“You need to show us the secret room where they keep the bodies after you’re taken to the Building and shot, or you can’t be our friend anymore.”[1]
The Building is the Edenite safe house on New Rho where Nona lives with Camilla, Pyrrha, and Palamedes. Because of Blood of Eden’s inauspicious activities, the hulking apartment building has earned a bit of a bad reputation among the civilians of the city.
History[]
“In the Building people did not come to look when they heard booted feet down the corridor, or a door flung violently open.”[2]
It is unknown when the Building was built, whether it predates the resettlements or if it was created to accommodate the population influx from planets the Nine Houses thanergetically flipped. At some point, Blood of Eden establishes a presence in the Building, and begins using it as a safe house for Edenites residing on New Rho. After the Resurrection Beast appears in the sky and the Cohort abandons the planet, Blood of Eden increase their operations to gain control of the populace and oust necromancers. Their militant tactics inspire a healthy amount of fear for ordinary civilians, who speculate that the Edenite presence renders the Building dangerous and worthy of avoiding. Nona’s school friends and teachers in particular seem aghast upon hearing she lives in the Building, though she notes that the nice lady teacher braves the Building to recruit Nona to school.
For the most part, the Building seems to function as an ordinary apartment building, until Blood of Eden mobilizes for a ground assault. With the arrival of a broadcast announcing the return of the necromancers, the Building turns into a “hive of activity”[3] with people urgently moving sealed security boxes out of storage and onto big trucks outside.
It is unknown whether the Building was damaged during the Resurrection Beast’s attack on New Rho.
Appearance[]
Exterior[]
“Her eye, desiring the familiar, looked to where the Building probably was, her home a little grey block among the other grey blocks.”[4]
Though Nona describes the Building as looming above the street, the Building is just one big building in a city full of big buildings. It appears to be uniform in shape and stretches at least thirty-one floors above street-level. Additionally, the Building has at least three levels of underground parking, guarded by an access gate.[5] On the first level of the parking garage, the outside is visible through the struts.[1]
Interior[]
"The corridor lights were dimmed and the cool linoleum under her bare feet felt sticky with each step, and condensation left perfect Nona-shaped footprints on the squares as she went. The windows were all blinded and boarded.”[6]
The interior of the Building is pedestrian and worn-down, with covered windows and “fizzing broken lamps.”[2] The elevator is unreliable, forcing most of the occupants to use the big concrete stairwell despite the height of the building. Apart from some sections of the lower levels being used for storage and other Blood of Eden operations, the Building is largely composed of individual apartments. The occupants keep to themselves, and Nona describes the Building as “still”[6] most of the time.
Locations[]
Elevator[]
There is an elevator well in the parking garage, and presumably an elevator landing on every floor in the Building. Unfortunately, the elevator has a notorious tendency to get stuck, although Nona and Camilla do manage to use it successfully at one point.
Nona’s Apartment[]
“The Building loomed high above the car window, and tears smarted in Nona’s eyes to be finally home after such a long and hideous day.”[5]
The apartment that Nona lives in is on the thirtieth floor of the Building. The apartment door has several different security measures. It requires both a key and an access code for the numlock pad.[5] Though they keep a spare key taped to the bottom of their welcome mat, Pyrrha and Camilla regularly bar the door from the inside as well and require a special knock pattern for entrance.[6]
Inside the apartment, there is a row of pegs by the door where Camilla, Palamedes, Pyrrha, and Nona hang their UV coats, hats, and masks.[7] The front room contains a fold-out couch where Pyrrha sleeps and a chin-up bar in one of the interior doorways.
The bathroom floor is covered in cool ceramic tiles and has a water tank and bathtub against one of the walls. As it has no exterior walls, the bathroom is where they shelter in place when there’s shooting near the Building.[8]
The kitchen contains a table and chairs, a fridge, and a hotplate that glows orange. The sink has a cabinet beneath it, and Pyrrha uses one of the drawers in the counter to stash cigarettes and other contraband. On one of the walls, there is a big brown sheet of paper where Palamedes and Camilla keep a tally of what kinds of jokes Nona makes. The windows are covered by frosted anti-sniper striping and thick blackout curtains.[7]
Camilla and Nona share a bed in the singular bedroom. Camilla and Nona’s clothes hang on the wall, and to the side, Camilla keeps stacks of notebooks, papers, and recordings that she uses to communicate with Palamedes.
Parking Garage[]
“The lights had all been turned off in the underbuilding where the other cars and trucks and motorcycles went, and it was astonishingly dark, all except for the truck’s big headlights. There were people next to idling trucks, next to cars, people with their dust hoods up, people with their guns out, or people standing and talking quietly.”[5]
Access to the Building’s underground parking garage is restricted, guarded by a manned access booth. In times of need, Edenites use the garage as an informal meeting place. Despite the ominous atmosphere, the neighborhood kids play in the garage during the day, and at one point Beautiful Ruby hit a parked car with a ball, causing the car alarm to go off for three hours.[1]
The Roof[]
The Building has access to the roof, which is large enough that in the times before bullets got expensive, Pyrrha would take Nona up there and show off her shooting skills.[9]
Known Occupants[]
- Camilla Hect, Nona, Palamedes Sextus, and Pyrrha Dve
- Baby prone to wailing[7]
- Cop that never takes their shoes off, who lives one floor above Nona’s apartment[7]
- Maniacs with a radio in number 302[6]
- Members of the militia who live one floor below Nona’s apartment[7]
- Drunk man who hits his partner (former)[9]
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Nona the Ninth Day 1, Ch. 3
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Nona the Ninth Day 3, Ch. 12
- ↑ Nona the Ninth Day 4, Ch. 17
- ↑ Nona the Ninth Day 5, Ch. 27
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Nona the Ninth Day 3, Ch. 16
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Nona the Ninth Day 2, Ch. 10
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 Nona the Ninth Day 1, Ch. 1
- ↑ Harrow the Ninth Epilogue
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Nona the Ninth Day 1, Ch. 2