- - -
The buzzer went off at the start of Day 6, flat and loud, and Outis was already sitting up.
He hadn't slept. He'd lain there all night with his eyes open and the System's words sitting in his chest like a stone. Tomorrow, pay attention. To everything. To everyone. He'd tried to think of what could happen and had come up with too many answers and none of them good.
Knock. Knock-knock.
"Morning!" Polites's voice came through the wall, bright and only a little hoarse. "Day six! Almost a whole week! Do you think they give you a cake at a week? I think they should give you a cake."
Outis closed his eyes for a second.
"They won't give you a cake," he said.
"They should," Polites said, with conviction. "I'm going to suggest it. To Malkuth. She'd want us to have cake."
Out in the corridor, Eurylochus was already standing beside his door, jacket buttoned, tie centered, looking at the elevator like it owed him money. The door of 004 was closed.
"He's still asleep," Eurylochus said, before Outis could ask.
Polites knocked on 004's door. Then knocked again. Then opened it, because there were no locks, and said, "Elpenor, wake up, it's day six, there might be cake," and from inside the room came a long, muffled groan that might have been five more minutes and might have been what's a cake.
It took all three of them to get him into the elevator. He fell asleep again on the way up, standing, with his forehead against the wall.
Outis watched them: Polites chattering, Eurylochus pretending not to listen, Elpenor drooling slightly on the elevator panel. He tried to memorize it. He didn't know why. He just did.
Without thinking about it, his hand went to his hip, to the short black baton clipped to his belt. It had been there since the first morning, when he'd stepped out of the elevator in a suit he didn't remember putting on. Nobody had ever told him what it was for. He'd checked it every morning anyway.
[ Good morning, Outis. ]
"Morning," he said quietly.
[ I'm here. ]
"I know."
. . .
On the morning of Day 6, Malkuth was six minutes late.
"Malkuth."
"I know."
"Six minutes," said Angela. "This will be reported to the Manager."
That was new. Outis saw Polites flinch. When Malkuth's face came up on the monitors, she was smiling, but her pen was moving across her clipboard very fast, writing something over and over, and she didn't look up for a while.
"Good morning, team," she said finally. "Today is... a very big day."
"Good morning, ma'am," said all four of them. Even Elpenor, who said it into his own shoulder.
"Thank you." Her voice wobbled, just slightly, and steadied. "Today, the Information Team opens! That's the department right below ours! And its head will be joining us to say hello, so please be on your best behavior, and Employee 004, please fix your tie."
Elpenor looked down at his tie, which was hanging open around his neck. He looked at it for a long time, as if it were a puzzle he'd never seen before. Then Polites reached over and tied it for him, quickly and badly, the way you'd tie a little brother's shoe.
"Oh! And one more thing before our guest arrives." Malkuth flipped a page, and some of the brightness came back into her voice, real this time. "The Manager unlocked another file last night! T-04-06, the new one, the bear..." She beamed. "Its name is Happy Teddy Bear!"
Polites gasped as if someone had handed him a present. "Happy Teddy Bear. Oh, that's perfect. That's exactly his name. He's so happy when you hug him."
"It's a bear," said Eurylochus. "It isn't happy. It's clingy."
"He can be both!"
"I'm doing him today, I think," Elpenor said, with a yawn. "The happy one. He sounds nice."
"The rest of its file is still being written," Malkuth added, tapping her clipboard. "We only have the name so far. But that's a good start! Names are the best part."
Outis looked at the word on her clipboard, Happy, and thought about a worn paw pressed against his back for one second too long. He didn't say anything.
The monitors split down the middle.
On the left, Malkuth, in her yellow frame. On the right, a new frame, a soft, cold purple like a bruise healing, and in it, a young man.
He was drawn like Malkuth was, clean lines and flat color, with short purple hair and the same strange eyes, brown, no pupils, a shadow over the top half of each. But everything about him was closed. A dark suit buttoned to the throat. A high turtleneck underneath it, swallowing his neck up to the jaw. A purple tie. Gloves. Not one inch of him showed except his face, and his face showed nothing at all.
"Malkuth," he said. His voice was precise, every word set down like a coin on a counter.
"Yesod! Good morning! Welcome! This is my team!"
Yesod's flat, shadowed eyes moved across the four of them, one at a time, as if reading a list.
"One tie, crooked," he said. "One tie, recently tied by someone else, also crooked. One employee asleep standing up." A pause. "In my department, that would be ten penalty points. Each."
"What's a penalty point?" Elpenor asked sleepily.
"Twenty," said Yesod.
Elpenor thought about that. "Oh no," he said, without much conviction, and went back to leaning on Polites.
"Yesod," Malkuth said, a little desperately. "They're very good employees! Almost all good results! Well, mostly good! There was one normal, but that was days ago!"
"I have read the records," Yesod said. "They are adequate." His eyes rested on Outis a moment longer than the others. "Employee 001. Eleven works in a single day, all good. Twelve the next."
Outis said nothing.
"Unusual," Yesod said.
And then his frame went dark, and the monitors were Malkuth's again, alone and slightly deflated.
"He's very nice once you get to know him," she said, unconvincingly.
"He's a viper," Polites whispered to Outis, in awe.
Eurylochus, unexpectedly, made a sound that might have been a laugh.
. . .
The elevator dinged about ten minutes later, and a man came out who was very clearly lost.
He wore the same black suit and tie as they did, but his armband was purple, stitched with a white Y. His sleeves were rolled to the elbows, a pen was tucked behind one ear, and he had a tired, freckled face that looked like it had been awake far too long and was making the best of it. He stopped in the doorway of the Main Room, looked at the Sephirot mural, looked at the four of them, and said:
"This isn't Information, is it."
"It's Control," said Outis.
"Of course it is." The man sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "The elevator stopped, the doors opened, I got out. That's on me. I'm James. Information Team. Just started." He squinted at their armbands. "M for Control?"
"M for Malkuth," said Polites. "Hi! I'm Polites! Do you want to sit down? Everybody here wants to sit down."
"I really, really do," James said, and sat.
He was easy to like. That was the first thing Outis noticed. He was a few years older than Polites, and he had a dry, crooked way of talking, like everything was a joke he wasn't quite sure was funny. Within five minutes he'd learned all their names, told a story about a vending machine in the WARP station that only took exact change, and somehow gotten Eurylochus to say more than one sentence in a row.
"Word chain?" he said, when Polites admitted they spent a lot of time on the benches. "You've never played word chain? Oh, you have to. It's the only thing that gets you through a shift. One person says a word, the next person has to say a word that starts with the last letter. You lose if you repeat or take too long. Here. Bucket."
"Tea!" said Polites instantly.
"Apple," said Elpenor, with his eyes closed.
Everyone looked at Eurylochus.
"...Elevator," Eurylochus said, after a long moment, with the air of a man doing something deeply against his principles.
"Rope," said Outis.
"Eel," said James, delighted, pointing at him. "See? You're all naturals."
"James."
The voice came from the speaker in the ceiling, and it was not Angela's. It was Yesod's: precise, cold and very, very close to irritated.
"You are on the wrong floor."
James winced. "Sorry, sir. On my way, sir."
"Five penalty points."
"Only five?" James said, standing and stretching. "He likes me." He grinned at the four of them. "Nice meeting you, Control. Keep the chain going. I'll want to know who won."
He walked back to the elevator. The doors closed on his wave.
Outis looked up at the speaker.
James. Not Employee 001 of Information. Not a number. Yesod, who handed out penalty points like a machine, had called him by his name.
He didn't know why that stuck with him. He filed it away with everything else.
. . .
The day went well. That was the worst part, afterward. It went well.
The Manager rotated them carefully, the way he had all week. Polites to the skull, Eurylochus to the fairies, Elpenor to Teddy for the first time. He came out covered in brown fuzz, said "It's very warm," and fell asleep on the bench for twenty minutes. Outis to Scorched Girl, where the burned girl watched him with her white eyes and the light didn't spit.
It was nearly two in the afternoon when the lights flickered.
Not the way they had in the skull's room on the first day. All of them. Every tube in the Main Room dimmed at once, held, and came back, and a low, ugly tone sounded from every speaker in the building, like a ship's horn heard through water.
"Manager." Angela's voice. Calm, as always. "The Qliphoth Meltdown level has reached two."
A pause.
"An Ordeal has begun. Crimson Dawn."
"Everyone, listen to me!" Malkuth, on every screen, clipboard clutched to her chest, eyes very wide. "An Ordeal is something that comes from outside the Abnormalities. It's not contained. It's going to move through the facility. The Manager is going to give orders, and you have to follow them exactly, okay? Exactly!"
Polites had gone pale. Eurylochus was already on his feet, his eyes on the doorways. Elpenor sat up, blinking.
"What's an Ordeal?" he asked.
Nobody had an answer.
"Your batons!" Malkuth said. "Everyone has one on their belt! That's what they're for! Get them out, please!"
Polites looked down at his hip as if he'd never seen it before. "This? This is what this is for? I thought it was a... like a flashlight. That didn't turn on."
"I use mine as a pillow," said Elpenor, unclipping his and looking at it with mild betrayal.
Eurylochus already had his in his hand. Outis realized, with a small jolt, that Eurylochus had been checking his own baton every morning too. He'd seen him do it, a quick touch at the hip, the same as the exits. He just hadn't put it together until now.
Outis unclipped his. It felt solid and dull in his hand, like a tool, not a weapon. He'd never hit anyone in his life.
[ Outis. ]
"I know," he said. "Pay attention."
[ Yes. ]
Then he heard it.
It was laughter. Small, high and thin, coming from somewhere down the hall, toward the containment units. It sounded like a child's laugh played back through a broken speaker. It bounced off the gray walls and came from everywhere at once.
"There's one on our floor!" Malkuth said. "Near the containment units! It's... oh. Oh, it's not attacking anyone. It's going to the doors."
"The doors," Eurylochus said sharply.
And then a second sound joined the laughter: a harsh, rising alarm, two notes over and over, coming from the containment hallway. Every monitor in the Main Room flashed red at the edges.
"Qliphoth Meltdown," said Angela, calm as ever. "One Sin and Hundreds of Good Deeds. Fairy Festival."
"Two of ours!" Malkuth's voice cracked. "Two of our units are melting down! When that happens, somebody has to go inside and work within sixty seconds, or... or it's very bad! The Manager is giving orders right now. Employee 002, One Sin! Employee 004, Fairy Festival! Go, go, inside, before the timers run out!"
Polites was already moving. Elpenor stood up, swaying, looked at the baton in his hand as if he wasn't sure what to do with it, clipped it back onto his belt, and followed him at a lope.
"Employee 003, the clown! Stop it before it gets inside anything!"
Eurylochus went. He didn't hesitate. He gripped his baton and walked fast, not running, toward the hallway, and Outis took a step to follow him.
"Employee 001!" Malkuth's voice stopped him. "The Manager needs you downstairs. The Information Team has one too, and they only have one employee! James is alone down there! Please hurry!"
Outis stopped.
He looked down the hall. Eurylochus, walking fast toward the laughter. Polites, halfway to the skull's door, glancing back over his shoulder. Elpenor, already pushing into the blue glow of the fairies' room.
Pay attention. To everyone.
"Go!" Polites called back. His voice shook, but he said it. "Go help James. We've got this. Right? We've got this."
Then he pulled open the skull's door and was gone.
Outis hesitated one more second.
Then he went.
. . .
The elevator took forever. When the doors opened on the floor below, everything was purple.
The walls were the same gray, but the light was tinted a cold mauve, and the clerks were wearing purple suits instead of brown. Three of them were pressed against a wall at the end of the corridor, staring at something. Outis followed their gaze.
James was in the middle of the hallway, baton in hand, his back to a containment door. The sign beside it read T-01-54. Through its small window, Outis caught a glimpse of a gray, hunched shape sitting on the floor inside: a thin man in a cream-colored straitjacket, bound with black straps, staring at the ground and shaking.
The Information Team's first Abnormality. It had arrived that morning. And in front of James, standing on the tile with its head cocked to one side, was a clown.
It was small. No taller than a child, with thin, stick-like limbs and a round head under a crooked little hat. Its face was painted white, and its grin was enormous, painted red from one side of its face to the other, much too wide and much too happy. It wasn't attacking James. It was looking at him, and giggling, and every so often it took a little skipping step toward the door behind him, as if it wanted to get past and was waiting for him to get out of the way.
"Hey!" James said, when he saw Outis. He sounded relieved and terrified at the same time. "Hey, Control! It's not attacking! It just wants the door! Why does it want the door?"
"Don't let it in," Outis said.
He didn't know why he was sure. He just was.
The clown turned its head toward him. Its painted grin didn't change. But its eyes, small and black and shining, fixed on him, and the giggling stopped.
Outis swung.
It was clumsy. He'd never done this before. But he'd lifted boxes for four years and his body was eighteen and growing every day, and the baton connected with the clown's thin shoulder with a sound like a branch snapping. The clown shrieked, a laugh turned inside out, and skittered back. James hit it from the other side. It spun, flailing, and Outis hit it again.
It fell. For a second it lay twitching on the tile, its painted grin turned up toward the ceiling.
[ Back! Get back! ]
Outis grabbed James by the collar and threw them both backward.
The clown exploded.
It wasn't huge. It was a hot, sharp crack, like a firework going off in your hand, and a wave of heat and red sparks that slapped against Outis's face and arms. When he looked up, there was a scorched black star on the floor where the clown had been, and a smell like burnt sugar.
James was on his back, staring at the ceiling.
"It exploded," he said.
"Yeah."
"Why did it explode?"
"I don't know."
"Nobody tells you anything here," James said, almost hysterically, and then started to laugh, the cracked, helpless laugh of someone who had just survived something stupid. After a second, despite everything, Outis laughed too.
"Ordeal entity suppressed on the Information floor," came Yesod's precise voice from above. "Adequate." A pause. "James. Are you injured?"
"No, sir. Control got me out of the way."
A longer pause.
"Good," said Yesod.
It was just one word. But Outis heard it.
Then the speakers changed.
It was Malkuth's voice, coming down from the floor above, and she wasn't using the speaker for their floor. She was shouting so loudly that it bled through every speaker in the building.
"Scorched Girl has breached! She's out! Everyone, everyone, Scorched Girl is out of containment!"
Outis was on his feet before he knew it.
. . .
The elevator had never felt so slow.
He stood in it with his baton in his hand and his heart slamming against his ribs, and Malkuth's voice poured out of the little speaker in the elevator's ceiling, quick and high and broken.
"Employee 002 stopped the meltdown on the skull, he's okay, and Employee 004 stopped the fairies, he's okay too, he's... he's somewhere in the hall. But Employee 003 couldn't get to the clown in time. It was all alone up here, and it already went inside Scorched Girl's room before he got there, it was in there for twenty seconds, it did something to her. And then he hit it and it exploded and he got hurt, he's in the Main Room now recovering, he's okay, he's okay, but she's out. She's out and she's walking."
"Where's Polites?" Outis said. "Malkuth. Where's Polites?"
"She's... she's chosen someone. She's walking toward them. She's very slow. The Manager says nobody go near her, the explosion..." A sound like a breath catching. "It's Employee 002. She's walking toward Employee 002."
The elevator doors opened.
Outis ran.
He ran past the Main Room, where Eurylochus was half-sitting, half-lying on a bench with his jacket off and a long red burn up one forearm, already trying to stand. He ran past the fairies' blue window and the skull's door and the bear's.
The hallway outside the containment units was full of orange light.
At the far end, near the supply cupboard, stood Polites. And between Outis and Polites, walking slowly down the middle of the corridor on her thin black legs, was the burned girl.
She wasn't hurrying. She didn't need to. Her white eyes were fixed on Polites, and the match in her chest blazed so brightly that it lit the whole hallway like a sunset, and with every step she took, the air shimmered and the tiles beneath her feet blackened and cracked.
There was a clerk in the hallway, too. A young woman in a brown suit and yellow tie, crouched against the wall, frozen, her hands over her mouth. And the door of the supply cupboard was half open, and through it Outis could see one long, thin leg sprawled across the floor, a black shoe, a rumpled trouser hem.
Elpenor. Asleep. In the cupboard. Where nobody looked for you.
"Polites!"
Polites looked up. Saw Outis at the far end of the hall. And Outis saw, in that one instant, that Polites already knew.
He knew what chosen meant. He knew what the girl was going to do when she got to him. Malkuth had said it, and Polites had heard it, and he knew.
And he looked at the clerk against the wall. And at the cupboard door, and the leg on the floor behind it.
And Outis watched him decide.
"Hey!" Polites said. Not to Outis. To the clerk. His voice was steady and kind and very, very calm. "Hey. You need to go now. Go toward the man in the black suit. Go on. You're okay."
The clerk stared at him.
"Go," Polites said gently, and she went, scrambling along the wall, past the burned girl, who didn't even turn her head, toward Outis.
Then Polites reached out and, very quietly, pushed the cupboard door shut. He leaned his weight against it for a second, the way you'd tuck in a blanket.
Then he walked away from it.
Not toward Outis. Not toward safety. Away. Down the side corridor to his left, the short dead-end one that led to the supply room, where the trays and mop heads and spare cloths for the containment work were kept, as far from the cupboard and the clerk and the Main Room as he could get. And the burned girl turned, slowly, on her thin black legs, and followed him.
[ When she reaches him, it takes five seconds. ]
Outis didn't know if the System meant it as a warning or an apology. He didn't care. He was running.
[ Outis, stop. ]
He didn't stop.
[ Outis, you can't reach him in time. If you're in the room when she... ]
He didn't stop.
He reached the mouth of the side corridor just as the burned girl stepped through the supply room door.
He could see Polites inside. He was standing between the metal shelves, with stacked steel trays and folded white cloths on either side of him, his back to the far wall, his baton dropped at his feet, his hands at his sides. He wasn't running anymore. There wasn't anywhere to run.
The burned girl stopped in front of him.
And Polites, because he was Polites, looked down at her, at the blackened face and the white eyes and the match blazing in her chest, and smiled.
"Hi," he said softly. "You still look cold."
The burned girl tilted her head.
One.
Outis was ten steps away.
Two.
"Polites!"
Three.
Polites looked up and saw him. And his smile changed, just a little, into something that was almost an apology.
Four.
"Hey," Polites said. "Stick close. Right?"
Five.
The light was so bright it had no color at all.
. . .
Outis didn't remember the sound. He remembered the heat: a wall of it, slamming him backward off his feet. He remembered the floor against his back, and the ceiling tiles above him, and the sprinklers coming on, and the cold water on his face. He remembered lying there and not being able to hear anything except a high, thin ringing.
He remembered getting up.
He remembered walking into the supply room.
He didn't remember what he saw there. Later, he would try very hard not to.
What he remembered was the hallway after. Sitting against the wall with his knees up and his burned hands hanging between them, the sprinklers still hissing, the floor running black with water. Eurylochus standing over him, his own arm bandaged, saying something Outis couldn't hear. The clerk with the yellow tie, crying silently by the far wall.
And the cupboard door creaking open, and Elpenor stepping out, sleepy, rubbing his eyes, his worn pencil in his hand.
"What happened?" Elpenor said. He looked at the water on the floor. At the scorched black star around the side corridor's entrance. At Eurylochus's face. At Outis's.
"Where's Polites?"
Nobody answered.
Outis looked down at his hands.
Stick close. He'd said that. On the very first day. Stick close to me. And Polites had. Polites had done everything Outis had ever told him to. And Outis had gone downstairs.
I'm not going to forget that, Polites had said, the first time he'd asked Outis's name. I'm not going to forget that.
Above them, the speaker clicked.
"Manager," said Angela. Calm. Even. "An agent loss has been recorded. Employee 002, Control Team."
A pause.
"Shall I prepare the..."
She stopped.
There was a silence on the line. A strange one. Like someone listening to a voice that the rest of the room couldn't hear.
"...Understood," said Angela. "Resetting."
The world went white.
- - -
The buzzer went off at the start of Day 6, flat and loud.
Outis sat up so fast he nearly fell off the bed.
The plastic crinkled under him. The tiny red light in the corner of the ceiling watched him, steady and unblinking. The paper cup sat on the shelf with its single white pill. His hands were whole. Soft. No burns. No water. No ringing in his ears.
He looked down at them and they were shaking.
[ Outis. ]
He couldn't answer.
[ Outis, breathe. Breathe with me. In. ]
He breathed in.
[ Out. ]
He breathed out.
[ The Manager reset the day. ]
[ Everything that happened... it hasn't happened yet. It's the morning again. Day 6, again. ]
[ Everyone else has forgotten. ]
[ You haven't. ]
Outis stared at the window.
"Reset," he said. His voice came out cracked and strange. "He... he can do that?"
[ He can. ]
[ I told you. The Manager in this building isn't careless with the people in it. ]
[ He doesn't leave anyone behind. ]
Outis put his face in his hands.
He thought about the supply room. About the light so bright it had no color. About Polites's smile changing, just a little, at the very end, into something that was almost an apology.
Hey. Stick close. Right?
And then, through the wall, muffled by tile, unmistakable:
Knock. Knock-knock.
"Morning!" said Polites. Bright, and only a little hoarse. "Day six! Almost a whole week! Do you think they give you a cake at a week? I think they should give you a cake."
Outis lifted his head.
He stared at the white tile wall for a long, long time.
Then he raised one shaking hand, and pressed it flat against the tile, right where the voice had come from, and held it there.
"Yeah," he said, and his voice broke in half on the word. "Yeah. They should give you a cake."
On the other side of the wall, Polites laughed.
Outis closed his eyes and listened to it, and memorized it, and swore, to himself and the System and whatever else might be listening, that he was going to hear it at the end of this day, too.