“There’s another floor above the tiles, and it’s not for you. Something walked over my head all night, I swear.”
The space above the drop ceiling is the gap between the office tiles and the slab of the floor above. From below you see only the white grid, the detectors and the odd stain. Wanderers who know Level 0 know there is something up there, though none of them has set foot in it.
How to recognize it
Look for the hatches that now and then break up the ceiling grid, a square of sheet metal with a half-erased label reading “Hatch closed: exit to another level.” They don’t open and only mark where the access would be. The fallen tiles let you see a piece of the gap, with ducts and darkness.
Description
Little is known, and what is known agrees. The gap is low, a little over a meter, and can only be crossed crouching. It is crossed by networks of ventilation ducts and there is no comfortable floor, so you step on the slab or on the tiles themselves.
How to survive
- Don’t try to force the hatch with tools. It won’t give, and the pounding carries across the whole floor.
- If a tile falls and you see the gap, don’t put your head in. Whoever did doesn’t tell the tale.
- You have better odds of reaching another level through the pits or the descent of the building.
What people say
At night, with the corridor silent, you can hear walking on the ceiling, always parallel to whoever walks below. Others talk of a light that slips between the tiles and doesn’t match the light of the room. Some swear they saw a hand lower a tile and raise it again. The relationship between this gap and breaking a wall or a floor remains unexplained, because nobody knows who would open a way from above if nobody can.
The office signs on the ceiling don’t help, since they all point downward.