Slowly, painstakingly, Everly shifted her shoulder under the woman’s arms and supported her as they made their way toward the bedroom at the back of the small apartment. Everly propped the woman up on the bed and then went in search of anything to bind her head wound with.
There was nothing. The apartment was nearly barren, and there was nothing that Everly could use, save the clothes already on the woman’s back. So, with a lack of any other options, Everly took the sleeve of her shirt and rolled her fist up in it. She gently dabbed at the woman’s bloody forehead, enough that she could see the wound really was only surface level, and then she helped the woman to lie down fully beneath the gray sheets of her gray bed, turning off the light as she left the strange woman’s small, gray apartment.
It was only once Everly was already in the hallway that she thought to consider if that man might still be on this floor, might be in one of the other rooms that encircled her, and might come marching out at any second. Might catch her standing there, frozen with one hand still on the door handle to the woman’s apartment. Might do the same awful things she’d heard him doing to the woman.
Holding her breath, as if that would keep her from being heard, Everly started walking down the hall, trying to move without letting her feet make any sound, but striding as swiftly as her legs would allow her. Her ears twitched at the smallest hint of a sound, head swiveling at every creak in the floor or gush of air from the air conditioner in the ceiling.
She had made it almost to the end of the hall when the elevator bell dinged. It rang out sharply across the floor, rushing against Everly, sending a spike of adrenaline through her.
She needed to move. Hide. She did not know who was in that elevator, or what it might mean if they found her, but after seeing what happened to the woman who lived at the end of the hall, Everly was certain she did not want to find out.
So, without really giving it much thought at all, Everly dove for the first door she saw, which just so happened to be the very first door on that hall, and, thankful to find the room unlocked, Everly sunk into the darkness of the room within.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Happening at the same time, one hundred and two floors below Everly:
The Warden was watching a screen.
It just so happened to be the very screen that Everly moved within.
The Warden saw Everly go into the room with the frail blond woman, and the Warden saw what happened to the frail blond woman (which, to be clear, not even Everly bore witness to), and the Warden saw as Everly walked back down the hall toward the elevator.
And then the Warden saw as Everly dove into the first room of the hallway.
This made the Warden smile.
And the Warden almost never smiled.
Despite his nagging ways, the good doctor was right: they did need her. The Warden, perhaps, more than anyone. And so, this development was good. Very good.
The Warden next typed out a message into the computer on the desk:
Have the boy come down here.
There was other information in the message too—the excuse they would give him, surely—but that was the important part. They needed someone to find Everly, someone to keep her here even longer. And there was only one person well suited to that task.
The Warden continued to smile, and continued to watch Everly Tertium on the screens, and continued to think about how perfectly everything was falling into place. But of course, didn’t it always?
Chapter Twenty-Six
Everly couldn’t see anything. The room she had fallen into was pitch black, and she stumbled backward, trying to move away from the door and the person who surely by this point was out in the hall, perhaps mere inches from where she stood.
Her foot slipped on something that was coating the floor, and Everly fell to her hands and knees. Before she could get back to her feet, she heard loud footsteps rapidly approaching the room she was hidden in. Quickly, Everly scooted backward, feeling the same slick substance that made her fall covering her arms and legs as she scurried to move as far back into the room as possible. She touched something that felt like the leg of a table and, heart pounding, pushed herself under it, moving until her back hit the wall. Then she sat, curled in on herself, breath abated, as the footsteps stopped and the door clicked open.
Everly couldn’t see who had come in, but whoever it was must have flipped a light switch because instantly the room flooded with bright, blinding light. Everly blinked, trying to make out anything she could about the room she had chosen to take refuge in, but then she instantly had to bite back a scream.
There was blood. There was blood everywhere—on the floor and the walls and, Everly realized with sickening horror, all over herself. It was coating her hands, her clothes, her skin. She swallowed thickly, feeling dizzy, and had to close her eyes, trying desperately to steady herself.
When she could breathe again, Everly opened her eyes, fighting against the nausea that still rose at the sight of the room around her.
The man—she could not see his face, but she was fairly certain he was a man—was on the other side of the room, still near the door. Everly was relieved to realize that she was, in fact, under a table of some sort, which seemed to shield her at least partially from the man who had come in. He hadn’t noticed her yet, which Everly thought of as a blessing.
Another detail that Everly took in while observing the room: beneath the splattered crimson, the room was entirely white. Now that she saw it, the whiteness of the room seemed almost shocking to her.
(The room was white—almost blindingly so . . .)
(White room, silver tools, white chair, silver smile . . .)
The blood, and the presence of the man across the room, was still making Everly dizzy, and so she could not think about why this room alone of all those she had encountered would be white.
She desperately wanted to close her eyes, to block out the room around her, but she was afraid that if she did that the man would find her. So instead, she counted her breaths, and she waited. It felt like an eternity, sitting there, crouched under the table, and Everly was certain that he would never leave.
But then: the man’s feet, barely perceptible from Everly’s position beneath the table. Moving away from her. Toward the door. The sound of the door opening, a flash of the hall outside.
And then the man left, flicking off the light behind him and throwing Everly back into perfect darkness. Right before the blackness set in, though, Everly looked over her shoulder, to the wall that she was crouching against, and saw another door. She stared at it for the second that she could before the lights cut out, and then she sat where she was beneath the table for a minute, two, three—afraid to crawl out lest the man return.
When she thought that enough time had gone by and was sure the man was not on his way right back to that room, Everly slowly made her way out from under the table, far too aware of the slickness of the floor beneath her feet. Carefully, Everly moved toward the door she had seen at the back of the room. She felt along the wall until her hand connected with the cool metal of a doorknob.
None of the other rooms she had seen in the Eschatorologic had a back room—at least none that she had noticed. There had to be something behind there, Everly thought. Something important enough to hide behind a room drowning in blood.
Holding her breath, Everly turned the knob and was half surprised to find it unlocked. Slowly, she opened the door, discovering only further darkness beyond. Everly took a tentative step forward, arms held out in front of her, trying to find anything within. She took another step, and nearly tumbled down as her foot met empty air. Curious, she thought, and carefully she sank down onto her hands and knees, inspecting the space where she had stepped.
There were stairs, she realized. This was a set of stairs, heading straight down. Hidden stairs. Everly hesitated for only another second before she got back to her feet and began to slowly progress downward.
There had to be something at the bottom of them, she reasoned. No one would hide a staircase for no reason. Whatever was hiding down there, it had to be worth it.
And so it was that Everly found herself blindly stumbling down into the dark.
