Wildwood Imperium (Wildwood Chronicles 3)

He stepped out uncertainly, unnerved by the quiet on the floor. He looked at his watch and confirmed that despite the inconsistencies in the plan, he was still on schedule. A tentative beep could be heard somewhere in the distance, and he began walking toward it, humming all the while.

The duct-rats had arrived at another vent cover; the dusty light from the hallway cast a hatch-marked etching on the floor of the duct. They waited for another explosion; it came, and Harry kicked the cover out into the hall, sending a spray of chalky drywall dust onto the floor. The way was clear; they extricated themselves from the low conduit and stretched in the open air of the hallway. Despite their small size, each of them was feeling the pinch of having to crouch so low for so long; what’s more, the five-story free climb through the vertical duct had taken all the energy they could muster. They were breathing deeply, gulping in air.

“To the bathroom,” instructed Elsie, and they all filed toward the door, which, as she’d known, was only a few feet to their right.

The bathroom was sparklingly clean; truly, the work of an organization that prided itself on spotless, bacteria-free cleanliness. To the children, having spent the last several years of their lives either in an overcrowded orphanage, in a woodland cottage with no working plumbing, or in an abandoned warehouse with even fewer amenities, the sight of the immaculately clean restroom facility was enough to bring tears to their eyes. Or at least Harry’s.

“I’ve never seen anything so beautiful,” he mused aloud.

“C’mon,” hissed Elsie, who, of the children, had had the most recent exposure to the everyday cleanliness of twenty-first-century life. She was committed to her task, which involved the careful cataloging of the byways of a ductwork that spanned hundreds of yards and stories. One kid’s potty break could be enough to throw that off. “The vent’s in the ceiling. Over here.”

“Can I just go to the bathroom once?” pleaded Harry, in thrall to the beautiful, snow-white porcelain that presented itself throughout the restroom.

“No,” whispered Elsie. “Let’s go!”

“What if it’s just a number one?”

Elsie grabbed Harry by the arm and dragged him toward the end of the room, where a black grate interrupted the cool white of the tiled ceiling. It hung directly above one of the bathroom’s toilet stalls, and Elsie had seen enough movies to know that one must look both under the door and above it to see if anyone is hiding wi

thin. The stall was clear; Elsie and Ruthie scaled the opposing stall walls and sat there, balanced on the metal dividers. Oz stood on the back of the toilet and braced Ruthie’s slippered feet while she undid the screws holding the cover in place.

The screws dropped, one after another, into the toilet. Ruthie slid the grate aside, into the interior of the duct, and they all climbed into the hole in the ceiling. All of them but Harry.

He’d been so taken by the bathroom that he lingered a moment longer, apparently ogling the facilities, before the hissed whispers from his fellow duct-rats shook him back to attention. Sitting on the edge of the top of the stall, he kicked one foot down and flushed the toilet, apparently just to see it work. The sound masked the noise of the bathroom door suddenly swinging open, though Harry saw the stevedore, moments after, as he came around the corner and made his way toward the stalls.

Elsie, her head sticking out of the hole in the ceiling, saw the intruder too; it all seemed to be happening in slow motion.

A voice shouted to the stevedore from the hallway beyond. “Come on, Tony! We got to get down to the lobby. This ain’t a drill.”

“Hold up,” said the stevedore as he walked along the corridor of closed bathroom stalls. “Nature calls.”

Elsie jerked her head backward into the duct; peeking over the edge, she stared wide-eyed at Harry, who was poised, spread-eagled, across the top of the toilet stall. The toilet stall that the stevedore had hurriedly selected.

Elsie held her breath. She could hear Oz and Ruthie suck in theirs as well. She only imagined Harry was doing the same.

The stall door swung open. The stevedore gave a cursory look at the empty toilet bowl before dropping his overalls and turning around, sitting heavily on the white toilet seat. He cupped his forehead in his hands and stared at the space between his knees as Harry, pale and terrified, stood only a handful of feet above his head, his legs painfully tenting the distance between the metal walls of the stall.

And they waited. Elsie couldn’t stand the strain, and she slid down the corridor, covering her face with her hands, as if willing the world away. A minute passed. One of the man’s fellow stevedores hollered out an impatient word before the toilet flushed noisily and the stall door slammed open and closed and the stevedore, freshly relieved, walked loudly out of the bathroom.

Only then did Elsie creep her head back over the lip of the vent opening.

Harry was still straddling the stall. He looked up at the shocked faces of the three Unadoptables, who were peeking down at him through the hole in the ceiling.

“That,” he said, “was disgusting.”

Before another stevedore had a chance to wander into the bathroom and disrupt their plan, Elsie and Oz had thrust their hands down through the vent opening and yanked Harry, with all their strength, into safety.

Joffrey Unthank’s goal was in sight. There, at the end of the hallway, was a door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Beyond it was the very small and dark room that housed the operational protocols for the Tower’s two auxiliary elevators. Only one of those elevators was known to most of the staff of the Tower: the service elevator, a nondescript apparatus that was used mainly by janitorial and, if needed, in emergency situations. However, unbeknownst to everyone apart from the few who had high-level security clearance, the console inside the room could also override the security lock for a more clandestine elevator: the small caged contraption that served as an escape route from Wigman’s safe room. Joffrey rubbed his hands eagerly; he had high-level security clearance. It was a benefit of being a Titan of Industry. And now: His penultimate goal was at hand.

However, no sooner had he finished rubbing his palms when a pair of lumbering stevedores came crashing toward him, barreling down the hallway and blocking Unthank’s view of the door. He immediately recognized both of them, which was surprising considering the strange uniformity among the stevedore ranks: They all looked as if they’d been engineered by a remarkably unimaginative geneticist. But Joffrey knew them: They were Wigman’s two right-hand men, and they were steaming toward Joffrey and looking very angry.

They saw him, and genetically inseparable looks of surprise fell across their faces.

“Machine Parts?” said one, surprised.

“Jimmy!” said Unthank, smiling excitedly. “Bammer! Been a while, hasn’t it?”

“What are you doing here?” growled Bammer. He was holding a very large, red pipe wrench in his right hand.