Emergency Staircase between floors 7 and 10, "Sky Pencil", Panthersville, DeKalb County, Georgia. Monday, October 28th, 2019. 14:00.

The spare set of clothes Sara brought was a sundress, a tight-fitting sweatshirt she could wear underneath the dress, and thick leggings in a matching color. Not the strongest fashion out there, but it would keep her warm. The reason for that was that these pieces occupied almost no volume when properly folded, as compared to, say, jeans. Her second set of spare clothing were just gym shorts and a t-shirt, also for the same reasons. Kelly vetoed that one in favor of warmer clothes.

Sara thought about how gross gore didn't bother her as much. Part of it was her Composure Skill keeping her mind from freaking out but also that she was getting inured to all of this horror stuff. She feared those Skills were changing who she really was. Composure keeping her mind, well, composed and calm, and the combo of Presence and Flattery allowing her to better navigate the intricacies of social interactions. Especially intimate social interactions, which didn't automatically mean naughty stuff.

She took a look at Kelly, who was sagging to climb the infinite stairs up. Kelly flinched at the sudden illumination upon her and Sara apologized. Would the musician still be her friend without those Skills? Would she be here, navigating the dark claustrophobic hotel concrete stairs filled with stale air with Sara, if not for her magic influencing the woman's decisions? The doubt ate at her but then again Composure dampened it. It was tempting to ask Abby to turn those Skills off and see what happened but would she just lose her mind and go into a panic?

Were the changes bad, to begin with? Sara had no idea.

"Kelly, I need your help. Promise to take it with an open mind," Sara said as she sat on the steps.

"Oh, thank goodness. We're taking a break," Kelly sighed and slumped down. "I vow to never again skip leg day. How do you even...? Never mind, it's magic, right?"

Sara replied with a wry smile, "I have many magical powers. And yes, one of them helps save stamina."

"Fair. Not. Never mind. What's on your mind?"

Sara explained all ten Skills she had to Kelly. She even showed her the written descriptions on her notebook.

"Are these Skills changing me"

"Huh, I couldn't tell," Kelly mused as she went down the list. "Does this one," she pointed at Brawn, "Makes you harder? You don't feel harder." The woman poked the girl’s cheek.

Abby offered an explanation.

"It makes me resistant to damage without changing the fundamental properties. My flesh is knitted and laced with Mana. Stuff imbued with Mana break the laws of physics. Let me show you, keep the light on me."

Sara stood up and climbed down a few steps. Illuminated by Kelly's flashlight, she drew her knife.

"Steel on steel, would this knife cut through the railing?" She asked.

"No," The musician replied with a skeptic eyebrow.

"Now," she imbued the knife and slashed. Sara saw the red flash but it was invisible to Kelly. The railing pipe was cut clean with a loud ringing noise that reverberated up and down the staircase. The pipe, braced on both sides, didn’t move but the cut was still visible. "Now it does," Sara said as she showed the spotless blade edge. She sheathed it right after.

"No way." Kelly gawked and approached to examine the cut railing. "It's sharp," she noticed as she touched the edges of the cut with her finger. "Okay. Your skin is magical and you can cut steel like butter. Are you bulletproof too?"

Abby replied and Sara relayed the answer.

"What's troubling you, then?"

"The social Skills. Are they changing who I am? Are they making, no, forcing people to like me?" She left the 'such as you' part out, out of fear.

Kelly took a step back and pondered as she finished reading the list. "Do they affect people's minds? Like—"

"Abby says I can't. You see, I have a special magical constitution, which gives me a huge bonus to using magic inside my body but divides all external effects by ten. Abby said that it is impossible for me to overcome people's mental defenses and I quote, 'even if I devoted all my energy to it'."

"So, how does it work?" Kelly asked, a bit wary.

Sara repeated what Abby said word-for word, leaving the last derisive sentence out.

"It is not tampering with people's minds then. Do you realize that's exactly—" Kelly started on a tirade but Sara’s emotions overwhelmed the girl.

"I'm not gaslighting anyone!" Sara protested defensively. She was equal parts vexed, exasperated, and ashamed. Tears formed in the corner of her eyes. "Please, believe me!"

Kelly bit her lower lip and opened her arms. "I don't doubt you and I wasn’t going to accuse you." She then went down a few steps to hug the girl. "You are such a kid sometimes. Now, listen to me to the end."

Sara almost protested she was seventeen but that would be basically admitting she was immature, she thought. "Your point is?"

"How different these Skills are from learning to do it the hard way? By taking courses on anger management, body language, social tact, public speaking, and so on?"

"Abby said they aren't so different," Sara replied, ignoring the patronizing fairy.

"Everyone changes. I am not the person I was when I graduated from high school, and I won't be the same Kelly in five years. We learn, we improve ourselves, we sometimes get wounded and it leaves marks. But you are growing at a faster rate because of your circumstances. It’s normal."

Relieved, Sara dropped her guard. "Thanks. I was afraid you were being coerced to be with me."

“By your magic?” Kelly smiled candidly. “Just the fact you were worried about my agency means you respect it. And I like you more because of it.”

The girl’s eyes stung as they moistened up. “I’ve never been good with people. It scared me.”

"It’s fine. You even gave Amanda the benefit of doubt right after you had a squabble with her. Your heart is in the right place. But say, how can I gain some of those nice powers of yours?"

"You just wait," Sara was about to talk when the world turned upside down, figuratively speaking. “It’ll—"

*******************

DOOOOOOM!

*******************

A bell rang soundlessly as no vibrations permeated physical matter or the air. Where did it come from? Nobody knew. They heard not with their ears, but with their souls. Sensitive to magic, Sara, in particular, knelt down and covered her ears as she screamed in pain. The offensive “sound” felt like an attack and it disrupted her Mana flow. Blood came out of her eyes, nose, and ears. Kelly suffered less but she coughed and covered her ears in pain.

"Sara! What's going on!" Kelly desperately asked with a raspy voice as she shook the girl. "You're bleeding!"

"Boost healing," Sara called and Abby triggered the Skill on her behalf. It would only take moments to stop the bleeding and start closing the small wounds.

Kelly used her handkerchief to wipe the blood on the girl’s face and neck. "What happened?"

"I don't know!" Sara whined. “Abby?”

"Here, water," Kelly handed her a bottle of mineral water.

"Where did you…?" The girl asked in confusion but accepted the bottle.

"From the minibar. I went exploring it while you showered."

"Smart."

Sara drank the water and checked herself. Apart from the minor bleeding, she was fine. "Abby what the fuck happened?" She could tell the fairy was reluctant to answer. "You know it, answer me, dammit!" She demanded.

"The WHAT?" Sara stood up and splashed some water on the stairs.

"The first seal, as in the first fucking seal in the book of Revelation?" She wheezed as her mind spun and she suddenly felt the need to breathe. Composure or not, that was too much for her.

Surprise, dread, and disbelief were stamped on both women.

"What? What does the bible… no way!" Kelly butted in.

"Give me the relevant page," Sara asked and Abby showed her a hallucination of a floating page. She read it out loud.

Then I saw when the Lamb broke one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures saying as with a voice of thunder, "Come." I looked, and behold, a white horse, and he who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer.

"The Four Horsemen," Kelly gasped as Sara recited the Bible. "Are they real?"

"Damned if I know," Sara cursed. "But despite my best wishes to the contrary, they probably are. I mean, the world seems to take whatever path leads to us being even more fucked. This time, what would you hate to happen?"

"Conquest. It says right at the end of the passage. Some call it the Antichrist or Pestilence," Kelly shuddered.

As unnerved as Kelly, Sara felt like squeezing the fairy until Abby coughed up all info. Unfortunately, the fairy was inside her, not even physically present in her tridimensional body.

"Abby, where is this happening?" The girl demanded. "Is it somewhere near us?"

"Middle East? The Holy Land? Stop talking in riddles!" Sara screamed, her voice reverberating in the staircase shaft.

She was getting angry that the fairy was not forthcoming with the information. Her fears that Abby might have an agenda of their own returned. Too many details hidden from her, too many cryptic things. Verachiel’s contingency plan. What was it? Which event it was a contingency for? She began to suspect the Seraph had some agenda and she was a puppet. With an alien parasite inside her. Suspicion and paranoia bubbled to the fore of her mind.

"Hell, why can’t you be forthcoming, you freaky parasite!" Sara cursed. "Where is it, what can we do about it?"

"Smartass. I should call you Smartass, just like the fairy of the one-legged guy from that book. Jeb," She snapped her finger as she remembered the character's name. “Or some other shit. ANSWER ME, DAMMIT!”

"Bet you are," Sara snickered and narrowed her eyes. She could only hope the fairy spoke the truth and did not mess with her brain.

Sara wheezed. “Not the point!” She didn’t reply with the classic answer for that sentence. "Are the other three coming too?"

"I doubt it!" She whined. "What aren't you telling me, Abby? Please, we need answers."

Abby shut up and there was nothing she could do about that. Without a choice, Sara spent a few minutes calming down and telling Kelly what she learned. That it was indeed the First Horsemen but it was on the other side of the world.

"Are the other things depicted in the book of Revelation going to happen too?" The musician asked.

"Beats me. I got confirmation that the other three horsemen are on their way to screw us all up, but as for the rest, your guess is as good as mine. The fairy went on a silence strike." Sara shrugged and hissed as she exhaled deeply. “When it rains, it pours. Goddammit, Abby. Jesus fucking Christ said you can’t serve two masters. Or three.”

The fairy didn’t make a peep. The two women spent a few minutes in silence.

"I'm worn out," Kelly sighed. "We should get out of here for now. This dark staircase is giving me the creeps."

"Agreed."

*

*

Circular Hallway, Floor 13, "Sky Pencil", Panthersville, DeKalb County, Georgia. Monday, October 28th, 2019. 14:30.

Leaving the staircase, Kelly leaned on the railing. "It doesn't stink as much," She declared after breathing without her mask.

"Abby is still silent," Sara stated. "I don't know what to say, Kelly."

"Then don't," The musician replied without turning around. She sounded reluctant to talk about the incident and her voice had a knot to it. "The guy with all the answers died, right?"

"I don't know if Verachiel was a guy. I mean, he sounded androgynous and slightly male. Verachiel was a ball of feathers with an eye in the middle and eight wings. Hard to tell their gender."

"As is the case with most birds. Unless you see them laying eggs or there's some dimorphism. Such as chickens or peacocks."

Kelly was going on a tangent and it seemed intentional. Maybe the woman didn't want to talk about the Four Horsemen and impending doom and the Apocalypse.

"I'm sorry," Sara mumbled.

"Thank you," Kelly finally turned around. "It's just... I reconnected with my parents, I spent so much time worrying about their fate, I thought things would get better and then..."

"Bam! The world sweeps your legs from underneath you," Sara waved her arms theatrically,mimicking an explosion.

"Exactly. I need some fresh air, let's get into an apartment."

They entered one of the apartments meant for tenants. It had pastel pink walls and no dead bodies. They opened the windows to air the apartment, heedless of the cold Autumn afternoon outside. Without civilization heating up the world with cars and electrical appliances and fires everywhere, it was as cold as the countryside. Especially this close to the lake.

"Gaudy," Kelly remarked as she studied the decoration. "But whoever lived here had money to burn."

One of the living room walls was dominated by glass shelves hung on steel cables, filled with dozens of golden figurines and action figures of several media franchises both eastern and western. But that wasn't the strangest feature. The couch was nowhere to be seen except for the tip of the right armrest. A massive pile of cute stuffed toys covered that side of the living room from wall to wall. While Kelly studied the gold-plated figurines, Sara lifted a teddy bear almost as tall as she was. It had a travel tag with a name, a date, and an address on the back, a post office’s P.O. box. The next stuffed toy, a small giraffe, had the same tag, with different information. This one was an internet nickname, some leetspeak user handle. Every stuffed toy she checked had a tag, and while the usernames repeated, every tag was different.

"Are all of these gifts? From different people?" Sara wondered out loud, trying to understand how that weird stuffed toy collection came to be.

"Probably," Kelly said as she took one of the toys to examine. "Maybe the tags are to remind the tenant of who gave which toy. The figurines also have them but smaller."

"Weird," Sara moved past Kelly and went to check the bedroom.

"I think she was some sort of influencer or internet celebrity," Kelly remarked as she followed Sara deeper into the apartment.

Instead of a bedroom, they found a video recording studio. An adult video recording studio, Sara remarked to herself. Racks of naughty costumes to one side away from the cameras, dozens of adult video props on a desk, studio umbrella lights, a computer on a wheeled desk facing the bed and a few spherical cameras on telescopic mounts. Even an odd mic stand on a swivel.

Sara was halfway turning around when Kelly approached from behind. "Oh, a streaming studio," she said. "A well-geared one. Professional stuff," she nodded.

"A porn studio, you mean," Sara said.

While the younger girl was flustered, Kelly treated everything naturally, as if it wasn't the first time she’d seen such places.

"Not exactly. I think we are seeing a webcam-girl personal studio. I doubt she fucked anyone but herself on that bed."

While Sara browsed the costumes for something she could wear, Kelly examined the equipment. The room didn't smell like sex or anything weird, in fact it had a faint lavender scent.

"Well-kept, clean, top-notch professional equipment," the college student finished her assessment and sat on the edge of the bed next to the computer. She examined it, then turned on a large black box at the bottom. It beeped and they could hear a vent wheezing. "A UPS," she idly muttered.

“I don’t see a headset,” Sara commented. “Did she use the mic stand to talk?”

“The microphone is attached to the monitor, it’s omnidirectional. What mic stand?” Kelly idly wondered and followed Sara’s gaze. The musician smirked with feline mirth. “That’s not for microphones.”

“What does it do, then?” Sara wondered.

Kelly stood up, took the power cord and plugged the “mic stand” on the UPS. She took the control box and turned a knob. The central shaft started to move back and forth, revealing the true purpose of the contraption. A surprised Sara froze and blushed while Kelly tried not to laugh but failed. Stifled giggles came from the musician’s closed mouth.

“Oh, wow. I mean, so it's... who needs men if there's machines... I mean, it's obvious that someone would invent something like that but..."

“Yeah, pretty much that,” Kelly agreed with a smirk. "You didn't watch much porn, did you?"

"No, why would I? And who would do it with a cold metal rod, unless..." Sara stammered then pointed at the table with every size of pleasure stick imaginable. “She’d take her pick from the attachments on the table, and then…”

Still on the bed, Kelly was bent over laughing, “She would enjoy herself and entertain her worldwide audience.”

The only thing breaking the silence was the machine pumping. With her cheeks burning, Sara decided to distract herself with the costume rack. Laughing, Kelly turned it off.

Sara checked a schoolgirl costume as the computer hummed and beeped to life. She sniffed the clothes and felt the softener perfume. Lavender. As Kelly said, whoever owned this place took good care of their stuff. The costume looked like a genuine private school uniform. Out of the studio, she would never guess it was used on erotic shows. Part of her felt disgusted that people would eroticize school uniforms, then she shuddered as she remembered Mr. Taylor Terabyte collection of illegal videos.

She opened the closet and searched the drawers, smiling when she found a drawer full of sealed pantyhose. From thin and transparent to thick winter thighs, it was a treasure trove. Sara wondered how many of these the camgirl who lived here went through in a day. She pictured men drooling at their computer screens, operating the device with only their left hands as the woman on the bed ripped her pantyhose before the cameras to reveal... And then the machine…

Nope. Shut up, imagination.

"We should take this equipment back to the university," Kelly said when she noticed Sara approaching. "It will be very useful to record stuff for posterity."

Still unnerved by the naughty studio, Sara raised a questioning eyebrow and stuttered, "wha-what kind of stuff? The machine? Do you want it? And who would watch… Kelly!”

Kelly chortled, "get your mind out of the gutter, girl. We wouldn't use this equipment to record naughty stuff anymore and I’m not interested in,” she pointed at the ‘mic stand’, “this but the video recording rig. We can record testimonials, news, lectures. The stuff here is way better than what the journalism department had at the college. We need to think ahead. We are too few and our knowledge won't survive long enough for the next generations. We have the library but almost no other way to convey knowledge to our children and their children's children. If what you said is true, and I believe you, the whole world suffered the same fate as this city. We don't have Google or Wikipedia or the whole knowledge of humanity at our fingertips anymore."

Sara was unconvinced. Kelly glanced at the table full of kinky latex... dowels, and sighed. "We'll leave the naughty stuff behind. We only need the computer and video equipment,” Kelly tapped the computer, “Besides, the men might welcome some of the footage herein."

She shook her head as she tried to calm down and focus. "That's fine, Kelly. We'll disassemble the equipment and you can have it. I get the clothes, you have a new video rig. Now, let's move on," Sara urged, unwilling to stay in the studio for much longer.

Kelly turned off the computer and shut down the no-break. No need to waste precious battery charge. “We’ll pick it up on the way back.”

*

*

Emergency Staircase, top floor, "Sky Pencil", Panthersville, DeKalb County, Georgia. Monday, October 28th, 2019. 15:00.

Back on the staircase, Sara offered to give Kelly a piggyback ride up. The tired woman gracefully accepted and was marveled at how fast Sara could climb while carrying another person. They reached he penthouse. Sara's legs were on fire after climbing that many floors of stairs.

They were on the floor above the weird metal ball. The penthouse complex occupied the two top floors in its entirety and didn’t seem to be part of the hotel structure as the panoramic elevators didn’t reach this far up.

"Is this a residence or an art gallery?" Sara wondered. The first room after leaving the lobby with its own elevators was decorated with stuff from all over the world. She recognized an Australian digeridoo, a feather hat from some native American from... Colombia? Yeah, that was the flag of Colombia. A set of Japanese swords on a samurai stand, A hand-sized statue of Buddha, an African tribal mask, A set of hand-painted Russian dolls, an Indian elephant figurine, and so on. Stuff from all over the world. Each item on display like one would expect from a museum or gallery.

Sara lifted her gas mask to test the air. She smelled no dead people, and they took off the uncomfortable masks.

"If I recall it correctly, the mayor's son lives up here. Some people protested against the construction, claiming that he just wanted the hotel as an excuse to have a house among the clouds."

“I don’t fault him,” Sara gawked.

The next ambient after the gallery was a Jazz club. About a dozen tables, a stage with musical instruments, a bar with row upon row of expensive liquor bottles.

"A grand piano," Kelly gushed as she focused on the stage.

"Guy knows how to throw a party," Sara remarked, checking the bar for dust. She found just a little but it was expected.

Back on the hallway, she checked behind a set of double doors and saw a small movie theater. She wouldn't dare call it a home theater. Next, a games room with poker tables, darts boards, normal tables, a billiards table, stand-up tables, and even one lonely bowling lane along the far wall. Also another bar with lots of liquor bottles.

"This bar is back-to-back with the one at the Jazz club. I bet there's a hidden corridor leading to a kitchen," Kelly conjectured.

They went on. Sitting rooms for guests to relax or have private conversations, gaudy and provocative bedrooms for guests to… sleep? Right, sleep. A library, some offices, a study room with booths like one would find at a library, another library, a living room with a fireplace, a kitchen that wouldn't be out-of-place on a major network cooking show with a glass dining table for ten people, and finally, stairs to the upper floor.

"How big is this place? Abby, can you show me a map of it? With the outline of the building?"

A map appeared in her sight. Sara studied it while Kelly studied Sara. The penthouse did occupy most of the floor, with unaccounted spaces that were probably for the elevator machinery and maintenance shafts. Or other hidden rooms. This place probably had secret passages, because why not?

Only after Sara refocused on the world around her did Kelly say something.

"You can see maps? Is that magic too?"

"Yeah. Abby can project maps or images into my optic nerve. That's how I did that drawing of yours. I told you I cheated."

Yet the fairy was still exercising their Fifth Amendment rights.

"What did you find?"

"We explored about three-quarters of this floor. You were right, there's gaps between the rooms, wide enough to hide a corridor and some rooms."

"I bet this place has secret passages," Kelly wondered. "The guy was fond of those things."

"Did you know him?"

"Not personally. But this hotel was a big deal when it was being built and people like to gossip. The local newspaper dug up a lot of stuff about him."

The upper floor was the beginning of the apartment proper. The living room had a glass cabinet full of die cast cars. Not your mass-produced cheap Hot Wheels but masterwork models. Sara could swear the tires were actual rubber. Some expensive-looking modernist paintings decorated the walls and accented the modern furniture.

"There's yet another floor," Kelly pointed at the stairs hidden behind a narrow corridor.

They went around the huge apartment, which occupied only half of the floor. The other half was probably machinery and the hotel's water reservoir or some other things like that. After climbing the stairs, they found that a quarter of the top floor was living space, another quarter was an open deck. It had a fancy barbecue grill, a rather big swimming pool, some tables, a sunbathing deck, and a Jacuzzi.

There they met the deceased resident, the mayor's son. The body was floating in the open-air hot tub and caused both women to startle and gag at the sight and foul smell as they quickly donned their gas masks. The skin had detached from the flesh and bloated like a balloon. The fluids leaked mixed with the bathwater to make a putrid sewage-like iridescent oily film over the tub.

There Sara found her second ghost. The man himself. He was sitting on a pool chair, watching the calm lake surface darken as the shadows of the lakeside town stretched to cover the water. He turned around and grinned, spreading his arms as he stood up slowly.

"Sara! Welcome! I didn't think you'd bring a guest, but please, make yourselves comfortable," the apparition said. "But please don't stab me like you did with poor Timmy."

Indeed, the girl had a hand on her knife already. The ghost had so much grease on his hair that it shone under the sun. He was a hottie, wearing a wool vest over a polo shirt and matching linen pants. His shoes were mirror-polished and he reeked of pride, vanity, and arrogance. Not that Sara could smell him through the gas mask with his rotting body right next to them.

"I'll be a gentleman and make it worth your time," the ghost promised.

Kelly only needed to glance at Sara's face to understand. "Did we find the last ghost?" she whispered.

Sara nodded. "What's the name of the mayor's son?"

"Eric Whitaker, architect at your service, my lady," the ghost introduced himself with a grin.

"Never mind. It's Eric," Sara told Kelly, who widened her eyes. The girl turned back to the ghost, "Hi, Eric. Nice to meet you."

"Indeed, it's Eric Whitaker," Kelly mumbled. Whatever skepticism she had about Sara’s magic was nothing but gone now.

"I've been waiting for you the whole day but it seems you were interested in my eclectic roster of tenants," Eric remarked.

“More like a bunch of pervs,” Sara snickered.

"I'm sorry for how things ended with Timmy. I should've invited him to some of my parties, the poor kid never got the chance to learn how to behave around the fairer sex," Eric bemoaned in the classier manner Sara had ever seen.

Sara was sure Eric was also a pervert, that the penthouse has seen the wildest parties, with the plethora of entertainment downstairs, including the bedrooms for the guests to entertain each other. She felt her cheeks burn but she shifted into business gear. "How may I help you, Mr. Whitaker? Is there any last request you want to fulfill? Unfinished business?"

She kept her wits about her and a hand on the knife. The moment Eric let his gentleman demeanor slip...

"Please! You break my heart, dear Sara" Eric declaimed theatrically. "Mr. Whitaker is my father the mayor, I'm just Eric. Little Eric, they called me. Never Junior," He poignantly stated.

"Eric it is, then," Sara tried to smile but she was still wary of the ghost. The innocence of previous interactions was all but gone after the last few spectral interactions. "How my I help you?"

Eric tutted, "All business and no fun, dear Sara is. Very well. My final wish is for you to live in this building. Inherit it. Keep it alive."

"I'm sorry? You want me to move in?" Sara gasped.

"With or without the dead?" Kelly butted in and joked.

Sara kept her eyes on the ghost but still huffed a grunt of disapproval at the suggestion. She would never move in with a ghost!

"Without me, of course," Eric answered. “I wish to see the pearly gates, to step on the fair grass of Elysium.”

She wouldn’t tell him that Heaven was no more.

"He can hear you," Sara told Kelly. "He said will vanish once I finish his last wish. Probably to take over the hotel."

"Inherit it. I have all the documents to change my will in my computer," Eric corrected.

Kelly nodded. "Why do you want her to keep the building?" She tried asking the ghost. They could obviously hear her and Sara would probably tell her what it, he said.

"This baby is my life's project," Eric said and Sara repeated it to Kelly. "I was born an architect, and I wanted to show the world a building as green as possible. One with the least impact on its surroundings. This is a carbon neutral construction, we offset all our emissions twice over. The basement has recycling and sewage treatment plants. Solar panels wherever the sun reaches and state-of-the-art batteries. When the world ended, I feared it would be destroyed in the meteor shower but you saved it, Sara. It is only fair to bequeath this jewel to you."

"Say again?" Sara asked, a bit confused. She didn't repeat the world end part to Kelly.

"What did he say?"

"He confirmed he was the architect who designed the building," Sara glossed over, leaving the last remark out. "His last wish is for me to take over."

"Exactly," Eric waved and pointed at something behind the deck wall out of their sight, "Follow me to the roof. The ladder is over here."

The two women sidestepped the mess left on the deck by the bloated corpse in the hot tub and climbed a metal ladder to the building's roof. It was covered in antennas and solar panels. Six feet of sturdy steel railing prevented people from falling over. The place was huge, covering three-quarters of the polygonal building’s rooftop. A lot of solar panels, thousands of square feet of them.

"The panels can hold four hundred pounds each, they won't break with your feather-like weight, ladies,” Eric bowed as he invited them onwards.“ Just mind your footing, you don't want to slip."

"Do these panels work?" Kelly asked.

"The building is covered in solar panels, even on the sides, it was one of the reasons I built it here, without any other high-rise to obstruct it. If you disconnect the power grid and recharge the batteries, you can bring it back to life. Winter is coming, you might want a warm place to live. This is my final wish, Sara. I want people living here, using my masterpiece. It does not deserve to be abandoned and ruined."

Eric sounded very passionate about his project. It was selfish and self-centered as he ruined the view for dozens of neighbors with his "sky pencil" building. Those neighbors, however, were no longer a concern.

Sara saw no reason to decline his request. Electricity meant heating, a fridge, and hot water... Wait. "What about water? Does it have its own well?"

Eric shook his head ruefully, "I'm afraid it doesn't have a well. This place is too close to the lake and drilling was unadvised."

Her enthusiasm faded.

The ghost noticed, and smiled, "Got you!" He pantomimed finger guns. "See those tiny channels between the panels? They collect rainwater and the solar panels have heating elements that can melt snow. Also, the building has a large underground reservoir and a water tank right underneath us," he pointed at a corner of the roof. "It's connected to a central processing plant to purify raw water. I told you, this is not only a green building but also almost self-sufficient!" The dead architect exulted as he proudly boasted. "And there's underground pumps to pull in lake water too. They go a mile into the lake to get the purest water possible."

Sara grinned, "I'll take it, then. Can you show us how to turn the electricity back on?"

"Sure, follow me."