Tag Archives: High Rise

Teya Test

Posted by on May 26, 2026 No comments

It was not good to be there, for Teya. She sat in her chair and waited. She waited for Mixa to come and tell her about the account she was working on. It had been three years since Teya had joined the offices of Kirdot, Kirdot occupied the floors 3 to 6 of the High Rise, an office building well known in the business area of the city. The city was bustling with many such buildings. The High Rise housed Kirdot and many such offices. The coming and going of people working there was on through most of the day. ‘Floor 03’. An orange painted block read as the elevator passed the second floor, the orange showed through mesh on the upper part of the elevator doors. Mixa got ready to get off the elevator. The elevator door opened and she stepped out of the elevator cabin. The outside was much cooler than the elevator cabin. Mixa felt better, she looked around as she walked on. She had to walk towards the place where Teya sat.

Teya sat near the window. It was not a corner office. It was half a cubicle. Teya sat there waiting. She looked outside the window pane. There was no one outside. It was an afternoon. The people were either inside the office, or far away from it. It was always like that there, around High Rise. Teya looked down, and watched 2 men walk towards the High Rise. They were not particularly interesting or different, yet, Teya watched them with interest.

“Hi”, a sound came from behind her. “Hi”, Teya answered as she turned around, with her swivel chair doing most of the job of turning around, it creaked a little as it turned, Teya felt as if the chair bumped up a little, the chair came to a stop, by the pressing of Teya’s feet on the floor, she saw Mixa as she did that. “How are you?”, Mixa asked. “I am alright, how are you?”, Teya returned the question. “Fine”, came a reply. Mixa placed 2 files on top of Teya’s desk. The files were both light red in color and both has a number on top of them, ‘1234’ and ‘1235’. Teya saw that, and she was not pleased. She knew that most of the coming month was gone now. She would have to scour through some 200 pages each of each of the files, that was the average thickness there. Mixa kept quiet for a bit. Teya did not respond. She took half a minute to recover. “What is this about?”, she asked Mixa, although, she knew what that was, a never ending bunch of reports, charts, pictures, sheets and accounts of some company that Kirdot had gotten paid to work for. It was mostly accounting, analysis work. The second file had the same contents. Teya sighed. Mixa seemed to sigh. Nearby, in another half cubicle, a male worker sighed as well, just like his dog had sighed in the morning. “It is the usual. Nothing much. It should be a breeze”. Mixa smiled, Teya laughed, part of her died inside though, the part which was not coming back, she knew it. “Breeze, alright”, Teya said and looked outside. Outside, there was sun and air, but, no breeze.

“Alright, do you want to go through them now? I can brief you on the contents. I am familiar with both the accounts. I have worked with these for a year now.” Mixa asked. Teya wanted to kill Mixa by shooting her between her eyes and she wanted to then dance on her fallen body, an office fantasy she had held dear to herself for the last 2 years, and, then she wanted to go get a strawberry flavored ice cream, manufactured by Ice One. She took a second and replied, “Okay”. For the next 10 minutes, they both went through the drudgery of looking at something that no human wants to look at, numbers, lines and accounts. It paid though. Mixa talked enthusiastically, Teya listened passively, she discarded half the talk. ‘Rubbish’, she knew it. It would take a month, she would have to begin from the start, work on all of it herself and generate a 20 page summary for her boss. Teya listened on. In ten minutes, she was done, Mixa said, “we are done here, please give me a call if you need help on this”, she said and then got up to leave. She said, “bye” and started to walk away from Teya’s desk. She took not more than 2 steps before she was called by Teya. “What is your extension number?” “203”, Mixa turned back, replied, and then walked back in the direction of the elevator. Teya sat back.

Present Day

Teya had aimed her gun at the center of the forehead of a scar. Her past in the building flew past her eyes in a flash, then, she shot, the scar fell down, she looked down and shot it again. ‘She is not Mixa’. Teya exclaimed to herself. Then, she walked on, the floor was covered in dirt and papers and dirty water. She walked on. There was no one with her. She kept her gun trained in the front.

The High Rise looked great, still. It was still a high rise. People still swarmed it and people still worked in it. It was business. Teya kept walking. The High Rise rose above her head, high in the sky, its glory unaffected by the changes in the circumstances. The sky above it was still grey blue. The buildings around it, still tall and standing. It was truly a marvel of the times. Those tall strctures stood the test of time, and they stood straight.

Teya looked back and then in front. Then, she looked up, she would have to go up, to the roof. ‘This is going to be a busy time’. It was a test time for her. The roof was always something challenging. It always was teeming with scars and something more at times. If the door down to the ground floor were blocked by something, she would have to jump from the roof. Teya sighed, then smiled and then took a step up, on the stairs, a small step for a small sized person, but, a big step for humanity.

Vertigo Why

Posted by on May 25, 2026 No comments

Sera moved quickly, she ducked and then she crouched. She was aware that she did not want to hurry. Of course, she did not want to be slow either. Speed is greed, slow is death, she reminded herself. She crouched behind a set of boxes, two of them, stacked, one on top of another. The boxes seemed heavy, they were not made of metal. Sera got jumpy, she did so also, she got up quickly and moved. It was the ground floor of High Rise. The ground floor was empty and desolate. There was no one there, there was supposed to be no one there. Sera looked behind. There was no one behind her. She moved and came into an open space. She looked up from there. It was a little breath taking, one could see the grey blue sky above, through the stack of 30 floors which rose above the ground. The High Rise gave way there, to the view of the sky. Sera looked for a second. Then, she looked ahead and moved. This was not a sight seeing visit. High Rise was no place for a rookie. It was a place for her to do her job.

She kept moving. She arrived at a staircase and looked up, there was no one there. She walked, up on the stairs. She walked up some three floors like that and then she stopped. She looked around, there was no one. She looked up. Then, she looked around. There was an elevator shaft nearby. ‘Let me take a look’, she thought and went up to that shaft. It was open, the door had collapsed. She leaned in and looked up and then down, there was nothing in there. She looked down, there was darkness below, ‘the elevator car has probably fallen there’. She looked down there, in the darkness for a few seconds and then looked up. There was light above. She stepped back. And then she removed her backpack. She zipped open the pack and removed a rope thrower. It read ‘Raisin’. It had a handle. She inspected the device for a bit. She checked the hook at the end of the coil of rope. The hook looked okay. So did the coil, the coil was housed well in the enclosing case. She put her hand around the trigger at the end and moved back to the door. She looked up and aimed her device at the edge of the shaft, the aim was very high up, the aim was the edge at the top, on the 30th floor. She took a second and then she fired, the device gave out a loud hiss, the explosive charge behind the hook fired and the hook went up, straight, it flew very fast and took the rope with it, it disappeaared from her sight and in a second, there was a light thud, it seemed to come from the 30th floor, Sera pulled the rope, it came tense, in her hands. She pulled it again. She knew she was ready. In a moment, she pressed a button on the side of the device, the big button clicked, and it started a rotor inside the housing which housed it. Sera quickly gave up the floor and held well onto the handle of the device, ‘Raisin’. It pulled her to the top. It took some few seconds. As she approached the lasr floor, she quickly gave up the grip on Raisin and grabbed the edge of the floor and then a bar on the side of the door. She pulled quickly out of the elevator shaft and on to the last floor. It was the last floor. She pressed another button on Raisin and got the rope fully wound back into the device. She looked around. It was time for business.

The business did not look good. ‘Scar’, she exclaimed lightly and shot at the head of one as it aprroached her. The scar went down, it lay on the floor motionless. The scar was a common problem now. A nasty evolution in the city. It was a creature which would eat you alive if you did not take it down, it was always covered in some kind of filth, it smelled bad, like a mix of rotten eggs and meat, topped with a week old garbage. Another one came at her and went down the same way. Sera kept moving. It was a big wave. It was non stop. Sera took down 2 more scars as she walked fast. She knew she had to keep moving. She kept moving. It was needed. The scars came at moderate speeds at her. Sera had only one response, shot of her gun. She reloaded after the fifth scar went down and kept going. It was business. She looked around, 2 scars came from behind, she shot each one of them twice. They fell on the floor and rolled and then stopped. She moved on. Now, 3 scars came up from the front, they appeared suddenly. Sera had to shoot them qucikly. She sprayed around bullets horizontally and they were on the floor. She moved, one more came up from behind wall, just inches from her face. She took it down quickly with the butt of her gun and then shot it, it rolled around and stopped. She hissed and reloaded her gun. Suddenly, a hand touched her shoulder. She froze, a bolt of fear went down her body, she could not movve or think for a second, the gun also froze, in her hand. ‘It’s me, Teya’, a voice came from behind. Sera unfroze and looked back. It was her business accomplice, Teya, she was a little pleased, then they both, each shot down 2 scars which came up towards them. It was nice after that. Sera and Teya chatted as they moved and shot down scars. “When did you get up here?”, Sera asked Teya. “Just now, how is it going?”, Teya answered and asked. “It is as usual, I got one in my face, it’s over there by the wall, it did not look good”. “Sure”. “This is not going to go away anytime soon”. “My mother says the same”. The conversation continued. The walk continued. The shooting continued. A scar came from behind, and now, Teya shot it down, without even looking back. Sera looked at her. They both appreciated each other, they did not appreciate the scars. “Let’s keep moving”, Sera said. They walked on. They took half an hour. After which, it was done. They both stopped and sighed. A quiet second went by and suddenly a scar emerged from the staircase, “Fracture”, Teya shouted. There was no way now, a Fracture could only be killed by a set of multiple grenades. They would have to bail. They both knew it. They both ran and they both jumped off the roof and then pulled the cords of the parachutes, behind them, they could hear the loud grunt of the fracture. They were both away now, and were sailing safely from the height of the building towards the ground. Teya looked at Sera, she was some 20 feet away, Sera had fainted, ‘Oh, she is going to land badly’, Teya exclaimed and looked down towards the ground which was coming up at her fast.