But it’s not quite wrong, either.
Chapter Twenty-One
Maurice Thompson entered the building for the first time as a twenty-four-year-old man with wide spectacles that covered half his face and a prematurely balding head that offset the amount of face that was covered by the wide glasses. He thought he was arriving for a job interview, but this was only because his ever-logical mind was trying to reconcile the direction his feet had guided him, and he didn’t understand why they would have taken him anywhere other than the building where he was intended to arrive at eleven thirty for his scheduled interview.
Maurice did, in fact, have an interview that day—an interview that he missed, to the bewilderment of the recruiters who had been inspired by the promising young upstart they had been talking with for months leading up to that last interview, only to be stood up at the final hour.
But Maurice did not, in fact, realize that he missed his interview. Not at first, at least.
At first, he was drawn into the building, where he encountered one Dr. Richard Dubose, as well as one person dressed in black, who by this point was already being referred to as the Warden—both of whom welcomed Maurice with wide and open arms, distracting him in the miraculous buzz that filled the building until it was too late for him.
What neither the Warden nor Dr. Richard Dubose realized at first was that Maurice was already twenty-four years of age when he first entered the building, nor what the unfortunate repercussions of entering at such a late stage would prove to be.
Needless to say, the first time Maurice entered the building, he only lasted a very short time on the lower levels before being repurposed for the upper floors.
This was a lesson to Dr. Dubose and the Warden both, of the value of younger residents, and when to bring them in to best suit the purposes of the building’s patterns.
This was not a lesson to Maurice, as he could no longer even process what the word lesson meant.
Chapter Twenty-Two
After having her blood drawn and confirming the very otherworldly significance of her genome, Everly did not go back to the Eschatorologic for a week.
There was something about having a needle stuck in her arm that gave her more pause than before.
She still didn’t understand what the building was. Not really. Something about genetic anomalies, something about changing the world.
Nonsense, really.
That day, when she’d been tested, she’d had every intention of sticking around and pushing Richard to tell her more. To tell her what he’d promised: the secret to what had happened to her dad. The reason why he’d died.
Afterward, though, she’d barely been able to string two thoughts together. It was an effort to walk back to the front doors of the Eschatorologic, an even greater effort to walk all the way home. Even now, days later, Everly still felt sluggish, like more than just blood had been drawn out of her.
It was unnerving, feeling that way. It was unnerving to know she’d willingly let Richard do that to her, let him stick that needle in her arm. And why? Why hadn’t she run away from all this yet?
Everly knew Richard needed her for his little science experiment. She knew all the people trapped there—because she was becoming more and more sure that’s what they were, trapped like lab rats in an elaborate cage—were twisted up in the game Richard had set the board for, and were being used to satisfy his own means, whatever those were.
What she didn’t know was why he needed her, specifically.
Or how her parents fit into all of this.
She’d looked through some of the pilfered journals from Richard’s office, when she’d been able to stomach reading about everything Richard had been doing in that building. So far, she hadn’t found much of substance—mostly Richard romanticizing his work, singing his own praises early on using vague, murky language. But one thing was immediately evident to her.
It was the handwriting. The same wide, looping letters filled Richard’s journals as the note she had found among her mother’s things, addressed to her father. You need to make a decision, the letter had said. A decision about what?
What had Richard needed her father to do?
Desperate to learn something, anything, about what her dad had to do with all of this, Everly had flipped through journal after journal, not reading the contents so much as scanning for a name.
When she found it, she stopped. The entry was short—far too short.
I have found that I quite like Jacob. He is a pragmatic young man, with a good head on his shoulders. But he’s too inquisitive, which doesn’t suit my purposes here. I can’t have him poking around where he ought not be—and I can’t have him dragging Mary into anything she shouldn’t be. It’s a shame he can’t stay. Neither of them can.
What had her parents gotten into, all those years ago? Why had her dad been there, at the building? And what happened to him—what really happened to him, the truth that Richard had promised, and still withheld from her.
Adding to the jumble of questions she couldn’t begin to think of the answers to, why didn’t the people in the building leave? What was keeping them there? Why play into Richard’s hands, Jamie’s hands, whoever’s—why not get far, far away from all of this?
For that matter, why wasn’t she getting far, far away from it? Or, better yet, why wasn’t she calling the police, telling someone what she’d seen?
Everly didn’t know if she could fully answer those questions. Even now, back at home, away from the building, she could feel it pulling her back. Each time she went, she left with a new ribbon attached to her chest, connecting her to that place. And she didn’t know why. But she could feel it, now more than ever.
A new thought popped into her head, more frightening than all the other unanswered questions piling up around her. What if she became like all the other people in that building, trapped without knowing why?
This—along with the memory of a sharp needle being jabbed in her arm—was the thought that kept her away from the building—away from Richard—that whole week. Instead, Everly spent the week watching movies in bed—movies she used to watch with her dad, that used to make him laugh, and made her laugh at him—and she made pancakes like he used to, and sat wrapped up in his favorite blanket, trying to find any lingering traces of his scent in the well-loved fabric of the patched quilt. The whole time there was that dull thudding at the back of her head; it only made it worse to know that the headaches would go away the moment she stepped back into the building.
It was while curled up like that on the worn cushions of her living room couch, gripping her head with one hand, that Everly finally allowed herself to remember.
To remember her dad, as she hadn’t been able to since before.
Since before there was a before.
She remembered a warm Saturday afternoon, years and years ago, when her dad had encouraged her to give bike riding a chance—It will be easy, you’ll see—and she had fallen on the pavement with her first attempt. He had rushed up to her, trying to suppress a laugh, and her eyes had burned with embarrassed tears, until he scooped her up and swung her around, coaxing a reluctant smile out of her.
She remembered picking strawberries on the first of May, as they did every year, eating the red fruit as she went about filling up her plastic bucket so much that by the time they were finished her stomach was as full as her bucket, and her fingers were stained a sticky red.
She remembered when she had walked across the stage at graduation and looked out across the sea of faces, her eyes instantly snagging on her father’s lone standing figure as he cheered and clapped louder than all the other families.
She remembered the last morning she had ever seen him, and she remembered the desperation that had traced his features as he set out into the bleak, rainy dawn. That whole week before had been an unpleasant one for her. The headaches had gotten so bad, she’d had to call out of work for a few days. And so, she hadn’t been herself—hadn’t noticed what was going on with her dad until it was too late.
