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The Kavach Building flickered before them. A ripple of brilliant color raced around the building like a New Year’s Eve light show, and it was gone. The dead air shook with its sudden absence.

The Lord of All Things roared its anger. The heretical machine, the machine that kept nature from taking its course, had vanished. The way was sealed.

The faithful had failed.

Andrew felt a wave of nervousness wash over him as his god’s wrath became known. Still, he knew he was favored. He was blessed for all he had done, and the proof was that he stood in the presence of the Great One itself.

He closed his good eye and angled his face to the sky. He raised his arms and smiled as he felt his god’s love wrap around him and lift him up.

It was the most wonderful day ever.

“Did we make it?”

Nate heard Debbie’s question, but didn’t know how to answer it. His arms were wrapped around Veek and hers around him. He could smell her hair and the masculine shampoo she used because it was cheaper.

He opened his eyes and they were sticky with blood. Veek shifted in his arms and he got one of his hands up to wipe his eyelids as best he could.

Xela yelped. “We’re not dead,” she announced. “My leg still hurts like all hell.”

“You and me both,” muttered Veek, putting her hand on her stomach.

Nate sat up. The seven of them were sprawled on the floor of Clive and Debbie’s apartment. Blood streaked their faces. Around them, the brainchild of Aleksander Koturovic and Nikola Tesla hummed as it had for over a century.

“Dark out,” said Roger.

“No,” said Debbie. She was smiling. “There’s a building in the way.”

They got up and staggered to the shattered window like a pack of grinning drunks. A wall of rust-colored bricks faced them, even darker in the twilight hours. They looked up and saw a little girl staring back at them. She waved at the strange looking grown-ups and they all waved back.

“Hang on,” said Veek. Her phone was powering up, and Nate saw a spinning icon as it tried to sync itself with the network it had been separated from. She let out a little laugh. “It’s Tuesday night,” she said. “We’ve been gone for four days.”

“Fuck,” said Roger. “So gonna get fired.”

They hugged each other and laughed. And after a few minutes, some of the laughter became tears.

* * *

Roger got fired, but found a new job by the end of the week. Veek had been fired, too, but didn’t care. By a stroke of luck, Clive didn’t have any work scheduled for the days they’d been somewhere else. Debbie and Xela both had classes to catch up on.

There was no other sign anyone had noticed their absence. No news crews. No police activity. No concerned notes. Somehow the Kavach Building had kept its presence in the real world even as it carried them somewhere else. The other tenants who hadn’t crossed over were more concerned with the sudden wave of vandalism—half the windows broken, the front door wrecked, and the steps cracked in three places.

The bodies vanished from the slab of concrete in the back. Aside from the blood in the hallway, there was no sign of them. Once Nate and Veek mopped the halls, even that was gone.

They found sheets of plywood out back by the now-restored fence. Clive put them over the broken windows.

Debbie went to Health Services on her campus and learned Andrew had cracked two of her teeth. She couldn’t afford crowns so they were both pulled. The gap was far enough down her jawline it didn’t show, but she talked with a lisp for a few days.

Xela also went to Health Services and said she’d been injured while moving an oversized picture frame. The doctor told her she was lucky the glass had missed arteries, berated her for taking so long to get it checked, and explained it was too late for stitches. She was going to end up with a scar. Her leg was wrapped and taped. He said to keep it clean and gave her a pair of aluminum crutches along with a bottle of Vicodin.

Nate’s hip got better and the bloodshot eyes he and Roger shared healed up in a week. For most of that time Veek had a grapefruit-sized bruise just under her ribs and winced whenever she laughed or breathed too hard.

Mandy was past her shock and well into denial. She’d sat silently in Debbie and Clive’s apartment for almost a day after they got back. Then she got up and walked back to her apartment. Two days later Nate saw her on the stairs and she acted confused when he asked how she was doing. “I fell down and hit my head,” she told him. “That’s all. Nothing else happened.”

He decided not to push it.

They went up one night to watch the sunset, but the roof was a different place without the wooden deck. It didn’t feel the same for a number of reasons. One of the big ones being the lack of a retired publisher-who-wasn’t-a-publisher.

Nate and Veek stayed together every night. They worked in his room and slept in hers. Her room was once again at a constant sixty-nine degrees. Sometimes, late at night, they talked about the machinery in the walls and the things on the other side.

One night they talked about Andrew and the Family of the Red Death.

Two weeks passed. And when they couldn’t avoid the issue any longer, they all met in the lounge.

* * *

“Rent’s due the day after tomorrow,” said Nate. “Someone’s going to notice Oskar’s missing, if they haven’t already.”

“What if we all just put our checks under his door?” offered Xela.

“Don’t think that’ll cut it,” said Roger. “Anyone’s gonna know something’s up.”

Nate nodded. “I’m just thinking...” He paused and wondered if there was a better way to phrase his suggestion. Veek knew what was coming and squeezed his hand. “I’m thinking maybe no one wants to be here this weekend.”

Debbie raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

“Because I think there are going to be a lot of questions,” said Nate, “and I don’t think we’re going to be able to answer them.”

“You think we should all move?” asked Clive.

“I just think you should all be somewhere else,” Nate said. “Go stay with friends out of town for a night or two.”

Roger shook his head. “Just come looking for us, won’t they?”

“Yeah,” said Xela. “I mean, this is all super-secret government stuff, right?”

“They won’t,” said Nate. “Because they’re going to find me.”

“No,” said Clive.

Debbie shook her head. “Nope,” she said.

“It’ll be okay,” said Nate.

“Why you, bro?”

“Because I’m the guy in charge,” Nate said. “Remember?”

“Captain goes down with his ship,” snorted Clive. “That’s messed up.”

Nate shrugged. “I owe it to Tim,” he said. “And Oskar and Mrs. Knight. They’re all dead because...because of what we started. They deserve a little bit of...I don’t know. Justice? Peace?” He shrugged again. “You can stay if you want. But you don’t have to, and I won’t blame you if you don’t.”

Veek squeezed his hand. Xela reached out and grabbed the other one. The surviving tenants of the Kavach Building’s trip to the other side took each other’s hands and said nothing for a few minutes.

“You know what I want?” said Nate, breaking the spell. “I want to be around people. Lots of people.”

“Yes,” said Debbie. “Somewhere that smells good.”

“Thai food,” said Roger. He patted his backside and his hand came back with a wallet. “On me.”

“I want to change my shirt real quick,” said Xela.

“It’s just the Thai place,” said Clive.

“I’ve got paint on me,” said the blue-haired woman. “And I stink.”

“I should change, too,” said Debbie.

“Yeah,” said Nate. “I could grab a different shirt.”

“Fine,” said Roger. “Five minutes, in the lobby. If you’re all not there, I’m going without you and eating eggrolls alone.”

“You’ll wait,” said Xela. She kissed his cheek.

“Not for eggrolls,” said Roger.

Nate squeezed Veek’s hand and climbed up the back staircase. He looked at his door, 28, then turned to look at Mandy’s. He turned his head down the hall to 26. He half-expected to see Tim there, giving him a casual wave. His eyes drifted down, staring through the floor to impossible apartment 14. He opened the door and tried to remember if his favorite striped shirt—his deep space shirt—was clean. Then he froze.

There was a man in a dark suit waiting inside his apartment.

The man was standing next to the entertainment center. Nate realized he was examining the DVD collection. His hand was out and he was inching a case out as a place marker.

He had black hair, cut conservative-short, with a bit of gray streaked through it, but not enough to look old. His nose was a little large, his eyes a little small, but neither enough to stand out. He was the same height as Nate, just under six feet tall, and had a body that showed enough time in the gym to keep off the pounds. The kind of guy who would blend effortlessly into any crowd if not for his sharp suit.

“Hello, Nate,” said the man. “I figured it was time we had a talk. Rent’s almost due, after all.”

“Who are you?”

The man gestured at the entertainment center. “You’re old enough to remember before DVDs, right? Back when you’d visit someone and learn about them by what was on their bookshelves. Don’t get me wrong, I love my movies, but it’s harder to get a good grasp of somebody with them. Movie tastes always seem a bit random.” His mouth formed a tight, professional smile. “You’ve got seventeen of the same ones I do.”

“I asked who you are,” Nate said. He tried to sound confident.

“We’re on the same side,” said the man. “That’s probably the most important thing right now, isn’t it? After all you’ve gone through, I bet you’re not too keen on trusting strangers right now, are you?”

“Not particularly.”

“If it helps, the FBI has arrested all the top members of the Family, and most of the congregation’s been detained for questioning. The ones that aren’t being locked up forever are heading for years of federally-funded therapy.”

“Really?”

The man nodded.

“So who are you?”

He put up a hand and shook his head. “Let’s not complicate things with names. Speaking of which, is it okay if I call you Nate? Overt familiarity’s a curse of the job. Would you be more comfortable with Nathan? Mr. Tucker, maybe?”

“Nate’s fine.”

“Great.” He took a long look at Nate. “You know, I’ve got to be honest. Part of me has been dreading this.”

“Dreading what?”

“You,” said the man. “I’ve been dreading the day I had to meet you. I’ve been waiting years for it, but now that it’s here...” He shook his head and then gave a shrug.

“You’ve been waiting...for me?”

“Well, not you specifically. If you’ll pardon the melodrama, I knew this day was going to come, and I knew I’d be having this conversation with someone. I’m glad it’s you, Nate.”

A moment stretched out between them.

“You’re Locke Management,” said Nate. “You’re who puts out the ads and hires the actresses and all that.”

“Guilty as charged.”

“You decide who lives here.”

He gave another calm nod.

“So, you’re...what? Some government agency that protects the building?”

The man in the suit shook his head. “I never said I was with the government.”

“You’re not?”

“For the record, I haven’t said that, either. Really, I could just be another actor hired to play a role.” His mouth formed a pleasant smile that felt sincere, but also a bit too practiced for Nate’s liking. “Besides, it’s not like the building needs much protecting, is it? Not with folks like you living here.”

“People
died
here,” snapped Nate. A wave of frustration washed over him. “Fuck, people have been dying here since this place was built.
Because
of this place.”

“Yes,” said the man, “they have. A lot more than you probably know about.”

“Why haven’t you studied it? If you had some kind of…back-up building or something, or if people
knew
about it, none of this ever would’ve happened.”

“We’ve tried to study it,” said the man, “and we’ve managed to copy some elements. That’s why you’ve got a room full of replacement parts downstairs. There are light bulbs, too, if you want to swap out the ones in the tunnels.”

“But that’s nothing,” said Nate. “It’s minor stuff. That’s like trying to copy an airplane and coming away with how to make tires.”

The man put up his hands. “It’s the best we can do. You can’t examine an airplane in mid-flight, especially the engine.”

“The right people could.”

“They probably could,” the man agreed. “There are some electronic and mechanical geniuses out there. The problem is recruiting them. I’m sure you’ll agree, we have good reason to keep this building as secret as possible.”