3:

Calyx let Hima take the lead as they ran through the twisting corridors and 
spiralling staircases. While she was fairly sure that she wouldn't lose her 
way -- she rarely did -- he knew the landscape better, having attended the 
Academy last year as well. If there was a short-cut that could get them to 
their classroom on time, Hima would know it.

Besides, he could run faster than she could.

Their route led them down into a hallway lined with pillars against a
bricked wall, but only on the right-hand side; the wall on their left was 
smooth and unadorned. Ahead, the right wall fell away to reveal what seemed 
to be natural sunlight coming in through --

And then Calyx stopped dead in her tracks as she smelled it.

Slowly she turned to her right, looking into the courtyard which lay in that 
direction. It was, as she'd noted, open to the sky, and the light of 
midmorning reached down to paint everything within the opened space in 
bright colours.

Except, of course, for the blackness that lined the sides of the huge cage 
at its center.

It took her a moment to realize that the blackness and the horrible smell 
were linked, and another moment to realize that it was not a cage, as she'd 
thought, but some sort of greenhouse. But whoever was responsible for taking 
care of the plants within had been lax in their duties ... for quite some 
time now.

In the moments when she realized all this, she slowly, steadily walked
towards the birdcage-shaped greenhouse. As she came closer, she saw that the 
decay wasn't limited to the plants inside. The metal parts of its structure 
were rusted, while many of the glass windows had been completely obscured by 
dust, or other impurities.

But the handle of the door and the lock above it seemed intact, and from a 
distance, Calyx watched her hand reach out to grasp that handle.

"Calyx! Come on, you're the one who didn't want to be late!"

Hima's voice jolted her out of whatever fugue had afflicted her, and she 
turned to look back at him. He stood just outside the courtyard, looking at 
her with mingled anxiety and confusion.

That blended into disgust and surprise as he apparently noticed the smell 
himself. "Ye cats!" Hima didn't-quite-yelp. "They still haven't cleaned this 
thing up yet?"

"You knew about this?" she asked. Now what brought that on?

He nodded. "Sheila saw it when she gave her first lecture here, a few years 
ago. She told me about it when I mentioned that I'd be coming here ... never 
actually thought I'd see it myself. What a stench! How can anyone stand it?"

She looked up at the sides of the courtyard, and saw that all the windows on 
its walls were boarded over. "I don't think anyone comes here very often," 
she said quietly. "What do you think it is?"

"A bad place to be, even if we weren't running late."

"Seriously."

"I dunno, Calyx ... I guess it's a memorial of some kind. I dunno to what, 
though --"

The sound of a slap richoteted through the courtyard like a sniper bullet 
glancing off stone, and her head jerked around to its apparent source. Hima 
blinked at her sudden motion.

"Did you --" she almost asked, then stopped as the fact that he hadn't heard 
anything showed clearly on his face.

"Are you all right?" he asked, starting to sound concerned.

A moment passed, and she quietly replied, "Fine" as she forced herself to 
run out of the corridor and into the hallway.

She couldn't understand why Hima was having a hard time keeping up with her; 
after all, it wasn't like she was running full-out, in a blind panic that 
something terrible had been lying in wait for her within the cage, and that 
she'd just had a narrow escape.

Not at all.

                                TBC