The Gate Keeper: updates on hold until further notice

2. Cornered

Luce could only see the front of the first warehouse face on, there were no windows or doors to the side walls of the buildings which where set back on either side of the first, perhaps they were in a better state of repair.

The risk of heat stroke and dehydration were inevitable standing out in the blazing sun for much longer. Luce stood more of a chance - if anything at all awaited her - inside than standing there in such unbareable heat. She made her decision to inspect the buildings, curiously wondering what form of business felt the need to be so far out from civilisation.

She carefully scanned the windows of the first warehouse with its moss coated red brick facade. Other than the broken window's that Luce could see were vacant, at least three had been boarded up. Luce imagined cracks of light seeping through the boards into darkened rooms where people could peer unnoticed upon the Savannah before them. Watching. Waiting. There were no signs as to what the building was once used for, only a rectangular placard by the busted front door which was long ago faded by the sunlight.
No one came out of the building. She heard no sound other than her frantic heart beats echoing through the silence for all to hear.

Luce made her way towards the second building of identical height and structure. She wondered perhaps if they had been office blocks.

Movement caught Luce's eye in the short walk between the two buildings. Movement across a garden of tall exotic flowers and trees with lazily swooping branches and brilliant orange flora. She felt she had made an astronomical leap from Mars to Venus. The landscape felt as otherworldly as the barren Savannah, and it struck Luce as odd that such plants could grow here in this space full of life when only a few feet away anything that grew was dead.

There wasn't a breeze to disturb the plants, someone or something moved with in them. The foliage was so thick it was hard to see anything with in. Luce stood on tiptoes trying to glimpse any signs of movement.

She heard a swipping noise that sounded more electronical than natural, followed by a soft thud, the sound of a book being closed.

She walked around the botanical garden like a child peering through the window of a sweet shop. The garden looked as though it stretched for miles. Luce approached what seemed to be a pathway through the foliage, soft grass which appeared to have been trimmed. Luce considered walking through, until she looked at her surroundings properly and relaized she was staring at a mirage. It wasn't the type of tripping out of your brain mirage, the type she expected to see lost in the desert. It was a carefully, purposefully acriciterured mirage that filled Luce with a sense of wonder and amazement. It was beautifully genius. She had arrived at a pathway not between two gardens, but a pathway between one garden and a building. The building was made entirely from reflective mirrors, so it had appeared to be an extension of the jungle before it. She stepped tenitively on to the grass watching as her reflection warped in the mirror blending her image into the jungle behind her, like one of those carnival mirrors.

An invisible building.

The academy was real.

Luce made her way across the grassy path. The swipping sound she had heard earlier was in fact a sliding door that opened as she passed by. Had it remained closed she would have walk straight by without noticing.

She walked into a large open lobby with white marble floor, organic wooden furniture the type that was meant to be placed in gardens, lots of plants and large trees in mirrored pots, and a waterfall feature which ran from the top of the staircase down behind the reception desk to Luce's left. Luce appeared to be in a grand green house that thankfully had air conditioning. She could have kissed the ground by her feet.

She found a water tank by the side of the reception desk which she guzzled down six glasses of before discarding the paper cup in its respective recycling bin. There was no one manning the reception desk. No one around at all.