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“I thought you went crazy,” said Jimmy.
Unthank shrugged his shoulders as if to say, It happens.
“Do you know there’s an attack on the tower happening right now?” added Jimmy.
“An attack? Had no idea, tra la.” It just slipped out, the singing. He bit his lip, hard.
The two stevedores, so confused by the random meeting, seemed not to pay the little tic any mind. “Chapeaux Noirs,” said Bammer. “Gettin’ brazen. Whole lobby’s blown out.”
“Oh wow, really?” said Unthank.
“Yeah. It’s real. The Chief’s down there. We got to get him to safety.”
“What horrible people,” said Unthank. “Those saboteurs.”
“We’ll show them, though,” said Jimmy, who was also holding a very large pipe wrench. Joffrey couldn’t imagine the kind of plumbing repair that would require such a large tool. The stevedore whacked it against the palm of his opposing hand a few times.
“You sure will,” said Joffrey. “No doubt about it.”
“You shouldn’t be in here,” said Jimmy. “Ain’t safe.”
“Yes, yes,” said Joffrey. “I’m just making my way out. I know the drill.”
Just then, another explosion sounded from below. The hallway was rocked slightly by the detonation. Joffrey braced himself against the wall.
“We gotta get down there,” said Jimmy. “All hands on deck.”
“Watch yourself, Machine Parts,” said Bammer as the two stevedores shoved past him. It was an annoying entitlement the two stevedores enjoyed: being able to refer to the various Titans by their Division, something only Wigman typically did.
“Will do, guys,” said Joffrey. “And good luck down there.” He waited until they were out of sight before continuing his walk toward the door. He breathed deeply, desperately tamping down the violent urge he had to sprint for the door, screaming epithets. He still had appearances to keep up; his narrow escape from Bammer and Jimmy was testament to that.
He reached the door in a few short steps. Access required handprint identification, which he provided, along with another retinal scan. “Good evening, Joffrey Unthank,” said a robotic voice from the panel by the door once the procedure had been completed. A click sounded by the handle; Unthank pushed the door in and entered the room.
The break room had exhibited all the signs of a speedy departure; benches were upturned and magazines thrown carelessly to the ground. Several of the stevedores’ metal locker doors were wide open, and denim overalls poured out like blue tongues. A few maroon beanies littered the floor. Cold cups of coffee. Half-eaten bagels. The duct-rats had managed their scurry through the room without incident, and they were now running down the hall toward the service elevator that would, if all things were going according to plan, be powered down.
Harry led the pack this time; arriving at the shut doors (a sign above them read SERVICE ELEVATOR! AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY!) he sized up his challenge with a steely eye. He was ten years old—he’d have been twelve if it weren’t for his two years in the time-stasis of the Periphery—and it was as if someone had held their thumb on his head as he’d grown. All of his development seemed to have occurred in his thighs and biceps, while his height stayed remarkably stunted. Even Elsie, who was shorter than most of the nine-year-olds in their crowd, met him eye to eye when they spoke. He squared up his stumpy legs and fished his thick fingers into the gap between the elevator doors and pulled.
Nothing.
Again: He pulled. He grunted as he did so, and little veins popped up in his neck.
Elsie gave a look behind them. “Hurry!” she whispered.
“I’m trying,” said Harry, annoyed, before he gritted his teeth and tried again; the doors gave a little this time, and a thin red glow appeared between them: the light from the interior of the elevator shaft.
“You’re almost there!” said Ruthie. She and Oz thrust their fingers into the fissure to try and help.
Harry grunted again, and soon the doors had been pried some eighteen inches apart and the boy was able to slide between them and brace them open with his feet. “Okay!” he whispered breathlessly. “Get in!”
Oz went first, climbing through the lattice of Harry’s splayed shins and elbows, and gasped loudly. “Long way down, guys,” he said. He then inched his way out of sight and presumably began climbing. Elsie and Ruthie followed suit.
Just beyond the doors was a red-lit shaft that seemed impossibly tall; the floors below were distinguished by metal doors that appeared periodically along the wall of the cement corridor. The car was nowhere in sight. They could only hope that Mr. Unthank had managed to shut the thing down; it was understood that if the car were operational and it were to run over them as they climbed, well, the less said about it the better. Above them, the shaft stretched into the unseen distance, a constellation of little red lights extending into a pinkish blur. The metal rungs of a ladder were set into a shallow channel in the shaft wall, and the four children began climbing them, mindful not to look down.
“Come on,” said Elsie. “We got a long ways to go.”
Adopting the bearing of a service technician finishing his rounds, Unthank backed out of the room and gently closed the door behind him, ensuring that the door was locked as he did so. He couldn’t help, at this moment, but feel a little impressed with himself. Not only had he steeled himself against the constant barrage fed by his enfeebled mind, bursts of manic suggestions and reality-tilting images, but he’d managed it all r
ather flexibly, adapting his actions to all the curveballs that fate had thrown at him. What’s more, he’d done an incredibly good turn for the children. Now they would be well on their way to freeing their friends from the grip of the Chief Titan and thereby scuttling any chance of Bradley Wigman achieving what would have rightfully been Unthank’s, what he had worked at for so long. . . .
