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ACCESS GRANTED. HELLO JOFFREY UNTHANK. Joffrey let out a breath of relief. He began madly tapping out commands, his two index fingers quietly punching at the keyboard. Suddenly, he heard the sound of footsteps in the hall. The secretary was returning.
Sucking in his breath, he scooted around the front of the desk, getting only as far as the counter before the young secretary reappeared, carrying a bottle of water. A little plastic flower on the surface of the counter caught Joffrey’s attention, and he pretended to be intently studying it.
“Funny,” he said as the secretary came closer. “This is a very funny little flower. Ha! It dances a little when there’s light, huh? What a little contraption. What an amazing little contraption.” He gave the secretary a feigned look of surprise and said, “Oh, hi! I’ve been standing here, looking at this little gizmo, the whole time you were gone. Literally. Just right here. Looking at this little flower.”
The secretary appeared nonplussed. “Here’s your water, Mr. Unthank.”
“Oh, thanks very . . . ,” began Joffrey as he took the water from the secretary. “Oh. I’m sorry. I need tepid water. I should’ve said as much.” He handed the bottle back. “Overly cold water is bad for your digestion. Did you know that?”
“No, I did not,” said the secretary. “Tepid water?”
“If you don’t mind,” said Unthank. He made every effort to retain close eye contact with the secretary; he couldn’t afford the man looking down at the computer screen behind the desk, which was now advertising the following words in fairly large block letters: YOU ARE ABOUT TO SET ALL SECURITY SYSTEMS TO BYPASS. ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DO THIS? Y/N.
“Not at all,” said the secretary. He wheeled about and walked down the hall and out of sight. Joffrey rolled around the side of the desk nimbly and jabbed his finger down on the Y key of the keyboard.
RETINAL SCAN REQUIRED.
He glanced at the elevator. The readout above the doors was proclaiming, in Joffrey’s inner ear, that the elevator carrying Wigman was now on the EIGHTH FLOOR.
“C’mon, c’mon,” hissed Unthank as he positioned his face in front of the monitor’s webcam. “Take your pretty picture.”
ACCESSING . . . ACCESSING . . . PLEASE WAIT.
7. 6. 5.
Little droplets of sweat appeared on Unthank’s brow; he could feel his face growing pink and warm. His heart began beating wildly in his chest. “Tra la, tra lee,” he murmured helplessly.
ACCESS GRANTED. SECURITY SYSTEM BYPASSED. THANK YOU, JOFFREY UNTHANK.
“No, thank you, tra la, tra loo!” he nearly shouted as he heard the elevator ding. He shot upright and spun around, staring helplessly at the elevator doors as they slowly hissed open. Like a video paused on a particularly unflattering frame, Unthank’s body was frozen, contorted into a bizarre and unbecoming shape, his mouth stretched sideways and his hands cocked in surprise like a campy vampire in pre-attack mode.
He had come face-to-face with Brad Wigman; or rather, face-to-bald-spot, as Brad Wigman was bending over, wiping some offending speck from the front of his chinos, presenting his blond pate and revealing to Joffrey that the Chief Titan was, in fact, losing a little hair on top.
Unthank thought fast; before Bradley had lifted himself upright, Joffrey dashed to the side of the elevator doors, safely out of sight. He then watched as Wigman stepped out of the open elevator and into the lobby. Joffrey silently slipped into the car as the doors began to shush closed, taking Wigman’s place. He watched as the closing doors slowly concealed the Chief Titan’s broad shoulders. Still holding his breath, Unthank punched the number twenty-two on the elevator’s keypad and glanced up at the readout above the door; the numbers began climbing.
Joffrey smiled. He allowed himself a long, loud melody, sung from the depths of his belly.
And then: the first explosion.
CHAPTER 17
Where Everybody Was
When the explosion happened:
Joffrey was in the elevator, singing loudly to himself. He was thrown to the back of the car by the force of the detonation; the lights went out. A red bulb flashed on, bathing the elevator in a stark light as the elevator’s climb became stuttered and uncertain, powered by some unseen generator.
Desdemona Mudrak was standing by the desk on the top floor of the tower, picking at her cuticles and watching Roger as he casually read the titles of the book spines on the shelves and tried to intuit which one was the hidden lever to open the case. The explosion made a ripple-like tremor, decreasing in strength as it made its way up the massive structure of Titan Tower, until it reached the top floor and merely rattled the trophies in their cases and caused Desdemona and Roger to look at each other in a confused silence.
Martha and Carol were in the safe room behind the bookcase, absently munching on pretzels and preparing to dig into the final chapter of Dumas’s jailbreaking masterpiece. The sound of the explosion caused Martha to drop the book.
Wigman had just stepped into the ground-floor lobby of the tower, having just removed an obstinate strand of lint from his otherwise pristine and pleated khakis. He was surprised to find the lobby empty; even the night secretary was missing from his station behind the desk. Wigman was about to say something when the secretary appeared, holding a plastic bottle of water. They both looked very surprised to see each other and equally surprised to see no one else. The explosion’s epicenter was some yards off, just beyond the gate of the guarding wall, but its power was enough to completely shatter the tall plate-glass windows that surrounded the ground floor and throw the furniture, which had been purchased cheap at a liquidator’s warehouse, into the air like beanbag chairs freed of gravity.
Rachel Mehlberg was huddled behind the cover of a stack of pallets with a cohort of fellow saboteurs, holding an unlit bomb in her hand. The explosion sounded, echoing off the cement walls and chemical silos that surrounded the tower, and splashing the dark nighttime scene with bright yellow light and a very sudden and intense heat. She could feel the shock wave rumble her lungs and she nearly fell backward, balanced as she was on the balls of her feet in a crouched position. Someone caught her; it was Nico. He was smiling. “Now,” he said. He lit a match and held it to the fuse of Rachel’s bomb. She let out a loud, prehistoric “WHOOP” and threw it as far as she could.
Elsie Mehlberg was crouched in a square, anodized aluminum duct, barely three feet across, at the front of her fellow Unadoptables-turned-saboteurs: the duct-rats. They’d been waiting for the little blinking red light above the latticed gate that blocked their way to turn green, at which point, they were told, they could safely open it without incurring a shock that would turn them, instantly, to small fuzzy piles of ash. This was a fate that none of them were interested in experiencing. When the green light came on, it was Elsie’s job, being the first in line, to reach out gingerly and undo the latch. It opened with a yawning creak, happily absent of any kind of electric flash, and she began shuffling on her hands and feet down the squat corridor toward the white light in the distance. When the explosion came, it shuddered the building and a very loud noise echoed up the metal vent, causing all the children to duck their heads. The light in the distance blinked out, only to be replaced by a strange red one. Elsie continued forward.
Michael and Cynthia had just returned to the Forgotten Place, to their warehouse home. They’d come back to resume leadership over their fellow Unadoptables as the eldest of the clan; they’d arrived with fresh blankets and fresh food and a promise that their two missing members would soon be rescued. Just as they’d announced this, the high, cracked windows of the warehouse were suddenly illuminated with a glowing light and the children oooooohed their appreciation, knowing that the great operation had begun.
