“Come here.”
The command sliced through the cavernous gloom of the lobby, sharp and immutable.
It carried no warmth, no room for hesitation, vibrating with an ancient, institutional authority that demanded immediate submission.
Sheren turned on his heel, his heavy coat flaring like the dark wings of a carrion bird as he moved toward a recessed alcove hidden in the shadow of the marble pillars.
Yuxuan did not pause.
He fell into step behind him, the rhythm of their boots striking the cold stone floor in an uneven, deliberate cadence.
They stepped into a lift that seemed pulled directly from the dying breath of an old European empire.
It was an ornate, cage-like structure wrought in tarnished brass and blackened iron, lined with dark, weeping mahogany that smelled faintly of copper, ozone, and decades of trapped dust.
Above their heads, a single yellow filament bulb hung naked from a frayed cord, humming with a low, sick resonance.
It cast a jaundiced, flickering glow over the small space, carving sharp shadows across Sheren’s stern profile and painting Yuxuan’s tailored uniform in shades of bruised gold and amber.
With a heavy, mechanical groan, the iron grates slid shut, locking them into the narrow chamber.
The lift did not drop smoothly.
It shuddered, groaned, and began a slow, agonizingly rhythmic descent into the bowels of the earth.
The air inside instantly grew colder, thick with the damp moisture of subterranean stone.
Every few seconds, the cables above them squealed in protest, a metal-on-metal screech that vibrated through the soles of Yuxuan’s boots and rattled the teeth in his jaw.
Yuxuan leaned his shoulder subtly against the iron cage, his dark eyes trailing over the tarnished filigree of the walls.
*Is this truly the standard of this place?* he mused quietly in the silence of his own mind.
*A central headquarters operating on machinery that feels as though it was forged at the dawn of the industrial age?* Yet, he kept his mouth shut, his expression a mask of smooth, unreadable glass.
In a place where every shadow seemed to hold a breath, he was acutely wary of alerting the man beside him to the rising tide of his internal suspicions.
The descent was unhurried, almost ritualistic in its slowness.
Minutes dissolved into the oppressive hum of the machinery.
Ten full minutes passed in absolute, unbroken silence.
The world above—the gray sky, the heavy rain, the grieving mother, the quiet tragedy of Flora Arghum—faded into a distant, half-remembered dream.
There were no windows, no passing views of intermediate floors, no rushing air.
Only the slow, steady pull of gravity drawing them down into the dark.
Yuxuan’s gaze shifted to the control interface beside the door.
There were no rows of brass buttons, no floor indicators, no emergency levers.
There was only a single, dark glass panel set into the mahogany wall.
Beneath its surface, a primitive digital display glowed with a pale, cold luminescence.
It read simply: **13**.
It did not change.
It did not tick down to 12, nor did it rise to 14.
It simply hovered there, an unchanging constant in an endlessly falling room.
“How many floors are in this building?” Yuxuan asked, his voice cutting through the thick hum of the filament bulb.
Sheren did not look at him.
His eyes remained fixed on the iron gate in front of them, his reflection ghosting against the dark metal.
“Infinity,” Sheren replied.
His tone was chillingly matter-of-fact, lacking even a trace of drama or exaggeration.
He spoke of infinity as one might speak of the distance to the corner market.
Yuxuan blinked, a rare flicker of genuine surprise breaking through his composure.
“But…
how is that even possible?”
“According to the *NS Beyond Infinity* book we discovered—written by our organization’s mysterious founder, Smith Zero—this whole world is both finite and infinite,” Sheren explained smoothly.
His voice carried the monotonous cadence of a priest reciting a creed he had spoken ten thousand times.
A sharp chime echoed through the shaft as the lift finally shuddered to a complete halt.
The iron gates slid back with a heavy, echoing clatter, revealing a long, dimly lit passage carved directly out of dark, damp stone.
Torch-like sconces lined the corridor at vast intervals, their pale electric lights flickering like dying stars in a subterranean void.
Sheren stepped out into the corridor, his boots echoing down the narrow shaft of stone.
Yuxuan followed, his mind reeling, spinning wildly in the wake of the paradox. This story is hosted at g.com.
*Finite and infinite?*
Yuxuan walked briskly to keep pace, his boots clicking rhythmically against the stone flags.
His intellect fought against the absurdity of the statement, reaching instinctively for the laws of the physical world he knew.
He thought of radioactive molecules—tiny, measured bits of matter bound by finite physical borders, yet possessing infinite possibilities of decay, an endless timeline of probabilistic futures stretching into the dark quantum abyss.
But the paradox presented here felt heavier, darker, rooted not in particle physics, but in the very fabric of architecture and reality itself.
“But how can something be both?” Yuxuan pressed, his voice echoing off the curved stone ceiling of the tunnel.
“A structure must have boundaries.
A world must have edges.”
“I’ve spent a long time observing the theory,” Sheren said, his words coming flat and firm, effectively slamming the door on any further debate.
He did not slow his pace, his shadow stretching long and distorted ahead of them under the weak wall lights.
He paused for a fraction of a second at a low archway, turning his head just enough for Yuxuan to see the hard line of his jaw.
“You will discover the truth after reading the book,” Sheren added softly, a strange, hollow weight lingering in his voice.
“I will bring it to you by tomorrow.”
They walked in silence for another five minutes, navigating a labyrinth of quiet, damp corridors that seemed to stretch endlessly into the heart of the earth.
The air here was old, preserved, smelling of ancient parchment, wet lime, and cold iron.
There were no doors, no windows, only smooth stone walls that swallowed sound and spat back only the quiet rhythm of their footsteps.
Eventually, the corridor widened, spilling them out into a vast, vaulted junction where several stone passageways converged.
Standing in the center of the subterranean intersection was a small gathering of four individuals.
They seemed completely alien to the grim, stone environment, standing beneath a ring of warm overhead lights like figures pulled from a high-society salon.
Three of them were elegant, strikingly beautiful women whose sharp, intelligent eyes swept over the newcomers with quiet scrutiny.
beside them stood a handsome young man with effortless posture.
All four were clad in immaculate, high-collared black uniforms—tailored from the same heavy, dark wool and adorned with the same brass fittings that Yuxuan currently wore.
They moved with a casual, practiced grace that only came from long familiarity with the strange paradoxes of the Suiban Organization.
As Sheren and Yuxuan approached, the handsome man with neatly styled, brown, elite-looking hair stepped forward, his boots making no sound against the flagstones.
“Hello, Mr.
Hoover,” the brown-haired man said smoothly, nodding toward an older, shadowed figure who stood quietly near the periphery of the light.
Then, his sharp, amber eyes shifted, settling directly upon Yuxuan.
He looked him up and down, taking in the crisp, unblemished cut of his new uniform and the quiet, guarded intensity of his posture.
“And who is this?” the man asked, a faint, polite smile touching his lips.
“Your assistant?”
Sheren stepped forward, placing himself slightly between Yuxuan and the group.
“He’s a new recruit,” Sheren clarified, his tone clipped and official.
“He’s Lie Longterm.”
“Oh, hello, Mr.
Longterm,” the brown-haired man said, his smile widening slightly, perfectly practiced, perfectly empty.
“I am John Hoover,” the man introduced himself, extending a gloved hand.
Before Yuxuan could reach out to return the greeting, the sound of heavy, unhurried footsteps echoed down from an adjacent corridor.
The introduction was cut short as a figure emerged from the darkness, stepping into the pool of light beside a massive, intricately carved wooden door that towered over the junction.
The newcomer was a young man with dark, windswept hair that fell carelessly across his forehead.
His uniform was worn loosely, the top button undone, giving him an air of casual defiance that stood in stark contrast to the rigid discipline of the others.
Sheren turned his head toward the carved door, his voice tightening slightly.
“Hello, Mr.
Stark.”
Sunny Stark leaned his shoulder against the heavy oak frame of the door, his dark eyes sweeping over the group before landing squarely on Yuxuan.
A slow, easy grin spread across his face—a look so entirely out of place in this subterranean tomb of stone and infinity that it felt almost shocking. You are reading on novelping(.)com, the official source.
“So, is he the late recruit?” Sunny Stark asked, his tone bright, almost playful.
He pushed off the wooden frame and took two steps toward Yuxuan, extending a hand with total lack of formality.
“Nice to meet you, Lie Longterm.
I’m Sunny Stark.
I’m twenty.”
Yuxuan looked at the outstretched hand, then up at the young man’s face.
The casual warmth was strange, a sharp contrast to the cold, bureaucratic hostility he had encountered in the lobby above.
“Hello, I’m Lie, also twenty,” Yuxuan replied, his voice calm, though a deep, internal knot of surprise tightened in his chest.
*Twenty years old,* he thought.
*Barely out of youth, yet walking through a fortress built upon an infinite abyss.*
Before the moment could stretch any further, Sheren’s hand snapped up, his wrist turning to reveal an expensive silver timepiece strapped to his arm.
The polished metal gleamed harshly under the sconce light.
His face hardened, his expression tightening into a mask of pure, unadulterated urgency.
“Hurry up!” Sheren barked, his voice booming off the vaulted stone ceiling like a crack of thunder.
“You are both twenty minutes late!”
“Alright, alright!” Sunny chuckled, raising his hands in a lazy gesture of surrender.
He turned on his heel, his dark hair swaying as he began to walk toward a wide stone staircase that led up toward the first floor.
After taking a few steps, Sunny paused, stopping on the second riser of the grand stone staircase.
He turned his head back over his shoulder, his dark eyes locking onto Yuxuan with a look of easy, open invitation.
“Aren’t you coming?” Sunny asked smoothly.
Yuxuan did not answer immediately.
He took a single, slow step forward, his boots heavy on the cold floor, falling into line behind Sunny and the senior officers.
As they began their ascent toward the first floor, the yellow light of the junction sconces caught Sunny’s face at a sharp angle.
In that fleeting, cinematic fragment of time, Yuxuan noticed a tiny detail he had missed before: a distinct, delicate beauty mark—a small, dark mole—resting just beneath Sunny’s right eye, like a single, permanent tear carved into his skin.
Up ahead, the senior detectives moved in a tight cluster, their voices blending into a light, distant chatter about administrative logs, shift rotations, and the dreary weather outside on the surface.
Their words bounced uselessly off the ancient stone walls, turning into meaningless white noise.
Yuxuan slowed his pace slightly, allowing a gap to form between himself and the men ahead.
He retreated into the vast, silent cathedral of his own thoughts.
He looked down at his own gloved hands, then up at the cold stone ceiling that held up a building with infinite floors, built in a world that claimed to be both finite and boundless.
A cold, suffocating weight settled onto his chest, pressing down on his lungs with the terrible pressure of a deep-sea trench.
What am I doing here?
the question echoed in the quietest, darkest chamber of his soul.
He didn’t care for their infinite buildings.
He didn’t care for their ancient books written by long-lost founders, nor their private police badges, nor their 12,000 Dolemn salaries.
He was a ghost drifting through a realm that was not his own.
I just want to return to my own world, he agonized silently, the thought burning like acid behind his eyes.
A profound, sickening realization washed over him, slow and absolute.
He felt the cold truth of his existence in this place sinking into his marrow.
Am I being fooled?
He closed his eyes for a single fraction of a second, feeling the damp, subterranean air brush against his skin as he took another step up the cold stone stairs.
No,he thought, a bitter, tragic clarity settling over him.
I am not merely being fooled.
I am being lied to—by this world, by time itself, and by the very architecture of existence.
He looked up at the backs of the young men and women walking ahead of him, lost in their petty ranks and daily routines while standing on the edge of a mathematical impossibility.
A soft, humorless, utterly tragic smile almost touched the corner of his lips, hidden in the dim shadows of the stairwell.
What a cruel, poetic joke fate had played upon him.
In a world built entirely upon a grand, cosmic deception, he had walked through its doors, looked its masters in the eye, and chosen for himself the name Lie.