“Oh,” Everly Tertium said. “Sure.”
“Do you know how?”
Did she know how she found the large, gray building that her feet somehow directed her straight to? “I walked?”
The man stared at her some more. “Marvelous.”
“And you?” she asked, thinking there must be a reason for his fascination. In response, the man lifted the contraption.
“Electromagnetic pulse. Very unique energy signature. Very strange. I walked past the building at least five times before my eyes landed properly on it.”
“Strange,” was all she could think to say.
The man studied her from across the hall, then took a tentative step forward. Everly ducked her head, trying to hide what she knew the man would be able to see if he got too close. The bruising beneath her left eye, the marks she could still feel roughing up the side of her face. She retreated a step, but as the man approached her, he didn’t even seem to notice.
When he was close enough, the man held out a hand, shifting the small machine around to be under his other arm. “Richard. Dubose.”
She grasped his hand in hers, noting that it was unpleasantly clammy. And in that fleeting second, with her hand tucked inside his damp one, she remembered for the first time that maybe she should be afraid. Or at least moderately cautious. On a whim, she decided on a fake name, and offered it to him with the confidence that she hoped would assure him it was true.
It took a few seconds for the man to smile, but when he did it was wide and bright, stretching across the center of his face. “Welcome to the Eschatorologic.”
Chapter Ten
Everly Tertium entered the building for the first time two days after meeting Dr. Richard Dubose in the park by her house. Her grandfather. Two days after meeting her grandfather in the park, and being told that she had a grandfather, and being told that an inexplicable building existed not two miles from where she had lived all her life.
She was struck first upon entering the Eschatorologic by a low hum that seemed to rise out of the floor, resonating with every step she took into the lobby. A lobby that was possibly the most expansive room she had ever stepped foot in. Or at least, she supposed it was a lobby. Standing there in the entranceway, it felt more like a ballroom, with its domed ceiling that sported a chandelier the size of a small elephant, glittering so high above that she had to crane her neck to see it. Large wooden benches with intricately carved designs were pressed back against the walls on either side of the glass doors that Everly had pushed through, and marble tiles lined the floor, leading up to a large desk in the middle of the cavernous room.
There was a woman behind the desk. She sat rod-straight, with her eyes facing forward, not reacting at all to Everly’s entrance. Cautiously, Everly began to walk across the lobby toward her.
The woman was striking, with carefully carved features set into golden-brown skin and silky dark hair that hung in loose waves around her shoulders. Her exceptional beauty was almost entirely overshadowed by her clothes, however, which were abhorrently bland (beige on beige on beige). The beautifully beige woman still didn’t acknowledge Everly or even so much as blink, really, so Everly cleared her throat and waited.
Still no response. “Excuse me,” Everly tried. “I’m here to visit”—a beat of hesitation—“my grandfather. Maybe you know him?”
The woman didn’t move. Chills ran up Everly’s spine watching this woman who was so still she could have almost been a statue if it weren’t for the slight rise and fall of her chest. It was unnerving; Everly wondered if something might be wrong with the woman.
“His name is Richard Dubose,” Everly pressed on. “He told me to meet him here?”
The woman gave no indication at all that she had heard Everly. At a loss for what to do, Everly looked around the rest of the lobby, searching for some sign that Richard had been there, that she was in the right place. Off on the side, against the far wall, she spotted an elevator that she hadn’t noticed before. Maybe I can find him, she thought.
Abandoning the woman and her desk, Everly walked toward the elevator. Halfway across the lobby, though, her feet stalled in place, her mind jarred by that uncanny feeling from before, from so many times before.
The déjà vu, if that’s what it should be called.
The sense of reliving.
Of doing over.
Of experiencing a dream that she’d already had, again and again.
She had been here before. She had stood in this lobby before, talked to that woman behind that desk before, strode toward this elevator before. She had ridden in this elevator, up and down (down?), she had been here with Richard before, she had done it all. Before.
Blink blink blink and no she hadn’t. Of course she hadn’t. Everly put a hand up against her head, shaking it slightly. Why would she think she had?
Except this time it didn’t immediately clear away like it usually did. Rather, the feeling of redoing felt stronger with every passing moment that she stood in the lobby. The harder she tried to focus on the feeling, the more abstract her thoughts and supposed memories began to feel.
She was old and young and a stranger and a friend and important and insignificant and everything and nothing all at once. None of the flashes lined up smoothly or made sense at all, but they pressed in against her, more and more insistent.
A small gasp escaped Everly’s lips as she clenched her eyes shut and tried to push it all away, to steady herself. But the harder she tried, the harder the intrusive thoughts fought to overwhelm her. Or so it seemed. They were building, growing, spreading, overtaking. They were—
The elevator’s ding cut through everything in Everly’s mind, and she used that distraction to pull herself back to her present, to the place she was now.
The Eschatorologic. She was in the lobby of the Eschatorologic.
Blink blink blink blink.
Everly’s eyes slowly came back into focus and, shaking away the rest of her unease over whatever that had been, she glanced up at the opening elevator doors in time to see a man stepping into the lobby.
He was easily the tallest man Everly had ever beheld, and she couldn’t help but stare at him, her mouth agape. He made the lofty ceiling seem a reasonable height by comparison. The man then caught sight of Everly, who had taken a few steps back toward the woman’s desk, and he walked up to her. As he approached, Everly took in the details of his appearance. He seemed to be around middle age—mid- to late thirties, if she had to guess. He had pale skin and equally pale hair that had been shaved with military precision, framing a kind, boyish face, and he wore red scrubs that hung loosely off his gangly form.
The man glanced back and forth between Everly and the woman at the desk, a question on his face. “Is there something I can help with here?” he asked.
And just like that, Everly remembered why she was in that lobby at all, why she had been headed toward the elevator before the man had arrived in it himself. “Y-yes,” she said, voice wobbling slightly. “I’m trying to find my grandfather. He works here, and I was just about to go look for him upstairs.” She pointed weakly at the elevator doors, and the man glanced back that way.
He lifted his brows, studying Everly. “What did you say your name was?”
“Everly. Everly Tertium.”
The man’s face immediately cleared. “You’re Richard’s granddaughter, then,” he said, declaring more than asking. Everly managed a small nod in response. “He said you might be coming by,” the man went on. “And you said you were going to go upstairs?”
