Get in The Elevator Sophia!

Morning arrived as I rustled under my covers coming to a yawning awakening. Last night had been a really enjoyable time despite all this stuff on my mind. I didn’t end up telling Tikki everything yesterday, I didn’t wanna ruin the special moment. Besides that I’m also just a coward.

I slid out of bed and changed into my outfit for the day. I dug in my vanity drawer and removed a pill from my colored pencil box, ingesting it hunched over like a gremlin. I don’t think there is any way for MGI to be watching me in my room, but it wasn’t something I was gonna risk. They can just go ahead and assume every morning I’m nibbling on pencil lead because I’m an odd girl.

I walked out my door, made a quick glance to make sure there were no notes on the door, then headed down the hall to the elevator. I arrived last with Clarice and Tikki already seated for the morning meeting.

I waved a greeting and they both greeted me with a “Morning!” and “Good morning Sophia!” respectively.

I took a seat between them in the empty chair they had left open. I glanced around for Miss Gretchen but she didn’t seem to be here right now. Maybe she’s out smoking in the parking garage? Well, usually she’d just smoke in here so surely she wouldn’t go to all that effort this time. It’s not a big deal, just gives us all some time to talk before she arrives.

Is now the right time to try and talk to Tikki? No, it’s too risky with Gretchen potentially around any corner. Plus, there’s no telling what sort of monitoring there is in the elevators, hallway, and rooms of the lower non-dorm floors.

“Gosh.” Tikki broke the silence with her exclamation. “Either or you feel like it’s kinda really hot in here, or is it just me?”

“Well, summer is coming around the corner, maybe it is warmer?” Clarice proposed.

“The room temperature is within three degrees of what it has been for the last month.” King stated, shaking his head and body.

“ARE YOU FEELING ILL?” I ask, holding my board up.

“Uh-” Tikki’s eyes darted down, “No, surely not. I’m fine! I just feel a little toasty is all.”

It was odd to hear a girl who’s often on fire suddenly being affected by a slight increase in temperature. “IF YOU START TO FEEL WORSE LET US KNOW. I WILL NURSE YOU BACK TO HEALTH!” I held up with my most serious face.

“Guh! You’re so cute Sophia!” She leaps onto me wrapping her arm and stump around me rubbing against me with affection. She pulls back after a moment, “Oh I’ve got an old nurse costume I could make you wear while taking care of me! Oh I bet you’d just be the cutest little thing! Perhaps getting sick is the best fortune I’ve had in quite some time!” She began to laugh. She sounded healthy, so I felt better.

“Gretchen still hasn’t shown up.” Clarice pointed out.

“Huh.”Tikki looked over at the door, “That is pretty odd. It should be that time to begin right now.”

I scribbled on my board, “DOES SHE EVER FORGET TO LET US KNOW ABOUT CANCELED MEETINGS?”

Clarice and Tikki chuckled slightly. “If that woman planned to cancel she would have put notes on our doors late last night on her way out to wherever she goes.” Clarice shrugged. “I’ve never seen her forget, something must be up.”

“We should go look for her!” Tikki decided, standing up and walking out of the room back towards the elevator.

Clarice and I followed her lead walking to the elevators. We stopped and waited as Tikki reached down and pressed the elevator button, but it did not light up. She looked at it with a puzzled expression, then tried pressing it again. Still, no response. “Something seems to be wrong with the elevator!” Tikki exclaimed, saying what we were all thinking.

“Weird, it worked just a few minutes ago?” King rubbed his face in a thoughtful way.

Clarice placed her face up against the closed doors. She placed her eye on the crack trying to look between them as she smeared some of her messy eyeliner. “Hey, I can see the elevator’s light, it’s still there, it just won’t open the doors maybe!”

She spun around and almost in unison Clarice and Tikki’s eye fell on me. I didn’t understand why they were looking at me as if I could do anything, but then I remembered I very much could do something.

I called forward Fool’s Knight, his aura surrounding my arms as I placed my fingers as deep as I could into the doors to get a good grip as I began prying them open. It wasn’t the most beautiful opening, ending up being bent in a circular hole rather than a clean opening. After making a large enough opening I stepped back looking down to assess my damage taken. I knew without my gloves I was gonna take on more of the unfelt pain, but what other choice did I have. I was pleased to only see my fingers were red, without any signs of breaks or tears!

Still, Tikki removed a small strip of bandage and wrapped both my hands just in case. It was really kind of her.

We all climbed into the elevator. I won’t lie and say I didn’t begin imagining just how poorly this could be if the malfunctioning elevator began to drop. I cleared my mind of such fears and focused on the now and getting us out of here.

Tikki tried the buttons inside the elevator, but once again they did not respond. “It’s odd that the lights are on right?” Clarice asked. “I mean, it’s got power but won’t move?”

“Could it be in some sort of emergency lock down mode?” Tikki suggested.

There was a tapping sound that caught my attention away from their convo.

King looked over the buttons. “The fire alarm hasn’t been pressed or we would be hearing an ongoing alarm. Still, it is possible there is some other sort of lock down going on with it.”

Tikki sighed in defeat, “Maybe the best thing for us to do right now is return to the meeting area where the staff are expecting us to be. Then we can await their instructions.”

The tapping occurred again, this time I could tell it was coming from the ceiling. Was there something outside the elevator? I spotted a panel that opened on the ceiling for emergencies, but I can’t reach it with my height. Not explaining what was going on I climbed out of the elevator and darted back to the meeting room to grab a chair to bring back.

Tikki and Clarice must have taken this as me giving up as well, because when I returned with a chair they were just now exiting the elevator.

“Huh?” Tikki tilted her head to the side, questioning what I was doing.

I raised my chair up and pushed it through my circular opening, it clattered to the ground inside the elevator. As I climbed back into the elevator Clarice and Tikki watched on from outside.

I stood on top of the chair and just had enough reach to open the hatch releasing it causing it to spring outward. I stood with my face just outside the opening staring into the dark elevator shaft waiting for something to happen. I hoped I hadn’t taken too long and missed whatever was out there!

Then finger tips appeared on the corner of the hatch edge, and those tips pulled forward a hand from the darkness. The others stared in silence as that hand reached over for the elevator cable and grabbed onto it, then began to pull itself upward bringing behind it a mutilated bag of flesh and teeth.

We all just watched silently, it was just so shocking. A Spawn, it had to be. It was small and just this arm and its blobby body covered in randomly placed human teeth. As it pulled itself up the elevator cable an eye came into view on the very bottom of the body. The eye looked right at me, then motioned upward.

I wanted to ask if it was trying to tell me something, but I didn’t know if writing a message would be worth it if it wasn’t able to read.

“How…did…Spawn…in here!?” Tikki was beginning to freak out. She didn’t know there were weak Spawn hanging around yet, unlike Clarice and I.

Clarice held her, keeping her calm and from doing anything rash. We didn’t wanna make an enemy of D’Claire-na if this was some sort of message from her. But if she was sending us a message… Perhaps our situation is far worse than I thought. They couldn’t be abandoning us this early could they?

“Sck-” King suddenly scoffed. Clarice and I looked over at him while Tikki couldn’t take her eyes off the Spawn as it slowly disappeared into the darkness. “I get what she wants us to do.”

“Who?” Clarice asked, confused.

“That basement gremlin, she’s telling us if we want to escape this floor we just have to use the elevator shaft.”

“Basement gremlin?” Tikki murmured even more confused.

“We’ll get to that later Tikki!” Clarice petted her on the head before turning back to her hand pal, “So what, we just have to climb the elevator cables like that thing? No way I can do that beyond a few inches.”

“Who said anything about climbing?” King leaned in looking up at her. “My dear servant, you serve a King, we have no time to dirty our hands with manual climbing. No, we shall be flying up that shaft!”

“FLYING??” I held up, excitedly.

King nodded towards me, “By manipulating gravity we should be able to have it push us upward, while also placing gravitational pulls above us to pull us upward.”

I gave him a blown away expression, this was so freaking cool! I had no idea they could do that!

“But King,” Clarice raised a concerned look, “We can’t put a gravitational pull on the top floor without first touching it, so how are we gonna pull that off?”

“Elementary my foolish servant!” He chuckled, “We don’t put the gravitational pull on our goal, we place it on what is always going to be just ahead of us, Sophia!”

I join Clarice in giving him a very skeptical glance. He chuckles again at us like he’s making perfect sense and we are idiots. “Sophia will climb the cable manually and we’ll have a gravitational pull on her pulling the rest of us along.” He nods. “Plus, we’ll place a reverse gravity on the elevator ceiling, so there will be a slight push helping her and us rise easier. Though that will get weaker with every foot we get away from the elevator.”

So in the end I still have to manually climb an entire office sized building via a rope while everyone else gets to float… Bummer.

“But what if we fall out from her gravitational pull!? What then!? We just plummet all the way back down!?” Clarice chastised.

King shook his head in disappointment at his servants' silly doubts. “Obviously we just can’t let her climb fast enough that we fall out of her radius. However-” He rubs his face with his little hand, “If she climbs too slow we’ll collide with her and probably really crush her.”

“Great. Good plan King.” Clarice sighed.

Clarice accepted this was just gonna be the way things were, I however, was very much freaked out by the thought of having to keep a certain tempo or else disaster happens!

“Do you think you can handle that Sophia?” Tikki asked me, she had recovered from her Spawn shock.

I don’t have much of a choice do I? I have to do this for everyone or else we’re all gonna be trapped down here. I’m worried this is part of MGI’s plan for us to become Spawn while awaiting a rescue that will never come. I turn to the others and give them a determined nod, let’s do this thing!

I call on Fool’s Knight, his aura surrounding my full body like a ghostly knight. I grip tightly onto the elevator cable, it’s unfortunately quite greasy and I just know it’s gonna get all over my nice skirt. Thinking of my skirt I remember I’m just wearing a skirt with underwear under them! Ugh, uh, I don’t want the others looking up my skirt but what else can they do? I think about letting go of the cable and climbing down to where Tikki is with my bag and board, but I don’t wanna delay us any further. They’ve all been in the bath with me, it’s fine, it’s fine.

I grip the cable again, looking down I give Clarice a nod. She climbs through the elevator ceiling and stands behind me, I climb upward just enough to still be within her reach. Then, once Tikki has climbed up and is positioned on the other side of the roof, Clarice taps me on the back, and screams, “Climb climb climb!”

One hand over hand and I immediately feel all this weight on me, is this what it feels like to be at the center of an entire gravitational force? Every time I reach my arm forward to grab above myself I have to fight to escape my own gravity, the same gravity that is able to lift others.

Then I feel a sudden boost, Clarice has tapped the elevator and now a new gravity is pressing up against me pushing me away. She must have set it to be much stronger than mine because for a bit it feels effortless to climb. But like she said with every foot we climbed it got weaker and my gravity became tighter around me.

We had climbed probably two floors when we heard a crunching sound. I didn’t stop not wanting for the others to catch up, but I wondered what was going on deep below us. Then there was a loud bang and the sound of something crashing hard below. A strong force of wind shot up the elevator shaft giving me the slightest boost but mostly just shot dust into my gravity all ending up covering me.

“Sophia!” Clarice shouted up at me. “We may have a problem!”

“That was the elevator!” King jumped in shouting. What were they talking about?

“All that gravity on it must have weakened the locks and it dropped to the very bottom of that shaft, we don’t have that push anymore!”

Was that gonna be a problem!?

“We might begin to slip out from your gravity Sophia! Or you slow down and we catch up and become much heavier for you.”

That does sound like a problem. I could feel the blood across my fingers, I was already pushing my body beyond its limit. I don’t know if I can take any more weight.

“Cut me loose guys-” Tikki suddenly spoke. My heart skipped a beat as I almost paused my ascent in shock.

“Don’t even think about it!” Clarice yelled back at her.

Tikki sounded calm as she spoke. “If you lose me you can add more weight and still be fine! It’ll equal out!”

“We’re all going to make it together! We aren’t getting separated!”

“Once you two get back upstairs you can alert MGI that something is happening. Somehow Spawn have invaded our office and have killed the elevators and perhaps even done something to Miss Gretchen!”

Clarice groaned at Tikki being in the dark on everything. “Look, there is more than you know going on, so trust us we need to stick together!”

Tikki seemed confused by that. “What?”

“Now really isn’t the time! But later, I promise! Sophia has been trying to get to it for days I’m sure.”

Great, yeah, throw me under the bus for being the one to exclude her. Thanks Clarice.

“My lady.” A male voice suddenly spoke. I was surprised by it before realizing it was Fool’s Knight. I ask him what is going on since we are kinda in a tense situation right now. “I have a solution for you to be able to take on a larger burden.”

Well what is it? What do I need to do? His ghostly helmet sways around my head. “We currently operate separately for the most part, two parts of you, but you can absorb more of me and gain that power.” I’m unsure what he is getting at. “Deep down there is a part of you that wants to still think about a past and present version of you. If you cease existing as anyone other than Sophia, you can gain so much more of my power.”

It doesn’t really make any sense to me. I am Sophia, that is who I am. “But were you always? Part of you refuses to say you were.”

Well yeah, obviously. At one point I was a boy who went to school and had a… a family.

I try to remember details about my past life but it really is fuzzy now. This is the work of my medication I’m sure.

“Why hold onto those fuzzy glimpses? Offer them up and you’ll be able to shift the balance between us. Reduce him and allow Sophia to take over more.”

And that will help me? That’s all it takes to gain that strength, offering up my past?

“Boost Sophia’s strength by draining his strength, my strength.”

What else can I do but do as he says. When has Fool’s Knight ever led me astray? I offer up the memories of school, of what it was like to attend elementary up to high school. Even if it's pretty fuzzy, I’m not ready to part with my family, even if I can’t see their faces anymore.

Those years of memories contain lots of information about who I once was, and immediately I feel more strength inside me as those memories leave me.

I slam my fist against the wall grabbing everyone below’s attention and then leap up the cable climbing with more vigor than before. They don’t know what I’ve just done, but they stop their arguing about self sacrificing as they are pulled deeper towards me.

As they begin to nearly be able to touch me I pick up the speed four fold, Clarice looks concerned the moment I begin speeding up. King looks rather pleased with the unfolding of events, perhaps just happy to enjoy such an odd ride.

We reached the dorm floor and without thinking I punched out the left elevator shaft door for the floor. It flies a few feet before sliding to a stop. The others grab onto the cable as Clarice removes the gravity effect from me. I leap into the open space, then help pull them all from the elevator one before the other.

We all immediately lie down on the floor outside the broken elevator shaft, catching our breaths as we can finally relax.

I can’t believe I just did that. I feel incredible even after just having to climb so many stories! But how will I feel once the adrenaline wears off? I fear what might await me.

“Tell me what is going on.” Tikki breaks the peace asking.

I look over to Clarice, she understands it would be quicker if she does the talking rather than making me write it all out.

And so we fill Tikki in on everything we know about MGI planning to abandon us all the way to D’Claire-na and her Spawn’s existence in the secret basement.