The Tower

By: David Anaxagoras

Narrated by: Christopher Gebauer

When 12-year-old Kolby wakes up on the polished concrete floor of an empty white room, he has no memory, no clothes, and no idea where he is. Kolby soon discovers he’s one of a dozen kids living in an extravagant penthouse atop the tallest tower in the city. Adults are nowhere to be found and, like Kolby, all the kids are missing their memories. The kids in the tower spend their time scaling the climbing wall, riding the winding waterslide into an Olympic-sized swimming pool, or playing video games on the 105-inch 8K video screen. A mysterious “manifesting room” magically provides food and rewards. They have virtually everything a kid could want.

Except a way out.

None of the kids show much concern for each other, let alone new arrival Kolby. That is, except for irrepressible Elías, who helps Kolby find his way around the penthouse and informs him of the tower’s “rules”. Elías seems eager for a friend, but Kolby isn’t interested. Haunted by fragments of memories he can’t quite make sense of and driven by the feeling that somewhere out there he has a family that loves him, Kolby just wants to escape the penthouse and go home.

Unfortunately, the only way to get out is by participating in the tower’s enigmatic game—a kind of scavenger hunt that takes place in the surrounding city. Players are chosen for teams by the tower’s apparent leader, Gen. Gen has been in the penthouse longer than anyone else can remember and she’s way past caring much about anything. Unlike Kolby, she has no desire to escape—who’s to say their previous life was better, anyway? But beneath her glib detachment, Gen harbors a secret—she knows more about the tower than she lets on, including the dark, inevitable truth about all their fates. It’s a burden that grows increasingly difficult for her to bear.

When game time arrives, it looks like Kolby has found his ticket out of the tower—but escape isn’t so simple. For one, people outside the tower don’t see the kids as they actually are. Kolby’s pleas for help are either ignored or he’s perceived as a threat. Even more troubling are the gaunts—menacing creatures who may once have been human and whose faces are slowly fading into a mask of featureless flesh. They shadow the kids at the periphery…watching…waiting. Stray from the game and they begin to close in.

Determined to get out, Kolby attempts to rally the other kids and work together to unravel the tower’s mysteries. But the closer he comes to answers, the more he suspects that the tower itself is alive and using them all for its own sinister purpose.

©2024 David Anaxagoras (P)2024 Recorded Books