We were going to walk right in like we owned the place.
Sidney led us through the lobby, down a wide staircase and into a long corridor. The sound of our shoes echoed off the smooth walls and polished dark red floor as we walked.
As we approached the end of the corridor, a security guard waved at us from a nearby bench. He looked to be about sixty-five, bald, with an easy smile.
“Hey, Albert,” Sidney called out.
“Hiya, Sid.”
Visible through a series of floor-to-ceiling windows on our left was an enormous courtyard—a dense world of deep green. As we passed by, I pictured myself employed at WorGames, sitting on a bench out there, eating lunch with my co-workers, breathing in oxygen-rich air and dreaming about the worlds we’d be creating together—worlds pulled directly from Sidney Farrow’s imagination. What would my life have been like working at a place like WorGames? Would that have helped me forget about Rabbits?
It didn’t help Baron.
I was snapped out of my reverie as we left the courtyard behind us and entered what Sidney referred to as The Tower atrium.
The atrium was spacious and circular, with an incredibly high, slightly domed ceiling. The floor appeared to be made of the same dark red polished stone as the hallway, but where the hallway floor was unadorned, the floor of the atrium was covered in a mosaic of intricate, swirling designs. Those designs were centered around a specific point in the middle of the room: a small white circle located directly beneath a giant pendulum. The pendulum hung from the ceiling by a long thin wire, and at first, its slow, hypnotic movement lent the room a sense of peaceful calm, but I could feel it up there, fighting its way through the space, doing its best—against the spinning axis of the planet—to trace a perfect line in the air.
As I thought about the pendulum, struggling in vain against vast universal forces outside its control, I shivered, and couldn’t help but feel the weight of everything we were up against.
I actually did a double take to make sure the Earth was spinning in the right direction.
There were two reception desks on our left as we entered, and a number of long low wooden benches to the right. The lobby appeared to be unoccupied except for a tall black-haired woman with a narrow face standing behind the desk closest to us on the left.
“Good morning, Ms. Farrow. How can I help you?”
“We need to go upstairs,” Sidney said.
“I’m sorry?”
Sidney pointed. “We’re going up.”
“I’m afraid you don’t have security clearance to access The Tower.” I could tell by her expression that she clearly didn’t want to say no to Sidney. “I hate to do this, but is there maybe somebody you can call for additional clearance?”
Sidney ignored her and led us between the two reception desks, down a short hallway, and into a long foyer. On our right was another wall covered in ivy, on our left two sets of tall elevator doors.
Sidney walked over and pressed the call button.
Both sets of elevator doors opened, and the three of us stepped into the elevator closest to the reception area. The doors closed behind us.
Inside there were two rows of twelve buttons set beneath a wider button marked with the letters PH.
Sidney mashed every single button immediately, but none of them stayed lit.
A few seconds later, the doors opened.
We were still on the ground floor, but now the security guard was standing in front of us.
“Sid,” he said, “what’s going on?”
“Don’t get in the middle of this, Albert. I need to go upstairs.”
“Sure,” Albert said. “That’s fine, but you have to wait for clearance.”
“This is bullshit,” Sidney said, stepping out of the elevator with Chloe behind her.
“Your clearance is coming,” Albert said.
Sidney was clearly surprised. “It is?”
Albert nodded. “Ten minutes.”
As I stepped out of the elevator behind Sidney and Chloe, something changed. The air was different suddenly, heavier, charged somehow.
Something was coming.
The back of the foyer, directly across from the elevators, started filling up with dark swirling shapes, and the familiar thick tingling of the gray feeling began gnawing its way into my skull.
But something was different.
I had no idea what this thing was, this gray emptiness that had become such a large part of my life, but I eventually realized what it was that felt different. It was excited.
It wanted me to step back into the elevator.
So I did.
As soon as I started moving backward, the shadows surged forward and slammed me into the back of the elevator.