“The stillness? No. I wasn’t involved in it.” He stopped beside a thick metal door and rested his hand on it. “But I know how it happened. It’s a long story. Let’s get you dry and fed first, all right?”
Clare nodded mutely.
The ID badge came out again, and Peter swiped over the black box beside the handle. After a quiet beep and a green light, Peter shoved open the door and stood back for them to enter. “Well, here we are. The closest thing I have to home now.”
The room was larger than Clare had expected. It wrapped along that half of the tower in a rectangular shape, with close to twenty windows overlooking the city. Most of the blinds had been closed or angled so that light could come in but the occupants couldn’t look out. She could guess why. Spending weeks staring down at the mass of hollows surrounding him would be a poor way to live.
Furniture had been arranged in the area haphazardly. Desks were propped against walls or standing free in the room’s centre. Most held dead laptops, stacks of binders, and reams of notepaper. A jumble of mismatched couches were arranged into a circle near a kitchenette against the back wall. Bookcases had been stacked anywhere there was room. Most held textbooks and hefty nonfiction titles, but Clare was surprised to see an odd assortment of fiction novels and board games mixed into them. Evidence that the room had been lived in was everywhere. Jackets and scarves hung over the backs of chairs. A pillow had been unceremoniously stuffed between a computer monitor and the painted brick wall. Chip packets and candy wrappers—the kind she expected to come out of vending machines—lay across the floor.
“Sorry,” Peter mumbled as he kicked an empty chip packet under a desk. “Bit messy…”
Clare tucked a strand of wet hair behind her ear. “It’s not what I expected. For a lab, I mean.”
“Oh, yeah, this is just our work area. The actual labs are in the floor above us. It’s much more, eh, official up there. This is just where we developed our ideas. Or came to relax.” Peter opened a cupboard near the door. “Aspect was pretty accommodating. They believed that the best ideas came from environments with no boundaries, so they let us get away with a lot. There are bathrooms and showers on the opposite side of the hallway, along with bunks for anyone who needed to spend the night here. Intended for time-sensitive projects, but of course, a few of us were lazy enough to just live here.”
Inside the cupboard was a medley of clothes. On one side were lab coats and white singlets. On the other were what Clare could only imagine were lost-and-found items, including scarves and rain jackets. She glimpsed a man-sized purple onesie with rabbit ears. Peter quickly shoved it aside and dug through the lab coats. “All right… this should fit you, I think.” He tossed a singlet and coat into Clare’s arms then squinted up at Dorran. “Big guy, aren’t you? Try this. It’ll probably fit. Tell me if it doesn’t.”
Dorran wordlessly accepted the clothes.
Peter ducked past them and dug through the stacks of paper on one of the desks. “We weren’t supposed to leave these lying around, but people did. Never thought I’d be grateful for lousy standards, eh?”
He held out two of the lanyards. Clare took the one offered to her. It displayed the photo of a plump red-haired man named Michael Billings. She glanced at Dorran’s. His was from Pauline Rosch.
“Bathrooms are this way.” Peter pulled open the door and pointed to the signs on the opposite side of the hall. “There are showers if you want. Towels in the cupboards. We don’t have any hollows on this floor, so you don’t need to worry about that. I’ll go foraging for some food. Just let yourself back in when you’re ready.”
Without waiting for a response, he turned to the stairs and began jogging down, his bronze hair bouncing with each step. Clare watched him disappear, the lab coat draped over one arm and the ID badge clasped tightly in the other. She glanced at Dorran and lowered her voice. “He’s a bit of a whirlwind, isn’t he?”
Dorran looked exhausted. He glanced down at the clothes he held. “I’m not that big.”
Behind them were two doors: one for the women’s bathroom and one for the men’s. Clare nodded to the nearest door, the women’s. “Can we stick together? I don’t really want to be alone in this place.”
“Yes. Please.”
The door beeped as Clare used her badge to let them in. The bathroom was spacious bordering on excessive, with a shower larger than the one in Clare’s old home, a double vanity unit, and a vase holding fake and slightly dusty flowers. Clare put her clothes on the sink then went digging through the cupboards for towels.
“Are you okay?” Dorran leaned his hip against the sink’s edge, his dark eyes following Clare’s movements.
“Yeah.” It was a lie, but she felt compelled to cling to it. In reality, Clare’s insides were in turmoil, tied up so tightly that she felt like she might be sick. She’d installed so much hope into the tower—hope about what it might hold and what it might mean—that the reality felt like a punch to the stomach. There was no colony of survivors. Just one man. No forming resistance. Just a monolithic tomb. No Beth. No hope.
Dorran lifted Clare’s hand and tenderly kissed its back. Then he pulled her closer and wrapped her in a hug.
“I know I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up.” She mumbled the words into his wet jacket, not even sure if he could understand her. “Of course Beth didn’t make it here. I just…”
“I know. It still hurts.”
Clare blinked burning tears back. She refused to let them fall. Dorran needed her to be strong. But now that she had time to collect her thoughts, they were turning in a dark direction. The tower was surrounded. “Dorran… how are we going to leave?” She closed her eyes. “Can we leave?”
He didn’t immediately answer. All Clare could hear were the faint hum of the lights and the irregular drip of water hitting the tile floor. Then he exhaled. “I do not have any answers. But don’t give up hope. We are safe for the moment. We can rest. And if this man is to be trusted, we will know more soon. I do not think he wanted company here simply because he was lonely. There must be some greater purpose. Hold on to hope, my darling.”
Clare nodded. Dorran pulled back just far enough to kiss her lips. It was soft and lingering, and for those few seconds, Clare let herself fall into the sense of security he gave her. She and Dorran separated reluctantly and turned to getting dry.
They faced away from each other as they rushed to undress and get into the new clothes. That floor felt warmer than the ground level, but Clare was still shivering by the time she tied off her new crisp white pants. She pulled the lab coat over the singlet and glanced at herself in the mirror. If she’d had a pair of glasses and her hair had been dry and tied back, she would have looked like she’d stepped out of a pharmaceutical ad.
Dorran buttoned his own coat. He pulled off the impression better than Clare did, with his dark hair swept back and his heavy brows. He flashed her a tired smile and picked up their wet clothes.
Clare collected their waterlogged boots. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
Barefoot, they left the bathroom. Clare used her badge to let them back into the main office area.