I’ve finished, but the last segment will need to be flogged a little bit more. In RealLife, still on semi-vacation, everyone else went out on the lake while I wrote, edited, and sent emails for the Lemur Throne Anthology, which I plan to publish on Christmas Day 2024. That’s fine; I don’t really like bodies of water and the sun turns me into a seeping blister.

Believe it or not, these last two parts, as Akky scales Building Three, was from an old memory of Bruce Lee’s Game of Death, and his fights to the top. There is nothing as remotely interesting here, but I take what inspiration I’m allowed to see.

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Akaiame stood on the ground before one of the many ways into the shell that was the seven stories of Building Three.  It was the north-most of the collection.  No one lived there.

Well, one did.

A glance at the sky showed the sun just before noon.

Not that that means anything, she thought.  In my second week here, I now know that the sun is a lie and clocks outright deceivers.  Still:  plenty of time for what I want to do here!

The ground floor seemed to be mostly given over to pallets.  She found a large, empty shaft of what had been a freight elevator.  Ah!  Stairs up next to it!  There were several crates that didn’t seem to be particularly accidentally placed at their base, but they were easy to move.  Akaiame pushed them to give herself enough room and started up.

First floor.  Still mostly just open space with some lathes and drill presses here and there.  Along the walls were what might have been offices.  She set about looking for a way up.

There the stairs were!  But dark from the walls on either side.  Looking up was more dark.  Akaiame ruffled her wings and climbed.

Definitely dark here on floor two.  I can see where the large, broken-out windows are, but someone’s tried to cover them up with tarps and sheets.  No more than three steps had her barking her left shin on a piece of metal.

“Ouch!” She shouted as her wings spread in protest.

And she perceived the room.  Where she faced, Akaiame now knew where everything was… like a picture in her mind.  She turned ninety degrees to her right and extended her wings.

“HEY!” she yelled.

I can take pictures with sound!

Once she’d found the ladder she quickly clambered up it.  She pushed aside the thin plywood and narrowed her eyes at the light.  Were those… ghosts?

No, not ghosts.  It bothered her she knew what ghosts were, but not how she knew.

Anything that was taller than it was wide on this third floor was covered by a white sheet.  The effect might have been disconcerting to a typical Young Broken, especially after the darkness of the floor below, but…

“Not to a hard-headed jerk like me!”

Her eyes now adjusted to the light, she looked for the next set of stairs.

Empty.  The fourth floor was completely empty.

Good.  That’s what I was, too.

The stairwell was broken.  A dark hole of indeterminate distance opened at her feet.  Ahead, attached at the top but not the bottom, an out of place ship’s ladder moved a few inches back and forth in the noon breeze.

You asshole, she thought of the one atop this building.

She jumped forward, her large wings beating down at the same moment.

Catching the ladder halfway, she scurried up it.

Climbing out onto the fifth floor she saw a tiny corridor leading about ten yards ahead.  There was no access to the outside, so it should  be dark.  However, the walls themselves were a bright white… bright enough to easily see.  She continued forward to what appeared to be a door… with a keypad.

Above the keypad were over two dozen pieces of paper.  They all had ink squiggles on them. 

Just like the notes from that priests!  I can’t read anything!

That one.  She’d started at the top left and had been looking down and right.  That one:  far left and halfway down.  She didn’t know what to call it, but she understood the pattern of the symbols.  Her hands shook as she held them over the keypad… a surfeit of confusion, and tapped out what she thought she was the correct patterns.

Akaiame and her wings shook as the bolts clacked and the door swung open.

Coming up the steps in the twilight was one thing.  Time, again!  Catching the cobweb across her mouth was another.  When she tried to brush it out –

Touching the spider the size of her hand made her scream.