30 DAYS. 0 HOURS. 28 MINUTES.
There weren’t many ways you could go up or down the level system, since most houses didn’t allow you to travel to the levels above it, but there were government-controlled elevation buildings you could use if you had the proper paperwork.
“Come along, Cinderella.” Phyllis grabbed my hand and yanked me down the next street that widened the closer we got to the corner building ahead.
It was one of the only buildings that got any decent sunlight, and its gray brick and bronze metal were free from any sort of moss, cracks, or other floor-zero appearances and structures. I felt less at home the closer I got.
IoN whizzed by my head, his arm brushing my shoulder every now and then in comfort when Phyllis wasn’t looking, but he remained otherwise empty of himself.
Why did Phyllis bring IoN with us? She hated the steambot, thought he was a waste of money. I had a bad feeling about this.
As I stepped through the building’s grand revolving doors, I looked behind me at the crumbling street and nearly gasped. The girl was following us. Well, that made me feel less guilty about leaving her alone, at least. Her golden skin was paler than before, and I swear I saw a speck of blood on her chin from all the coughing. Whatever was wrong with her, she was going to die from it. In thirty days.
“What are you staring at?” Phyllis scolded. “Stop being such a dither-dather and come along.”
“Yes, Mother.”
She guided me to one of the terminal booths where an old steambot sat behind a high desk in the shape of a giant cog wheel chipped at the edges. I got the feeling it wasn’t due for repair anytime soon. Nothing got repaired down here.
“Papers,” the bot stated.
Phyllis handed over the two invitations that came with the letter.
The bot took the papers and stared for a moment before his eyes flashed yellow. “Please proceed to elevator eleven.”
“Come along.” Phyllis grabbed the papers and followed the signs to elevator eleven.
I trotted along behind her, trying to discreetly check on our tail who’d managed to skip past the guards and follow us up the dingy, busy path made of broken cobblestones. The building might look fancy on the outside, but it was just as rotten as the rest of floor zero.
We traversed the main path that led to all of the central elevators, passing smaller pathways that led to more specific elevators and destinations on the higher levels. Everything was dark this far down the main street, and even with the lights flickering on the walls in their swirling, bronze holders, it was getting harder to see with every step.
The next offshoot to our left flashed a sign as yellow as all the others: FLOORS 11-20 . Taking a deep breath, all three of us rushed down the much smaller path with the only sound being the whirring of IoN’s thrusters as he kept pace with Phyllis’s monster-walking speed. She shot off down the path in such a frenzy, even her hair was starting to fall out of place, and I briefly wondered if she was scared of the dark. That thought made my lips curl up. Imagine that? A level zero resident afraid of the dark. The idea was almost laughable. If I thought hard about it, though, I couldn’t remember a time when Phyllis didn’t have some sort of light on. She even slept with a pink light she clipped to the edge of her bedside.
Perhaps she really was scared of the dark.
I tucked that nugget of information away in the recesses of my mind as I looked behind us once more, but everything was too dark to make out more than a few feet of space. I hoped she was okay.
I felt for the girl. I really did. She had only thirty days to live, and by the looks of it, they weren’t going to be pleasant final moments. It was a shame; I didn’t even know her name.
The path opened into a wide, double-doored space filled with the same eerie light as back on the main path. On either side sat a steambot of some kind—ones I’d never seen before, but they seemed to be some kind of conductor.
“Please,” the one on the left said, “step inside the elevator.” It flicked a switch on its left, and I marveled at the sight that unfolded.
A massive mechanism swallowed the room, where a pillar in the center held a glass dais currently resting upon the concrete floor. Various pipes joined the walls and the pillar together, like a spider web of engineering I tried to track with my eyes but didn’t have the time to figure out. How did this thing work? Did it lift us to higher floors somehow? Was this also powered by the steam mines? It had to be.
I followed Phyllis up the two steps on to the dais with my mouth agape and my eyes wide.
I’d never left floor zero before, but I’d made Dad tell me all about the other levels he’d been to—over and over again until he’d order me to bed. The memory of him standing above me with arms crossed and a smile on his rugged face while I lay tucked in a blanket and begging him to tell me more had me as gleeful as a child once again.
Phyllis regarded me with much the same disdain as always, though I thought I saw the hint of a bemused expression in the depths of that scowl somewhere.
I stepped onto the dais with caution; I knew what could happen if even one of the internal mechanisms were faulty. Once we were safely over the line roughly painted onto the glass floor, I ummed and ahhed over the cogwork beneath our feet. You could see everything from here! The way the cogs all piled together to create one perfectly working machine whose only aim was to lift the floor—with the people on—up to the higher levels. It was simple engineering really, but it was still beyond even my imagination. I could fix things, but creating? That was left for great inventors, like the great Zimeon—he was behind the latest steamer designs. Oh, what I wouldn’t give to meet Zimeon over a steaming cup of toffee.
“Please stay behind the line and hold on to the handles provided,” the other steambot announced.
IoN settled himself onto the floor behind me while Phyllis and I grabbed a metal railing circling the central tower at waist height.
“Lifting to floor eighteen.”
As the bot pulled a lever near the gate, the entire central mechanism at my feet lit up in dim oranges, reds, and greens, and each cog turned, triggered the next cog and then the next and then the next, until the mechanism reached the central tower and the whole thing began buzzing and hissing as steam flew through its metal piping.
The floor rose a few centimeters and latched onto a thick metal pole surrounding the dais, which detached itself from the wall, and we began ascending. It was a slow ascension, but since there were no walls to prevent us from simply falling down the gap between the dais and the exterior tube, I guessed that was a good thing. I bet it could go faster with some glass walls and a seating system for the passengers.
It took about ten minutes to ascend to floor eighteen, but those ten minutes revealed more about the other floors than I’d ever learned from other people: The walls got cleaner and whiter the farther up we went, and as we gained height, the cogwork and lighting systems attached to the walls of the elevator tube got fancier. I wasn’t sure what I expected, but it left a sour taste in my mouth. They had money to throw away on fancier machines and lights and elevators, but not enough to feed us down on floor zero?
The thought made me sick.
“Welcome to floor eighteen,” another bot—identical to the pair on floor zero, if slightly shinier—said. “Please remain behind the line until the elevator completely stops.”
We waited for the whirring of the machine to end before crossing over the line, down the steps, and through the similar-looking archway. That was where the similarities stopped. Unlike floor zero, where barely any light lit the tunnels and paths, floor eighteen was pristinely white, with bronze cogs stained the same color as the girl’s bracelet built into the marble walls similar to the ones in floor zero’s temple—or maybe they really were gold cogs.
We walked through tunnel after tunnel, following the exit signs that marked the way every few feet, until we reached the foyer at the front of the building. The foyer had security guards—real, live people—checking bags and pockets before allowing anyone to pass to the floor beyond. Everywhere I looked there were people dressed in corsets, dresses, and skirts, and they were caked in so much makeup and hair product, I doubted they looked anything like their real selves. No dirt marred their features, no bones stuck out from malnourishment, and their corsets amplified their curves rather than bunched what little they had.
Even Phyllis looked uncomfortable with our surroundings, though she tried her best to hide it with courtly detachment and a polite glance at everyone we passed. No matter how hard she tried, her polite actions were getting her nowhere. These people took one look at us and sneered at our cheap clothes, imperfect faces, and hair, and then walked on, their heeled boots clicking against the marble floor.
Phyllis walked all three of us up to the nearest security line, and we waited to be seen by one of the men with the bored, uninterested looks on their faces.
“Next!”
Phyllis gave him her purse, which he sifted through before checking her pockets and person and announcing her clear.
I looked at him as I stepped forward, and he frowned.
“Bag?”
I shook my head.
He asked, “Pockets?”
I raised my hand and gestured to the rims of my dress, where two pockets lined either side.
After rummaging around both and finding them empty, he shifted me along, but he stopped IoN and scowled. “What model is that?”
Err . . . “He is an Internal OxiNexus, sir.”
He blinked at me. “A what?” His black mustache wrinkled as he frowned.
“An Internal OxiNexus. He was designed by Preston, my father.” Pride filled me as I straightened my shoulders. “He’s one of a kind, sir.”
“Well,” he said with a gruff scowl, “do you have his paperwork?”
“Paperwork?” Crap. “Not on me, no.”
“He simply cannot come onto the floor?—”
“Excuse me, sir?” Phyllis tapped him on the shoulder. “If you wouldn’t mind examining our invitation, you might find his presence requested.”
What? IoN had been invited to the meeting too? I looked at him and let out a withheld breath. Something about this didn’t feel right. No one this far up should have even known IoN existed, much less required his presence.
The guard examined the invitation and his eyes widened. “Oh, okay then.” He let us pass without any hesitation, but as I looked back, he looked at IoN with more curiosity than I was comfortable with.
Phyllis scowled at me like usual, fiddled with my dress, and tucked a stray strand of hair back behind my ear before allowing us to leave the building. When we did, the gentle breeze caressed my cheeks as something strange tingled every inch of my skin.
Sunlight!
I took deep breaths of fresh air mixed with the smell of something sweet baking. I couldn’t get enough. The walkway we were on was large with plenty of people traffic, but the steamers on this level flew high in the air—well out of everyone’s way. There were so many kinds: chug engines, balloon risers, and even a few fender fins with their wide, angular wings and open tops.
I sprinted to the edge of the path, ignoring Phyllis’s shouts of protest, and peered over the side. We were so high up, I couldn’t even see floor zero, and Seren, there were so many lights, advertisements, and signs floating in the air, attached to buildings, and even nailed to railings.
New Zimeon Engine Design Unveiled
Donuts, 10 Coins a Dozen
See the brand-new entertainment center!
See New Floor 21: Tours Available
They were allowed on floor twenty-one here? I thought only the royals and their families and servants were allowed that high. Well, it was an entire floor, and I guessed everyone there had to make a living, but I thought they were all rich enough not to have to work.
“Cinderella!” Phyllis grabbed my hand and yanked me into the nearest line of people walking down the street. “Stop gawking and start walking. We’ll be late.”
“Yes, Mother.”
Phyllis tried her best to navigate the busy streets and various signs of level eighteen, but we eventually got lost and had to ask a nearby vendor for directions. Luckily, we weren’t far and eventually made it with minimal sweating and scuffing of our dresses—much to Phyllis’s glee.
“Now, Cinderella,” she said with a grimace, “please behave in there. And let me do the talking.” She patted me on the head and looked as if she were going to say something else but decided against it.
“Yes, Mother.”
The Dome in question was a giant structure made of bronze and some black shiny stuff I’d never seen before. It was easily the biggest building here, having to be held up by at least ten building towers. Flashing on the front doors was a sign that read Zime Industries .
“Wait, Zime Industries?”
“Yes.”
They were owned and run by Zimeon, the legendary inventor. What would they want with me?
“But what?—”
“Oh, really, Cinderella. Would you just stay silent for once in your miserable life?”
I snapped my mouth shut and stifled the whine of disapproval that threatened to escape. I just wanted to know what this was all about. The closer to our meeting we got, the more I suspected this wasn’t a regular job. They had their own engineers. Why would they need me?
Upon entering the doors that were the height of ten men, Phyllis directed us straight to the reception desk. There, a woman greeted us with a warm, practiced smile. “How can I help you today?”
“Hello,” Phyllis began. “We have a meeting scheduled for nine this morning.”
“Uh-huh,” the receptionist said as she took out her book. “And what’s the name, sweetie?”
“Cinderella Ferning.”
The receptionist’s eyes widened with shock for a moment, but she quickly covered it up with that same smile. “Of course.” She waved another employee over and said, “Could you please show our guests to meeting room twenty-three?”
The blonde-haired, thin-waisted woman beamed at us in that practiced way that seemed to be all the rage up here and beckoned us forward. “Of course.” She directed us down hallways, up smaller elevators, and through so many twists, turns, and doorways, I was lost before we’d even begun. Eventually, she stopped outside an engraved metal door: MEETING ROOM 23 .