the knot of keys on the end jangling. Eyes goggling, the wad of bubblegum he was previously chewing plopped to the floor as he remarked, “I thought those things only existed in the movies!”

Max relaxed as he realized that this one, at least, was not an enemy. Still, he said, “We can save the introductions for later. Now’s not the—”

Max’s need to finish became redundant at the crash of breaking glass behind him. As the first one crawled through, Max noted, with growing dismay, that these adversaries didn’t even notice the shards of glass still stuck in their hands, or the blood oozing from those wounds. When Max tried to resume his flight, he nearly stumbled over his gimp leg, which still wasn’t responding right.

Guess I should be glad I didn’t use the full blade, or I’d have cut off my own foot…

“Um, man…” Max told the custodian as he backed up, blade held before him.

“Damn drunks…” the custodian muttered, bubblegum forgotten, grabbing Max’s arm and drawing him farther down the hall. “I wish those lazy assholes wouldn’t leave the damn windows open after hours…”

About halfway down the hall was a double-door. Once the two of them were past those doors, the custodian hauled one side shut. Max followed suit, taking the other one. By then, the two closest pursuers were over halfway there.

Max leaned against both doors at the middle while the custodian dug around in his pocket for the keys he kept on that silvery chain, chewing furiously on a fresh piece of gum all the while. Even as one, then another of those things started pounding and scraping against the doors, Max wondered if he might yet be forced to kill them after all. Held his laser sword, thinking about how he could have kept them at a distance with his power pistol, but he had given it to Shades. And refused to regret it.

No matter what happens to me, at least he has a weapon.

Thinking about his friend reminded him that he had also lost Bandit in the thick of things, and he had no idea how many of them were shambling around that maze of alleys. The number on the other side of the door had grown to the point that he could barely hold them back, and he feared he wouldn’t be able to hold much longer. Soon it would no longer matter if his leg was injured or not, there would simply be more than he could stop even with his full strength.

As Max continued his stark ruminations, the custodian wedged a doorstop under one of the doors, buying Max some time. At last his face brightened as he found the key he was looking for, rammed it home and locked the door.

“God, they can be pushy,” the custodian muttered. “Fortunately, those other doors are locked, so at least they can’t hurt anything…”

Now that they were locked, the doors seemed pretty solid, and were hardly even budging against those pressing on the other side.

“Those guys…”

“I’ll have to report this later, though I doubt anyone will do anything,” said the custodian, “and technically you’re not supposed to be here either.”

“Sorry,” Max replied, and even the custodian seemed taken aback by his sheepishness. Then, even as he was trying to figure out how to explain himself, he again remembered what it was he was most worried about to begin with. “Bandit!”

“What?”

“My friend…” Max paused for a moment, then, “Have you seen a big black-and-white cat anywhere?… Of course you haven’t… He’s still down there… somewhere…”

“I see…” the custodian replied. “I’m afraid I haven’t. If I see him, I’ll do what I can…”

Max wasn’t really sure what else the custodian may have said. In addition to fighting the longest nonstop battle of his life, on top of NK-525 and Mall Security in the same two days, with hardly any rest in between… He knew it was too dangerous to rest here, no telling if enough of them might somehow break the door down, yet now that he was slumped against that door, his body refused to rise under its own power…

That, and he had been feeling a little drowsy even before he entered the alleys…
XXIII by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
Chase and the fruitless orchard
After only a few minutes wandering among the cubicles, Chase wasn’t sure how much more of this he could take.

He kept hearing— or at least imagined he was hearing— those weird corpses getting back up and crawling after him, primeval murder in their glazed eyes… Kept glancing at the floor as he stepped around every corner. Now that he was past those shambling shadows of humanity, he feared there might be more of them about. That the commotion of their skirmish may have drawn their attention.

All of these cubicles seemed to be arranged to go in circles, and he was also afraid he might come back around to the same spot. Just seeing them again would be bad enough, but he didn’t know which thought was worse: if they were still there, or if they weren’t. Perhaps that his attackers were no longer there anymore, but awaiting their revenge deeper in the labyrinth. So, though it was not his intention, he finally did it. What every frustrated office worker, in any world, always wanted to do.

Frustration, desperation, it was with a mix of these that he kicked the nearest cubicle wall down.

Wishing he hadn’t shouted so loudly, he looked down and realized that his half-dead attackers had actually shown him a simple solution to this puzzle.

Found a shortcut through your maze, he thought, a vicious grin coming to his lips.

Channeling all of that rage, he started knocking down one divider wall after another, working his way in one constant direction. In addition to making a good workout, he decided, it would allow him to release some of this tension so he could think more clearly. After a lot of demolition, he finally found the outer edge of the cubicles. From there it was just a matter of finding a door to somewhere, anywhere.

At the far end of the dim chamber, he finally found it. Incongruous against the ultra-modern office look, the door itself was of the heavy wooden variety, with dark metal bars across the top and bottom of rough planks. Chase didn’t care much what it looked like; he just opened it.

At first blinded— but heartened— by a glare that could only be daylight. His hopes were dashed, though, when he got his first good look at his surroundings. Rather than Centralict, he stepped outside to find himself in a field.

Its exact dimensions were lost on him, for they were obscured by rows of trees running both ways. All of them forming perfect rows and columns. Though the trees themselves were mostly bare and dead-looking, there was scarcely a leaf to be found in the brown grass under his feet. The trees themselves were fairly thin— not too many years past sapling— with an equally sparse spread of branches, reaching about twenty feet high. The pungent odor of recent rainfall hung in the air, yet the sky overhead was mostly clear but drab as far as he could see.

Much like everything else he had seen in the last several hours, he didn’t like it. But he liked it better than he had the skeletons or the office maze. Just thinking about that dark place behind him, the grim battle he had fought, made him shudder in spite of himself.

Pushing the door solidly shut behind him, he resolved to keep moving forward. He now understood that this place would manage to be at least somewhat scary, no matter where he went. Part of it was just the bizarre nature of the place itself, yet even more than its constantly-changing environments, he felt that the shopkeep from Obscura Antiques was wrong. Rather than great treasure, he was somehow certain that this building hid some monstrous secret.

Wanting to shake off thoughts of the undead (or the unliving, a part of him was certain that something worse than death had befallen those doomed souls who wandered too long in this place and became a part of it), he turned his attention to the way by which he had come, the door he had exited from. At first he thought there must be some sort of mistake as he gazed upon the small, squarish stone structure set in the midst of this eerily symmetrical forest, too small to possibly house the massive block of cubicles within, feeling his legs try to buckle under him for a moment. He may not have seen that otherworldly doorway to Tranz-D, but were Kato ever to tell him about it, he would now understand all too well the mental vertigo it could induce.

The inside is bigger than the outside…

Looking right and left, he saw, about two hundred yards either way, high stone walls, by which he somehow knew he was still inside the Building.

Straight ahead were trees as far as the eye could see. Figuring that any way was as good— or as bad— as another in this place, he started that way. Anymore, he had no idea which way he was supposed to go; it seemed to make no difference. He knew not what lay ahead, but he had seen for himself what was behind him, and he wasn’t going back.

After a few paces, Chase paused, hearing a creaking sound behind him.

He only needed to see the door swing slowly inward out of the corner of his eye before he broke out running from the little building with a horrified cry. Got about ten yards before he looked back again. But before he could see anything clearly, he tripped and fell flat on his face.

“Shit!” he hissed.

Rolled over, scuttling backwards, trying to get a good look at something he probably didn’t want to see.

Yet he saw nothing. No ghouls. No zombies. No monsters.

Just the door to that tiny building hanging partway open. He sat there for a long moment, sawed-off disrupter rifle trained on that entrance, deciding that at least he could bottleneck whatever came out, pin them down in the doorway. As he looked in, it dawned on him just how dark it really was in there. Half expecting to see red glowing eyes glaring out at him from the gloom, something, it really made him want to go back and shut the door.

For a moment, at least, then he remembered that to close the door would mean to go back. And he didn’t want to go anywhere near it. Jumping in spite of himself at the vision of shimmering tentacles reaching out and dragging him back into that darkness, he wanted only to put as much distance between himself and that door as possible. After another moment, he hauled himself to his feet and took off at a brisk pace.

And frequently looked over his shoulder.

It was the only bad part about his interest in the Unknown, he reflected, at times like this his curiosity was too compulsive for his own good. No matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t convince himself that door had opened all on its own. Still, he was pretty sure ghouls couldn’t come out in broad daylight anyway.

Could they?

In all that whole struggling for his life, he hadn’t exactly gotten around to asking them about it. Or course, while ghoul was the term that came first to mind, and not some other foul creature of the night, he wondered why he was so sure they were really something else. Perhaps the experience of being in this place escalated over time, which he suspected was true, but he wondered if something else also happened to those damned wanderers, a fate he was sure they didn’t deserve.

Though he was fairly confident that he was safe for now, as long it was still light outside. Yet the trees themselves just didn’t inspire confidence. Having open sky over his head should have been encouraging, but the walls off in the distance seemed to silently testify that he was still inside the Building. Its true scope was quickly becoming apparent to him. A voice in the back of his mind seemed to ask, But isn’t everything inside the Building?

So this is how it starts… he realized through quiet panic. First it spooks you, then it scares you, then it starts planting creepy thoughts in your head. A scrolling marquee in his mind’s eye that read: The Building is hungry! over and over. If the Building is alive, could it be hungry?…

“Quit fuckin’ with my head!” Chase screamed. At who? The Building?

He knew he had to find a way out here soon. Or he believed he would also end up like those guys back there. His most recent experience made him worry all the more about George. Made him wonder if Kato would ever find out what happened to them. He was already beginning to think that perhaps what happened to them might be the fate of anyone who challenges the Harken Building.

Then his fiery resolve returned.

“Not to me…” he muttered, fishing out that odd key he bought at Obscura Antiques, strangely certain it might be his trump card here in this place of mazes and locked doors, and pressed on, deeper into that dead orchard.
XXIV by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
the custodian
Bandit padded silently down another stretch of hallway in this strange place, wary of every doorway and opening he passed.

Somewhere along the way he had gotten separated from Max, and had nearly been surrounded in a blind alley. Surrounded by those creatures that walked around on two legs like humans, but whose scent was sweat and fear and spent adrenaline, like his human companions’ body odor when they hadn’t showered in a while. Only much worse. And, underneath that primal b-o there was an undersmell more like that of the dead animals he sometimes came upon back in Paradise. Everything about them was just unnatural.

It was only after a harrowing chase through narrow, confined areas that largely hindered his speed advantage that he finally eluded them by bounding up a series of containers and ledges before they could completely surround him. The creatures, of course, started climbing after him, so he was forced to jump into an open window on one of the ledges. From there, he was able to press his speed advantage, bolting down various passageways.

Deeper into this foul place. Though he had left his pursuers far behind him by now, he also had no idea where Max was. Now he was all alone here. First there had been his mercifully brief experience with the alien, sterile atmosphere of Tranz-D, where everything smelled wrong and the whole place seemed to hum like a thing alive. Then there was the Mall, where he was bombarded by all new smells, but had quickly discovered most of it only smelled good on the surface; underneath, it all smelled rotten. There was also a vibe to that place, which he was so indescribably elated to finally get away from.

This place was like the Mall, only more intense. Just the feeling from the surface, from outside, was almost enough to make his fur stand on end. But Max and his human friends insisted on going in anyway, and now he was discovering just how much worse this building could be on the inside. The intensity of it made his time at the Mall seem like a warm-up for this place by comparison. He wanted out, but he also wanted to find Max, all the while resisting the terrible desire to just curl up in a corner somewhere and hide.

This was another Jungle, only here the hunter had become the hunted.

Right now, he was following a scent, the only human scent he had encountered since losing Max. He could tell it wasn’t Max, but at least it wasn’t one of those shambling things from before. For now, it was all he could do to focus on this one thing, to keep moving forward.

Around the corner, Bandit found the human he had picked up on earlier.

Baggy denim cargoes, untucked t-shirt, earphones hanging around his neck, and a hat that— could Bandit make anything of the strange symbols that his human friends seemed to rely on so much— read Harken Facilities Services. The young man stood about halfway down the hall, in front of an elevator door. Next to him was a cart loaded with a mop bucket and other cleaning gear.

The custodian stood before the door, arms folded, foot tapping, a bubble nearly as large as his face in the works. So absorbed he was in whatever he was thinking about, he never noticed Bandit walking up and sitting behind him for a moment until his bubble finally burst. When at last he did notice, he jumped back against the elevator door with a cry of alarm.

“Whoa!” he finally managed. “What the hell are you doing here?” Then he paused for a moment, saying, “Um… Hi, kitty!” as if remembering his manners, “You enjoying the night air?…”

Another long, awkward pause, then the custodian walked up to the big cat, and Bandit let the young man pat him on the head; could tell from his scent, as well as his aura, that this one was alright.

“Yeah, you’s a good kitty!” he said in a high, chirpy voice, scratching Bandit behind the ears, right where it always hit the spot. “You scared the hell outta me, little guy,” he confided, “then again, maybe you’re not so little, now that I think about it.

“People gettin’ in here left and right tonight, my friend. First one of them just falls asleep in the hallway, then that dude who was being hassled by bums, then the wankers actually broke in, now exotic pets…”

He paused for a considerable moment, just staring at the panther.

Then, “Black-and-white cat… about the right size… Dude! You must be the cat that guy was looking for!” After another pause, he said, “You’s Bandit, isn’t you?”

Bandit perked up at the sound of his own name.

“Wow! And I thought that guy was just pullin’ my leg about your size! What kind of kitty are you?” Resuming what he was doing before, he pressed the elevator button again with an impatient sigh, then said, “Unfortunately, I don’t know where your friend went, or I’d take you to him.”

He looked above the elevator door, watching the numbers descend, then stop and go back up again. He jabbed the down button again, muttered, “You come back here right now! Damn thing’s got a mind of its own…”

He had to argue with the elevator, but he slowly worked it back down to his own level. It stopped on one floor for a long moment on the way, and the custodian stared at it with resigned disgust while he waited. When it finally arrived, he pushed the cart aboard, and Bandit tagged along. It was cramped inside, and he barely squeezed in between the man and the cart.

“I hate that color,” the custodian muttered, trying not to touch the dusky orange-painted walls. “Gives me the screamin’ hoodoos. Reminds me too much of a scary story I read once. Hell, I need to quit this temp bullshit and get a real job…”

He pulled out a knot of keys from the long chain clipped to his belt, inserting one into the keyhole in the elevator controls.

“This is the only way to the top floor, kitty, otherwise the button doesn’t work,” the custodian told him. The two of them rode on in silence for a couple floors, then he said, “There’s the abandoned wing. Glad that’s not on my run…” and shuddered.

Of course, Bandit entered the elevator only because the custodian seemed to know what he was doing. Fast decided this human should thank his lucky stars he couldn’t see what he saw. Other colors that hurt both his eyes and his mind.

This elevator was wrong, even compared to most of the rest of this place.

“This one always makes me a little nervous,” the custodian told him, blowing another bubble, “but good gum helps take the edge off. I mean, what can I say? There was another elevator around here that started acting up like that, and one day it just crashed. Shoulda quit this job as soon as I found out I was hired to replace that poor schmuck…”

They made it to the top without incident, and the custodian pushed the cart into the doorway, then let Bandit slip past him.

“If I let that door close behind me, I’ll have to chase my gear all over the building,” he explained. “I wish I knew where your friend ran off to— I’m lousy with names— but he said he was also looking for someone else. Maybe I’ll run into him, too. Well, the only thing I can think of to help you…”

He dug out his keychain again, unhooking a ring with only two keys on it, each marked COMM. He bent down, attaching the key ring to a strap on Bandit’s pack.

“Those are the keys to the building’s intercom system. Spares anyway,” he told the cat, patting him on the head. “If your friend knows what to do with those, they might help him find his friends. It’s almost time for my break, but for now I’ve gotta get back to work. You know, exotic creatures like you technically aren’t allowed in here, but I just can’t help it. Well, good luck finding your friend, kitty.”

With that, the custodian resumed pushing his cart down the hall on this level. After meeting this strange young man, Bandit found he felt somehow less afraid in this place. Seeing as how this human wasn’t of any further use to him, Bandit set out again.

Yes, this place could be creepy, but he was sure that if he was with Max again, everything would turn out fine.
XXV by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
George the hacker
George sat bolt upright, wincing at the sudden, unexpected crunch of his movement on his midsection.

The last image in his mind was of a runaway carnival ride flying off its mountings, hurtling straight at him on its way to the ground. The strangled, inarticulate grunt he let out was the type he ordinarily kept a lid on, as it only seemed to encourage people to think he was retarded. It took him a moment to catch his breath, that lunatic musical collage still ringing in his ears as he stumbled away from the couch he only vaguely remembered falling asleep on in the first place.

Don’t let the building overwhelm you…

The custodian’s words came to mind as he halfway sat down on the couch again. Now he remembered his conversation with the custodian. Conversation… And finally figured out what was so strange about the whole thing.

Wondering if the custodian was still about, for something had snapped him awake, he glanced across the hall. A puzzled frown touched his lips as he looked and saw that there were no restrooms across from him. No custodial closet, either. He stared at the wall for a long time, finally concluding that it all must have been a dream. Rubbing the back of his head, where he could still feel faint scars from… an accident… or something that happened to him when he was a child, he decided to get going from this place he felt sure now was haunted.

As he stumbled back to his feet, wandering down the hall in a daze, filled with a silent longing. Much like his attempts to write down his name for Kato and Chase, it had been a great long time since he had last dreamt of talking.

An even longer time since he actually had talked. Yet, whenever he thought about it, he would get a warm shimmer of nostalgia, though no specific memory would come to mind, just a jumble of images. If he tried to bring any of them into focus, though, he would just end up giving himself a headache, always starting just behind his eyes, in his temples, and spreading backward.

Even as he thought once more of these things, it dawned on him just how hungry he was, how long since last he’d eaten. Chase’s failed attempt to score cheap breakfast was many hours past; back when he was still waiting for his friend, he had been a little hungry, but now the hunger was back, and it sank its teeth into him with a vengeance.

Around the next corner, he found another nook in the wall, this one occupied by a trio of vending machines. Neither Kato nor Chase trusted him with more than pocket-change, and only then if they happened to be feeling generous. Knowing that what little money he had jingling in one pocket wouldn’t get him very far, especially since the thing seemed to demand something called dollars instead of credits, he instead turned to one of Chase’s favorite uses to put the silent kid’s talents to. Unslinging his “armtop” computer, he strapped it to one arm and fired it up. Aiming the unit’s infrared port at the electronic “lock” panel on the vending machine, George loaded a special lock-cracking program and started to work.

At times like this, something seemed to click in George’s head, in a way he doubted he could explain to anyone even if he could speak. His mind became a flowing stream of numbers and information. Had long ago lost any sense of intimidation around even the most sophisticated of machines because he knew that, once he got that click, he would quickly start to understand, and somehow know things he hadn’t known a moment before.

So lost to him was the real world in this state, Chase or Kato often either guarded him or had him work from a safe location. So lost, he even forgot his sense of unease about this place and what he had seen. So lost to him was the real world that he wouldn’t have even noticed, say, a black-and-white panther coming down the hall.
XXVI by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
Kato's "A" train
Kato was relieved to be blinking away at the daylight outside. Just knowing it was brighter out here, despite the fact that it wasn’t that much brighter. Just knowing she was no longer in there.

But I still am, ain’t I?

Though no longer stumbling among the gloomy halls of the abandoned wing behind her, the fact that this entire courtyard was surrounded by walls on all sides told her she was still in the Building. She wasn’t sure just how long she had run around back there, but she was largely out of breath by the time she made her way out. Was no longer certain whether or not those taunting voices were real, but she feared that, either way, the Building was starting to get to her. Even as she looked up at the block of cloudy sky overhead, that betrayed not a single hint of sun, several stories above, she got the unnerving impression that those long banks of windows may be blank— some even broken— but far from blind.

She seriously didn’t want to go back in there, yet the only other way she could see before her was a kiosk in the middle of the courtyard, with an escalator leading underground.

Resigning herself to the fact that most of the place was going to be like this, Kato plunged deeper into the depths of the Building. Figuring it would continue to mess with her every step of the way. Realizing that her only hope of escape was to keep it at bay long enough to find an exit of some kind.

At the bottom of the escalator was a cavernous chamber. Before her were turnstile gates and an empty booth. Beyond, she made out a broad platform in the gloom. And beyond that, a drop into darkness.

Keeping her power pistol armed, she checked both sides of the landing before passing through the turnstile and entering the platform. This place was as deserted as any of the others she had visited, yet she wondered if a place this impossibly large could ever truly be empty. Farther out, she saw what lay beyond the drop: several feet down were sets of railroad tracks. As she drew nearer, she noticed broad tunnels extending the path in both directions.

And on the other side, the platform resumed.

Though Kato could see few places anyone could hide in here, she still felt watched. It gave her a bit of a jolt when she finally noticed the surveillance cameras mounted in various corners of the chamber, just staring dead sockets, electric eyes that do not sleep. Wondered for a moment if she wasn’t starring in her own silent drama on some bank of monitors somewhere. Then forgot it.

Though the security room was surely empty as most of the rest of this place, wherever it was, she had no doubt the Building was watching.

And though she knew it had been even longer since she’d had a good sleep than it had since her last meal, she was still startled at how heavy her eyelids were becoming. Now that she thought about it, it started not long after raiding the fridge in that kitchen, but her unnerving experience in the elevator, and her harrowing race through the abandoned wing above (?… for this place made a total mockery of her sense of direction, just like that door to Tranz-D) had shaken her awake again. Now it was coming back with a vengeance, despite her gut feeling that if she fell asleep on one of the many benches around her, she would never wake up from this nightmare.

Just found she could see herself sprawled out on one of those benches, as shadowy shapes silently encircled her…

Rubbing her eyes with her free hand, she nearly jammed her knuckle into her eyeballs as she jumped at the faint high-pitched electronic tone as all of the monitors hovering near the ceiling clicked on in near unison.

She stumbled around, gawking at the now-activating screens in bewilderment. But instead of the arrival and departure times she expected, every line displayed the same message: The Building is Hungry! Seeing those words finally pushed her over the edge, and before she knew what she was doing, she screamed and opened fire on one of the clusters of monitors, sending it crashing to the floor, where it shattered in a burst of sparks.

As the last pops and sparks fizzled out, Kato stood in silence, gaping at her own reaction and listening to the lingering echo.

Before she could regain her composure, though, she heard something come roaring down the tunnel, along with a growing light filling up the previously impenetrable darkness, illuminating concrete slabs of wall. The fact that there were tracks made the presence of some manner a train a no-brainer, but as the subway cars thundered through, Kato scrambled behind one of the massive pillars supporting the whole place. For some reason, imagining a great barrage of firepower cutting loose from all those windows.

But when she opened her eyes, everything was still intact.

Shit!” she muttered, barely hearing herself over the fading din of the engine.

Before she could step all the way out from behind the pillar, she ducked back again as a subway train came rumbling in, this time from the other direction. Instead of going past, though, this one came to a stop at the platform. After a moment of hesitation, Kato stepped out of her hiding place. Seeing that all of the cars’ wide stretches of windows revealed them to be empty, she cautiously moved in for a closer look.

At last she stood at the threshold of one of the cars, seeing for herself that it was indeed empty. For a moment she almost stepped aboard, purely on impulse, then jerked her foot back, remembering her fun ride in the elevator not too long ago. Picturing herself being whisked off through fathomless miles of tunnels…

Without pretense, the train lurched back into motion, the door slamming shut, Kato staggering back from the edge of the track as it picked up speed.

Not this time! she thought as it clanked away down the tunnel.

Her sense of victory quickly faded to despair, though, as she realized that she had hit a dead end of sorts. The tunnels, aside from being pitch-dark, also promised a swift death the next time one of those engines roared through. The only other option she could see was going back up to the abandoned section and looking for another way out of it.

At least until she looked across the tracks and saw a white four-panel door on the platform on the other side.

She was about to climb down onto the tracks when she spotted the WARNING – HIGH VOLTAGE! sign and caught a faint whiff of ozone from the tracks themselves. That, and she remembered just how fast those trains came barreling through. Wondering if she could climb up the other side fast enough if one came, assuming she didn’t get fried first trying. And it was definitely too far for her to jump, as well.

That was when she saw the light panels overhead, and grabbed her new laser whip. She snapped out the solid “blade” and lashed out at the panels overhead, finding that she could “lock” it after it wrapped around its mark. Stepping back, she then lunged forward, swinging across the tracks. As she arced out over the other platform, she felt her line go slack, dumping her on the floor.

Kato heard the lights crash to the tracks behind her as she tumbled across the floor.

Feeling a twinge of embarrassment that she broke it. Not to mention that her little stunt didn’t come off as she intended, and for some reason, avoiding electrocution just wasn’t as much of a relief as it should have been. To her eyes, everyone else around her seemed to be moving forward, while she stood still. Max’s display against the Enforcer, for example. Or the way Justin kept surprising her at every turn. Hell, she suspected even that Shades guy would make her look bad, too.

More to him than meets the eye, she reflected glumly.

After stumbling to her feet, she went to the door. When she first noticed the blue “exit” sign above the door, she scowled at it, sure it was just another trick. Still, she could see no other way to go. Even if she wanted to turn back, there was no guarantee that the other light banks would hold long enough for her to swing across, and she was none too enthused about going back to the abandoned wing anyway.

When she heard another of those trains rumbling on its way, and saw no pillar close enough to take cover behind, that made up her mind.

Hauling the door open—

Kato stepped out into the alleyway next to the Harken Building.

Slamming the door behind her, the train fell completely silent. Next to her was that ominous graffito-tag Max had told them of. Beyond were regular streets, the streets of Centralict Island, not part of the Building.

And that was when she stepped in it; for all of Bandit’s efforts, there just wasn’t much dirt to work with.

“Ah shit!”

Looking down and seeing she had guessed correctly. Scraping her boot against a small rock, she looked out at the alley, noting that, whereas it had been noonish when they first entered the Building, it was now evening.

Despite her uncomfortable proximity to the place, she slumped to the ground, leaning against the wall trying to decide if she really wanted to tempt Fate by going back in for her friends again, instead deciding to go see what Justin & Company were up to.

Hoping they hadn’t gone in after her.
XXVII by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
Justin's joyride
Wooo!!…

Justin could barely hear his own voice over the racket of the motorcycle’s engine, but he loved the feel of it as he sped down the tunnel. The thunder of the engine, the wind in his face. Though he started out slowly, getting used to the handling of it in these narrow tunnels, he gradually felt comfortable going faster. Now that he had a chance to really get the hang of it, he had poured on the gas, risking a little more speed in the better-lit sections. He was really glad it was equipped with a headlight, for there were stretches where all or most of the lights were out.

It was fast, and easy to maneuver; he definitely planned to take this thing with him.

The only thing to disturb his otherwise exhilarating little joyride was the occasional question of just how long these tunnels could be, where they might end. His mind kept insisting that there had to be a vast network of tunnels— above? below?— Centralict Island. It was the only possibility to that made any sense to him.

For they were starting to seem, for lack of a better term, never-ending.

It was hard for his mind not to wander here…

…To wander back to sand and sun, to what he would realize, weeks later in the disjointed tunnels of the Building, was the only place in all his life where he had ever truly felt content.

Justin was just finally starting to catch his breath after his longest training run yet. He was certain he had run farther in some of his escapades in the Triangle State, but keeping up with Max was something else. As he lay on the sandy beach, he still couldn’t figure out how the hell his new friend got to be so fast without anyone chasing him everywhere.

And there was Max, sitting on a rock, petting Bandit, as if nothing had happened. Justin knew this wasn’t half the distance his friend typically ran, and even after more than two weeks of this, he wondered if he could ever really become that fast. That strong. That tough and focused. That wild.

Of course, Max assured him he could do more than he thought he could.

“Are you sure?” Justin demanded, for it seemed to him that he hadn’t gotten any faster.

“Do you think I was this fast five years ago?” Max asked. Sounding as if he were quoting someone— perhaps the one who taught him all these things once upon a time— he told his friend, “These things don’t happen overnight. The only way you become stronger is by pushing your limits.”

“I suppose. At least I got farther this time…”

And Max just laughed, assuring him that even someone named Carlton could run that far. Whoever the hell
that was. From time to time, Max just dropped names like that. And of course, if he asked what he meant by that, Max would just clam up.

After a while, he quit asking; he just didn’t like the sad, distant look on Max’s face, yet he was also confident his friend would tell him more about himself in time.

At times like this, even being stranded on a desert island didn’t seem so bad. Of course, the two of them continued working on the new raft, though it would be months before they were even ready to test it, still for now he felt he could wait a while. No need to rush. No need to worry.

The outside world, and all of the adventures he imagined himself having out in it, weren’t going anywhere, seemed so far away at moments like this…


…And now here he was. To think that Max’s training had indisputably saved his life several times since those all-too-brief carefree days.

His thoughts were snapped back to his present adventure, though, when he spotted something barring his path up ahead. So lost in his reverie, he was both surprised and relieved that he actually noticed it in time. As he slowed down, realizing that there was no way to crash through it in this small unarmored vehicle, he drew nearer, seeing a waist-high bar across the width of the passage, and a small booth next to it.

Came to a complete halt in front of this obstacle, not liking it at all. Found himself wishing he had brought the tank after all as he peered into the booth’s dusty glass windows. Even the fact that the booth turned out to be empty didn’t dispel his feeling of being ambushed.

For a long moment, he just stood there in the sepulchral silence of the tunnel, remembering the armed checkpoints the TSA seemed to set up at random in the ports and shantytowns. And again with the black-and-yellow stripes on the bar blocking his way. On top of that, the audacity of the blocky sign demanding what appeared to be a sum of money to pass.

“Fuck that,” Justin muttered as he fired up his laser staff and chopped the bar down.

With that, he hopped back on his motorcycle and took off again. He didn’t like this place, and didn’t want to be stopped in this maze. Of course, it seemed this vehicle just kept going.

He figured this thing had to run out of gas sooner or later, he just hoped it didn’t before it could carry him out of here.
XXVIII by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
Chase races against the dusk
Chase was okay for a while, but as the sky began to darken, and the shadows lengthened, he began to worry.

The ground was rough, and there was no real path through it, so the going was slow enough when it was still light out. And that low-level drowsiness was creeping back. He now knew even a full nine or ten hours’ before entering the Building would be little help. The sheer size of this place defeats everyone. At last he decided that if it got much darker, he would change course and give the stone wall that continued on his right a try, though it didn’t offer much hope of anything helpful.

He imagined himself just slumping against one of those gangly trees to catch his breath. Then, of course, to rest his eyes for a moment. Just a moment, but once he nodded off, he pictured shimmering tentacles wriggling up out of the ground…

When he shook off that unnerving image, his mind instead turned back to those guys in the office maze. Despite the brutality of that battle, he didn’t really think he had murdered them, wasn’t even sure he had killed them, at least not in the way most people would think of it. Whatever had once dwelt behind those glazed eyes was long gone, in a way he couldn’t fully fathom. And the Building had somehow moved into that vacancy.

Nobody’s home… he thought, and shuddered yet again.

Chase wasn’t so sure he “killed” them so much as he finally made them understand that they were already dead. Just didn’t know it yet…

Admittedly, it wasn’t his first time in mortal combat, still he found himself taken aback how much it shocked him. He had certainly injured his share of enemies in the course of his— and later, the Triad’s— escapades, but there was only one other time he was forced to kill to survive. To his defense, the other guy had tried to kill him first, and Chase was forced to take his life in order to get out alive himself.

It was something he didn’t really like to dwell on. Neither proud nor ashamed of it; he just did what he had to. Still, his experience in the cubicles made that other fight to the death seem pleasant by comparison.

The whole mess made him uneasy, so he decided to drop it.

After a short while, he noticed that his course was moving in a decidedly uphill direction. Up ahead, he spotted crumbling stone steps leading up into a forest of not-so-symmetrical trees. It was still only twilight, and he was liking this fruitless orchard less and less the longer he was in the midst of it. Figured high ground might help, so he ascended the steps.

His pace quickened as the shadows grew longer. He could tell, instinctively, that this was a race, a race against time. That there would be no second place if he lost. Had no idea what would happen, all he knew for sure was that he didn’t want to still be out here after dark.

Indoors, it didn’t seem to matter if it was light or dark. Then again, no matter where he looked, he knew he would see the scary side of this place. Though the path he had traveled with the Triad hadn’t taken him to very many of them, he had heard tales of them, and was beginning to suspect that the world contained quite a few of these sort of places.

The thought both frightened and inspired him.

As Chase continued his ascent, the trees became larger and larger. Great hoary, mossy things of abnormal proportions towering over him. Casting deep shadows all around him. He couldn’t figure out exactly what it was about them, possibly everything, but he seriously didn’t like them.

Before long, full twilight was upon him, and it was all he could do not to break out running, and trip over one of the trees’ massive roots. Which to him looked too much like tentacles for his taste. He had just whipped out his flashlight when he stumbled out into a clearing surrounded by those ugly trees.

Though it was what was in the middle of this clearing that caught his attention.

In the midst of this blank dirt circle stood what had to be easily the biggest of these unpleasant trees. And set in the very side of its massive trunk was a plain white door with four panels. It just stood there on half-seen hinges, seemingly leading into the tree itself. Above the door, which didn’t seem to go anywhere, glowed a blue “exit” sign.

Chase wondered for a moment if this was some kind of sick joke, but his time for pondering such things was brief. It was so weird, but darkness was falling, and he was out of options. He wasn’t particularly fond of the idea of entering one of those trees, but he wasn’t sure if he could find anyplace else in time.

When he started hearing strange, indistinct noises from the gloomy forest below, that made up his mind. Throwing aside all thoughts about mysteries, he hauled open the door and saw a rude stone stairway leading underground between the great twisting roots. This didn’t look too good, but he doubted he would last long out there after dark, so he started down. The only thing that convinced him to go down was the sight of another blue exit sign at the bottom. But the door was locked, and he wasn’t sure his flashlight would provide enough light to try picking it in any reasonable amount of time.

He was about to try it anyway, when his hand stumbled upon the small silver skeleton key in his coat pocket, which that creepy shopkeep at Obscura Antiques had given him, remembering the old man’s cryptic remark that he would find a use for it in the near future. Chase pondered the key for a long moment before he made up his mind. Seemed a waste to use such a rare and useful thing so haphazardly, but if it saved his life…

Then it was time to find out if it was for real. In spite of all he had seen at Obscura and heard along the way, he was genuinely surprised when the key slid home and turned with ease. Then there was sharp, static-like shock, and a flickering spark that jumped between the door, the key, then his hand, after which the key broke in half, and the door swung wide open.

He stepped out into a gloom barely brighter than the tunnel—

“Well Chase, it’s about damn time…”

“Kato?” For a moment, he was totally disoriented as he stepped out into the alleyway next to the Harken Building, then by the fading light of the setting sun, he spotted his friend standing near the street end of the alley, hands on her hips.

“You get lost in there?” Though she was now acting cavalier about it to cover it, he could tell she was spooked by his unexpected appearance. To him, she seemed just a little too spooked by his appearance.

“What happened to you?” Chase asked. “Don’t tell me…”

“That damn building happened to me, asshole!” she told him. “I told you to wait for me! Why can’t you just stay put?”

“We got bored,” Chase replied, trying to stay as nonchalant as possible. His mind was still telling him to be on the lookout for whatever was in that forest, even as he stood safely outside the Building. This whole drastic shift left him at a loss, both looking and feeling rather sheepish as he explained, “Well, I talked to this guy…”

He trailed off, realizing that whatever lurked in that creepy orchard might come out after them. Yet when he looked behind him, all he could do was try to figure out when the door had shut behind him. Not that he cared; just seeing that door had no external handle satisfied him immensely, just knowing that “They” couldn’t follow him anymore. Still, just seeing that cryptic warning slashed on the wall gave him a strong urge to go join Kato out on the sidewalk.

“So, hat-head, did George go in with you, too?”

“Well, yeah…” Chase fumbled for a way to change the subject, finally asking, “So why aren’t you still at the library?”

“For your information,” Kato replied, grinning as if to say told you so, “it just so happens that while you were running around in that fucked-up place, I found the other two Tri-Medals.”

Chase’s jaw dropped at that last.

“But thanks to you, George is still trapped in there, along with the guys who have our Tri-Medals, so we had to go in there looking for you. If those guys don’t come back out, then what?”

“Well, um…” Much to his annoyance, he found that he couldn’t come up with an answer to that as he joined Kato’s vigil outside the alley.
XXIX by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
the late Chad Owen
Max slowly blinked his eyes open.

He was still lying against the same double-doors he remembered from before. Only now there was no sign of the young man he was talking to… Much to his dismay, he had no idea how long he was out, no more than he knew how long he had fought that marathon battle… He was still sore and stiff from head-to-foot from that…

He snapped wide awake as he remembered why he was slumped here in the first place.

Relief washed through him just to see that both doors were still firmly shut and barred against his insidious attackers, and all was silent behind them. At some point after he passed out, the custodian had apparently also braced a chair against the other door. In spite of how exhausted he was, he still couldn’t believe he passed out in the face of all that thumping and scraping and moaning back there.

As if he had sunken asleep into a nightmare.

Rising to his feet, he found his leg was still all pins and needles, but at least it moved correctly. His ankle, on the other hand, stung as if he had stepped in a pile of jellyfish. He slid his boot partway off to find his ankle mysteriously bandaged up, though he had no memory of having done so himself. Left-over supplies from what he now realized was his own first aid kit lying on the floor next to his unzipped backpack left him wondering if his encounter with the custodian hadn’t all been a dream.

On the other hand, the teethmarks in the tough material of the boots and the gash in his pantleg made him shudder in spite of himself, more than enough proof that the nightmare part, at least, was more real than he would have preferred.

A few grunts and groans later, Max reached to open the door, finding it locked, and only a keyhole to work with. Of course, he could chop it down easily enough with the laser sword he was still clutching in one hand, but now that he was more awake, he wasn’t sure that was such a bright idea; the door was apparently enough to stop his grisly attackers, but if he removed that obstacle, there was no telling how far they might be able to hunt him next time. For some reason, he could picture them just lying on the floor beyond that locked door, looking for all the world like corpses.

…Until someone came through, making just enough noise to wake them up. Pictured one of them grabbing his ankle as he walked past…

Then shook his head. I need to find Bandit. Yet to go back through there, even if those creatures that were once human actually had shambled off elsewhere, he would still have to battle his way back into that random maze of alleyways. Where Bandit could have gone any number of directions.

In the midst of his glum contemplations, he remembered, vaguely, something Mom had said about this place, something about coming upon what she was certain was the same place twice, in spite of having gone a different way. Angus never says much about his experience, other than to agree with what we said, but I think you can come back to the same spot even if you go a completely different way. Or something along those lines. Some had seemed to believe his parents’ account, some said they were pulling everyone’s leg, others just listened then quickly got back to whatever they were doing, Mom once said.

The shame of continuing his retreat was almost enough to make him tear down the doors anyway, but he reminded himself that he was currently in no shape to fight, and had no way of tracking Bandit down that path. Much as he hated to admit it, he would have to trust his and Bandit’s— to say nothing of his friends’— fates to his mother’s intuition that there was no rhyme or reason to the connections between areas here.

“I won’t leave without you, Bandit.”

Though loathe to leave his old friend alone anywhere in this lethal labyrinth, he knew he had no choice but to put his faith in Bandit’s ability to survive until he could find another way to reach him. For now, the most important order of business was his own safety; he could do his friends no good if he fell here. To that end, he put on his pack and started poking around his end of the hallway. Turned out the other doors in the hall were locked, so that just left the restrooms near the stairs.

The knowledge that there was more than one possible path to the same place was not very reassuring, Max reflected grimly as he stepped wide around the corner into the men’s room, for he really had to go. Feeling how unreal a room could look as he scanned it from top to bottom. Looking past the trough-like row of sinks to the line of stalls beyond. The stillness of the room accentuating the individual drops of sweat dripping down the back of his neck.

He stared into that room for what felt like minutes on-end, slowly working his way down the length of it, checked around every corner, not wanting to be caught unawares again.

It was only after he was absolutely sure the room was empty that he locked himself in one of those stalls and took care of his business, having never noticed before how vulnerable one could feel with one’s pants unzipped.

That taken care of, Max at last turned his attention to the stairs at the end of the hall, around the corner. He was finally beginning to understand what the stranger was only hinting at, what he really meant about no one coming back out. Between its enormous size, and its host of hazards, there were plenty of opportunities to die before ever laying eyes on an exit, this place could stop anyone.

Almost anyone, he amended, thinking of Mom and Dad, even Uncle Angus. Just kept reminding himself that others had found an exit, and if they could do it, so could he.

Every step of the way, he kept expecting those creepy subhumans to emerge from the woodwork, yet he knew he couldn’t keep his energy blade fired up all the time, or he wouldn’t have enough power left when he really needed it. After his harrowing experience earlier, he tried not to jump at shadows as he made his way up to each successive landing, telling himself that if he could somehow get back up onto the rooftops, he would have the best chance of finding his friend.

He was again reminded of the unpredictable nature of this place when the door at the top, instead of opening onto a roof, opened into a garden. The flowers were sparse, and of a variety unfamiliar to him, but he still recognized it for what it was. Though he wasn’t sure he liked the look of those flowers, he was drawn to the beauty of the small trees, which all but stole the show with their clusters of white and pink blossoms. As he walked upon the fallen petals toward the nearest of several buildings, which all had ornately curving tile roofs, he paused for a moment to take in this unexpected beauty he had found in the midst of such an ugly place.

Yet the more he took it all in, the more he decided that the flowers growing on the ground had a sickly, unpleasant aspect that seemed to mar the natural splendor of the trees the longer he looked at them. As if they somehow didn’t belong in this garden in the first place. As he wandered past a clump of them, he decided that they even smelled wrong.

After pushing and pulling on the door, he finally discovered that it was supposed to slide open along the wall. Inside was a fairly large room with polished, if dusty, wood panel floors. For some reason he couldn’t quite fathom, he found he felt somehow ashamed of treading on it in boots. Again with the sliding doors, and the inner walls all seemed to be made of paper; it was all he could do not to punch or kick it, just to see if it would rip. And again, the very walls seemed to exude a sense of… disapproval at his presence.

In the room beyond, the last thing Max expected to find was a skeleton.

Though at first he wasn’t sure what the thing was, the slumped jumble of bones and blood-stained clothes, until he saw a skull sitting atop it. Along with all the blood, the way its clothes were all torn up in a vain attempt to bandage too many wounds, the power rifle lying splayed across its crumpled lap suggested a rather less than peaceful end. Next to the corpse was a sheaf of thick paper.

Kneeling to read it, he found himself drawn deeper and deeper by the weak script of this last message. If Justin were to ever tell him the tale behind the words Beware NK-525, Max would now know very much how his friend had felt.

To Whoever Finds This:
If anyone. I managed to get away from them, but I fear I won’t last long. Too many wounds, too much blood. I don’t know how much longer I have, but I want to say something. Teena, Robert, Alida, I’m sorry I dragged you in here. Angus and I got separated, and I hope he’s alright. I know its not my place to say this, but if you ever read this, Rob, I think Alida really likes you. Lucky bastard. I can barely see anymore, and I fear this place will be my grave. I never thought it would end like this.
-Chad Owen


Each name smote Max with disturbing confirmation. Though he already thought he was certain this was the place his parents so narrowly escaped from all those years ago, this proved it in a way that mere words could not. It also reminded him, with an unsettling jolt, of yet another detail he had all but forgotten over the years: his parents and Uncle Angus didn’t challenge the Harken Building alone.

Perhaps it was the fact that he had never met either of these people, Teena or Chad, that caused him to largely forget about them. Now more words drifted back to him from what felt like another life: We waited for Chad for several days, one of us always at the exit. Angus was worried the authorities would interfere but… they never did. No one notices you when you stand next to that place…

As if his thoughts about his parents had somehow conjured this scene.

So this was Chad, who never returned. He lifted the rifle from the crumbling pile of bones, using some unsoiled cloth to wipe away what remained of the blood of years. Rooting around in the backpack sitting on the other side of the body, finding nothing of any real use until he came upon a laser sword, much like his own. Activating it revealed a teal blade, shimmering just between blue and green.

At that point, Max scrambled back to his feet, sensing something was wrong with this picture, finally figuring out what it was. After all, he had seen dead animals before, but this fellow had been reduced to bleached bones. Picked clean, and the more he examined the scene, he realized that only the faintest stains of blood remained, mostly on the clothing itself. What came to mind was rain that had soaked into the ground after a storm.

As if the very walls and floors had sucked it up…

Deciding that to leave his parents’ companion, and a fellow adventurer, in a place like this amounted to defilement, he took Chad’s skull. Wrapping it in some unsoiled cloth, he stuck it in his backpack, filling the space emptied by he and Bandit’s most recent (but hopefully not last) meal. Such a light burden, yet bearing the weight of forgotten years.

Max no longer felt like lingering in this room for even one more minute. Picking up the paper, he continued on his way. Grateful for the weapons, and feeling privileged to have found a piece of his family’s past— ugly as it may have been— in spite of the creepiness of this long-past scene, took one look back.

Mom, Dad, even if I can’t get him out of here, I will still carry Chad’s blade with honor, in his memory… But right now, I’ve still gotta find someone who’s still among the living… Has to be… Please forgive me…
XXX by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
George cracks the code
When George finally noticed that there was a big black-and-white cat standing behind him, he just about fumbled his fingers on the keyboard.

But, though the keyboard was small, he had long-since learned to navigate it with ease with just one hand. And for some reason, when he was in the zone, his fingers almost seemed to have a mind of their own. Just kept on typing even as he jumped aside. Even as he turned around to face this feline visitor, his arm remained angled to face the port on the vending machine as he at last cracked the access code, and the panel finally popped open.

For a moment, George imagined himself saying, in his dream-voice, Hi kitty! and was disappointed when he thought once more of all the things he had wanted to say all these years.

The cat, for his part, cocked his head at George, then jumped back as the front panel of the vending machine swung open. George, for his part, nearly lost his balance as the heavy panel pushed him aside. The cat glared at the hulking machine for a moment, then regained his composure.

George simply stared at the big cat for a moment, having never seen such an even black-and-white pattern on such a large cat, but once he saw the exotic creature meant him no harm, his stomach drew his attention back to the now liberated snacks all lined up in a row. He snatched a candy bar, and several bags of chips and crackers. Then he thought about Chase, that he might also be hungry if he found him; his backpack wasn’t very big, but he loaded up on his junk-food bounty as much as he could.

One more for the road, as Chase always said, in spite of the fact that they spent more of their time at sea than on land.

After stuffing his bag with snacks, he turned his attention to the pop machine next to the snack machine. After warming up against the first system, the second one fell quickly to George’s code-cracking skills. He grabbed a couple bottles of Cam’s Cola, then, remembering that he hadn’t made it all that far from that creepy carnival before he crashed out on the couch so mysteriously earlier, he set out again.

The panther tagging along.

After he got going once again, George found his wariness subsiding in his new friend’s company. When he started munching on some potato chips, the big cat mostly just kept staring at his hand as it went from the bag to his mouth. It didn’t take a genius to figure out the kitty wanted some, too.

Hungry as he was, George split with him. Sort of. One for you, two for me, one for you… Just like Chase always did. Always telling him that if he didn’t like it, to just speak up about it.

As the two of them went, they passed through what appeared to be many different buildings. George was beginning to suspect that even that carnival, outdoors as it was, was still somehow inside the Building. In addition to his conversation with the custodian, he was now sure he remembered a little girl’s voice whispering to him, but all he could really make out was …After all, isn’t everything inside the building? And occasionally giggling, as if amused by his apprehension.

The gift of chips had gained him the big cat’s trust, so even after they finished eating, the two of them continued on their way side by side. Much to George’s delight, the panther actually let George pat his head. Even started purring, at that. Perhaps it was just the leftover feel of that weird dream, as if just coming back from a daydream, but he really couldn’t figure out why he started following his new companion.

George almost got the impression that the big cat might actually be leading him somewhere.

Such vague contemplations vanished in a puff of surprise when his feline friend took off on him.

Just paused for a moment, as if he had caught wind of something George couldn’t sense, then went bounding down the hall and around the corner. By the time George got to that corner, the panther had completely eluded him. A four-way junction of hallways, and no clue to which way the big cat had taken.

George felt a moment of disappointment, then shrugged his shoulders at the big cat’s parting. As if he had served some cryptic purpose only he understood.

Having no idea where any of the halls might lead, he just started forward again. After a couple turns, he found himself in part of a network of grey-walled halls on two different levels connected by short stairways. Along the way, he encountered several dead security cameras that stared into space, as Chase often accused him of doing. Due to the nature of the Triad’s business, he still didn’t like them. Much to his unease, the whole place was dimmer than the last place, seemingly running on auxiliary power.

Determined to find his way out of this dead-looking place, he went down another short set of stairs and came around the corner into an enormous room. To his right were two computer terminals. To his left, the largest computer screen he had ever seen, framed by a collection of smaller monitors. Hanging above him, from the high ceiling, were still more clusters of monitors. As he wandered into the middle of the chamber, he saw that there were two additional alcoves in the back, also crowded with computers and other equipment.

All of the screens dark, dormant.

The whole place looked like a control room for something.

Not liking to be in the middle of this eerily silent chamber, he made his way over to the glass doors on the far side of the floor. Refusing to pass beneath any of the hanging monitor banks. As he drew nearer, he could tell the double-doors were automated. Through the smoked glass, even in the gloom, he could make out a narrow hallway leading to a stairway that ascended out of view.

The controls for the doors consisted of a button pad and a card slot. With the small mental click he had simply grown used to over the years, George’s mind shifted gears, and he set to work. Again with that trick that caused other people’s jaws to drop, for them to call him an idiot savant and such, he again whipped out his armtop and started analyzing controls he had never seen before.

Using a screwdriver, one of several tools his companions insisted he carry for jobs, he opened the control panel and plugged his computer into the port, linking both machines. An endless procession of characters raced across the small screen on the upper half as he worked. His decryption programs translating the entire network.

Hacker, as Kato and Chase called it.

As he suspected, judging from the hi-tech nature of the system, shooting out the glass would only have sounded an alarm. Though there appeared to be no one around to respond to it, there might still be some kind of automated defense measures, at least according to his readouts. Were Kato to ever describe what it was like in Tranz-D even before she set off the alarms, George would have no trouble understanding exactly what she meant.

Just that sense of something big that should be allowed to just keep on sleeping.

After a few minutes of tinkering, he finally cracked the security codes, and tapping in a string of commands, the door slid open with a hydraulic hiss. Easier than manipulating the more relatively fool-proof security system at the Centralict Museum years ago. If only Kato and Chase hadn’t broken his concentration…

As the doors opened, he saw something that he completely overlooked in the dusty gloom of the hall that made him feel as if someone had just danced a jig on his grave. What appeared to be a pair of auto-guns mounted to the ceiling halfway down that hallway, set to aim in either direction. Now he understood that if he had made a single mistake unlocking those doors, it would likely have been his last, for even if he ducked around the corner in time, those guns would surely have cut him to ribbons before he could retreat up the steps and back around the corner.

Not liking this derelict control room, he unhooked his gear and made a bee-line for the stairs on slightly shaky legs. The steps led up to a very solid-looking metal door, with a similar control panel next to it.

Having electronically unlocked all the doors on this level, this one opened without a hitch, revealing a large room, what appeared to be part of a warehouse. Boxes and crates stacked along the walls around the edges of the room, almost completely blocking the garage door that was the only other way out. At least until he noticed the catwalk that ran along the ceiling, where there was another door.

Though George didn’t relish the thought of going back through the defunct base, feared he had no choice, even as he remembered that the auto-guns had likely reset themselves by now, when he noticed that the door up there was marked with a glowing blue “exit” sign hanging above it.

At first, the only way he could see to get up there was a pile of crates stacked against the wall underneath the catwalk like the side of a pyramid. Yet even as he was thinking about how much he hated climbing, he happened to spot a ladder leading up. Took some consolation in having avoided doing something the hard way for a change.

Then he noticed the forklift.

Big and yellow, and partly hidden behind a pile of boxes, he might have walked right past it without even seeing it on his way to the pyramid of boxes he had contemplated climbing only moments before. Keeping a close eye on it, he made his way over to the ladder. Part of it was that it seemed to be trying to “hide” from him, but the greater part was that, for some reason, he just didn’t trust the thing. Watched it every second as he crossed to the ladder, even looking over his shoulder as he scrambled up the lower rungs.

And would swear, even years later, when he looked back down at it from the top, that he saw one of the forklift’s headlights “wink” at him.

The forklift, though, never so much as budged, still George’s nerves were rather frayed by the time he reached the door and pulled it open, hoping it wasn’t some dirty trick—

To find himself stumbling into the alley outside the Harken Building, where, what felt like days ago, Chase had laughed at the writing on the wall. Speak of the devil, there he stood near the street talking to Kato. It was now after dark, the street illuminated by streetlights. The two of them paused as they noticed George’s arrival, both of them concluding after looking at each other for a moment that unless he took up a career as a novelist, they would never get to hear whatever tale he had to tell.

As he neared the street, he looked back to see that the door he came through had quietly shut behind him, and as far as he was concerned, good riddance. Though he couldn’t help noticing, even as he neared the street end of the alley, that the streetlights beyond this block seemed somehow brighter than those on the same block as the Building.

They both beckoned him over, Kato saying, “Come over here.” And to think, this was the one she was most worried about even making it back out of the Building, let alone next. “Quick, before the others show up. We’ve got to tell you the plan…”
XXXI by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
Shades' unsettling realization
The drop into the skylight earlier was easy enough, but in spite of the fact that what lay behind Shades was nothing but a dead end, even after nearly an hour it still bothered him that he could not go back.

Back in the halls again. On one hand, it was hard enough feeling as if he had to keep his guard up constantly. Yet he also had to battle that mysterious sandbagging that was making it hard to stay awake, to stay focused.

Fortunately, the halls themselves were part of an enormous complex, full of long hallways and stairs, so he hadn’t had to face any doors so far.

The Building was vast, bottomless. Though the pressure was low-level, it was constant. He knew it would wear him down eventually if he stayed in here too long. Was beginning to suspect that he was one of those rare exceptions, an anomaly of sorts at the Mall, and his and Max’s energy combined had formed an even greater anomaly, which had allowed the both of them to survive for as long as they had in there. But this place’s power was still greater, and he now understood that it was only a matter of time before even he succumbed to its terrible influence.

That line of thought led him to an ominous conclusion. Places like this, and the Mall, were pitcher plants, fly traps. Slippery, hungry holes in the fabric of reality. And, much to his chagrin, this one even came with its own warning sign.

Shades was beginning to realize with growing alarm what this place really was. The endless, ever-shifting scenery. The mix-matched passages that made no architectural sense. That sense of being in a maze whose walls and boundaries are in fluid motion when you’re not looking. Keeping you, engulfing you, folding up the entire world into the maze. This was the stuff nightmares were made of. He could easily picture Evil-Cam chasing Amy through this place.

In that moment, a scene played out in his mind’s eye. It was really a dream he had the other night, emerging from the dim waters of Rem, that deep sea of dreams which most seldom remember. A message in a bottle from beyond night’s Plutonian shores.

There was Amy, having (for the moment, at least) lost her unseen hunter, looking around with tangible apprehension. She looks right at Shades and says, Watch out, Dex! The building is hungry! Then resumes her seemingly ceaseless flight.

If what little Max said about this place was true, he suspected that, in spite of the Harken Building’s sinister reputation, somehow no one would ever quite get around to tearing it down.

Back in the blind alley— which he realized was somehow the dreamplane’s version of this building— Amy had been pointing to that same line of graffiti even as she warned him. Those words now shook Shades to the core. After remembering that, he found himself looking around even more warily than he had before.

He blinked away at the sandbagging, that stifling, dryer-lint heat, as he finally understood this place for what it really was. It was a graveyard. But though it must surely house its share of unquiet spirits, it wasn’t really a graveyard of people.

It was a graveyard of places.

Lost and forgotten, places that no longer existed. Places that no longer were, in one world or another. Now he was certain he had dreamt of this place, in nightmares his waking mind refused to remember. Had often said he had few nightmares as a child, but now he understood that his unconscious memory had been holding out on him.

These thoughts just kept coming unbidden, gnawing at this mind. Looking back, Max had seemed uncharacteristically perturbed by this place after looking at it for a while. Outlanders’ tales, indeed… He would have to ask later just what kind of stories he had heard.

If I ever get to ask him anything again.

So lost was he in his dark contemplations that he almost shot the black-and- white panther that just stepped around the next corner. So startled he nearly fumbled Max’s weapon as he realized who he very nearly killed with it. For his part, Bandit just stood there, watching him.

“Bandit? Is that you?” For a moment, Shades had to grapple with the disconcerting thought that maybe this wasn’t the real Bandit, finally deciding that was just too paranoid. Still, when his friend didn’t appear next, he began to worry. “Where’s Max?”

Yet even after Bandit started toward him, his human companion still refused to put in an appearance.

Figuring that if this really was some kind of impostor, like John’s looking-glass doppelganger that sometimes haunted his dreams, the big cat would have had more than enough time to pounce, Shades put out his hand and patted his head. Cursing the Building, and all of its unsettling thoughts that kept slithering into his head here, he petted his friend. Fearing the worst, but putting on his best face, he said, “Come on. Let’s go find Max.”

It didn’t take long for them to come upon a vending machine in the next hall. For Shades to realize just how hungry he really was. For it to occur to him that it had been just as long since Bandit had eaten last. And all of it had been ruined by the pool water.

Though durable, he reflected, one of the downsides of denim was that it took forever and a day to dry. He was still damp from his unexpected swim, and knew he would be for a while yet. What he really wished, though, was that his damn boots wouldn’t make so many squishing noises in this too, too quiet place.

The Building ain’t the only thing that’s hungry around here…

He still wasn’t completely sure he trusted the food in this place, yet he knew he couldn’t go for too long without something. Nothing but necessity. There was also a pop vending machine, a really old one, and Shades decided to check it out. After nearly shooting Bandit, he concluded that he couldn’t waste any more ammo. He had no clue how much Max’s pistol had left, but knew that, from here on out, every time he pulled the trigger, he would have to make it count. Instead, he decided to again put his new lockpicking method to the test.

Besides, while the first vending machine he ran into appeared to want dollars, this one demanded to be fed something else. The numbers themselves looked familiar enough, but from the instructions and the unknown symbol, he had no clue what kind of currency it took. Just out of curiosity, he grabbed some loose change from his pocket and tried it.

Sure enough, his quarters and dimes proved totally useless, every one rejected.

Fishing out the ballpoint pen with the ink tube and the tip removed, he inserted it into the cylindrical lock and probed carefully. Apparently, some old locks were susceptible to this method, and this one looked pretty old. Just another test.

Still, he was surprised when it actually worked, yet again. Remembering Bandit’s needs, he also grabbed several bottles of water. It was tricky at first, but he finally got the big cat to drink from the bottle as he poured it out, he was that thirsty.

That settled, they resumed their exploration. A short while later, they came upon a door that hung wide open. Fearing what he might find on the other side, he stepped around the door itself, pointing Max’s gun in as he entered.

The first thing that struck him was the smell of old book bindings. Though the view left him disoriented for a moment. He had always rather liked libraries— being alone in a library was like having entire worlds all to himself— though they often gave him an odd feeling, this was topped by the fact that he was looking down on the whole thing from the small landing he stood at.

Again, seeing this made him wish he could have stayed longer at the Centralict Library. A little longer in that vast treasury of knowledge. Even Max had spoken of how he was similarly tempted by it.

A few steps down, and he was in a long, high-ceilinged room, lined with shelves on either side, with a narrow island of chest-high shelves down the middle, dividing the room. A thin strip of windows ran near the ceiling on his right. At one end of that island a book sat open.

Or rather, part of a book. A few pages still clinging to their binding, but Shades found himself drawn to it. Though an older volume, he couldn’t help himself; he was a sucker for reading material. At least he didn’t feel that foreboding presence, as he had with the Book of Fate.

It appeared to be a book of poetry, mostly pertaining to supernatural and eerie imagery, but the page with the beginning of the passage he found was missing, so all he got was:

—to nowhere uncheck’d.

All aboard the Mystery Train, walk through the dimly-lit cars, away from the Twylight City, riding under fading, dying stars. All the passenger cars art empty and the destinations don’t connect, but this train doth run through every one; ’twill make the hair stand on thy neck.

Nameless armies prowleth abandoned places, incomprehensible and vast; no one returneth who hath seen their faces: thou’rt through the looking glass.

Nowhere to hide from the scanners, in this dark place of Shadows, thou wilt never find the Lord of the Manor; in the Halls of Power, no one knows. Creepy like a place from some old black and white movie show, to which no one wouldst even come: ’twas more real than they couldst know.

A Presence in the room, of impending doom: don’t freeze up, for ye must runneth. Footfalls in the hall, to the book’s tomb, when something wickèd this way cometh…


Quite frankly, the whole thing seemed too apt for his taste, in this place. He put the book down, deciding that he had read enough. Perhaps too much, in light of all he had seen.
End Notes:
AUTHOR'S NOTE: The verse Max stumbled upon is from Chapter 11 of The Book of Spooky Doors, from The Book of Hondo.
XXXII by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
Justin takes the freight elevator
Justin had no idea how long he had been cruising around these tunnels before he finally reached a dead end.

Or at least at first he thought it was a dead end. A big metal wall with a black-and-yellow-slashed strip across its width. On closer inspection, though, he realized that it was a door, complete with a blocky control panel next to it.

He pondered his move for a long moment, finally dismounting and whipping out one power pistol. Bracing himself for the worst, he reached out and pressed the largest button. The door split open about halfway up, along the strip, the top sliding into the ceiling, the bottom into the floor. Like jaws gaping, Justin reckoned.

Within, a second latticework of bars accordioned aside, revealing a blue steel freight elevator. It took him a moment to realize what it was, then he lowered his guard. Having tired of the monotony of the tunnels, he pushed the motorcycle in.

There was another control panel inside, and he closed the door behind him. Once inside, though, he was again struck by the same disorientation as he had at finding a basement at the “top” of all those stairs. His directional quandary finally ended with the realization that he was already at the bottom level of this thing.

No way to go but up, so he pressed for the top floor.

The interior of the freight elevator was like a big blue metal cage; as he rose through the levels, he could see different concrete segments as he passed them. For over a dozen levels, he ascended through a massive steel framework, beyond which was a colossal, multi-level chamber full of pulleys and hoists and smaller elevator platforms, ramps and crisscrossing stairways. Levels upon levels of platforms and catwalks circled the interior of this impossibly tall enclosure.

Seeing it all from his moving vantage point nearly made him dizzy as he looked about.

Then it was back to the concrete shaft. Justin had completely lost track of how many levels he had risen through when it finally stopped. He stood there for a long moment before finally making up his mind to leave.

For a moment, he was afraid to leave the elevator. Much like a shark-diver, he had come to feel rather safe inside this cage. It was hard to shake the maddening feeling that there was something— perhaps more than one something— on the other side of those metal jaws, lying in wait.

It was finding his hand again holding that crudely carved figurine that made up his mind; it was time to nip this growing reliance on magical thinking in the bud.

Along the way, he had noticed that there was a lattice-door facing each way, but when he opened the one he came through, he found nothing but solid concrete before him that was clearly a wall. The only path open to him lay in the opposite direction.

Keeping his double-barrel power pistol ready, he took a deep breath and at last opened the other door. Beyond was another cavernous chamber of concrete and asphalt, the ceiling easily high enough to drive large vehicles through. A few vehicles were scattered on row upon row of grid-lines marking most of the level. Numbers, and more of those black-and-yellow signs, marched up and down the walls. At one end of the place was a pair of ramps, one going up, one going down.

After finally shrugging and resigning himself to the fact that such abstract notions as “up” and “down” didn’t mean jack shit in this place, he decided to see what was at the top of it. Firing up the engine, he took off again, cruising up the ramp. At the top of the ramp, he found himself on an almost identical parking level, with another level above it. Practicing his maneuvering, and getting the hang of it in this large and mostly open space.

At least until he ran out of gas.

Or something. The engine just sputtered out, and the motorcycle puttered to a halt and then refused to start again. After messing around with it for all of thirty or forty seconds, he just let the thing fall over and walked away.

So much for keeping it and taking it with him.

After pondering his options for a few moments, he decided to press on as he had before, wanting to see how many levels there were. Resolving that if it went on too much farther, he would change direction, and see where any of the occasional doors he saw along the way led to. Concluding that if any of Kato’s friends had come this way, once into the tunnels, there was no hope of tracking them anymore anyway.

And no chance in hell of Max being able to catch up with him, even before the tunnels. Though now fairly confident he was wasn’t being followed earlier, as he originally feared, he was no longer so confident that leaving marks of any sort would have done him or Max much good anyway. Was no longer even so sure he could necessarily find his way back to the tunnels, despite their being what seemed like a very direct route back.

This whole Building was making Tranz-D look positively navigable by comparison, and Justin Black didn’t like it one bit. Reaching into his pocket and clutching that strange figurine from Obscura Antiques again, he set out once more. And surprised himself by hoping maybe the odd trinket would turn out to be a good luck charm, for he felt that no amount of good fortune could possibly be too much in this creepy place.
XXXIII by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
Chase wins the bet
George stood on the corner next to the Harken Building, trying hard not to get dragged into his companions’ dispute.

Kato and Chase had been arguing for some time, then stood in silence until Kato sat down on a bench in front of the neighboring building. Much like the one on the other side, this one also had a FOR SALE sign; after her fun experience in that place, she suspected the two neighboring buildings were never occupied for long at a time. After a while, Chase started asking questions about Max and his friends.

“…So that guy’s from the Triangle State, too?”

“Yeah. Go figure,” Kato replied, exasperation steaming off every syllable. “He escaped from the mines there or something. He’s even more rude than you, but he’s also pretty handy with a power pistol. I wonder who’s quicker… Anyway, if he doesn’t come out of there, his friends— the ones with the Tri-Medals— might not trust us anymore.”

“So what?”

“So what?” Kato demanded, then reminded herself that they hadn’t met Max & Company yet. “You wouldn’t say that if you ever saw that Layoshan guy fight. He’s got a laser sword, and he damn well knows how to use it. Remember what I told you about NK-525? Don’t forget, him and that ‘Shades’ guy beat that fucker all by themselves. All Justin did was destroy what was left of it. Our weapons were useless against it,” (though she wondered how she would fare now with her new laser whip) “but those two are not to be underestimated. Especially Shades. I think he’s suspicious of us.”

“You worry too much, Kato. Now the three of us are back together, so it’s one-on-one. All we need is the element of surprise, and it won’t matter how strong they are…”

George could smell this kind of storm from a mile away, and he had no interest in being caught in the undertow if push came to shove. As if it were a contact sport or something. Just when he thought it might be a good idea to step across the street, he saw a man round the next corner out of the corner of his eye.

Chase was in the midst of ignoring Kato’s lecture when he happened to see the same man come up behind George. Unlike Kato, he recognized this one. And he also recognized Chase.

“Hey man,” Chase called out, “you owe me some money.”

“The hell…” The man stopped in his tracks.

“Come on.” After going through seven kinds of hell over that bet, he was going to collect no matter what. “Fork it over.”

“But… no one’s ever…” the man stammered. “Not since that woman…”

And what a tale she had to tell. Just came staggering out of that alley, panting and frantically looking back as if being chased. Back then he was just a boy, but Alida Wymore’s account still frightened and fascinated him to this day. And tided him over through this recession. Though in all these years, he had never upped the nerve to investigate the place himself.

And now he found himself standing in the presence of a duo who had seen the fathomless depths of the Harken Building, and lived to tell the tale. He could figure no way out of this. When he was making his wagers, he had always made a ritual of carrying enough to cover most of them, confident that he would never have to pay up. After all, in all these years, no one had ever come back to collect. Too stunned to argue, his gut instinct telling him it might be a very bad idea to renege, he handed over all of the money he had.

Saying, “No one’s… ever…”

“Thanks, pal.”

Then the man walked away, his shock finally starting to subside. Already thinking of how he could promote this. Yep, only one man ever dared to challenge the Harken Building and won…

Kato and George just stared, first at the man, then at Chase, then at the tidy wad of bills he was now counting.

“Well, Kato,” Chase grinned viciously as he said, “today seems to be my lucky day after all. If you drop all that shit you said earlier, I might treat you to dinner.”

And Kato resumed glaring at him.
XXXIV by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
Shades' great escape a dud
Shades, to be quite honest with himself, found he was ashamed to walk away from one spooky book, especially given how many he had read in his life, but even with Bandit as company, he still didn’t like the vibe he was getting from those passages.

Had finally had to quit reading it in this environment. Was simply reading too much into it. Could “the book’s tomb” refer to the Book of Fate? Or was it just some creepy coincidence? Lines about things prowling abandoned places, and talk of black-and-white movie shows, especially those creepy old horror flicks, made him wonder exactly what was more real than they could know. And if he really wanted to know, himself.

And that word. Fate.

He never really liked the word itself. Its implication that all the major plot twists in his life were preordained. Then again, he had escaped from his own prescribed fate. So far.

In that spirit, Shades climbed up onto the shelves and opened one of the windows lining the ceiling on that side. Though near the ceiling, it was a basement window, and he could see the bottom and tires of an old school bus, with weeds poking out through every chink in the pavement. It was a narrow fit, and he had to shove his backpack through first, but he slithered through himself. Much like a cat, if Shades could fit his head and shoulders through an opening, the rest of him would fit as well. Like the cat he was, Bandit slipped through quite easily.

As he crawled to his feet, Shades could smell dirt and plants, and the oily odor of the bus, and it brought back a flood of memories. But the fact that he was out here was proof that he had found a new way to avoid the Flaming Ghost. He looked up to see an open sky over his head, and for a moment he wondered if he hadn’t just found a way out of the Building.

Yet when he looked around, seeing that walls surrounded him on all sides gave silent testimony that he was still inside. Again the maze had folded itself up around him, even out here. Clearly, the Building was determined to keep its occupants inside.

After all, it’s hungry, you know…

Shades shook that thought off, and Bandit shook himself free of dirt and grime as he climbed out of the window. It was the jingling sound that caught Shades’ attention, the jingle of a pair of keys hung on his harness. Reaching down, he pulled the keys off the harness to take a closer look.

Comm…

He wasn’t sure exactly what it meant, or where his feline friend got it from, but he got the odd feeling it might just come in handy. Standing back up, he wondered what a bus was doing in such an enclosed area. Then he saw the garage door in one of the walls. But he knew that would just lead back into the maze of doors; what he needed was a way out of that…

It was then that he realized the bus itself was the key. Unlike the flat-front models he used to ride to school when he was a kid, this one had a protruding hood. Climbing up onto it, then easily onto the top of the bus, and from there he found an easy jump to the closest roof edge. And Bandit followed him effortlessly. Now from here he should be able to find his way back to the street back in Centralict.

Or so he thought.

Just when he was thinking he could escape, worrying about how that would involve leaving Max and the others behind, yet how perhaps if he found a way out, he could find a way to help them find it, too, he saw it. Once he stood up and got a good look around, he saw the endless— not to mention streetless— maze of rooftops that stretched out before him, and saw that his escape plan was a dud. There were narrow alleyways running between some of them, dirty and dingy and abandoned-looking. It was disorienting to be looking from on high after climbing out of a basement window.

Shades decided that it was better not to think about it. The inside of no building could possibly be gargantuan enough to fit all of this. Yet here it was. Just another example of this place’s mix-matched… Warp Architecture. It was as good a name for this phenomenon as any other, as far as he was concerned. And to think he had once thought the Mall would be better, easier to hide in, if it were infinite in scope.

After seeing this… “I take it all back.”

All those rooftops, and he was still only at the middle levels of it. Though that creepy poem mentioned nothing about this, it still reminded him of it. Especially those alleys, so eerie and brooding. Leading to places whose names would never appear on any map from his own plane of existence.

If he thought those alleyways looked like something from the set of a horror movie from above, he liked them even less when he found no other way to go but down a fire escape. Once down below, Bandit seemed more uneasy than he had ever seen Max’s companion before. Kicking trash out of his way, Shades found it tough to figure out where to train the power pistol. His narrow range of vision made him feel more claustrophobic than he ever had in his life.

He had already made up his mind to take the first way back up that he could find, when his own apprehension was ratcheted up another notch by Bandit’s abrupt pause. The big cat just stopped, sniffing the air. After a moment, Bandit started growling.

“Hey Bandit? What’s wrong?…”

Before Shades had any time to be frustrated by his travel companion’s inability to speak English, Bandit bolted, racing back the way he came. Shades didn’t bother calling out, just took off with him. Unfortunately, he didn’t get more than two or three turns before he lost Bandit altogether.

“Dammit! Bandit!” Shades stumbled to a halt, wishing he knew what to tell Max. Something had definitely seized Bandit’s undivided attention, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to stick around to find out what. At times he got the distinct impression that cat knew what he was doing more than anyone else in this crew. “Now what?”

As Shades stepped forward, he nearly tripped over a backpack lying on the ground. At first terrified it might be Max’s, he was unspeakably relieved when he realized he couldn’t place it. In fact, it was all dusty and frayed, and looked as if it had lain there for years.

Farther ahead was another fire escape, even a trashcan to stand on to reach it. He picked up the pack, deciding to seek higher ground to avoid whatever it was that had spooked Bandit. To be someplace safer before he dared to stop and take stock of things.

Now that he noticed it, in addition to the backpack, there were other random items strewn across the ground in the immediate area, what to him seemed to be signs of a grim struggle. This only further increased his haste as he made for the ladder. Found himself glancing over his shoulder until he was over halfway up, and then just because he could no longer see anything useful down below from above that height.

Looking back down, he could see how truly grim and foreboding that area looked from above, and wondered why anyone who saw this view would dare to go down there.

On this rooftop, he found a cracked plastic flashlight lying near the ladder, and a canteen a little farther along. Then several skeletons lying around, sprawled on the rooftop in blood-stained clothes. Shades gasped, just about biting his tongue in an attempt to avoid screaming. For fear that whatever left these stark remains— quite possibly what frightened Bandit so much, too, while he was busy being paranoid about it— might hear. In the midst of these loosely ranged remnants he found a power pistol; when he tried it, he found it was out of juice. Near the ladder on the far side of the roof, leading up to more rooftops several stories above, was another useless power pistol.

Spent. Every round exhausted.

At the bottom of the ladder was yet another skeleton, its cracked skull and splintered ribs all but screaming of the impact of a full drop from at or near the top of that ladder. Somebody’s been here with the ugly stick, Shades concluded, but from the looks of the aftermath, whatever went down here had clearly happened years ago. Ridiculous as it seemed, he couldn’t get the image out of his head of these half-dozen or so skeletons simply pulling themselves back together and attacking him, like something out of a video game or a “B” horror flick, so he quickly pocketed the power pistols and made a hasty ascent.

Vowing to be more conservative with the unknown quantity of his remaining power clip as he climbed this ladder. By the time he reached the top of that one, he was tired enough to stop and actually look in the extra backpack he had lugged up here with him, a cursory look around showing him that there were no corpses on this rooftop. Keeping a wary eye on the top of the ladder in spite of himself, he found the bag’s contents mostly consisted of a moldy old jacket, some feminine items he glossed over, a power clip he decided to arm one of the empty power pistols with as a last resort, and some old foodstuffs that he was certain would be the death of him if he even thought about eating them. Otherwise, not much of use.

Until he found a pair of items buried in the smaller pocket. Each looked like a t-joint with perpendicular handles. One end of the cross was longer than the handle end of it, partially sheathing what to him looked a lot like the business end of Max’s laser sword.

Wisely pointing that end away from himself, he hit the tiny switch near the joint of the two hand-grips. And a bright orange energy blade flickered into shimmering existence. The “blade” itself was just a little over a foot long, but it allowed him to see the weapon’s true form, deciding that it was just about right.

After all, it looked just like his pair of tonfa back home.

Firing up both of them, he held them in a casual fighting stance, finding that the “sheathing” opposite the other end of the “t-bars” kept the blades flush against the backs of his arms without actually touching them. With the staff as a close second, tonfa had been his best weapon in Master Al’s class, and he had sorely regretted having to abandon the guards’ nightsticks (which were of similar design) back at the Mall. Twirling them in each hand, he executed the first tonfa kata his sensei had taught him years ago, finding the weapons’ handling very much to his liking.

Staring out at the vast expanse of rooftops, he turned them off, deciding that if they were to be of more use to him than they were to whoever dropped them, he needed to conserve power. Though they were likely pulse weapons, like Max’s laser sword, or Justin’s staff, he still wanted all available power for when— though hopefully only if— he needed it. Having some close-range defensive ability, and hopefully a regenerating pulse weapon on top of it, made him feel more confident about his chances of getting out of here as he set out once again.

His newfound hope, though, was tempered by his lingering anxiety about losing Bandit, as well as the nagging mystery of how the big cat and his human companion got separated. To say nothing of the ominous intuition that whatever scared Bandit so badly back there may have a been a clue to both mysteries.
XXXV by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
Max at Chad's last stand
In the room beyond where he found Chad’s remains, Max discovered that whole sections of those strange paper walls were torn open in a long sequence. Sliding door after door open, he followed a barely visible trail of blood that would have led to his father’s long-fallen friend, one that he could hardly track. Again, that unnerving impression that the wooden floors, even the paper walls, had somehow sucked up all the blood that should still be there with no one around to clean it up.

The trail came to a stop in a hangar, on an upper level catwalk. The ladder leading down to the lower level had been chopped down, as if with an energy blade. Below were the ruins of the ladder and several rag-clad skeletons. Every single one of them missing at least one limb.

Max could picture all of them shambling around down there, just like his friends from back in that grim alleyway…

For all those wounds, this must have been where Chad Owen made his last stand.

Where he made his last stand against the darkness… he could hear his mother’s voice whisper, like some kind of cryptic epitaph.

Deciding that he had investigated this matter far enough, and feeling no particular need to go down there, he crossed the catwalk to a door on the opposite end of it. Though that gruesome act must have taken place at least twenty years ago, even with his climbing skills he saw no readily available way to get back up here if anything was still lurking down there. Beyond the next door was another series of those long, winding hallways that seemed to connect everything in this disjointed maze.

It was a long, eerie walk that only further messed with his sense of direction.

He had been so on-edge about being attacked by more of those creatures, it was strange to pause at one point and finally notice that, the bite not withstanding, his leg was completely back to normal. Unfortunately, though the stun blow had numbed it first, the actual pain of being bitten was starting to bother him.

Eventually, he came out in a large, walled-in field, rank on rank of inscribed stones lining the breadth and depth of it.

Just like the Cyexian Graveyard in Kinsasha…

That brought to mind images of dazed, bloodied Cyexians shuffling around through the storm of that fateful night. Max suspected this place must have served a similar purpose; it was all too easy to picture dead-looking people stumbling around here.

He shunned that thought, deciding that he could do without it. After the spectacle in that hangar, he found it hard to shake the all-too-real image of Bandit’s mutilated remains turning up at every turn. It was all too easy to see Justin or Shades ending up like that, or even Kato and her companions, and he still couldn’t find his way back to the rooftops.

So lost was he in his worries that it was only after he had walked past the familiar black-and-white feline shape curled up between two of those gravestones that he recognized it for what it was. As Max ground to a perplexed halt, Bandit opened one eye at him. As the big cat stretched and stood up, Max simply stayed rooted in place in dumbfounded silence, blinking at the unexpected appearance of his old friend.

“Is it really you?…” Though not as tired as he was earlier, Max was still worried that this was all just a dream or something. Yet the relief at actually being able to reach out and touch his friend’s fur again dispelled all doubt. So heartening, giving him renewed hope for his other friends in spite of the horrors he had experienced. As his feline friend tackled him, he laughed, “I was afraid I’d never see you again!… How’d you get here?…”

Max abruptly wrestled himself to his feet in spite of their unexpected but welcome reunion, fearing that more of those twisted creatures may have followed Bandit here. He relaxed a little as it dawned on him that if Bandit caught even a whiff of that, there was no way he would just be lounging around like this. Bandit must surely be tired, too, but Max concluded that this must be a safe place.

At least as safe as any place seemed to be inside the Harken Building.

Max sat on a particularly stout stone, digging some snacks out of his bag. Shades had come up with some stuff that was suitable for Bandit as well, and he shared some with his companion as he tried to figure out what to do next. It had been so many years, and he had done a very thorough job of forgetting most of that unsettling account, but he was increasingly certain that if he could just remember one part, his mother’s words might just save their lives…

Hoping that Bandit would sense any danger from farther away than he could, and hopefully in time to evade it, Max turned his mind to trying to remember everything he could.
XXXVI by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
Justin vs the void
After striding up several parking levels, and finding no clue as to how many remained, Justin finally gave up on it.

At the far end of his current level he pulled open a broad double-doorway which led to a sky-bridge. As he crossed the bridge, Justin looked out the windows, seeing at first what he thought was a way to escape. Yet as he took in the dim scenery outside of the skybridge, it didn’t really shed much light on the situation, but only gave him a clearer idea of just how twisted this place really was.

He stepped over near the edge, peering through the glass. The view was both stark and impressive. The walls at each end of the bridge were all rough stone, like cavern walls. He could see nothing but darkness above, though below, by the light of the bridge, he could make out mist and jagged rocks thrusting out from below. He stared at those depths for a long moment, but still couldn’t see the bottom.

Finally, the eeriness of it got to him, and he continued on his way. Keeping to the center of the bridge until he was all the way across. When he noticed that his hand had once more crept into his pocket for the figurine, he nearly threw it down in frustration.

Still a little voice in the back of his head stayed his hand, in much the same way he believed it had saved him from potentially catastrophic errors in Tranz-D not so long ago.

Beyond was a long hallway, with light panels placed on the upper corners of the walls. He kept looking back at the skybridge every few steps until he was around the next corner. That alien landscape back there caused his imagination to try to picture things that those unsettling meat slabs in the frozen storage areas may once have looked like, and he didn’t like it one bit.

At the end of the hallways was a catwalk traversing another cavernous chamber, this one lined with storage vats and tanks. The whole place smelled strange to him, the vats filled with liquids and semi-liquids the like of which he had never seen before. And the more he examined it, the more rickety the catwalk itself looked to him.

Just as he had about made up his mind to go back to the parking garage and try another level, he heard breaking glass and a loud crashing noise from back that way. Imagined the glass shattering, and the whole skybridge collapsing into the dark mist below. Then came a rush of wind, gusting from ahead of him, pushing him back toward the hallway.

For some reason picturing water pouring down a drain, imagining this doorway as that drain, Justin started forward, not wanting to get sucked back into the hallway, fearing he would get dragged back into the misty darkness.

“Hold together…” The moment he stepped out onto the catwalk, Justin discovered just how flimsy this thing really was, and that gusting wind wasn’t helping any. Still, he could hear more jolts and thumps from back there, so he decided not to stick around to see what was causing that.

Yet as he neared the middle, the way became still more unstable, began to sink and sway from side to side. Every step became a toss of the dice, sometimes he would jerk his hand back from a section of railing that broke away at his merest touch, and one section that partially collapsed under his feet, nearly spilling him into a vat of some impenetrably murky sludge. At first, a piece of metal railing that did fall in almost seemed to float on top of it, then started smoking as it began to dissolve and appeared to melt into the vat. Even with the stiff breeze blowing most of the fumes away, the smell was still acrid, eye-watering.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit…” Justin half muttered, half coughed, as he crawled up onto a more level section of the catwalk.

When a section he had crossed earlier actually fell apart, leaving several section lengths’ worth of gap, he knew he was long past the point of no return.

The gale seemed strongest back near the door, where it nearly pushed him back into the hall, but the farther he got from it, the more it diminished. Now that he was farther away from it, it seemed to him more of a pull, dragging him back, than a push. Yet that pull was steady, and the fact that he could feel it all the way over here was hardly reassuring.

Time seemed to stretch out like a rubber band, but when he finally reached the other side of it, he couldn’t help feeling as if someone just stepped on his grave as more catwalk sections gave way. It was then that he realized he had been so preoccupied with escaping the wind-tunnel in that hallway, he hadn’t even noticed that there was no door on this side. He looked about frantically, but all he could find was a ladder.

So he started climbing, clinging to every rung as that raging wind whirled, whipping at his hair and clothes; he hoped it was just his imagination, but it seemed to be getting harder to breathe the longer he struggled. Several times he nearly lost his grip, but he scrambled on anyway, feeling as if he was now in some kind of race against time. Trying to keep his imagination at bay, trying not to picture vague, unhallowed forms crawling into the ruptured openings of the skybridge… from…

Someplace else…

Past the ceiling, the ladder continued up a narrow shaft. Remembering the push of the waterfall back in Paradise, he felt as if he was climbing against a current trying to pull him down even harder than gravity. Below, all the while, he continued to hear those crashing sounds and this only made him try to climb faster in spite of his growing exhaustion.

Just when he thought he couldn’t possibly climb another step, feared he would be dragged down to his doom by this mysterious air current, he came out onto a platform. It was small and cramped and lit only by a small bulb set in a low ceiling. At first he could see no way out, but then he spotted a circular lid above him.

Even though he couldn’t even stand up all the way, short as he was, with this low ceiling, he felt as if he was trying to breathe underwater, and even his mightiest effort couldn’t budge it.

Seeing spots in his vision, and knowing that he was somehow running out of time, he whipped out his laser staff, cutting around the edge of the lid. Glad that he wasn’t standing directly underneath it as it tore loose and plunged down the ladder shaft with a force that would have smashed his skull. Hearing it crash back-and-forth down the narrow shaft, then hit the bottom with a strangely muffled boom. Now he could feel that same suction, trying to drag him into that square hole behind him, and for some reason knew this was why it was so damn hard to open in the first place as he jumped up through the hole above.

He rolled over for a moment, certain he was going to black out at any second, but a gust of fresh air revived him a bit. It was the realization that all the air was being sucked out of this place, as well, that dragged him back to his feet, gasping for breath. His whole body felt like lead, dragging him down as he stumbled on along what appeared to be a narrow, low-ceilinged concrete shaft.

He no longer cared where it led, as long as it involved air.

Having more air to breathe helped him regain some of his strength, but in this confined space, he was pretty sure the air supply wouldn’t last long. Only the knowledge that he would die here if he didn’t keep moving kept him energized as he staggered along, often leaning on the wall for support against his growing dizziness.

At one point he stumbled, watching the little carved figurine the shopkeep had given him fall out of his jacket pocket and tumble into the darkness. Reflexively, he tried to reach for it before he realized what he was doing, stumbling and falling on his face. Since he was already down there, and since his fuzzy mind was filling up with vague premonitions about the thing, he fumbled around on hands and knees and finally found it. Stuffing it back in his pocket, he had to lean against the wall for support as he fought his way back to his feet.

He felt he was losing this race anyway, and wasn’t sure if he could even take another step, wondering if bothering to pick up the figurine might have been the worst mistake of his life, when he came to a second small box-like room, with another manhole lid above him. Focusing all of his strength, as Max had taught him, he hurled his backpack up first, then jumped, barely hauling himself out of the tiny chamber. Seeing another lid like the one before next to him, he summoned the last of his immediate strength and pushed it over the opening.

The suction slammed it tightly in place.

Justin sat, leaning against the wall, panting and straining for breath, for some time, before he even thought about getting up. It was seeing the coin-size holes in the lid, and feeling the faint shift of air being sucked into them, that gave him his second wind. The force was greatly diminished this far away, but he feared this place here might also become part of the growing vacuum. Finally bothering to take note of his surroundings, he saw that he was in a tiny room giving way to another series of narrow concrete halls.

With nowhere to go back to but his own grave, he pushed on, the exercise helping to clear his head now that he had enough air to breathe. There were few lights in this section, so he had no choice but to whip out his flashlight and proceed with caution. Power pistol held firmly in his other hand, though he hated that in such a compact space, he would have little warning if anything did attack him.

Thinking only of getting as far away from that open void as he possibly could, he paid little heed to which passages he took, pulled open one door after another, shutting them behind him in hopes of slowing down that vacuum suction a little.

Eventually, he came upon a door that reminded him of the door to the freight elevator earlier. He pressed a button, and it snapped shut with a sharp hiss. Not quite sure why, he paused for a moment, reaching his fingers near the rubber-sealed doorcrack.

Not even a hint of suction.

So he pressed on, moderating his pace so he could catch his breath, now that there was enough time and air to do so. After wandering around in the dark for what felt like hours, he eventually came to a small room with just one door. It was white, with four panels set in it, and looked a little spooky to him for some reason. It was the glowing blue sign above it that really got his attention.

EXIT.

Seeing no other way out, and hoping after all he’d been through that this wasn’t some kind of mean prank, he pulled open the door.

For a moment, he was nearly blinded by the shaded daylight of the alley, stumbling out into the early light of dawn next to the Harken Building.

At the street end of the alley stood Kato, and two people he assumed to be Chase and George. And, much to his dismay, no sign of Max or Shades, or even Bandit. As the others noticed him, Justin walked over and addressed the matter point-blank.

“Kato, don’t tell me…”

“You got it,” she replied, shrugging with obvious frustration.

“Anybody else come out yet?”

“See ’em anywhere?”

“Shit.” Justin was pretty sure he had taken too long getting back out, but he had also quietly hoped they would decide to wait awhile. Still, the fact that four people had found a way to escape offered at least some hope for his friends.

He just hoped they hadn’t used up all their luck on just that. Or worse, used it all up against NK-525, even before this mess. He had spent so much time hoping Max and Shades hadn’t entered the Building, it was only now that he realized he had no contingency plan for what to do if they had. Much to his dismay, all that came to mind was the thought that Max had been willing to brave the perils of Tranz-D to come back for him, and feared he might now end up doing the same for Max.

“Well, I guess we’ll just have to wait.” Kato turned to her friends and said, “This is one of the guys I was talking about, Justin Black. This guy’s also from the Triangle State…”

She figured she may as well swap stories while they waited. The other two were the ones with the Tri-Medals; Justin by himself was no good to them. Nothing to do but wait. And go back in if necessary. Though still shaken by her own disturbing experience, she was starting to regain her nerve. A growing part of her didn’t care how hungry the Building was.

It wasn’t going to eat her Tri-Medals.
XXXVII by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
intercom: Max's side
Max kept his and Bandit’s meal a short one, for he was loathe to stop for long anymore, now having witnessed for himself the true terror of the Harken Building.

After their brief repast, Max resumed his quest, grateful simply for finding his friend. Still he tried to remember what Mom said that day, the key to how she found the exit. And still keeping his new power rifle handy, though he feared it didn’t have much ammo left, determined not to let anything in here reduce him to close-quarters combat again.

He never imagined that a cemetery could be so big, but eventually it gave way to a courtyard, then small groups of offices, connected by concrete stairways that were completely incongruent with the designs of any of the offices.

Max sat in one of those cushy, ergonomic chairs to rest his legs. Especially the one that thing had bitten, for his ankle was hurting still more. He didn’t have to sit there long before he began to worry that maybe he was getting a little too comfortable. Though he doubted Bandit would allow anything to enter this area without giving some manner of warning, still he pictured one of those creatures lurching toward him, and it jolted him awake every time he started to nod off.

He kept chiding himself for letting his guard down so easily in such a dangerous place, when he really did jump out of his seat as something in the room started beeping, followed by a hiss of static.

The last thing he expected to hear was Shades’ voice. At first he wasn’t sure, due to the crackling static, but the more he listened, the surer he was.

“Hello?… Is there anyone else out there?… Anybody hear me?…”

Then the confirmation.

“Max?… Justin?… Kato?…” Then a longer pause. “Chase?… George?… Stupid question…”

Max started looking around the room, finally spotted an electronic-looking box on the wall.

“Justin?… Max?… um… Bandit?… John?… Amy?… Anybody?…”

After examining the device for a moment, Max found the TALK button, pressing it and saying, “Shades? Is that you?”

“Max? Max! Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” Max assured him. “Shades, have you run into any, um… strange people in here?”

“No, but…”

“Watch out,” Max warned him. “They’re dangerous. Even stun mode won’t work—”

“Max,” Shades’ voice cut in, “I’m sorry. I don’t know how to tell you this, but I ran into Bandit earlier, but he ran away again and…”

“Shades, it’s all right,” Max interrupted, “I found him again. He’s right here with me. I know you did whatever you could… Uh, Shades, why are you talking on this thing anyway?”

“Well, Bandit was wandering around with these keys hung on his harness— I don’t know where he got them, but it seems they’re keys to the intercom system here, so I thought I’d see if I could, you know, talk to any of the others…”

“Has anyone else answered?”

“No,” Shades sounded both grave and worried. “I’m really glad you found Bandit again, but I’m worried about Justin and the others.” Another long pause. “Max, we need a plan. I mean, you could walk around at random forever and…”

Max lost track of what his friend was saying as those words echoed back to him across a gulf of years: Unless you got lucky, you could just wander around at random until you die, or the Building gets you… And then Alida had said something about having a dream, or a vision, something about snake-fangs. Easy to walk into, but hard to walk back out of. Something about doors…

“…Max? Hey! Max! Are you still there?”

“Yeah,” Max replied after a moment.

“Don’t scare me like that, man. I don’t know what happened to you, but all the doors I open…”

“That’s it!” Max finally remembered.

“What? Did you say something?”

“Yeah,” Max told him, “I finally remembered. The dream. Try looking for doors that pull open.”

“Max, what are you talking about?”

“It’s hard to explain…” Max didn’t want to go into his parents’ visit here, so, “The point, if I understand this right, is that if you go through doors that pull open—”

“You only have to push them open to get back out…” Shades’ voice had an odd, meditative sound to it, as it often did when he was lost in thought. “Because if you push a door open, then that means you have to pull it back to get back out again… Max, every door I can remember has been a push door since I found that damn book…”

“Book?” Then something else. Very important. “Shades, you need to find a blue exit sign. The rest are all fake.”

“Okay… I guess we’ve got a plan. I’ll try your idea of using only pull doors, and try to find one of those blue exit signs. And since it takes one of these keys to activate the intercom, I’ll leave this one switched on. Keep an eye out for more of these intercom boxes, and if you run into another one, stop if you can and try to get in touch with… with any of the others. Good luck, Max.”

“Shades, wait.” In the midst of these revelations, Max had nearly forgotten the most urgent thing he needed to say. “Be careful. Those guys I ran into… they look like people, but they’re different somehow. Don’t try to talk your way out— they won’t listen. They’ll just try to kill you. I mean it. Just run. And they’re faster than they look. Whatever you do, don’t let them corner you. Just… come out alive.”

“I will…” From the concerned tone of his voice, Max was fairly sure his warning had gotten through. “And you be waiting for me when I get out, Max.”

“No way I’m gonna let this thing beat me.” Though Max almost said, If Mom and Dad could beat the Building, so can I, he kept that part to himself. And found that he actually believed it.

“I think the longer we stay in this place, the worse it gets,” said Shades, “so I think we should get going. Good hearing your voice again, Max.”

“You too, Shades.”

And then he was alone again. No, not alone, Bandit reminded him with a quizzical stare. Still, this was one place he wanted to leave as just a memory.

He just hoped Shades could do something for Justin, too. That conversation gave him hope, but still he feared Shades or Justin might end up sharing Chad’s fate as “the one who didn’t come back out” and wished there was a way he could do more for the others.

Even Kato; he still was none too thrilled about teaming up with a Cyexian, but what he had seen back there was something he wouldn’t wish on his own worst enemy. The thought of any of them rotting in some forgotten corner of this place was enough to make him shudder.

Mostly he tried to keep his guard up as he continued through more of the Building’s never-ending menagerie of blind, twisting halls. This time careful to turn back from any door he had to push to open. It was slow going, with a good deal of backtracking (Backtracking is a thief of time… he vaguely recalled that custodian muttering, that, and something about not letting the Building overwhelm him), but he eventually found himself standing in front of the very thing his mother had described, once upon a time.

A white, four-panel door, totally incongruent with the design of his surroundings, with a blue EXIT sign glowing above it.

Pausing for a moment, he looked to his feline friend before making up his mind. He had not steered Shades wrong, as he half feared he had with his fuzzy memories of past events, so at least he knew his friend knew a way out. That the others had a fighting chance. Still, that didn’t stop Max from worrying about him, and Justin. Yet he also knew that their chances of finding one another in this place were nearly non-existent.

Putting his faith in his friends, Max opened the door and stepped out into the alley next to the Harken Building, Bandit hot on his heels.

There was no one in sight, but he could hear the distant sound of traffic, alien to him but reassuring after so many long stretches of eerie quiet, and nearer the buzz of conversation around the corner by the entrance. As he came around the corner, he spotted Kato talking with Justin, and a guy matching her description of Chase. Off to the side was the one who must be George.

But of Shades there was no sign.

“…if we went back in,” Kato was saying, “we could mark each way as we go. I know that place is big, but sooner or later we could mark all the ways if we kept at it. They are your friends, aren’t they?”

“I know,” Justin muttered as if he had already been through this a thousand times, “and I know Max even tried to go back to Tranz-D for me, but do you really think—”

“Justin,” Max said simply. “You’re okay.”

For his part, Justin wheeled around, and the others jumped in spite of themselves, as he replied, “Damn straight, Max. Took ya long enough.”

Meanwhile, when George saw a certain black-and-white panther emerge from the Building with Max, the way the two of them made such a natural duo, he couldn’t help but feel a hint of envy for the lucky bastard, to have such a cool pet.

“Have you seen Shades?” Max asked.

“Hell no.” Justin glanced at the Building for a moment, then said, “I saw nobody.”

“So we’re still waiting,” Kato concluded, folding her arms and glaring at the Building.

Nothing more to be said for now, Max and Bandit took their places, joining the growing vigil for the one still trapped within.
XXXVIII by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
intercom: Shades' side
Shades paused in the middle of the hall once again, fingering that strange key he had found on Bandit’s harness. As he had from time to time since their parting. At times, he wondered if perhaps he should have left it there, but even if Max and Bandit somehow managed to find each other again, he wasn’t so sure his friend would have any idea what to do with it.

He, on the other hand, believed he may have just found its use.

After a few hours wandering around the “outside” and stopping to rest his legs and have a snack, he came to the conclusion that there was no exit to be found out there, and all the ways beyond where he was led back down into that creepy nest of alleyways, so at last he reluctantly went back “inside” to try to find another way. Which left him standing in front of a box mounted in the wall, the other piece of this puzzle. It was part of an intercom system. There was even a keyhole that looked to fit the key.

Perhaps it was just desperation, that after walking around in circles he was at wits’ end, but he couldn’t think of anything else to do as he walked up to it. Turned out the key did fit the slot, and he was able to unlock the intercom controls.

Unable to come up with anything else to say, he just simply called out, “Hello?…” hearing nothing but static. So he added, “Is there anyone else out there?…”

Still static.

“Anybody hear me?…” As the silence dragged out, he started rambling: “Max?… Justin?… Kato?… Chase?… George?… Stupid question…”

As if all his desperation sought escape through his lips, his voice poured out names.

“Justin?… Max?… um… Bandit?… John?… Amy?… Anybody?…”

Having run out of names, and out of wind, he released the button, letting his head fall against the intercom box. After all, he had no right to expect a response, no idea if any of his companions were near enough to an intercom to hear him. No idea if any of them was even still alive to respond.

Then, just as he resigned himself to the possibility that he might have to camp out on this location for a while if he was going to have any chance, another voice spoke up.

“Shades? Is that you?”

Shades just stood there for a moment, trying to work some moisture back into his mouth. The voice was grainy, but still recognizable.

“Max? Max! Are you alright?” His voice already gushing a flood of relief, without even knowing the situation.

“Yeah,” Max assured him. It sounded like a bad long-distance connection from Neptune, but the more he listened, the more certain he was. “Shades, have you run into any, um… strange people in here?”

“No,” Shades replied, though Max’s words brought to mind that backpack he found, that sense of a desperate flight, and Bandit’s disconcerting response to it, “but…” He just couldn’t find the words to tell him.

“Watch out,” Max cut in, and something about that warning raised the hairs on the back of his neck. “They’re dangerous. Even stun mode won’t work—”

“Max,” Shades interrupted, pulling himself together and going for the direct approach, “I’m sorry. I don’t know how to tell you this, but I ran into Bandit earlier, but he ran away again and…”

“Shades, it’s all right,” Max told him as he stumbled over the words. There was something in his friend’s voice that was a little too reassuring. At least until he heard him say, “I found him again. He’s right here with me. I know you did whatever you could… Uh, Shades, why are you talking on this thing anyway?”

“Well,” Shades explained, “Bandit was wandering around with these keys hung on his harness— I don’t know where he got them, but it seems they’re keys to the intercom system here, so I thought I’d see if I could, you know, talk to any of the others…”

“Has anyone else answered?”

“No,” Shades admitted. “I’m really glad you found Bandit again, but I’m worried about Justin and the others.” Another long pause. “Max, we need a plan. I mean, you could walk around at random forever and…”

He trailed off, alarmed at the frustration and worry creeping into his own voice.

Then the silence began to weigh on his mind, and he asked, “…Max? Hey! Max! Are you still there?”

“Yeah,” Max’s voice replied after a moment.

“Don’t scare me like that, man,” Shades told him. “I don’t know what happened to you, but all the doors I open…”

He stopped when he heard his friend blurt out something like “That’s it!”

“What? Did you say something?”

“Yeah,” and Max again sounded as if he was thinking about something Shades wished he knew the rest of, “I finally remembered. The dream. Try looking for doors that pull open.”

“Max, what are you talking about?”

“It’s hard to explain…” But Max tried anyway. “The point, if I understand this right, is that if you go through doors that pull open—”

“You only have to push them open to get back out…” Shades’ finished. For some reason, it made him wonder how Amy would have fared if she had tried pulling on that door in the blind alley. The whole concept was dredging up thoughts he could have done without. “Because if you push a door open, then that means you have to pull it back to get back out again…” A trap. Then he realized. “Max, every door I can remember has been a push door since I found that damn book…”

“Book?” Max asked, in a tone that really made him wonder. There was a long pause, then, “Shades, you need to find a blue exit sign. The rest are all fake.”

“Okay.” Shades wasn’t sure where Max was coming up with all of this, but it made an eerie kind of sense, the way things did in dreams. He was stunned to realize somehow that that was how he could tell if the doors Amy took in those chase dreams were traps or not… For now, though, he decided to run with it. “I guess we’ve got a plan. I’ll try your idea of using only pull doors, and try to find one of those blue exit signs.

“And since it takes one of these keys to activate the intercom, I’ll leave this one switched on. Keep an eye out for more of these intercom boxes, and if you run into another one, stop if you can and try to get in touch with…” And he tried to swallow his doubts, telling himself that if Max was still alive, then surely Justin and Kato, at least, must also still be, as well, “with any of the others. Good luck, Max.”

He was about to set out again—

“Shades, wait.” There was something in Max’s voice that stopped him in his tracks. Then, “Be careful. Those guys I ran into… they look like people, but they’re different somehow. Don’t try to talk your way out—” His friend’s words brought to mind his near-fatal confrontation with the Flaming Ghost. “—they won’t listen. They’ll just try to kill you. I mean it. Just run. And they’re faster than they look. Whatever you do, don’t let them corner you. Just… come out alive.”

“I will…” Shades had never heard Max sound so creeped-out in all the time he had known him. When he realized that his friend was clearly speaking from personal experience, it sank in. Just how serious Max was about that warning; just thinking about that alleyway again gave him a whole new appreciation for Bandit’s reaction down there. “And you be waiting for me when I get out, Max.”

“No way I’m gonna let this thing beat me,” Max declared, in a voice that sounded more like himself than anything else he had heard in this conversation.

“I think the longer we stay in this place, the worse it gets,” Shades informed him, “so I think we should get going. Good hearing your voice again, Max.”

“You too, Shades.” Max replied.

And then he was alone again.

Shades stared at the box for a long moment, then busted the key in its lock. Afraid someone, or something, might turn it off behind him. That last exchange had sounded way too much like last words for his taste. Resolving to keep an eye out for more intercom units, and feeling even more as if he were playing the doomed character in some horror movie, he continued on his way.

All the while keeping an eye out for any of those strange people Max had warned him about. Between that grim scene in the alley, Bandit’s abject fright, and the unnerved tone of Max’s voice giving that warning, he was quite certain that he did not want to meet the cause of any of these things. Yet, given that nothing had attacked him down there, in spite of his feline friend’s abrupt departure, on one hand he was fairly sure he had avoided that particular peril, yet on the other, he somehow doubted that whatever had chased the previous owner of his new weapons was actually limited to just prowling those alleys.

His first test was the first door he found that appeared to open by pulling. He winced as he turned the knob, but once open, he saw that it led into another room. Apparently only push doors led to back to the Flaming Ghost. Adding some weight to Max’s bizarre hunch.

Unfortunately, no matter which way he went, he couldn’t find another door that pulled open. He was about to give up and camp out back at the intercom, when he remembered his new weapon. Much like Max’s laser sword, or Justin’s staff, these things also had cutting blades. Firing one of them up, he quickly carved out a chunk of wall, finishing it with a high kick.

On the other side was another stretch of hallway, leading into an area he was pretty sure he hadn’t explored yet.

“Looks like I found a shortcut through your little maze…”

Still, it was slow going, and there was a lot of backtracking involved— for every door he found usually ended in a series of dead ends— and the pull doors themselves were few and far between, but after hours of blundering through one unsettling section after another, he eventually found what he may have been looking for. All the while keeping a sharp eye out for the “they” Max had spoken of in such fearful tones; he had no desire to meet anything his friend was openly afraid of. He still kept his guard up, even as he examined the door before him.

White, with four panels, looking for all the world like that spooky door to the basement all the apartment kids used to dare each other to enter when he was a little boy. The word EXIT glowing in blue letters above it. Just as Max had described.

“Well, I’m damned if I do, and I’m damned if I don’t…” Shades muttered as he opened it.

And gasped at the all-too-familiar stairs, leading downward from it. Vowing to retreat if it led any closer to the Flaming Ghost, and fearing this might all be some twisted joke, he descended. Before he reached the bottom, though, he could already see another blue “exit” sign over that one, as well.

If he had heard it from anyone but Max, he would have decided it was some kind of trap out of hand, but he felt he could trust his friend’s intuition. Of course, the thought had crossed his mind that that might not be the real Max, but he got a “genuine” vibe from that conversation, just like he got from Bandit. That, and he doubted an impostor would have bothered to warn him about any of the other dangers of this place. Combined with the undeniable fact that he really had nothing else to go on, was fresh out of bright ideas.

Closing his eyes, and trusting in Max, for everything he had told him held true so far, he opened the door…

And stepped out into the alleyway next to the Harken Building.

Max and Justin stood on one side of the alley entrance, apparently swapping stories about their recent misadventures. Kato stood on the other side with two companions he presumed to be her missing party members. Everyone safe and accounted for; he sighed quietly.

“Shades has left the building.”

And was more than glad to have done so.
XXXIX by shadesmaclean
Author's Notes:
left the building
“Shades!” Max turned from his conversation and headed his way, Justin hanging back.

“There you are,” Kato said, then turned to Chase and George. “That’s the other guy.”

“Max… and Bandit. It really was you on the intercom.” Shades tried not to sigh too openly.

“You bastard,” Justin muttered, “what took you so long?”

“Well, excuse me,” Shades replied. “If you recall, I was the one who warned you not to take that place lightly.”

“Whatever,” Justin shrugged. At least now they wouldn’t have to go back into that demented maze for anyone; between Tranz-D and the Harken Building, he had had enough of such things to last him a lifetime.

Kato held both of her partners in her gaze for a moment, Chase and George both nodding.

“The important thing is that you made it,” Max told them, almost saying unlike Chad without thinking. In spite of his relief, he already felt an insatiable need to know more about all of their experiences inside the Building. “Both of you.”

Chase and George casually stepped to each side of the alleyway entrance.

“Now my friends are safe, and yours are, as well,” said Kato. “That means we beat the Harken Building. That’s one problem solved.”

“Now that that’s settled,” Shades replied, his imagination already running wild at what kinds of tales the others had to tell, “what say we get the hell away from this creepy building?”

“For once, I’m with you.” Justin told them. “I swear, if I ever see this place again, it’ll be all too soon.” Gesturing toward the street, “Come on, let’s get… going…”

He trailed off as he turned to face the Triad. Kato now had her power pistol out. Chase his sawed-off disrupter rifle. Even George had a power pistol, loaned from Chase’s Coat of Arms. And the two of them held the alley, barring them from the street, Kato covering them from behind.

“Hand over your Tri-Medals,” Kato commanded. “Now.”

Even as his two friends already caught up with what was going on, all Max could think was, At least now I see why Bandit doesn’t like her.
End Notes:
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
-early draft: 1997
-notebook draft: Oct 31, 2004 – Oct 02, 2005
-Word-processed draft: March 25 – August 20, 2006
-additional revisions: 04/22/07; 02/16-9/09

The Harken Building really goes back. Though it didn't always go by the same handle. The Never-Ending Building made its first appearance when I was in middle school, in a story I was role-playing with my friends, when our characters from yet another world were stranded in the Sixth Dimension for a while before finding their way back to their own realm. Some things go all the way back to the first incarnation, including the Book of Fate, and the Flaming Ghost, while other things (such as "them") evolved between versions, and other things, including a talking painting and some really lame booby-traps, fell by the wayside.

There were a lot of different influences on this over the years, but most of the biggest ones for this version of the series started with an old building I worked as a graveyard shift custodian temp for a few years ago. The kind of things popped into my head overnight in a big empty building sent my scrambling for my notepad almost every break, and even sowed the seeds of future portions of the series. For those interested in the story of what goes on behind the keyboard, here's a guided tour of the Harken Building:

Shades' run-in with the Flaming Ghost, and the room with the Book of Fate were very much a character-relevant rebuild of the original, stairs, dead-end room, the Easy Way Out and all, while much of the rest of Shades' experience this time around were written from scratch from this version. The vacant cafeteria and the library he encountered are based on the elementary school I attended. A building, I might add, which no longer exists, having been torn down at least a decade ago to pave the way for a newer school building. In the older version, Shades also never found his way out into the alleyways or rooftops, either.

On the other hand, Max's tour had more of a mix of older version versus newer version elements. One of the biggest differences was a bit of a no-brainer: the older version had Max take a stairway up to multiple rooftops instead of down; I slapped my forehead at the simple realization of how much effective that one little change way. The same with Justin's, where up-vs-down became a recurring element in his adventure. Meanwhile, a lot of things didn't make the cut from the older version, starting with the talking painting that told him a potential exit from the Building, as well as an "old temple" area, bristling with enough traps for an Indiana Jones movie. And so derivative, they were left out of the revised version altogether. Yet the storyline for Part 10 involved Max's ankle being injured (originally from falling into one of those traps), and what I came up with instead was an expanded version of Max's journey through the "outdoors" section, and a showdown with Them, enemies previously only faced by Chase in the older version. The Japanese Garden section was an entirely new environment, though, a result of going back and further developing the backstory of his father and his friends tangling with the Building many years before.

Justin's story got expanded considerably, as the main portion of it originally involved the hangar and underground tunnels (as well as a cheesy motorcycle chase that ended with the WTF Moment of Justin being the only character to ever escape from the Building via a manhole), now including the freight elevator and parking garage. The skybridge was inspired by the ones that I recall seeing at a very vertically oriented mall in Anchorage, Alaska, where I lived back then. The hallways and "jail-barred" storage areas were directly inspired by the basement level of the building I used to clean, while the frozen storage areas were a creepy leftover of the walk-in freezers from when I worked fast food in school. The last part, with the industrial vats and such, was actually originally from Kato's account, but it seemed to fit better with Justin's tour.

About the only two things left from George's original walkthru were the hi-tech facility and the carnival, though in the oldest version had the carnival still active, populated by phantom people that just didn't seem to fit with the Building, and were finally cast aside to make the setting flow. Tuns out the abandoned version worked out better anyway, in terms of both plot and atmosphere. The last part, though, with the forklift, came from the forklift from the basement level of the building I worked, and how whoever operated it during the day always seemed to "hide" it around the corner when they parked it...

Chase's creepy tour, on the other hand, had substantially fewer changes made to the actual main events, with the biggest being the absence of a bunch of stupid traps rigged in the Weapon Museum portion. The office cubicles got their idea from one of my earliest childhood memories, of my parents helping to clean an office complex when I was really little, of both of them going deep into this dark labyrinth of dividers that I was too scared to set foot in. Even "They" were adapted from an earlier version of the Building from my childhood role-playing stories. The outdoor region was inspired by the initial background for the Johnny Cage vs Scorpion fight in Mortal Kombat, of all things.

Kato's take started out the same way as the old version, with the furniture galleries, then quickly switched gears with the elevator. In the oldest version, she simply boarded it as a way to get from Point A to Point B, whereas, after working in a spooky old building, with a stubborn old elevator that required a key to reach the top level, I realized that it would be a crime to pass up that scenario. By the same token, as her story originally involved the vats that later became part of Justin's storyline (except that her version involved actually falling into a tank of water, and and opening a ridiculous door that "spilled" her out into the alleyway...), she ended up finishing her trip in new territory, especially the Abandoned Wing, based on both the abandoned section of the second floor of the building I worked at, as well as the completely deserted fourth floor of a building I used to visit a lot for appointments when I was in grade school.

There were a host of the various inspirations, both major and minor, but these are some of the most significant ones. A little trivia: one of the more subtle ones, though, is the music of Akira Yamaoka, as I transcribed the word-processed version of this story listening to the soundtracks for Silent Hill 1-3. Every step of the way, I cast my mind back to that building, and the overall feel of it when crafting the atmosphere for the Harken Building.
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