Prologue (In which Charles O'Daniels and Andrew McKinney see the truth)
Sheriff Charles "Chuck" O'Daniels of the 207th-209th Floor and his trusty deputy Andrew McKinney, stopped their four wheeler recon about 200 years from the shack. The shack was very basic, flat roofed, roughly twelve feet wide and eight feet tall, had only a door on the front, no windows or porch. Chuck turned on the high beams and the supplemental flood lights, and the shack appeared in the natural grey-brown color of old cypress reWood. There was nothing else in the patch of terrain illuminated, only the shack and marks on the floor indicating something was dragged to the door.
Outside of the light cone from their vehicle it was pitch black, and even inside the cone, the dust floating around made it hard to see at a distance.
Chuck took out his service magnum revolver, while Andrew drew a shotgun and aimed it at the shack.
Chuck took a deep breath. "Let's do it," he said and spat his wad of chewing tomacco to the side.
The couple took a single step at the same time, and immediately a loud groan coming from the shack stopped them. Chuck aimed his revolver with both hands, set his face hard and yelled "Allright! Goddamit! Come out with your hands high, you son of a bitch!"
Andrew, visibly shaking, kept his weapon trained on the shack, but his eyes darted left to right peering into the darkness.
"Sir, I don't think this is wise, sir" said Andrew.
"Shut up, you pussy," replied Chuck without looking at him, "he'll get out, we got him cornered, and when he does, you blast his head off. You got that?"
"Yes, sir" said Andrew, as beads of sweat formed on his forehead.
"This is Sheriff Charles O'Daniels, you goddamned son of a bitch!" shouted again Chuck. "If anyone other than Dreyfus Canalli is in there," he paused.
Yeah, what if is there someone other than Dreyfus?
"Well, goddamittohell, if you're in there with that scumbag, get out with our hands where I can see 'em and and identify yourself, 'cause otherwise I swear to fucking God I'm gonna blast your fucking head off!"
"Sir, we shouldn't be here, sir!" said Andrew looking at the shack, at the darkness around him, at the Sheriff, at the recon they came in with. "I think we're not alone here, sir!"
"Jesus fucking H Christ, Andy, what the fuck is wrong with you? Of course we're not alone! We got Dreyfus in there, and now we're gonna blast his head off! Get your shit together, boy!"
Chuck took another step forward, and again a loud groan came off the shack.
"Shit!" cursed Chuck, "What the fuck do you have there Dreyfus?!"
Andrew, sweating profusely but not daring to take his hands off the gun to wipe his brow, started training his gun to his left and to his right. "Sir! I swear I see eyes glimmering in the dark! Sir!"
"Fuck you, Andy. Fuck you and your glittering! Keep that damned gun pointed at Dreyfus and follow me!"
"But, sir!"
"Andy, you little shit stain, if you don't come forward and cover me, I'm gonna take that bitch gun of yours and shove it up your ass! Now git moving!"
"Sir, yes, sir!" said Andrew, now mouth breathing and swallowing hard, while still dripping saliva from his open mouth.
Chuck and Andrew took a step forward, fully expecting another groan. Nothing happened.
Chuck grinned and walked all the way up to the brightly lit shack's door, positioning himself to the right of the door. Andrew slowly followed glancing everywhere, and kneeled a few steps in front of the door.
"On three," whispered Chuck, "I'll open it!"
Andrew nodded, nearly crying.
"One.."
"Two.."
"You do know you're out of your jurisdiction, right?" said a voice definitively not from inside the shack.
Chuck swung his gun around, getting blinded by the recon's beams.
"Who the fuck said that?!"
Indeed they were out of their jurisdiction, far from the 207th floor. Far from the 206th or 205th. They were deep in the wastes of the 204th floor.
If the 207th was the frontier, the Far Down, a nigh-lawless region where the naive came to seek fortune and died quickly at the hands of the tough, the 206th was the border, and the 205th was the desert, the place where people running away from the law hid, trying to survive avoiding marauders and pirates, until they either died, turned around, or became marauders and pirates themselves.
But the 204th was a wasteland. There was nothing. There was no light, for one thing. No light, little or no air circulation. No animals either, as there was nothing to draw sustenance from. As a matter of fact there was no vegetation, no grass, no dirt, no rocks. Just dust. It was also the lowest floor you could reach with the elevator. "The" elevator. A single one that opened at the End of the 205th, semi-hidden in a valley rarely visited even by marauders.
The rumorline claimed that at the End of the 204th floor you'd find a new set of elevators, and they would take you down, below 200, even all the way to the Ground. On the rumorline you could even hear that there were floors below the Ground. Many rumorlines contended that this was all nonsense, as it would be impossible to go below Ground, because it was the End of the Ends. Others claimed there was an Under Ground. Everyone agreed that there had to be a Ground, since the floors stood on top of each other, but nobody had been below 204th, or even 205th, since the Reset, so there was no real way to tell, unless you were a Believer. Then anything was possible.
None of this mattered to Chuck, who, firstly, believed, and secondly, was spitting curse after curse at who had spoken.
"Come out, you son of a bitch! Show your pox marked mug, bitch!" he repeated, waving his gun from side to side.
Andrew had made himself small on the ground, hugging his shotgun, crying, and squeezing his eyes shut.
"Are you quite done?" said the voice again.
"Fuck you!" yelled Chuck, "I am the law! And if you're helping Dreyfus I'm gonna.."
"..blast my head off" said the voice really close to Chuck's ear.
That was the last thing Chuck ever heard. After that the floor lit up and Chuck saw the truth.
It was beautiful beyond words, it was immense, it was unimaginable.
Andrew sprung up, dropped his gun and ran screaming in no direction in particular. He got a glimpse of the truth and stopped, slack jawed and panting. Then Andrew's head exploded in a shower of brain, blood, and bones.
"What the fuck.." started Chuck, dropping his gun, dazzled by the truth.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" said the voice.
Chuck spun around and faced the voice, but before he could say or do anything, a vibroblade sunk in his stomach and got pulled all the way to his sternum.
"Dreyff..goddammitfuckinsonsabitchfuck"
The man behind the voice pressed a button on a remote controller and the floor returned dark, then he went to the rover and turned it off, plunging the floor in complete darkness again.
