Season 03 - Episode 11

‘uneventful it seems’

Ak doesn't know what to do.

He has spent several days searching every inch of this floor, even forcing himself to enter the park with its obligatory corpse pile. There is no way out. Even the stairs down, the exit he's taken from every other floor, are shuttered with steel here.

There are two options. He can retrace his steps back up and hope that he missed something. He searched those other floors pretty well though, checking not just the exits but finding all the food too. If he goes back up and doesn't find a way out he will just end up back here again only starving.

The other option stands before him now. Two tall, thin, mirrored metal doors with one button to the side, a button bearing a downward arrow. Above, a small screen displays a digital number. A filthy, bearded man stares back at him from the polished metal surface.

It is a lift, an apparently functional lift, that only goes down.

The reflected man appears to make a decision and reaches out, as if to the press the button from the other side. Ak hesitates however and eventually lowers his arm. He's been doing this for almost twenty minutes now. This lift is a way out, the only way towards more food, let alone escape. He knows he has to take it.

Every time he tries however, his mind is flooded with screaming terrors. The whole place is derelict, old and ruined. The glowing button seems to say that the lift is fine, but what if it's not? What if it breaks? What if it falls? The thought of falling triggers a cold darkness inside him that shrinks his lungs and weakens his knees.

Eventually, he sobs his frustration and stabs at the button. The doors slide open, revealing a simple, clean interior. He forces just one foot into the lift, pressing down as hard as he dares, ready to spring back at any moment. The lift feels solid.

After several minutes of gasping and swallowing and nodding to himself, Ak steps fully into the lift, not noticing the little machine on the ceiling scuttling in after him. There is a stack of buttons on one wall so he presses one.

The doors close and the lift shudders and rumbles to life. He pushes his back into the corner and presses his palms to the walls. At one point the lift jerks a little so that he cries out but otherwise the descent is uneventful.

It seems to take forever, but finally the lift jerks gently to a halt and the doors slide open once more. Ak marshals his now hollow feeling legs and stumbles out of the lift, wiping a stray tear from his face.

The first thing he notices, as he recovers from the trauma of the lift, is that this floor is very different. He is not in a corridor or a room or even a park. The space is cavernous, the ceiling lost in shadows far above.

Ahead of him, a long, straight path stretches off into nothing, flanked all the way on either side by impossibly vast, hulking machines. Everything is dark and quiet and dusty and dead. He stares at the scene agog, until his brain catches up and explains.

He is in the industrial sector.

Ak knows the industrial sector exists, everyone in The Levels knows that. It's where all the food and equipment and everything else comes from. It has simply never occurred to him that he might see it first hand.

He begins to walk until the sound of his own, echoing footsteps stops him. The industrial sector houses the huge machine plants that run non-stop, supplying anything and everything that anyone needs.

Only they're not running.

They clearly haven't been running for a long time.

He decides to try a different floor and returns to the lift. He moves to press the button but realises the lift is already on its way up to him. While he waits, he turns a full circle on the spot, craning his neck to looking at the baffling structures that rise above.

Then he freezes as a thought occurs.

He left the lift here, on this floor.

So who's coming up in it right now?

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