She had been having quite the day when her new classmate decided to slam open the office door, and Silvia was not appreciative of the girl's awkwardness making it even more uncomfortable. 

The cities were loud and tense labyrinths, not meant for traversing on foot. Which made it both fortunate and dreadful that her parents had forced her to get up at an insane 3 AM to find her way to the stop.

When she finally did find it, the Pole was so rusty it was a wonder that it didn't fall apart on the way. And the school itself.. Well, Silvia wouldn't consider herself particularly snobbish or much of a germaphobe, but she was going to need a long shower after this. And probably a few tetanus shots for good measure.

One welcome surprise, however, was that she now had eight hours a day during which she could do whatever she wanted, with practically no supervision to worry about. It almost felt like some sort of trick.

Still, never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Silvia was going to take good advantage of it.

Page fiddled with the strings of her oversized hoodie nervously.

"So.. What do you do for fun around here?" Silvia asked.

Silvia thought Page might pass out with how pale her face turned. 

"W-well-" Page stuttered, unsure. "I don't really know of anything to do here, aside from just doing classes and going home."

"What? This place is huge! There's not even anything interesting on one of the other floors?"

"The steps down are, er, rather creepy. So I've never really looked."

Silvia laughed, a confident grin taking over her face. 

"Come! Let us journey, to the Center of the Earth!"

Mere moments later, Silvia found herself rather regretting her previous excitement. Honestly she didn't really know what she had expected, it may be an ancient government building but it wasn't exactly 'top secret' stuff. Old and creepy, yes, but not particularly exciting.

As she finished coughing up the dust she had accidentally inhaled while opening the door to the third floor down, Silvia took in their surroundings - which weren't really much different from the previous. Page stood behind her cautiously.

Ahead of them was a long dark, echoey hallway. After searching blindly against the entrance wall for a light switch, Silvia was able to illuminate the space with the dull buzzing of a dozen flickering tubes on the ceiling. It was really a miracle they worked at all, Silvia thought.

A sudden "Clang!" sound arose from somewhere deep down the stairwell behind them, and Page anxiously pushed past Silvia and into the hall. 

"Will you please relax?!"

Silvia complained as she caught her balance from being bumped into. Page blushed an embarrassed scarlet, and her voice rose with irritation.

"I need to relax?! How does a sudden mysterious noise from the depths of a dark stairway *not* bother you?"

Silvia rolled her eyes. Old things make lots of idle noise, it's just the way they are. She didn't see anything particularly alarming about it.

"Look, let's just keep on exploring, okay? Surely you wouldn't have come down here with me if you weren't the least bit curious what we might find."

"Curious, yes. But not suicidal."

Page sighed, and tried to set her anxiety aside as she struggled once more to make her mind feel grounded. Of all the days..

The two slowly traversed down the hall together, glancing into rooms as they went along. Down the side left from the entrance, there were two classrooms with posters rotting off the walls, and what looked like collapsed chalkboards on the floors. Their old screachy surfaces had been shattered to near dust. 

After the classrooms were two foul-smelling rooms of toilet stalls, and then a strange dead end. On the right side from where they came in, there was only a single doorway, the door of which had broken off it's hinges but somehow stubbornly remained, firmly wedged in place. Both tried to push it open with their hands, but to no avail. Silvia motioned Page aside, and gave it a few sturdy kicks. One last attempt, and at last it collapsed onto the ground with a loud "thump!".

Silvia flipped the light switch and peered inside, and Page watched as a confused look took over the girl's face. This room was quite different from the others.

The entirety of the floor and most of the walls were made of concrete, with the exception of one wall on the far right of the entrance, which appeared to be a large metal gate. A weird oily grime coated and stained nearly every surface.

Across the center of the room, to the girl's right, was a low concrete divider that reached about the height of Page's waist. The side of it that they were on appeared to have been set up like all the other classrooms they had seen, with rows of desks and chairs facing a board on the left wall; except for one larger desk at the front of the rows which faced the opposite - likely where a teacher would have sat, the two girls thought.

The other side of the divider, however, was littered with rusted tools and mechanical parts. Page had always known that some human being at some point had to have been there to build the auto-mechs themselves, but it wasn't really something she'd ever processed  beyond a thought or two until now; let alone stood in the physical evidence of.

Silvia ventured further in, examining a bookcase which stood against the far end of the left wall. 

"This is so.. weird." Page said, glancing around with a vague sense of recognition. For a moment she had nearly escaped her anxiety, distracted by this strange piece of history. 

Silvia, meanwhile, had noticed something strangely glistening in the spaces between the books on the shelf. Or not between, but rather, behind them. She pulled a heavy book from the shelf:

"Automotive Services: Part 1" she read aloud to Page, then tossed the book to floor behind herself, and looked back to the shelf. She could see a letter 'M' painted in a bright, gritty, and glistening yellow behind where the book had once been. She pulled off another, and now there was a letter "A" next to the first one. She continued this repetitive process until there were no more books left on the shelf, and she had found the bold, declarative words "MAINTENANCE ROOM" presenting themselves before her. 

"This is interesting."

Page had spent the last few minutes watching Silvia rip ancient books from a shelf and throw them onto the floor dismissively; and while Page had assumed Silvia's frame was simply blocking view of whatever had caught the girl's interest, her actually being a crazy person was not quite out of the range of possibilities in Page's mind. 

Thus, Page approached the bookcase slow and tentatively, as if a stray dog had accosted her on the streets and was unfortunately blocking her way home. Silvia stepped aside, revealing the letters to her.

But Page noticed something else as well.

The floor of the entire room was completely coated in grime. Except, in front of the bookshelf, where it appeared to have been roughly scraped in a kind of curved triangle - As though the bookshelf had been pushed away from behind.

Someone had been here. Recently. 

Silvia noticed Page's look of alarm with confusion. She knew Page was nervous of course, Page had looked nervous since the moment they had met upstairs. But now, Page had turned a sharp, cold white. Like all the heat in her face had vanished.

Silvia started to say something, but Page held up a finger to stop her. Page motioned to the scuff marks, and whispered: "Did you or your boots do this?"

Silvia shook her head slowly.

"Me neither.  Someone else must have been down here. Recently."

Silvia looked at her, confused. 

"I'm sure it's nothing. Who else could even get down here? We're the only ones with chips for the Poles.. Weren't there any other students here with you, before me?"

Page shook her head.

"Well, nobody could possibly get here on foot, and in this day and age we're far past the whole 'ghosts' and 'monsters' thing. Are you trying to play a prank on me or something? Scare the new girl?"

Page searched Silvia's face, unsure if she was serious or not. The dim lighting above them flickered slowly, as a chill of piercing air blew slowly past. 

"Do I really look like the type to play pranks?"

The lights went out.

Page felt something press against her collarbone and shoulder.

Page ran.