The Last Human: Book 1 of the Phicon Series

By Ben Klarich

Earth is lost.

Like the human colony on Mars and Lunar City, it was destroyed by an alien race called the Rhians. Aggressors in a war against humankind, the Rhians are stronger, more advanced, and more brutal than any other known species.

The conflict is over; only one human remains.

Felix stares across a distant planet, orbiting on a space station as his last refuge. What will become of him? A prisoner? An exhibit at a zoo?

Hatching a plan to escape, he chooses freedom. After all, it rests with him to keep his kind from extinction.

Protected by a formidable commander, pursued by a resourceful intelligence officer, Felix must navigate strange worlds and high political stakes to find his way.

The Last Human is a fast-paced journey across new galaxies and civilisations, in a race to uncover the truth and perhaps, even hope.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ben Klarich
• Release date: Apr 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005918040

Book preview

Prologue

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Nikori poured coffee from the pot to his mug in slow motion, staring more at the TV than the drink. 

The monitor was the only black object in a sea of white, the walls, cabinets, appliances and tiles. Even the countertops were mostly white, made from marble, with dark grey flecks running through them. Spilling a mud-brown liquid in such pristine conditions would upset his wife. However, it was still preferable to missing the incredible news. 

Despite the darkness of the video feed, his trained eye quickly made out the glistening metal of the ships. 

Fatigue carried over from the night before. He figured he had slept no more than a few hours across sporadic napping. At his age, he was paying for it. Morning sun streaked through the panelled window over the sink in front of him. If only he could look away, he would have realised what a glorious day it promised to be. 

Nikori’s wife walked in. The images stopped her as another explosion flickered. No pleasantries exchanged between them as he sipped from his white cup. The coffee was horrible, but he didn’t expect much else. At least it was caffeine. 

‘Is it still happening?’ Mae asked.  

‘And getting worse,’ he replied, his wife shuffling out of the room. 

The footage beamed from orbit was the most extensive collection of space vessels ever gathered in one place. Hundreds of them and, unfortunately, less than half were human. The storm of duelling ships was a sharp contrast to the serene blue and green hues of Earth in the background. 

It was the front lines of a war fought against a race of aliens known as Rhians. The war had waged for five years, the conflict on Nikori’s TV representing the last stand. Humans had lost nearly every battle; their colonies on the Moon and Mars had gone. 

The enemy knocked at their door. And it could be the end of humanity.

Nikori had more invested in the war than most. He was part of the crew who made first contact only three decades before. He had met the Rhians, dined with them, laughed with them, written about them. He never envisioned them as executioners. 

‘What time is the reporter arriving?’ Mae reappeared, pulling him out of his thoughts as she clattered around the coffee machine. 

‘Any minute now,’ Nikori mumbled, slurping gently.

‘Strange time for an interview,’ Mae took a sip before spitting it back in the cup. ‘Urgh. How on Earth do you make it so bad?’

‘It’s my gift.’

‘I can’t serve this to that woman and her crew, pointless interview or not,’ Mae flushed away the offensive liquid, beginning the process anew. 

A chime echoed from the hallway. 

‘That’s for me,’ Nikori finished up his drink, accustomed to the burnt taste, and headed for the sound.

The entrance hall was a sun trap, pulling light through double-height windows which bounced off a bright oak floor. The kitchen, sitting room, family room and stairs were all set off the welcoming hub, as well as the extra-wide and tall, green front door.

‘Hello,’ Nikori greeted his guests with a warm smile.

‘Dr Nikori,’ a young, caramel-skinned woman remarked, a bright blue suit popped in the daylight, her shirt crisp and black. She was flanked by a cameraman on one side, with his equipment clipped neatly to the left rim of his glasses, and a pale-skinned woman on the other. 

‘Yes.’

‘I’m Sunitra Gomez. We spoke last week,’ the lady looked to each of her colleagues. ‘Victor will be filming, and Siobhan is our producer.’

‘Delighted,’ Nikori nodded, scrambling to remember their names. ‘Won’t you come in? My wife, Mae, is making coffee for you all,’ he turned and led them back to the kitchen, surely moving slower than his guests would like. Any spring in his step had long gone. 

‘This is a lovely home,’ Victor said. ‘The view of the city is fantastic.’

‘Thank you. San Francisco is a beautiful place.’

‘Do you go in much?’ The cameraman was positively chatty. 

‘Not anymore, since the kids left. Cisco Bay is a big enough town for the two of us,’ Nikori gestured to his wife, who smiled and shook each guest’s hand, making Nikori feel bad. He wasn’t a tactile person. That was Mae’s thing.

‘Can I get you anything to drink?’ Mae asked with a beaming smile and those kind eyes of hers. 

‘We had plenty on the way,’ Sunitra assured her. ‘I think we would like to get started.’

Nikori understood the urgency. Men and women were dying above the beautiful sky. Who knew how much time remained? 

‘You are right. Please follow me to the office. There are things in that room, things I would like to cover during our conversation.’

‘I think you will like the view from the third floor, young man,’ Mae said. ‘You can see the historic bridge nicely.’

Victor smiled, Sunitra nodded, and the three cohorts moved aside to let the old man through. Nikori shuffled up the stairs as fast as his knees could bear. 

At the top, there were only two rooms. A bedroom, the sixth of the house, and utterly redundant. The other, Nikori’s office. He opened the door short of breath and gladly took his seat. His chair was the best thing in the room. It was brown, leather and fit like a glove, ergonomically designed for him while on the east coast at NASA to provide maximum comfort. He was allowed to keep many things during his retirement, but he was happiest about the armchair. 

Sunitra sat opposite, the other side of the gleaming wooden desk. The producer, who’s name escaped Nikori’s mind, perched against the left-hand wall, while Victor looked around, assumedly capturing footage. 

There was plenty to see. 

It was the office of a collector, all surface space taken by a trinket or device or MacGuffin. Mae always joked Nikori was a hoarder first and a scientist second. If not items of ‘research’ he would fill the office with comics or figurines or similar.

‘Do you know what this is?’ Nikori reached into the cubby below his desk and produced a round, white bud. ‘It is a wondrous device, made even more amazing by its size,’ Nikori tucked it into his ear. It fit snuggly into the concha in the earlobe with a second part which hung just below over the ear canal. ‘This is the first piece of alien tech, and first universal translator, I ever wore,’ he grinned, welcoming the nostalgia. It had been many years since an alien language hit his ear.

‘That’s really cool,’ Victor confirmed, taking images as he spoke. 

‘This is going out live,’ the young reporter reminded her subject. 

‘Yes,’ Nikori replied, his enthusiasm about the device waning. ‘Do you expect many people to watch? Considering the alternative?’ Nikori removed the bud from his ear and placed it back in its dusty resting place. 

‘No. But perhaps,’ Sunitra took a breath. ‘Perhaps we can be a distraction.’

‘That would make this whole thing worthwhile,’ Nikori said with a grin. 

‘OK,’ the producer got to her feet. Siobhan. That was her name. ‘We start with Suni on close up, pan to Dr Nikori, context shot of the room, then keep it dynamic,’ she said to Victor. ‘We have fixed cameras on each of you,’ as Siobhan spoke Nikori looked around, unaware of the installation or location of the cameras.

‘Got it,’ Sunitra, or Suni, swiped on her terminal before straightening her jacket and facing Nikori. ‘Ready, doctor?’  

He nodded. 

‘I’ll be the other side of the door, moving the feed as you speak. Good luck, counting down from five, four, three,’ Siobhan pulled the door to as she whispered the last numbers to zero. 

Sunitra jumped to life. 

‘Good morning, good day and good evening, wherever you are on this planet we call home. I’m Sunitra Gomez, and in this darkest hour for humanity, I am sitting with Doctor Kei Nikori, former astronaut and one of the first humans to travel through an intergalactic wormhole,’ she turned from Victor.

‘Dr Nikori, thank you for taking the time to speak with us today.’

‘It is my pleasure,’ Nikori replied, not entirely sure where to look, with Victor moving around and Sunitra fixed in place. 

‘Now doctor, as we sit here in Cisco Bay City, there is a shadow cast from above. Our brothers and sisters are fighting against the Rhians, aggressors in a war we have waged for half a decade. Our atmosphere is the last line of defence. If this is humanity’s last stand, I wanted to come here today and ask you; how did it come to this?’ 

Nikori sighed.

How had it all come to this? What had gone so wrong over the years since first contact with extra-terrestrials?

‘I believe it started when we evolved,’ Nikori began, only to be cut off by his eager interviewer.

‘When the Paragons emerged?’

‘Well, I see it as human evolution rather than emergence. Our new neighbours call themselves the Paragons, but their scientific name is Homo Genetica. And thankfully, they didn’t kill off the inferior species,’ he coughed. 

‘I would argue they left us to die. We certainly couldn’t count on our evolutionary superiors from Paragon for assistance in the war effort. Nor the Synians from planet Fell,’ Sunitra had some bite.

‘The Synians are a peaceful race. As are the Paragons.’

‘Is being peaceful the same as condemning a species to die on their own?’ Sunitra’s breathing became audible, verging on frantic. 

‘Perhaps you are right,’ Nikori replied, wary of the politics in any broader answer. 

‘And how do you link the Paragon evolution to the war with Rhia?’ The reporter asked with more control. 

‘When the Paragons left Earth all those years ago, annexing part of Mars as their own, humanity developed a - well I think it was always there -’ he was getting lost in his thoughts. 

‘What was always there?’

‘An inferiority complex,’ Nikori finished his thought. ‘A desire to be the apex, the top of every chain, not just food but intellectually as well.’

Sunitra frowned, glancing off to Victor. Nikori was sure he had said something wrong, but with all the things swirling in his head, he couldn’t pick out which. 

‘Tell us about that historic day. You were at NASA when they picked up the alien vessel?’ The reporter changed the subject.

‘I was,’ Nikori focussed on the question. ‘Sat in this very chair,’ he smiled. Sunitra urged him to continue with a hand gesture. ‘There was a faint blip on the scanner. An asteroid, we thought. It was fast, though, and big. Our neighbours on Mars, Paragon by then, confirmed it also. When the visual came in from a satellite by Saturn, we couldn’t believe it. A ship.’

‘But not just any spaceship, was it doctor?’ 

‘Quite right. When it finally slowed to a stop not far from our Moon, it was more like a floating city, with two peculiar white prongs sticking out the front. We would learn, over the next few weeks, that the vessel was capable of opening a gateway to twin stations, light years away in other galaxies. The Rhians called them Phicons.’ 

‘You are one of the first humans to travel through these gateways, aren’t you?’ 

‘Yes. Myself, and my old friend Commander Morris. Who is, at this very moment, fighting the Rhians in orbit, close to that very Phicon.’

‘We wish Commander Morris our best,’ Sunitra said down the camera. Nikori almost cringed. Well-wishing was so useless it felt like an insult. 

‘He is a good man. And he was great company during that first trip,’ Nikori shuddered. By now, perhaps Morris was gone? 

‘How did you find the Rhians?’ 

‘They were aloof, but not unfriendly.’

‘Were there any signs of the violence ahead?’

‘No,’ Nikori replied. ‘But we didn’t show ours either.’

‘Can you describe what it was like to voyage through the gateway? To look at other stars?’

‘It is so hard to explain,’ Nikori glanced at a picture of him sitting next to Morris. He lifted the frame to his lap and rubbed his jaw. 

‘We would appreciate it if you tried,’ Sunitra replied, her voice enticing. 

‘The Phicons make a route from one to the other,’ Nikori said, before once again being interrupted.

‘They create wormholes,’ Sunitra said. 

‘If you want to call it that,’ Nikori replied. ‘I remember the black sphere, swelling between the two prongs of the Phicon, flickering and twitching with light. It grew from the size of a beach ball to a small moon in seconds. The sheer blackness,’ Nikori trailed off.

‘Can you expand on that?’  

‘It felt close. Dark and...heavy. Like we were flying into water,’ Nikori took a moment to review the picture once more, recalling the trepidation he and his companion felt. The black enveloped them as they accelerated, completely removing any context of speed. As their minds told them the ship was stationary, their eyes saw lights. Thousands, maybe millions of lights began to glisten in front of them as the gateway opened. Nikori was looking at stars light-years away from every other human in existence. He heard Morris gasp so vividly it felt like he was still beside him. Then he thought about coming home again, forever changed, desperate to tell Mae and his kids.

‘What were you thinking about, Doctor?’ Sunitra asked with a smile, abandoning her previous impatience with a scatter-brained old fool. 

‘My wife,’ Nikori replied. 

‘Sorry, doctor,’ the young reporter looked up and around the room. ‘I’ve just heard the news that only a few human ships remain. It looks like we may be at the last stages.’ 

Victor dropped his head as Siobhan pushed the door ajar. All three were at a loss for what to do next. 

Then it hit him. What was he doing? Sitting in his office, talking to strangers?

‘If you’ll excuse me,’ Nikori said. He lifted himself out of his chair and set off down the hall without another word. Behind him, the news crew stared at one another, each as silent as the next. 

Taking the three floors in his stride, Nikori made the ground floor and searched around. 

Mae wasn’t there. 

He navigated through the kitchen, the pantry and the snug, all were vacant. Nikori pulled in a breath, ready to call out, before spotting her in the garden. Mae stared across the bay, hands by her sides, with their dog, Ruby, lying beside her. Nikori smiled and opened the French doors, walking across the patio and onto the grass behind her. 

‘Hi honey,’ he said. Mae turned around and smiled despite the tears in her eyes. 

‘I couldn’t watch it anymore.’ 

Nikori threw his arms around her and felt her light sobbing on his chest. ‘Me neither,’ he welled up. ‘I missed you,’ Nikori cursed himself for the wasted time spent in his office. He regretted every moment he hadn’t spent with her in their perfect home. 

‘What is going to happen?’ She asked, taking a step back. 

‘I don’t know,’ he sucked in some fresh air and wiped tears from his eyes. ‘Why don’t we enjoy the view?’ He motioned at the city and the lapping water in front of them. ‘Do you remember when we first moved here? How different it was from Florida?’

‘Ugh, I hated it. It was so cold and windy,’ she laughed.

‘What about now?’

‘I wouldn’t be anywhere else,’ Mae replied. ‘How much longer can they last up there?’ She obviously couldn’t take her mind off it.

‘Not long. It may already be over,’ Nikori said as he glanced upwards. He thought it looked darker, almost imperceivably at first, but gradually he could tell the difference. The sky, at nearly nine o’clock in the morning, was turning black. Fast.  

‘What is this?’ Mae asked next to him, noticing the same. Ruby whimpered in distress at their feet. 

Nikori had no idea how to answer. His stomach sank as his heart began beating faster. The sky was darker than any night, devoid of any twilight. He had seen this before, and he had no idea how it could hang above him on Earth.

Somehow, a wormhole was opening, and it looked to be swallowing the planet. 

‘Niki!’ Mae shouted as she grabbed him, Ruby now barking in the background. 

‘I love you, Mae, I love you,’ he whispered as he held her tight. She grabbed him around the waist and screwed her eyes shut. Nikori gazed in horror at the horizon and the landscape around him. 

There was nothing but darkness.

One

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Another bead of sweat hit the treadmill. The room pounded with the sound of feet against the whirring belt. It had been constant for over an hour, broken only by heavy breathing and sporadic coughing. The runner worked hard to keep his mind blank. He feared to let any thoughts in, unwilling to process them. 

Jogging helped.

With his strength waning and mind wandering, Felix grabbed the frame of the apparatus and lifted his legs to the sides. He stared down at the moving tread, picking out the occasional stain. After a pause, he hit the stop button with a balled fist before dizziness could take hold. 

Felix surveyed the gym of Kaly station, his current ‘home’. The place was sterile, like visiting a hospital ward, getting cleaned twice daily despite limited use. Most days, it was empty. Just about everything on the installation was grey, with the gym no exception. His mood was the same, and Felix could no longer outrun his thoughts. He caught his reflection off the glass window, his height and build, his short brown hair. All average, just like everything about him. Only he wasn’t average anymore. Suddenly, Felix was unique, one of the rarest things in the universe. He was the last human.

Less than twenty-four Earth hours earlier he was one of two official humans left alive. Maria Flores was the second to last. Twice Felix’s age at sixty-four, she slowly succumbed to an illness he hadn’t heard of since childhood. Felix had grown to know Maria well. They moved to Kaly on the same vessel from Paragon, a planet known to humans as Mars, the home of their evolutionary partners.

Felix and Maria had been together ever since. 

Then she died.  

Felix lived on Kaly station; explicitly built to hold the surviving humans after the war. It orbited the peaceful home planet of the Synians – known as Fell, which dominated any window on the base. Fell was a beautiful ball of blues ocean, green land and white clouds. All painfully reminiscent of Earth. The geography was different at least - Fell was a single landmass surrounded by a vast ocean. Small grey artificial islands broke through the clouds where the Synians had expanded their reach. They were mostly research facilities. The Synians, like humans, wanted to understand their planet better. Unlike humans, their pursuit would continue.

Despite spending months in their company, Felix couldn’t adjust to the looks of his Synian companions. They were all mostly the same height, shape and weight, not too dissimilar to the average human. Synian faces were flatter and broader though, with features likes mouths and noses less prominent than the strong wrinkles around eyes, cheeks and forehead. Many Synians were hairless, save for wispy strands from their scalps and chins. Matched with pale, blotchy skin, they were hardly Felix’s definition of beautiful creatures. Their evolutionary journey hadn’t seemed to touch anything like the apes of Earth.  

Phicon-F hung off in the distance, drifting further along Fell’s orbit, distinctly shaped liked a massive white beetle. The Rhian race, aggressors of the war with humans, constructed and owned these floating cities. During the conflict, they shut down Phicon-E, the gateway nearest Earth. Even if other planets wanted to help humans, they couldn’t.

Felix remembered his approach to Phicon-E during his transport to Kaly. The Rhians had been kind enough to open it once the war was over. 

‘Look at the scars,’ Maria pointed out the damage after the battle for Earth. Felix had grunted in reply, knowing their failure to destroy the Phicon was a microcosm for the entire war. The humans underestimated their foe at every turn. And their last-ditch plan to stem the flow of Rhian reserves had barely made a dent on the metal shell. 

So was the story of every other idea or strategy of their hopeless war. 

Looking at Fell through the glass, he wondered what the Synians made of the Human-Rhian conflict. They were an advanced race. Such a dispute was beneath them. Felix’s kin must have seemed so violent to the billion or more scientists beneath him.   

It didn’t help that the humans were the newest member to the galactic community and the only ones ever to start a war. The opportunity of using the Phicons and travelling the vast corners of space was an honour for any race. Instead of a bold next step for humankind, it was the last. 

We are fools, Felix told himself. And now, he was the only fool left. 

As Felix shook his head and fought overwhelming thoughts, the Paragon researcher on Kaly coughed to announce herself. 

Felix turned to face his evolutionary superior. Helena certainly was superior, over six feet tall with prominent bones in her cheeks and jawline. Her skin looked like polished porcelain, with blonde, tousled hair, deep blue eyes and a slim athletic figure. On the biodomes of colonised Mars, she was normal, to Felix, she embodied an Amazonian Warrior. 

Felix knew several other Paragons, but Helena was the only one he found relatable. She had compassion for the human plight – almost in a maternal sense. Helena wanted to protect them and assist them. She had volunteered to come to Kaly, desperate to help Maria and him. 

‘Felix,’ the pity in her voice was less noticeable while Maria was alive. Helena spoke with precision; each word enunciated and executed with perfect diction. Paragons were homogenous in accent, a far cry from their human counterparts. Felix swirled influences from his time in Canada and China in his voice, along with the quirks he’d picked up from exotic squad-mates.

‘You looking for a workout?’ He moved away from the window and felt the need to tidy up his mess. In solitary, he hadn’t noticed the drinking cups and towels strewn around. 

‘No need to do that on my account. I wanted to use the cross-trainer anyway,’ Helena moved to a machine in the opposite corner. Her exercise frequency increased as Maria’s health faded. Felix understood that urge. 

‘I was going to head back to my cell and have a wash anyway,’ Felix didn’t look up as he dropped a handful of cups into a vacuum waste can. 

‘You used to call it your quarters,’ she had a sly smile in the corner of her mouth. The comment was half curious, half sarcastic.

‘Today it’s a cell.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Helena delayed getting on her machine and took a step towards Felix. It was an odd gesture as she was half the room away. ‘Why don’t we have dinner this evening?’ It would be the first time eating together without Maria. 

‘Sure. Same place as usual?’ Felix joked after a long beat. There was only one place to eat on site - the grey mess hall. 

‘Same as usual,’ she turned to her machine, then quickly turned back. ‘Oh, by the way, Thall is looking for you.’ 

Felix rolled his eyes. Thall was the head of security on Kaly, which meant he ran the place. He was a renowned member of the Synian hierarchy, for what reason Felix had no idea. Thall wasn’t particularly friendly, but then neither was Felix. He had the impression that Thall didn’t want to be on Kaly as desperately as Felix, so it suited each to keep a professional distance. Felix had been on the station for nearly three months, and Thall had never been ‘looking’ for him. 

‘OK,’ Felix nodded as Helena started her regime. 

‘See you later,’ the Paragon doctor waved in response. 

Felix walked down the hall, each wobbly step a reminder of how hard he pushed himself. If he had known knew he would end his session with a talk from Thall, he would have saved some energy. 

Felix could count their interactions with one hand. Three fingers to be precise.

The first came the day he arrived on Kaly. Felix and Maria where both on the Paragon colony when Earth was lost. Due to the lack of Paragon support during the war, the two surviving humans had no desire to stay, so they were put on a ship to Synian orbit.

Thall was waiting to greet them. ’I am commander Thall, chief of Kaly, your new home,’ he proclaimed. Thall followed them during their initiation, studying them like curiosities from a zoo.

The second took place in the gym when Felix was sparring with another member of the security team called Broda. Felix liked Broda. He was like a fresh army cadet who wanted to impress the squad vets. He listened intently to everything Felix said and would often do anything Felix set him up to do. Most of the time it was sneaking him the Synian equivalent of alcohol. It was pretty tame compared to most human spirits, but it did the trick on lonely nights. 

On this occasion, Broda was off duty, and Felix was pounding a homemade punch bag. Broda maybe swilled a few too many mugs of kroon with his evening meal and insisted he would make a more challenging opponent. Felix thought better of it but indulged the intoxicated officer. After a few light rounds of friendly blows, Broda caught Felix in the ribs a little enthusiastically, winding him. Felix remembered with a smile how upset Broda was, trying his best to comfort his accidental victim. Synian empathy is slightly different to human customs. Broda rubbed his hands slowly when nervous and kept tapping Felix on the chest as an apology. It was at this point that Thall burst in. 

‘What happened?’ 

Broda immediately sunk his heads and shoulders in shame, again resembling a new army cadet, caught short with a prank by older recruits. 

‘Nothing, just blowing off steam,’ Felix straightened himself but kept his right hand to his throbbing ribs.  

Thall looked bemused. ‘Is that an expression of Earth? I do not understand it.’

‘Yes, it’s an expression. It just means we were entertaining ourselves with some friendly sport.’ Felix couldn’t adapt to the Synian language. The translators were excellent at their task, but they didn’t explain metaphors. 

‘Broda, you are off duty?’

‘Yes, sir, I came to exercise after my shift,’ Broda met his superior officer’s gaze. Felix had heard that Thall was a much-respected military leader of notable Synian lineage. Broda was intimidated. That was clear. 

Thall nodded carefully and sent Broda to his quarters. Felix and the stern security chief remained still until Broda was gone. 

‘Don’t be too hard on him,’ Felix said with more authority than he was entitled. 

‘I understand your attachment to this exercise chamber. I cannot imagine being in your position, and of course, I offer you leniency in almost any regard. However, my crew follow my rules.’

‘OK,’ Felix couldn’t help but notice Thall’s reply had zero empathy, despite his words. 

The Synian nodded and turned away, before almost immediate turning back in a robotic pirouette. ‘One last thing, Mr Gagnon. Stealing supplies of kroon is something I take seriously. Perhaps you can find a way to procure it without my staff having to be involved?’ 

‘Sure,’ Felix said through a smirk. 

The third and most recent interaction was the day Maria died. Helena was the one who delivered the news. 

‘We did all we could,’ she said. ‘But given Maria’s advanced illness...’ Helena was devastated as well, sitting close beside him to offer comfort.

As Felix hung his head, struggling to reconcile the grief and the magnitude of being the last human alive, Thall spoke his mind.

‘If my team can do anything to make you feel better at this time, let them know.’ The Synian promptly spun on his heels and marched away. Felix had never found a way for Thall’s team to make him feel better, nor had he found a way to process the pain and fear and grief. 

Felix focussed on the current situation. What would encounter number four bring? He expected it would entail more stern faces, empty gestures and general indifference. He would be proved right on all three. 

Getting to the security office was straightforward. Kaly had one central passage running its entire length, each different section having a hub one step off the main strip. The gym Felix made his second home was near one end of the corridor, and the security