Standing outside, he looked at his communicator again. The view of the map had zoomed out again, to show him the whole picture. The red dot was blinking more fiercely now. As far as he could tell, it was somewhere below him. Far below him. It seemed to be located somewhere below the ground floor, impossible as that sounded. So she wasn’t locked away somewhere, after all.

He looked around. He had often wondered what the floors must look like from the outside during the day. It was pretty much as he’d imagined—silent, completely deserted. What he wasn’t prepared for, however, was the complete lack of any sort of odour in the air. Not even the usual whiff of the various fresheners one smelt on the way in and out. It was like standing in a vacuum. Uneasily, he made his way along the conveyor belt, beside the vast expanse of white that stretched as far as the eye could see, marked only with slight indentations where there were doors, like a colossal, bleached honeycomb. He walked on, hardly daring to exhale, acutely aware that each of the cells he passed contained a person, someone like him, living, breathing, waiting for the door to open again. He moved away from them and his foot brushed the edge of the conveyor belt. Sensing his touch, it sprang to life, its buzzing reverberating across the entire room. He crouched and froze, not daring to move, listening to see if he could make out any sign that the noise had been heard.

Silence.

After a few moments, he straightened up. Looking left and right, he stepped on to the conveyor belt, riding it alone, back the way he had come this morning. He shut his eyes and began to count.

Several minutes later, Albert got off on the ground floor, then turned around and walked back, head bowed in concentration as he stared at the communicator. He had an uncomfortable feeling that he was walking into a trap of some sort. Still, there was no choice but to comply, he thought bitterly, none at all. He had to go where he was summoned, to a rendezvous with this lunatic who wanted him to do something that she could do on her own in less time than it would take him to get there. She was definitely mad. But who was she?