The Elevator
Azra woke up, stared at the ceiling for a good few minutes thinking of any possible excuse to stay in bed, and eventually forced himself out from under the covers and to his feet. No such excuse existed - no good ones, anyway. He was about to spend another 8 hours working at a job he hated, just like the 8 hours he spent yesterday and the day before that.
He cracked some eggs and threw them on the skillet.
After those 8 hours were up, he'd come home to spend another 8 hours at an apartment he hated, thinking about people he hated, with nothing that was able to truly distract him until he fell asleep.
He started the coffee maker.
Why it was that he wouldn't be able to just accept this day-in day-out routine just like everyone else was beyond him, but that didn't mean he wouldn't try to find a way. Nothing interested him. Life was, in every possible way, bland and colorless.
He ate the same breakfast he cooked every morning and drank the same coffee he always drank, and was ready to go about his day. He grabbed his jacket, put it on, and started towards the door.
He heard a thump. It was from the apartment above him. He stopped for a second, then kept moving. He opened the door.
Bricks. "What the hell?" he thought, looking at the newly constructed wall that was flush with his doorframe, seemingly built in an attempt to block him in. He heard something dragging in the apartment above him.
That door was his only way out. He lived on the second floor. He looked out of his windows to see people walking and cars driving as if everything was entirely normal, unaware that someone's been trapped in his own apartment.
He heard a drop hit the floor. Blood. It was coming from the room above him - there was a pool of it seeping through the ceiling. He couldn't stay here. He rushed to the windows, trying to open them, only to find that they were sealed shut. "Fuck it," he thought, grabbing a mallet. He swung it full force into one of the windows, breaking it to reveal circuitry. A TV screen displaying what he thought to be the outside world. The same wiring was found behind the next one he smashed, and the next. He looked back from the windows to the spot in the ceiling where the blood was leaking through. It was pooling on his floor now, and the soaked part of the ceiling began to warp.
He felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned around, swinging the mallet, to find that no one was there. The ceiling collapsed behind him, pouring gallons of blood into his apartment. Too much to be in one person. The level rose quickly as it kept flowing through a widening hole. In less than a minute, he was up to his neck in the sea of blood, and it began to cover his nose and eyes, which he had pressed against the ceiling.
He woke up.
His eyes were met by rusted steel above him. As he looked around, the surroundings matched the new ceiling. A candle lit the nearby area, revealing that he was in some sort of hallway that stretched in both directions until it was engulfed in total darkness. He heard someone snap their fingers right next to his ear. He turned around, despite having nothing to defend himself with, to see an elevator.
"That wasn't there before," he thought. He looked forward and back down the darkened hallway. He refused to take the elevator, grabbing the candle and walking into the darkness. As soon as the elevator was out of sight, he heard whistling, and someone blew the flame out. An elevator light illuminated inches in front of him, blocking the path he originally saw.
The floor number read "1" on the light. It dinged. Still 1. It dinged again. 2. Then 3. Then 5. Then 8. It kept dinging faster and faster, going to 13, 21, 34, keeping that pattern all the way to 987. The elevator doors opened. In contrast to the rusty, grimy, and unsanitary metal floor he was traversing before, he was met by an interior of ornate gold engravings on a silver background, and impeccably clean walls. He stepped into the elevator. "Not much choice, I suppose," he murmured.
The doors closed. The buttons on the panel before him had animals engraved on them in gold. First was an owl, then a fox, and lastly an alligator. He pressed the owl.
Without the elevator itself moving, the doors opened to reveal a field of roses with a sunset above. Beautiful in every sense of the word. A prettier sight than Azra had ever seen. He saw smoke clouds begin to form, which were quickly followed by a sweeping blaze that engulfed the field. As the flames rushed to the elevator, Azra mashed the fox button, and the doors closed just in time.
He felt the elevator move to the right with great speed, stopping abruptly and jolting him into the wall. His head was bleeding, and his arm was bruised. The doors opened to reveal a thousand knives of different shapes and sizes, maybe more, hanging from a steel ceiling. About 50 feet ahead down a corridor of bladed chimes, he could see a man chopping something. It didn't seem as though the man had heard him. Azra saw a black tanto blade, about the length of his forearm, hanging close by. He grabbed it, and yanked it from the ceiling, breaking the twine that held it there. The sound of it clanging against the other blades caused the butcher to look dead at him.
Even in the distance, Azra could see that the grotesque figure was far from human. A shrivelled, tiny head met a starved torso connected to arms that were the length of the entire body. It let out a horrible sound, some sort of screech like nails on a chalkboard, as it sprinted towards Azra through the sea of knives. The blades didn't slow it down, and it seemed incapable of pain or realising just how much blood it was losing. Azra mashed the button with the alligator frantically, but the butcher thing reached him before the doors would close. Its tiny mouth was still open as it screeched on its way towards him, and he jammed the tanto straight through it, the width of the blade slicing open the cheeks as the tip pierced through what Azra assumed to be the brain stem.
The creature was painted in its own blood, so much so that Azra wouldn't have known the sickly gray tone that its skin originally had if he hadn't seen the creature before it started running. Still holding the tanto, as its long and thin arms drooped lifelessly into the elevator, the doors began to close. Azra kicked the thing out of the way of the doors, sliding it off his blade, and doors closed. The elevator began to move forward. He heard scraping and knives clanging against the steel vessel, the bones of the butcher crunching below it. The elevator began to slow down, emitting some sort of clicking noise as it scraped against something new. It stopped.
With a worrying creak, the left wall fell away, slamming into a soft, ornate carpet. Two men playing chess looked at him, and the older one said "You're back."
The other added "And late. We had to start without you." Azra just stood there, his tanto still soaked in blood, pale and silent with fear. The younger one got up and walked towards him.
"You got some fuckin' nerve leaving us hanging back there. We needed you, and you were off doing God knows -" the man was interrupted as the tanto was flicked quickly upward towards his throat. The tip of it painted the man's throat in the blood of its last victim.
"Answers," Azra demanded, ready to end the young man's life in one swift motion. The older one spectated calmly and the man at the end of the blade came to a realization.
"You're still named Azrael, right?" the older one asked as the other two were locked in their stances. The younger man didn't dare move. "Azrael Civita Escher?"
Azra glared at him. "I'll take that as a yes," said the old man. "I'm Willem. That man at the end of your blade is Henryk. I'm guessing you went to the wrong stop at first, right?"
"I don't know you," said Azra in a dark, dead voice.
"I expected as much," said Willem. "This ain't the first time this has happened, you know. How's about you let Henryk put some distance between y'all and you and I can play a bit of chess? We have brandy. And cigars."
Azra averted his eyes from Willem to stare at Henryk. The man's expression seemed more patient than scared. Perhaps they have had this happen before. "Back," Azra commanded, both frightened and suspicious. Henryk walked back slowly, with Azra still pointing the tanto at him.
"If I'm to sit with you, both of you will be sitting on the other side of the chess table. Within my blade's reach," Azra asserted.
"Fine by me," grumbled Henryk. The two men sat across from Azra as Willem began to set up the chess table. "Go ahead, light one up and I'll pour you a drink," Henryk said as he grabbed the brandy on the table, being sure not to let his throat get out of range of Azra's blade, which was quickly wiped and set down on the table next to the chess set.
Azra sparked a cigar as Henryk handed the brandy to him. Willem moved a pawn forward, and began speaking.
"You always need a bit of loosening up whenever this happens. I'm not gonna say I feel your pain, because I don't, but I understand why. Paz is in the other room; she's usually able to calm you down. She almost certainly heard us already, but she knows not to open the door without your permission. It's the door just behind me," he said as he gestured towards the back wall. "Are you okay with her coming in now?"
Azra blew a hit out as he moved a pawn forward. "Your revolver, Henryk. Give it to me." Azra had seen the imprint of the weapon on the back of Henryk's waist when he was walking toward the table.
Willem nodded. Henryk produced a .357 magnum, saying "Just promise to God you won't shoot her right when she steps in."
Azra took a sip as Willem moved another pawn. "I'd be shot by Willem in the process," he said, assuming that the old man was armed. He was, in fact, carrying a 1911 chambered in .45 ACP - the round's stopping power would ensure that Azra wouldn't be capable of retaliating if shot. No one felt like confirming or denying the claim.
"You can come in now, Paz," said Willem in a raised voice as Azra moved another pawn. He blew out a cloud and aimed the revolver as the door opened to reveal a woman that he thought he knew, the only seemingly familiar face he'd seen in a while.
"How you holdin' up, Az?" asked Paz calmly as she stared down the barrel of his weapon, the hammer pulled back.
"Take off the jacket and turn around," he said, looking for imprints of a handgun. She obeyed, and he continued. "Henryk, walk to the other end of the room. Paz, take his seat." Willem nodded, and Henryk did as he was told. If the need arose, Azra wanted to be able to kill one with the tanto and the other with the revolver, leaving Henryk unarmed and at a distance. He trained the revolver on Willem now, grabbing the tanto and placing it on the left side of the table to use against Paz if need be. With both of them sitting close by, he said, "Continue the explanation, Willem."
Willem had gotten quite good at condensing the story at this point. This marked the fourth time that Azra's memory had been wiped, at least somewhat. While he left much unsaid under the statement "you'll see for yourself", he explained that they were scientists. Paz studied quantum mechanics, Willem was a mathematician, and Henryk was a chemist. Azra, as Willem described, was used as the muscle of the operation. He was intelligent, just as much as the rest, but he was the only one particularly skilled in the use of weapons. He primarily studied mathematics, with an emphasis on differential forms and neural networks. This allowed him an adept understanding of Paz's work and the ability to code targeting software that identifies humanoid targets..
Willem went on to explain that Azra had a cybernetic weave in his right arm, something that could control the muscle impulses to act on the aforementioned software's commands. In essence, Azra was able to use any gun or knife one-handed in such a way that he had nearly perfect precision and faster reflexes than almost any human. He didn't need the revolver - he could have just as easily thrown the tanto at the perfect angle to end Paz as she stepped through the doorway if he so pleased. How Azra came to get this cybernetic weave was a topic for another day, according to Willem. The simple fact of the matter is that, outside of their small laboratories and common area, in the areas that the elevator could take them, nothing but danger in the reality-warping halls awaited them. There were originally 7 scientists, counting Azra. For whatever reason, despite the freakish beings that lived past the elevator killing off the others, they wanted to keep Azra alive, just with wiped memories.
"I suppose now would be the time to tell you about the button panel," said Paz as Willem finished his exposition. "As more of your memories come back to you, you'll see more buttons appear. It has something to do with how much you can comprehend, and how much your mind will block out. Your job is to search for an exit, and I'd bet there are more buttons there now. So it's best that you get searching."
"The fuck? You want to send me right back into that hellscape?" Azra asked. "Y'all got here, and it was y'all's choice to study whatever the hell this place is. You can figure it out, not me."
"Az, you were the one who demanded we study this place to begin with. None of us even knew about it until you saw it. You were the first one here, and knew that it had some sort of scientific significance. With all due respect, it's your decisions that got us trapped here," she explained.
"Oh, fuck you. How can I trust a word you're saying? I haven't led a single damn thing in my entire miserable life, much less a group of intellectuals willing to dauntlessly study whatever horror show I throw at them."
"So, they must be mixing things up," started Willem. "What were you this time, and office worker? Last time, it was construction. The time before that, police. Before that, a gardener. That's how come we've had enough vegetables to last us this long. One of our rooms was turned into a pseudo-greenhouse, per your request. They apparently didn't like replacing your real memories with useful ones after the first round, so they started replacing them with more boring ones whenever they got their hands on you again."
"Who is 'they'," asked Azra angrily, "and how long have we been down here?"
"Seven months, 6 days, 14 hours," said Paz. "And your first question doesn't have a straightforward answer. Judging by the blood on your shirt, I'd guess you've already met one of their experiments, though."
Azra looked down at where he wiped the tanto. None of this made sense. "How do I recognize your face, Paz? I don't remember anyone like you from my office job or my apartment."
"Some memories always stick with you. The ones you care most about. That's how come you retain your mathematical knowledge, since you were always so engrossed in your work. I, apparently, am someone you used to care about."
"Like a girlfriend?"
"Not exactly. It was complicated. And it's irrelevant now, regardless." She paused. "You gonna go into the elevator or not?" Azra grabbed the .357 in his right hand, holding the tanto with his left hand, blade facing downwards so that he'd have more stabbing power if necessary, and a better angle for grappling with any freaks unwise enough to get close. He stepped into the elevator to find a new button with a snake engraved into it. He pressed it, and the left wall of the elevator moved back into place as he looked away from it and at the panel.
"When should we tell him?" Paz asked Willem once she looked back up at the wall where the elevator was to find that it had reformed, as though Azra had never come through in the first place.
"When he sees the lab, perhaps. But we'll keep him searching for a while before then. We don't need him just yet, not with you making such headway."
"How long do you think he'll last this time?" she asked.
"Last time, he made it almost a year and a half. Nice seven months lie, by the way. I think the accuracy made him buy it."
"I know that man like the back of my hand," Paz replied. "And his mind is breaking, Willem. More and more every time we send him out there. The structure of this place depends on him, and if he goes insane -"
"Then it all falls apart. I know." The door opened, and Henryk walked in.
"He took your gun," said Willem. It didn't surprise Henryk. The old man focused back on Paz. "You know you're not doing much to help his sanity, right?"
"What do you suggest?" she asked, agitated. "Ask him out to coffee with me like the 'good old days'? He had trust issues even before all this started, and I'm just a ghost in his mind. He remembers those damn equations better than he remembers me, as if it wasn't clear enough before all this that I took second priority."
"He's not gonna start trusting you if he sees you as the one who keeps throwing him back into the fray, Paz," said Henryk. He was fed up with her getting on her high horse.
"Oh, go fuck yourself. Y'all are lucky he doesn't remember you - neither of you get nominated to deal with his unending list of emotional problems."
"Oh, maybe you want to have a knife put to your throat every time he hits a snag and gets reset, then? Didn't think so, you arrogant bitch."
"Enough," said Willem, annoyed. Paz was about to retort, but Willem's word was the closest thing to law that they had. Azra may have been the leader originally, but someone had to take charge when he wasn't able to. "Don't you have something to mix up, Henryk?"
"The last thing Azra tasked me with was making a new batch of gunpowder."
"He had quite a few rounds on him last time I saw him," said Willem. "He's gonna burn through that cylinder quickly, and he needs more, whether he knows it or not. Finish the batch."
Henryk sighed, and slammed the door to his lab behind him. Their garden, much like the rest of the facility, didn't entirely obey the laws of reality. It was the simplest thing for Azra to control, as he was able to create seeds for various plants at will, both for food storage and for Henryk's recipes. Common monatomic materials such as Sulfur, which couldn't be easily extracted from plants for gunpowder, were created separately. The skill always returned to him within about a week, but the ability to warp the structure of the facility was much more fickle.
Soon enough, though, the group would need Azra's abilities, and he'd be forced to learn much faster than usual.