Then I head for the staircase.
In a heartbeat, Kingston is after me—so quickly it’s unsettling—but I ignore it.
“Where are you going?” he murmurs, his tone as sharp as a library-level whisper can be.
I don’t answer. I walk to the end of the reading room, to the alcove with the printers and copiers, toward the back stairs
“Gwenna.” The urgency in Kingston’s voice ticks up. “Where are you?—”
I whirl around.
“I want to see it, okay?”
For the first time all day, I meet his eyes.
Really meet them.
And it hurts.
“I want to see what happened.”
Kingston is stock still. Then?—
“Gwenna, no.”
It’s too late; I’m through the door, I’m descending the stairs.
“Gwenna!”
It’s not a shout, not quite, but it sounds loud enough in the cavern of the stairwell. I don’t care; I can barely hear anything over my heartbeat now anyway.
Ground floor. A-Level.
It’s empty in the lower levels stairwell, of course. Echoing, buzzing with fluorescents, nothing but the sound of my feet pounding down the concrete steps an
B-Level.
The same door is still there, the glass window papered over. I don’t know what I was expecting—caution tape, a big DO NOT ENTER sign—but there’s none of that.
I suppose it’s been long enough.
Before Kingston can catch up to me—although, what would he do? Shove me away? Physically restrain me from going in?—I grab the doorknob and twist it.
Eyes closed, I brace myself.
Piles of ashes on shelves. Scorch marks lashing every wall. Charred, curling pages on the few survivors.
Eyes open, I see…
Nothing.
There is nothing here.
I fumble for the timer switch, which, to my surprise, flares to life, and washes everything in white, bright light.
It’s not empty. Not strictly speaking. The fixtures are still in place—the tall gray boxes of moveable shelving to the left, the structure that was once my alcove to the right, even a dead EXIT sign with darkened letters above the entrance door—but that’s all.
It’s been swept clean and sterilized. Hollowed out. Anything that made this a library, an archive, a place with something to find, is completely gone.
