Chapter 11: The Restroom

“As you said outside, this building claims to have forty-three floors, but it actually has forty-four. The extra floor is between the thirteenth and fourteenth. The elevators don't reach it, and neither do the stairs,” Gu Wen told Accountant in the elevator. “Only floors fourteen through twenty-eight are rented out. Each elevator serves a particular range of floors and can't stop anywhere else. It looks like the separate elevator banks you see in upmarket office buildings, but Steel Commandment actually designed it that way to help conceal the building's layout.

“Still, it really is a pretty good design. Nobody's bored enough to stand outside their own office building counting the floors. And the funny thing is, as far as I know, most people lose count on buildings over thirty stories unless they use their fingers.”

Accountant asked, “What about the stairs, then? If someone took the stairs, wouldn't they notice something wrong with the number of floors?”

“Just separate the stairwells,” Gu Wen replied. “Put the stairs for floors one through thirteen in the northeast corner, ending at thirteen. Put the stairs from there to twenty-eight in the southwest corner, then move them somewhere else again for the floors above twenty-eight. That lets you use differences in stair height, slight slopes in the corridors, offsets in the building's structure and so on to keep people from noticing the extra floor.”

“In that case, how do you get into the hidden floor without elevators or stairs? How do Steel Commandment's people get in?” Accountant asked.

Gu Wen said, “There's a secret elevator that serves every floor except fourteen through twenty-eight, plus the underground parking garage. But that's very well hidden too. The doors on every floor are guarded, and you need a pass and an eye scan to use it. Hmm… the main problem is that we can't get to those floors in the first place. Those shell companies don't have any ‘clients,’ you know. If you run into anyone, your only way to bluff your way out is to say you're looking for the restroom.”

“Wait… why do you know so much about this building?” Accountant asked.

“Before we came, I hacked into their main system and had a look at the building plans, company locations, staffing and so on. I didn't dare change any data. If they noticed, it would tip them off,” Gu Wen replied.

“Couldn't you have shared this information with me beforehand?”

“Aren't I sharing it with you right now?” Gu Wen said. “Are you having trouble taking it in?”

That left Accountant speechless. He could only let out a long sigh.

Just then, the elevator doors opened. Gu Wen led Accountant straight to the restroom.

Nobody stopped them. As they walked down the corridor, Gu Wen casually swiped a “Cleaning in Progress” sign from a cleaner's cart. After checking that the men's restroom was empty, he hung the sign on the door, closed it, and bound the lock shut with the Thread of Truth.

“Now what?” Accountant asked.

Before he had finished speaking, Gu Wen turned his palm upward and raised his index finger slightly. A section of floor one meter square flew up in front of them. The tiles and the concrete beneath them had been cut into a neat slab, which hung in the air, evidently suspended by the Thread of Truth.

Accountant looked down into the hole and saw, to his surprise, a gleaming plate of alloy steel.

Gu Wen put the concrete slab back. “It's not as tough as pure alloy, but metal this hard is already beyond me.” He pointed to a nearby stall. “The drains do go through, though.”

“We didn't bring Darkwater. How are we supposed to get through a pipe that narrow?” Accountant lifted the large suitcase he was carrying. “Besides, getting ourselves through is no use. The case has to go too.”

“That's why I'm buying you time to use your ability to break in,” Gu Wen said. “Don't worry. I really did call that advertising company yesterday to arrange a meeting. Even if security phones their reception desk, they won't find anything wrong with our story. When we stepped out of the elevator, I noticed the surveillance was no longer focused on us. It seems they only wanted to make sure we actually came to the fourteenth floor.

“There aren't any cameras in the restroom, and this isn't the only restroom on this floor. I'd say we've got at least twenty minutes before anyone notices anything unusual here.”

“But if someone's in the restroom downstairs and we run straight into them on the way down, won't we be trapped like rats?” Accountant asked.

“We're both only Paper-rank ability users, but we're hardly weak,” Gu Wen said. “As long as we don't happen to drop in on some fighter of Strong rank or above taking a shit, we can easily subdue whoever's there or kill them on the spot. All right, stop wasting time and get to work.”

…

Meanwhile, in the men's restroom on floor thirteen and a half.

“Those spicy stir-fried shrimp really packed a punch… ugh…” A burly middle-aged man sat on the toilet, clutching his close-cropped hair with both hands as he battled the agony of his third day of constipation. This floor housed only relatively senior members of Steel Commandment, so there weren't many people around to begin with. His anguished groans made even fewer of them willing to use this restroom.

This poor bastard was named Feng Bu'er. His position in Steel Commandment was “provincial internal affairs chief,” which made him sound like a high-ranking official. In fact, it didn't even qualify as a junior management post. His authority was extremely limited, and he mostly handled miscellaneous chores. His status was a little higher than an ordinary knight's, roughly equivalent to a battle knight's.

Whoever named Feng Bu'er had done him dirty. It would have been fine if his surname were Zhao, Qian, Sun, Li, Zhou, Wu, Zheng or Wang, but his surname was Feng. And Feng Bu'er meant Feng “without two”—take the “two” out of the Chinese character for Feng, and you were left with the character for “horse,” weren't you? So people took to calling him Bimawen, Keeper of the Heavenly Horses. What could he expect, with that connection to horses and such a useless post to boot?

But the guy really was a Strong-rank ability user.

Earlier, when war had broken out across Europe, Steel Commandment had transferred large numbers of fighters from all over the world to headquarters. Yet somehow they had left him out, because Feng Bu'er counted as administrative staff.

To explain this, we have to start with Steel Commandment's structure. Beneath the supreme grand master, the organization had separate administrative and military hierarchies, with somewhat different duties. On the administrative side, the highest position was chief priest, followed by Holy Land inspector (finance, personnel, trade), standard-bearer (from this level downward, each rank had multiple holders), provincial inspector, and finally provincial internal affairs chief. Those were only the established posts. Holy Land inspectors could also have their own secretaries, record keepers, attendants and other staff.

The military hierarchy was also fairly clear at the top, but its lower fighting ranks were divided much more finely. In descending order, they were legion commander, knight commander, Holy City Inspector (guardian of the supreme Holy Cross), knight captain, elite knight, battle knight, knight, and sergeant.

Of course, there were also some less clearly defined positions at the very bottom, such as chief legion attendant, senior cleric and cleric. Their status was so low, about on a par with ordinary knights, that nobody cared where a bunch of deputy squad leaders stood.

When this war began, everyone transferred to Europe came from the military hierarchy. Administrative personnel stayed behind to keep the resistance organizations running in each region, so Feng Bu'er, Bimawen that he was, never went off to the battlefield.

That also made him one of the few powerful fighters Steel Commandment had left in Kaifeng.

“Ah…” Feng Bu'er let out a long, blissful cry, signaling that the black hawk was down.

Then he reached out and discovered a problem. There was no toilet paper left in the stall…

Just as his face began to twitch, a strange noise came from the ceiling.