Dust clouds permeated the air, filling the room with the musty scent of something forgotten, something unused. Everly coughed, waving a hand to dispel some of the particles.
She was spending the afternoon going through her dad’s things—both because it needed to be done, and because it gave her something to do with her hands while her mind tried to piece together what she had seen while visiting the Eschatorologic.
Their house was a single floor, divided into four spaces: kitchen, living area, bedrooms, and storage. She was starting with the room they used for storage; his bedroom had remained closed up like a vault since his death, and she hadn’t been able to force herself to enter it yet. Later, she kept telling herself. That could come later.
The storage space might have once been set aside as a third bedroom or an office, but Everly and her dad had taken to filling it with sporadically labeled cardboard boxes of keepsakes and tossed aside trash bags of everything they’d never gotten around to donating or throwing out. So far, Everly had made a rather substantial pile of all her old things that she’d long forgotten were even in that back room, but she had found surprisingly little of her dad’s. She’d never considered him to be much of a minimalist, but box after box of miscellaneous junk seemed to be all hers, none his.
As she sorted through a box of old sweaters from her high school years—setting aside one or two she thought she might still be able to pull off—Everly reflected on everything that had happened the day before. Everything she’d seen at the Eschatorologic.
They’re here to change the world, Richard had said. It was nonsense, pure and simple. What could he possibly mean? Nothing Everly had seen remotely suggested the magnitude Richard seemed to believe he was working with.
She ran through a list of what she knew about the Eschatorologic. The building had a hundred and two floors, two of which you needed a key to access. What would warrant being kept locked up like that down there? Could there be dangerous chemicals stored in the basement? Or contraband of some kind? Or maybe it wasn’t that illicit, and that was just where they stored cleaning supplies. Regardless, the building had one hundred and two floors, and thus far Everly had seen exactly two of them.
A lobby, with one strange receptionist. And an all-gray floor, consisting of a hallway lined with doors.
The only room Everly had entered was a dwelling of some kind for a very old, very disturbed woman. Taking a small leap in assumption, Everly would guess that other rooms in the building likewise housed other people—perhaps equally old and disturbed.
She knew no one was telling her the truth—that much was evident. Neither Jamie nor Richard would give her a straightforward answer when asked what the building was, which could only bode poorly for whatever truth they were trying to cover up.
Everly tried to think of a logical explanation for everything she’d seen. It could be some kind of nursing home, or a hospital. An asylum. A prison?
None of it quite fit, which she knew, but she couldn’t think of anything else it could be.
Trying to banish further thoughts on the building—for now, at least—Everly shoved aside a rather heavy box and found an old wooden crate. It was soft and spongy around the edges, like the wood had been left in a damp space for far too long. Everly nudged aside another cardboard box so she could sit on the floor in front of the wooden crate, and she pried off the lid.
The interior of the box emitted a musky odor as Everly peered down into the contents. She stuck a hesitant hand inside, wary of anything that might have been overtaken years ago by mildew and age.
The first item she pulled out of the box was a photo album. One she’d never seen before. Everly opened the cover and stared in shock as she was met with the warm blue eyes of her mother. Mary Tertium smiled up at Everly through the fading picture, a floppy beach hat drooping over her forehead and a bottle of what looked like champagne in her hands.
It had been a long, long time since Everly had seen a picture of her mother. A piece of her was relieved to see that her scarce memories lined up fairly well with this tangible image of her.
Flipping the page, she found more images that reflected a time she had little to no memory of. Several of her as a baby, dressed up in frilly clothes, the occasional bonnet, and more than one animal costume. A couple of a very young version of her dad, with a full head of hair and, to her shock, in some a bushy beard. She also found some pictures of all three of them—Everly and both of her parents. A family that used to be.
At the end of the photo album were several blank pages. Everly ran her fingers over the edges of the pages, checking if there was anything she had missed. From between two of the last pages, an image fell out, landing in her lap. Everly picked it up, and the breath froze in her chest.
It was a picture of her. Not her as a baby, as in the rest of the album’s pictures, but her now. In the picture, she was seated in a nondescript area, looking away from the camera so that the shot only caught the side of her face. But there was no denying that it was her—Everly knew herself, knew that it couldn’t be anyone else.
So why did she have no memory of this picture being taken?
Shaken, Everly hastily set the album back in the crate, shoving the photo of herself back in between two random pages. She rummaged again through the rest of the items in the box, none of which she recognized from her childhood: a rose-colored sweater, a fountain pen with a university’s insignia carved into the side, several novels that she couldn’t imagine her dad ever reading. Eventually, Everly began to suspect she had found a box of her mother’s belongings—things her dad had decided to keep stored away in here rather than throw out.
The items in the box painted the edges of a picture for a woman whom Everly had never been given a chance to know. This box said she had been a woman who enjoyed small comforts and little moments. Soft things and memories. The items told a story of a woman who loved her life.
And had it taken from her all too soon.
At the bottom of the box, crushed beneath a hefty volume of short stories, Everly noticed what looked like a crumpled-up piece of paper. She pulled it out, frowning as she tried to smooth out its edges.
There was no date on the piece of paper, so no telling how long it had sat at the bottom of the crate. Someone had scrawled out a note in wide, looping handwriting across the white piece of paper. But it wasn’t addressed to her mother—it was addressed to her father.
Jacob,
The time is drawing near. You know it is. You need to make a decision, soon. Come and visit me—you remember the way, I’m sure. I think you know what has to happen.
There was no signature, not even so much as initials to go by. Everly hadn’t the faintest idea what the letter was supposed to mean. What decision was her dad being asked to make? What did this person, whoever they were, think had to happen?
She read the letter again, hoping for some other clue to pop out, but there was nothing. It was too vague, too nondescript. With care, Everly folded the piece of paper, then set it back inside the crate.
Why was her dad receiving mysterious letters at all? She had always considered him to be an upfront, straightforward kind of man, but recently she wasn’t so sure.
Could this letter be connected somehow to what happened to him?
Everly shook her head. That was too much speculation, even for her. This letter could have been in that crate for decades; there was nothing to suggest it had anything to do with her dad’s death.
But still, she couldn’t stop thinking about it.
The week before he died, there was something off about him. He came home one day acting strange, and he refused to tell her where he’d been or what he’d been doing, only turned aside and walked away. She followed after him, and he shook her off, leaving her standing behind in the hall as he closed himself in his room.
A few days later, he left again—went out without telling her why. When she’d seen him that morning, the sight of him had left a twisting in Everly’s gut.
He hadn’t looked like her father. His eyes were sunken in, empty, frantic. His skin—so wane, so sallow. He left quickly that morning, running out the front door without noticing Everly standing behind in the shadows. Afterward, she tried to banish the image of her father escaping the house like a wild animal set free—but then she had walked into the kitchen and found the note.
Don’t follow me, it said. I will be home soon. I promise.
But he’d lied.
The police found him later that afternoon, and she was so unable to reconcile the image of the man she had seen that morning—the man who hadn’t looked or seemed at all like her father—with what they said happened to him.
They said a car accident, and who was she to question that? He had been found in his car, after all, and it had been totaled. Wrapped around a tree, according to the cops.
She didn’t know much, but she did know her dad was always a careful driver, the kind who never went more than three miles per hour over the speed limit, who used turn signals when there wasn’t another car within five blocks of him.
Not the kind of driver to wrap himself around a tree.
And Everly didn’t know much when it came to injuries, but she didn’t think his sounded right.
Lacerations up and down his arms. Burns covering his whole body. More skin damaged than not.
He wouldn’t have been so careless as to wreck his car like that.
And he was supposed to come back. He always came back.
He had promised.
Something had rattled her dad that week, and somehow, because of all that, he died. The explanation could have been as simple as he hadn’t been in his right frame of mind, and that led him to swerve his car off the road, but she didn’t believe it, not really. The man she’d seen that week, the one with the crazed eyes and frantic energy, hadn’t seemed at all like the man she’d known all her life.
But he had seemed like the kind of man who might receive ominous, unsigned messages and not tell her about them.
Everly placed the lid back on the wooden crate. Her dad, Richard, the Eschatorologic. This box full of her mother’s keepsakes.
It was all too much, all at once.
And what about her? It was undeniable that something was also happening inside her head—something beyond the headaches. Visions, memories she shouldn’t have, images that made no sense.
Her thoughts strayed to that picture of herself found in the back of the old photo album. The one she had no recollection of being taken.
Maybe she was losing her mind. Maybe that’s all this was—her own slow descent into madness.
Everly didn’t know what was happening to her, or what had happened to her dad, and she didn’t know what was happening in that building.
But with a sinking in her stomach, Everly understood that there was only one place she could go to get more answers.
* * *
As Everly approached the Eschatorologic the next day, she saw Richard waiting outside. She waved a hand in greeting, trying to smile despite the anxious energy that coursed through her.
“You’re waiting for me today,” Everly said.
“It’s a large building,” Richard said as she reached the top of the stairs, falling into step beside him. “Easy to get lost. Dangerous, in fact. I didn’t want you alone in there anymore, so I figured it would be easiest to wait out here.”
“What if I hadn’t come back?”
Richard glanced down at Everly. “I had faith that you would. And besides,” he said, gesturing around them, “it’s a beautiful day to wait outside.”
It was a beautiful day, but Everly could see there was something Richard wasn’t telling her, a tension to his posture that hadn’t been there the day before. “Are you okay?” Everly asked. “You look a little pale.”
Richard shook his head, face suddenly serious. “I want you to meet a few more people today,” he said. “Some really amazing people, actually. Men and women I have come to care for greatly during my years working here.”
As she followed Richard into the Eschatorologic, Everly again felt the floor buzzing beneath her feet, as if the building itself were rumbling from all the pent-up mysteries stored within its walls.
The same woman as before sat behind the desk in the lobby, and Everly glanced at her uneasily as she walked toward the elevator with Richard. The woman didn’t acknowledge either of them, continuing to sit straight with her head lifted high, her eyes unblinking.
Once in the elevator, Everly turned to Richard. “Who is that woman?” she asked, indicating the direction of the lobby beyond the closed elevator doors. “The one who’s always behind that desk. She seems . . . I don’t know. Strange? Yesterday, she wouldn’t even look at me when I tried talking to her.”
Richard’s face softened, his eyes going distant. “That’s Sophia,” he said. “She’s . . . very special, very dear to me. She’s one of our runners. More or less. Was the very first one, actually.”
“Runners,” Everly repeated. “What does that mean—” Everly started to ask, but then the elevator chimed as the doors opened to the third floor, and Richard cut her off, exclaiming, “Here we are!” as he strolled out. Everly stood where she was a moment, watching him walk away, before huffing a sigh of frustration and following behind.
This floor was identical to the second floor in every way—same gray walls, gray floors, gray doors going all the way back to the end of the lengthy hallway. Richard passed by the first door in the hall, stopping in front of the second.
Inside was another bare apartment, this one with a man who sat at the small wooden kitchen table. He was slight in stature and hunched over, staring at a plate in front of him with something that looked almost like mashed potatoes. His head was bald and shriveled, reminding Everly of an overly large raisin, and he wore a gray uniform identical to the one Lois had worn the day before. Also identical to Lois was the thin, silvery scar that Everly could see running up the back of his neck—much more visible on this man, with his bald head, than it had been on Lois. Everly wanted to ask.
Everly was afraid to ask.
The man didn’t appear to notice Everly or Richard as they came in, continuing instead to stare at the plate of food in front of him.
“Hello, Maurice,” Richard said, approaching the man. “I hope you’re doing well this morning. I see one of the runners has already paid you a visit.” He nodded at the plate of food and then turned to Everly. “The runners are what we call the workers here,” he said, answering her half-asked question from the elevator. “Among other duties, they are responsible for bringing food to the residents on these floors. Many of those living here can’t handle even feeding themselves on their own.”
Everly watched as Richard sat down in the chair across from Maurice, smiling kindly at him.
“I brought someone here to visit you today, Maurice,” Richard said, and he gestured over to where Everly stood. “This is Everly. She is my granddaughter, and she is excited to meet you.” He looked pointedly from Everly to Maurice and so, taking the hint, Everly walked around the table and took one of the remaining empty chairs.
“Hi,” she said, voice small and uncertain. “I’m Everly. It’s nice to meet you.”
Still, Maurice did not move from where he sat, continuing to stare down with a vacant expression. Everly saw Richard’s smile tighten, but then he leaned forward and continued to talk to Maurice in an upbeat voice.
The man remained unresponsive through the rest of the visit. Richard kept up a lively one-sided conversation for about ten minutes, then bid Maurice a good day and got up, signaling for Everly that it was time for them to go.
Out in the hall again, Richard paused to look at Everly, asking, she assumed, if she was all right to go on.
Everly nodded once, and they continued.
They spent the day like that, going from room to room—or floor to floor; Richard never took her into more than one room on each floor before they went up another level—visiting numerous residents in varying states of awareness and sanity. All seemed to be at least sixty, some probably much older. While a few of the residents more or less recognized Richard, none of them were able to completely understand who Everly was. A good number of people were like Maurice, barely able to look their way when they entered the room. Others were like Lois—responsive but unintelligible, and sometimes hysterical. Richard went into each and every one of their rooms with the same wide, open smile on his face. He talked to them. That’s all, Everly realized. He wasn’t doing anything special or medical. He was just talking to them.
She wondered briefly if that was why he had asked her to come with him—if he just needed another person to help, to share the burden. Assuming all the floors were full of apartments like these, housing people like those she had met, there had to be hundreds, thousands of people living in that building. They had only been able to visit with a dozen or so residents—who went to all the other people during the day?
Everly kept trying to bring it up. In the hallways after they left a room, she’d turn to Richard and open her mouth, prepared to ask him again why these people were here. Why she was here. But every time she tried, he blew her off or walked away or spoke over her, loudly and enthusiastically about something entirely different. As they ascended floor after floor, visiting more rooms, Everly’s frustrations grew, becoming nearly suffocating as she tried to shove them down, at least long enough to get through the day.
After a couple of hours spent visiting rooms, Richard stopped Everly before they could get back into the elevator. “I think that is enough for today,” he said. “Do you want to go somewhere else with me? I—” He cut himself off, eyes scanning the hallway. “I want to talk to you about today, but I know you’d probably rather do so someplace else. The Eschatorologic can be . . . a bit much, at first.”
Heart racing, Everly nodded. Finally, she thought. Finally she could get some answers out of him.
Richard told her to wait where she was for a few minutes, and he left her, standing alone in the empty gray hallway on the fifteenth floor—the highest they had managed to get that afternoon, visiting one room per floor. About ten minutes later he returned, adorned in the tweed coat and bowler hat she had first seen him in, and he ushered her back to the elevator. They exited into the lobby, and Richard began to quickly walk toward the door, Everly trailing in his wake. Before they could reach the door, a voice called out from across the wide room.
“Richard!”
Everly turned and saw Jamie’s tall form striding toward them, hand outstretched in greeting. Richard paused where he stood, hesitated for half a second, and then spun to face Jamie, a new smile plastered on his face. To Everly, the smile was tinged with a hint of something insincere, and she watched him closely as he walked over to Jamie.
“Jamie, how nice to run into you.” Richard put an arm around Everly. “I hear you’ve already had the opportunity to be acquainted with my granddaughter. Thank you, by the way, for being willing to help her with the elevator.”
Jamie waved him off. “Just doing my job,” he said, repeating the words he had told Everly the day before. “Though, you must have beat me to it; I didn’t have to do much for her.”
Everly saw Richard pause for a second before responding. “Right,” he said. “Well, at any rate, it was good you were down here when she came in.”
With a grin, Jamie turned to Everly. “Nice running into you again, Miss Tertium.”
Everly offered him a tight smile in return. Something about this was off. Richard, who was so friendly and open all day with the people they visited, suddenly seemed closed off, distant, despite the relaxed air he was trying to give off. Something about Jamie had set him on edge.
“Listen,” Jamie was saying, “if you both have time, there’s something I’d really like your eyes for, Richard, and I figured I could give Everly a tour of some of the lab space, too, in the process.” He winked at her. “Might be something she’d be interested to see. What do you say?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Jamie, but we were on our way out for the day. I have to take Everly home before it gets too late. But I can come find you tomorrow, if you’d like.” Richard spoke with ease, but there was still a certain tension, a rigidity to his spine, that kept Everly watching Jamie closely as he responded.
“Is that so,” Jamie said. He grinned again. “No worries. There’ll be another day, right? Well, I don’t want to keep you. I’ll see you tomorrow, Richard.” He nodded at Everly. “Miss Tertium, a pleasure, as always.”
And then Richard was steering Everly away, out the front doors of the building, waving back briefly to Jamie as they went. Once outside, Richard looked like he could finally breathe again, like a noose had been released from around his neck. Everly watched him carefully, walking beside him as they descended the long trail of steps down to the road.
“What was that about?” she asked him, once she thought they were far enough away from the building.
He shook his head, not answering at first. “That was Jamie,” he said, then sighed. “Suffice it to say that while Jamie and I have similar goals in mind when it comes to the Eschatorologic, he has a very different preference of methodology. I would rather if you didn’t spend too much time around him while you’re in the building. That’s all.”
“Methodology? What do you mean?” All she’d seen Jamie do in the building was fix the elevator to let her use it. She couldn’t think of what would cause Richard to be so edgy around him. Jamie seemed nice, and so far he had only been helpful to her; but then again she’d also say Richard seemed nice enough, and what did she really know about either of them?
“It doesn’t matter,” Richard said sharply. “He just doesn’t . . . value the sanctity of what we’re doing as well as I do.”
“And what are you doing?” Everly pressed. “All you’ve done is show me rooms full of people who probably wouldn’t remember me if I went back tomorrow. What does any of this mean, Richard?” She saw him flinch at the use of his name.
Richard stopped walking, looking—really looking—at Everly for the first time that afternoon. “You’re right,” he said. “I owe you some answers.”
Everly crossed her arms, waiting for him to continue. Richard had taken on a look as though he were gathering all his thoughts together like yarn in a basket, trying to pull apart one strand from the rest.
“When I was twenty-six years old,” he began, “which is not much older than you are now, I stumbled across a genetic anomaly.”
That term—genetic anomaly—tickled at something in the back of Everly’s mind. She remembered the snippet on Richard that she’d found at the library. Something about a grant, right? Something to do with genetics?
“I was in the final year of my PhD program at the time,” Richard continued, “and found it without realizing I had been looking. At first it sounded outrageous—impossible. But it intrigued me, and so I began to spend more time searching for it, studying it, trying to understand it. Eventually, my studies with this genetic anomaly led to my discovery of the Eschatorologic.”
“What is it?” Everly asked. “This . . . anomaly. What does it do, exactly?”
“A good question.” Richard paused. “The anomaly is very special, and exceptionally difficult to explain. It is also rarer than I have ever heard of a genetic trait being among humans. If I hadn’t been so actively searching it out, for so many years, it is unlikely my research would have ever come to anything.”
A gust of wind blew between Everly and Richard then, nearly knocking off Richard’s bowler hat, and he clamped down a hand to keep it in place. His eyes had gone distant while he spoke, and Everly took this moment to study him. In the building, he had seemed so at ease, so content to move from room to room, speaking with the elderly residents and being among them. Out here, in the real world, she suddenly saw how out of place he appeared.
“I say all of this to you,” Richard continued, “because I have strong reason to believe that you have this genetic anomaly. That you are what we in the Eschatorologic refer to as enhanced. And so, I want you to come back—I want to test you.”
“Test me?” Everly repeated faintly. “I’m sorry, you want to what?”
“It’s a simple enough process. Not too invasive.” Which implied that it was, at least a little bit, invasive. Everly’s pulse spiked, trying to process what Richard was telling her, what any of this was supposed to mean.
“Why would you possibly think I have this—this anomaly? Why me, Richard? You don’t even know me.”
Richard turned his body then so that he was facing her more directly. His eyes had lost the far-off glaze that had filled them only moments before. Now his attention was sharp, pointed. It reminded her of the funeral, when she had known he was watching her even when she couldn’t really see him. “Because your mother was enhanced,” he said. “And while it is not always a genetic trait that is passed down by birth, it does drastically increase your odds.”
Her mother. Everly thought back to the box of her mother’s belongings she’d found the day before. Thought of the photos of the woman with the coy smile and bright eyes.
Were you part of this? Everly found herself thinking.
“There’s more to it than that,” Richard said, eyeing Everly closely. “Your headaches cease when you’re inside the Eschatorologic, don’t they?”
Everly stared at him in shock. “How do you know about those?”
She hadn’t noticed before, but he was right: she’d never gotten the headaches while inside the building.
Richard continued by saying, “It’s all connected, you know. Return to the building, and you can keep the headaches away for good. They’re only the start; it’ll get worse from here on out. I should know, I’ve seen it before.” He paused very briefly before adding, “It’s imperative you return. You don’t understand how important you are, Everly.”
And that—that was what shattered the illusion, what went too far. Because Everly was many things, but important had certainly never been one of those, especially not to this man who hadn’t wanted to be part of her life for the first twenty-four years.
“No,” Everly said, shaking her head. “I don’t know what’s going on in that building, or what you’ve gotten yourself in the middle of, but I want no part of it.”
Richard opened his mouth to interject, but Everly plowed on, saying, “Test me? What does that even mean? You have no right to march in now, twenty-four years late, and tell me I’m important and decide that that’s enough to pull me into all of this. So unless you can give me a reason—a real, concrete reason—why I should go back, I’m done—done with that building, done with those people, and done with you.”
Sucking in a deep breath, Everly paused her tirade. She had never spoken like that before—to anyone. Staring at Richard, waiting to see what he would do, she expected to see shock in his eyes, or surprise at her outburst. Instead, she saw something she almost would have read as anger; anger, perhaps, that she’d dare to stand in the way of his progress, in the way of everything he’d been working toward?
Oh, he masked it well, putting on a somber face a moment later, but she’d seen it. He couldn’t hide who he was, beneath all his pretty and kind words. She might not know what he wanted with her, but she knew it was all for his own gain—knew it had nothing at all to do with helping her, even if he wouldn’t acknowledge that to himself.
But oh, he knew what he was doing. Richard looked at her with those faux-kind eyes and he said, simply enough, “I can tell you what happened to your father. He came to the building, you know. Only a few weeks before you.”
It was like a sledgehammer to her gut. Everly nearly bent over from the weight of Richard’s implications. He did know. He knew what happened to her dad. She was right, there really was more to it.
Everly studied him for another moment. This man to whom she owed nothing. Every survival instinct in her told her to run, to go home and never look back. It didn’t escape her that he still hadn’t even told her what this genetic anomaly was—he hadn’t told her anything.
But he knew what happened to her dad.
And he knew that would be enough to pull her back in.
“Okay,” she said. And that was that.