/
A stiff, cold atmosphere has permeated the elevator. The moment Suits pressed the button in the elevator, it starts moving. Not up, though, but down.
“Just as we thought…” Suits says, “the elevator buttons do not correspond to their supposed floors.”
No one followed up, not even Teen. Suits seems used to his companion’s coldness, though, nor does he care much about the other Missiontakers.
The elevator runs for about three seconds, so about two or three storeys later, it stops. Then, the elevator door opens.
The Missiontakers are on high alert.
Though it is quiet out there. There are no madmen. It doesn’t look like there are many dangers here either. After the elevator has opened, what is revealed is a scenery not unlike that of the 36th floor.
Messed up office cubicles, charred window frames, a silently burning city beyond the window. There is almost a tragic sense of beauty to this scene of a city if frozen in frame… Heartbreaking as it is.
“Is this…” Fei asks with a soft voice, “safe?”
Suits replies, “it looks so.”
So the Missiontakers leave the elevator, but just in case, only Suits, Fei and Jiang Shuangmei entered the floor first, so that nothing might happen to the elevator while they are all gone.
Later, Suits discovers something, and alerts the rest of the Missiontakers.
“There is another elevator stopped on this floor,” Suits says, “we must now decide whether to switch to this one.”
Teen says, unprompted, “this is the first run, so we should stick to the original elevator… Hm, let’s call it Elevator One.
We do not know where Elevator Two here might take us to, and we still have yet to figure out where all four buttons on One lead us to, so I’m against switching.
If nothing else, we can finish checking all four buttons before coming to this elevator.”
‘Can’ is the word he uses, but his tone suggests otherwise.
Jiang Shuangmei has had enough, and says, “why don’t we just split up?”
Suits and Teen shares a look, then they both turn towards her.
She speaks with a genuine tone of mockery, “you and I both hate being with each other, so let’s split up, then we’ll both be happier.
We won’t necessarily be able to solve the Nightmare in the first run, so we can just exchange information by the second run. How’s that? I believe we will not be withholding information to ourselves.”
Jiang Shuangmei said that because one, she knows she wouldn’t lie; two, while she doesn’t have much goodwill for these Missiontakers from the higher floors, given how arrogant they’ve been, she finds it unlikely they’d go so far as to deceive them.
Most importantly, she really wants to spend no more time with the two. She’s worried she won’t be able to hold her fists back.
Suits seem hesitant to say something, but Teen just nods to say, “sure, then let’s do it this way. Three each,” he turns to Mystic to announce, “you’ll come with us.”
Jiang Shuangmei “…”
How discriminatory are you towards them Missiontakers of the bottom floor?!
Mystic looks at Teen hesitantly, but then she murmurs, “necessary… it is necessary…”
Then she slowly drifts along to Suits and Teen.
Fei and Shen YĂźnjĂź seem complacent with the arrangement as well.
With the team split, they finally get to exploring the floor proper.
This is a safe floor, is the conclusion the Missiontakers come to after spending some time around. Though safe also implies that there isn’t much clue to go on.
“Do you remember the madmen of ‘floor seven’?” Suits asks after some thought, “what drove them to madness? Why were they killing each other?”
Jiang Shuangmei was about to ask about the ‘each other’ part when she suddenly recalled, that on the hands, faces and even mouths of those people were traces of blood. It couldn’t have been Missiontakers’ blood here, right? So naturally, the Missiontakers can conclude that it’s the product of their fighting.
Jiang Shuangmei feels slightly unhappy right now. She feels like she has at least been to the higher floors with her older sister once, but now it feels like her intelligence is being ousted as subpar.
She asks, “could it be hunger?”
Based on the fact that there is blood around the madmen’s mouths, she suspects they may be eating each other.
Suits remains silent for a bit, then seems to realise that this is merely a possible hypothesis, so he responds to it, “that’s not the point I’m trying to say. The problem is, why? What caused the conflict in the building? If it is hunger, so much that they are committing cannibalism and turning into savages, then why did they not leave the building? And why… did they go mad?”
Jiang Shuangmei has no answers to give, so she murmurs, “this is probably touching at the truth in this Nightmare already.”
Suits glances at her, but doesn’t say another word.
… Jiang Shuangmei knows that he is questioning her IQ once again, but this time, she feels too tired to come up with an excuse. She suddenly wonders, if it could be the case, that her older sister, really did spoil her too much?
But she really can’t think of any explanation!
Maybe these two Missiontakers from the higher floors really do have different logic pathways in their brains. She pays more attention to the immediately phenomena in the Nightmare, and wish to resolve the Nightmare as soon as possible; Missiontakers from the higher floors, though, seem determined to figure out the truth behind the Nightmare instead.
A different motivation causes a difference in opinion and understanding.
They reach the stairwell, but they do not see Lin Qin or Wu Jian who should be descending the stairs. Perhaps they have already reached a lower floor.
“… This is, the 24th floor,” Suits says, “there is an elevator each on both the 36th and 24th floor.”
Fei asks, “could it be a pattern that holds?”
Suits shakes his head.
It is too early to tell. There are only four elevators in total in the elevator shaft situated at the elevator lobby, but they still haven’t found out the two elevators yet.
Also, a skyscraper like this usually has more than four elevators by design. Either additional elevators, or perhaps elevators for goods.
They run another detailed sweep through the floor, and finally, under the dim lighting, they manage to make a detour somewhere in the offices, and pass through a fire safety door to find the elevator well for two cargo-used elevators. No elevators can be seen or called here, though.
“So six elevators in total,” Fei concludes, wondering, “though if there are only a few usable buttons in every single one of them, who knows when we’ll be able to get to the 1st floor to leave the building.”
Then, she reflexively stops.
Once again, she is recalling the Tower──This Nightmare, in a sense, is oddly corresponding with the situation in the Tower, although they only need to take the elevators here, while in the Tower, they must complete Nightmares one by one, forever and ever.
Though, wouldn’t that unknown risk of the elevator door opening also feel like stumbling into an unknown Nightmare?
Thinking so, something suddenly flashes through Fei’s mind.