Chapter 1: Unlit

She pressed “8” on the bronze panel.

The button didn’t light.

It never did.

Her hand hovered over the largest button at the bottom.

Then Heather pressed “6.”

The elevator rose with a gentle jolt.

The car smelled faintly of lemon cleaner and metal warmed by age. The mirrored panels were scratched at hip height along both sides, the kind of marks left not by violence but by years of ordinary contact: bags, elbows, the slow accumulation of people moving through a space without thinking about it. Someone had once tried to polish the brass rail and stopped halfway. The unfinished half had dulled back to the same patina as the rest.

Heather watched her reflection distort as the car climbed.

Half-bell.

Five.

Half-bell.

Six.

The doors opened onto a corridor that held its silence the way old buildings do, not empty, but settled. The hallway ran north and south from the elevator bank, its sconces casting warm, uneven light along walls papered in a pattern of small repeating shapes, darkened at the seams where decades of humidity had worked its way beneath.

The carpet absorbed her footsteps completely.

❧

Floor Six was quiet in the morning.

Three doors along the north hall stood open. One on the south. Light moved through the open ones in long, angled bands, catching dust that had no particular reason to settle.

A stack of magazines sat beside the kitchenette sink in the common room. A half-finished painting leaned against the wall with wide strokes of orange bleeding into gray, the brush still balanced across the rim of a jar of clouded water.

Haley stood barefoot in the hallway, brushing her hair.

“You went exploring?” she asked without looking.

“Just to see,” Heather said.

“Anything different?”

Heather shrugged. “No.”

Haley tied her hair back. “There never is.”

Heather walked past her into the shared kitchen. The bread bag was folded tight with a rubber band. A jar of peanut butter sat open on the counter, knife balanced across the rim.

“Gross,” Heather muttered.

Tony was at the table with a book open in front of him. He wasn’t reading. He looked up. His eyes were clearer than they had been the month he arrived.

“What did you find this time?” he asked.

Heather didn’t answer.

Tony watched her for a moment, then returned to the page without turning it.

❧

Heather finished her muffin and wiped her hands on a towel that had been folded too neatly to disturb.

She glanced down the hallway toward the elevator bank.

The doors were closed. They were always closed when she looked.

Tony stood in the doorway of his room.

“You’re thinking about it again,” he said.

She didn’t deny it.

“You ever wonder who’s coming next?” she asked.

Tony didn’t look toward the elevator. “I don’t think about it.”

Heather frowned slightly.

Tony shrugged. “Just hope it’s not another me.”

Heather walked to the window. Outside, the city moved. Cars. A bus. A young man sat alone against the wall of a nearby building, folded into himself against the cold.

She wondered if that was what Tony meant.

Then didn’t.

She rested her hand against the glass.

The building hummed softly around her.

It always did.

❧