Nico found himself in the corridor. His heart was pounding in his temples and he was short of breath. The person in charge of breakfast for the sick prisoners was lying on the floor in an awkward position; the mush that had been breakfast was scattered across the corridor floor, dimly lit by oil lamps fixed to the walls. He looked right, then left, not knowing which way to go. The lamps cast a flickering light on the black ceiling and floor, which were the same everywhere, and for a moment he thought he had made a mistake.

  “Hey! You! Here!” said a young male voice, excited and amused.

  Nico turned abruptly, his shoulders stiff. He saw an eye glimmering through the crack in the door in front of him. The figure behind the door moved, trying to look through the crack with first one eye and then the other, its gaze feverish.

  “Help me,” whispered the voice. “I swear it's all a misunderstanding. I wasn't hit by the Nothing. They locked me in here by mistake.”

  For a moment, Nico stared at that single feverish eye peering through the crack, madly. He shook his head and looked around to decide what to do.

  “Hey, hey! Don't go away. Listen: if you open it for me, I... I know how to get out.”

  Nico turned back to look into those feverish, wide-open eyes. He saw the keys on the floor, next to the overturned meal trolley. He looked left and right again. The corridor stretched out long and unfamiliar in both directions.

  His hands trembled as he inserted the key into the lock. A thin, slender figure darted out of the room and threw himself into the corridor.

  "Good, good. See? I used to work here. Before these idiots decided I was infected. But I'm not! I think it's just a headache... or something I ate... anyway, come on, give me a hand with this guy. We have to lock him in your room so he doesn't raise the alarm."

  The boy was thin, with a slightly upturned nose and a sly smile that cut across his thin, almost pointed face. His feverish eyes, always on the move, shone with a restless light.

  “Hey, do I have to do all the work myself?” he blurted out, bent over, raising his feverish eyes to Nico as he held the breakfast attendant's arms outstretched, trying to pull him.

  Nico shook his head and sprang into action, grabbing the man by the legs. They pushed him into the room while, in the corridor, murmurs and shouts urging them to free the other prisoners echoed off the walls, making Nico uneasy. Through various cracks in the doors, he saw agitated eyes trying to understand what was happening.

  “You know, there's a trapdoor,” the boy began to say between snorts as they carried the breakfast attendant into Nico's room.

  “Oh, I almost forgot, I'm Peter,” he said. He let go of the unconscious boy, who fell and hit his head on the floor, and held out his hand to Nico.

  Nico raised his eyebrows, puzzled. Peter stood there with his hand outstretched. “And you?”

  “I'm Nico,” he said without thinking too much about it, then added with a sigh, “Now, would you mind giving me a hand with this?”

  “Oh, yes, yes, of course,” said Peter, rushing back to grab the unconscious boy.

  “You know, I was telling you, there's a trapdoor. They throw the bodies in there. I know because I'm the recovery guy. You know, we take them out of town, to the mass graves,” he said with a snort, “here, okay, let's leave him here,” he said, letting go and slamming the breakfast attendant's head again. He ran a hand through his tousled hair, unconcerned. “If you're not particularly sensitive, we could throw ourselves into the corpse container, wait until evening, and POOF, they'll take us out of here. Brilliant, isn't it?”

  Nico stiffened, his eyes wide, his stomach tight.

  Peter burst out laughing. “Hey! Come on, did you believe that? I was joking. The only thing that's true is that I used to work here. But now they've locked me up because they don't know how to take a joke. So they locked me up. But I'm fed up, and you're my chance to get out for some fresh air.”

  He closed Nico's door behind him and looked down the hallway in both directions, as if he hadn't said anything gruesome.

  Nico stared at him for a long second, confused. The boy's eyes were very lively, perhaps too much so.

  “Listen, some of these poor guys have been here longer than me. I want to help them before I go, okay?”

  Without waiting for an answer, Peter grabbed the keys still in his room's lock and slipped them into a slot, dropping them with a dull clink beyond a door where a huge, wide-open eye glowed, watching what Nico and Peter were doing.

  “Rosa, you take care of freeing these poor animals. I have to go,” Peter said in a suddenly theatrical voice.

  A scratchy female voice grunted in agreement, and Nico immediately heard her fiddling with the lock.

  “We'd better run,” Peter said, his tone defiant.

  “Why?” Nico asked, his mouth dry. Then he shook his head: yes, he told himself, they had to run if they wanted any chance of getting out of the tower.

  “Well, because Rosa is half troll, and trolls...” Peter didn't finish his sentence. Rosa's door burst open and a roar exploded into the hallway.

  “They must have heard her,” said Nico, dismayed.

  “Well, of course,” said Peter, pointing to the corridor on the left and starting to run. “We needed a diversion, didn't we?”

  Nico frowned, and Peter, turning to Rosa, said, “Hey, gorgeous! Don't forget the others, okay?”

  A roar from the room seemed to answer him.

  They turned the corner. Nico could feel his heart beating in his throat. “So?” Nico managed to say, “Where's the exit?”

  “It depends. If you don't mind falling several meters down a vertical shaft...”

  Nico nodded uncertainly; he didn't know what to say. Peter seemed encouraged to continue: “It's hidden behind a stone wall and opens through a small door, just wide enough for an adult man to pass through. You're slim, like me, so I don't think we'll get stuck. Unless it narrows along the way, but I honestly don't know.” Nico saw the most sincere arrogance painted on Peter's face.

  “What is it?” he asked as they turned another corner. With every step, Nico expected to see guards, nurses, surgeons... but there was no one there. Only closed doors and the thud of their footsteps on the shiny black stone floor.

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  "It's a kind of waste chute, but much more disgusting. The bottom is full of rotten livers, kidneys, and lungs that they throw away after surgery...“ said the boy with a crooked smile. ”I'm warning you: you might end up swimming in a broth of organic waste. But hey, if you feel like fake organic waste, then you're good! It's all about mimicry."

  Nico leaned forward as a retch shook his chest. Peter continued as if nothing had happened, turning another corner.

  "The Cinerary Canal doesn't actually lead outside, but to an underground combustion chamber, a huge pit... wait, I can't remember.

  What day is it today? I don't know if it's on. No, not today... at least I don't think so. Anyway, what was I saying?"

  “Are you crazy?” Nico blurted out.

  Peter laughed. "I was joking! Come on, you look too funny when you're scared. But this time I'm serious: I really work here. I wasn't a prisoner. They locked me up just because... I don't know, they think I'm ‘unstable’. But you seem like a nice person, and you came here voluntarily to get treatment. I'm sure you'll come back tomorrow, after clearing your head with a walk. So why not let yourself out for a bit?"

  “I'm not going back,” Nico huffed irritably as he ran. “Why should I go back when I'm fine?”

  Peter shrugged. “It's your business, I don't care.”

  Peter slammed on the brakes and Nico crashed into him. “Come on,” Peter whispered. “This way.”

  He dragged him into a side corridor, darker than the rest of the tower. They came to a small round room, where a structure of ropes, pulleys, and a suspended wooden platform enclosed by iron bars hung from the ceiling.

  “This, my boy, is an elevator,” Peter said proudly.

  Nico nodded, a little unsure about the instability of the structure.

  Peter looked at him curiously. “Ever been on one of these?”

  Nico nodded and climbed onto the platform. The wood swayed under his feet and he instinctively grabbed a bar to regain his balance.

  Peter climbed onto the platform with him, closed the metal door made of iron bars, and grabbed a bell, which he rang decisively.

  As they descended slowly and gently, the room began to disappear as the stone walls slid past them, black, smooth, without a single crack. Nico found himself asking, more to break the awkward silence than out of real curiosity, “What powers this thing? Is it magic?”

  Peter laughed. “Sure, they use a couple of silly spells: one is called Peppe and the other Giorgio,” he continued to laugh.

  Nico blurted out, “So what do we do? They'll find us.”

  Peter laughed again. “Leave it to me. Remember?” he said, touching his forehead framed by unruly locks of hair. “I work here.”

  “You worked here...” Nico murmured.

  Peter laughed. “Yes, but don't worry, this place is huge. No one knows I was fired.”

  “But didn't they keep you here because you showed signs of illness?”

  Peter shrugged. “Okay, you got me: they fired me, I didn't know where to go, so I pretended to be a patient. The orderlies here are dumb as flies, and all you have to do is escape the healing surgeons when they arrive.”

  Nico frowned. “How do you escape the healing surgeons if you're locked in your room?”

  Peter raised his eyebrows and fixed his lively eyes on Nico's. “I have my methods,” he said, amused.

  The platform touched down.

  Two large, burly men with dull eyes and sleepy faces stared first at Nico, then at Peter.

  “Hey, guys, still here? When does your shift end?” said Peter.

  The two looked at each other with watery eyes as big as saucers, then went back to staring at them. Behind them, a door was half open. Peter started walking toward the door, still talking, and Nico followed him, his heart pounding in his ears.

  “They make you work grueling shifts and pay you peanuts,” said Peter. “You guys are the hardest workers here. Forget surgeons and healers: you save lives, you know that? If it weren't for you... do you know how many people, including surgeons, would drop dead on the stairs? BAM, dead as a doornail.”

  The sad smiles of the two hulks broadened into satisfied grins.

  Peter continued, “Take me, for example. I was the lowest of the low, a kitchen scullery boy...”

  Nico frowned, remembering that Peter had told him he was the corpse attendant, but let it go: maybe it was one of his jokes.

  “...and then one day, BAM, he's no longer welcome and Peter ends up out on the street, penniless. Does that seem normal to you?”

  The two looked at him puzzled. One of them narrowed his eyes and asked, “So you don't work here anymore?”

  “Um, well... Let's just say... Bye!” Peter shouted, walking out the door with lively eyes and a sharp smile.

  Nico followed him while Peppe and Giorgio decided what to do, watching them leave with teary eyes.

  “This way,” said Peter, turning a corner to avoid a couple of men in white coats walking with papers under their arms.

  “It gets more complicated here. There are the kitchens and the refectory. If someone who went to breakfast catches us, we're screwed,” said Peter, smiling. Nico was irritated by this reckless behavior, but said nothing.

  “This way,” said Peter, slipping into a well-lit corridor and adjusting his gray jacket and hair, as if to make himself more presentable.

  “Do as I do,” he whispered. “Let's pretend we're kitchen scullions.”

  Nico nodded and adjusted himself to look neater.

  They passed a ten-year-old girl carrying two baskets of onions. She was wearing a brown robe with an apron of the same color. She stared at them with wide, astonished eyes, then continued on her way. Shortly after, they saw a boy, also dressed in brown, carrying crates of fruit and vegetables.

  Nico noticed the colors: white for the healing surgeons, white with a dark belt for the apprentices, brown for the servants. He looked at the tunic he was wearing: gray, for the sick, he thought as his stomach tightened.

  The man with the crates stared at them and stopped. “But you don't...” he said, uncertain.

  Peter, with a sudden movement, threw the crates into the air and shouted, “Run!”

  They started running while the man shouted, “They're sick! Fugitives! Stop them!”

  “Come on!” said Peter, turning a corner. “This is the kitchen way. The waste chute is nearby. If we find the trapdoor open, we're out.”

  “This isn't another one of your jokes, is it?” asked Nico, turning toward three people who, realizing the situation, were starting to chase them.

  Peter laughed: “We'll slide right in, straight into the food scraps. Um, and a few other things. But I don't want to spoil the surprise!”

  Nico didn't have time to reply. The trapdoor was really there, wide open, with a grate moved to one side.

  He saw Peter slide in and, without turning around, followed suit.

  He fell a couple of meters into the darkness and landed on something soft and nauseating. Lumps of food, peels, foul-smelling scraps.

  The smell of rot and dampness made him gag again; he put his hand to his mouth.

  Peter laughed, breathing in deeply. “Ah, how wonderful the smell of rot in the morning.”

  He looked at Nico, who was staring at him in amazement, his mouth open and his eyes wide, then the two burst out laughing.

  They slipped out of the huge container that looked like a food bin. Others were nearby, all empty. Nico imagined that they emptied the trash at night.

  He followed Peter blindly down a dark corridor. A door creaked loudly.

  The early morning light blinded his eyes, accustomed to darkness; he instinctively covered his face with his hand, then, having adjusted to the light, he breathed in the fresh air that entered his lungs, invigorating him instantly.

  The square was already bustling with activity. Someone pointed at them in surprise, then...

  A group of attendants in white tunics and dark belts appeared in front of them.

  “Get them!” someone shouted, pointing at Nico and Peter.

  [AUTHOR'S NOTE]

  Log updated: critical sequences detected.

  Readers are invited to provide comments on narrative anomalies and evaluate the behavior of subject N_01.

  [LOG_024] will be released on Monday ET.

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  Log closed: The system observes.