Wildwood Imperium (Wildwood Chronicles 3)

One of the screens showed the interior of the service elevator shaft. Four small children were there, gingerly scaling a narrow ladder, bathed in a dim light. One reached a hand out to the other, helping their compatriot over a difficult spot. Unthank looked down and, typing in the pass code he’d been given when he’d been named a Titan of Industry, restarted the power to the elevator.

CHAPTER 19

Martyrs for the Cause

Elsie had climbed nearly five stories (the numbers were painted in bright yellow by every door they passed) when she heard the elevator power up. It sent a jolt of adrenaline through her body. The car itself had come into view once they’d climbed a few dozen yards, lost in the hazy distance above them. A single white bulb dangled from its underside. But now: She’d heard a kind of buzzing hum echo through the shaft, and she looked down at Harry, who was some feet below her.

“Did you hear that?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said.

Hoping it was a fluke, Elsie kept climbing. It wasn’t long, however, until her worst fears were confirmed: The elevator car began to move.

Harry swore. Elsie looked up at Oz and Ruthie, who were close together, some thirty feet up. They both looked down at Elsie and Harry, a look of identically abject horror in their eyes.

“Guys!” they shouted. “It’s coming down!”

Elsie desperately began looking around her for some crevice to crawl into; none presented itself. Some ways up the shaft, she saw a small notch in the concrete, potentially big enough to house her small body. She began climbing toward it.

Just then, the elevator stopped at one of the doors, a few floors above them. Elsie barely had time to breathe a sigh of relief when it started up again, having presumably taken on passengers, and was now once more barreling toward them.

“Guys!” she shouted, disregarding the need for quiet. “Get to someplace safe!”

The elevator was picking up speed. A loud hum echoed through the long chamber. Elsie could hear the clacking of the cables as they struck against one another, dangling in the center of the shaft. She stepped away from the ladder and pressed herself into the small crevice she’d found, trying to flatten her back as well as she could. She willed her every inch of flesh to worm its way into the corners. Looking down, she saw that Harry was busily scrambling for a similar safe point, though it seemed to be some feet below him. Oz and Ruthie hadn’t had as much luck; the elevator was approaching them at a remarkably fast speed, and they were many yards away from one of these pockets in the shaft wall. Oz, dangling from the ladder, was trying to pry open one of the doors in the wall to no avail.

“Guys!” shouted Elsie.

Ruthie, unbelievably, was climbing madly toward the oncoming car, desperately attempting to reach the divot in the wall closest to her, which happened to be about ten feet above her. She arrived at it just as the speeding car passed her and she screamed as she thrust her small body into the cavity; the noise was swallowed by the groaning cry of the elevator as it plummeted downward, and Ruthie was gone from Elsie’s sight.

Oz, acting quickly, leapt from his place at the ladder and caught the looping cable that hung from the bottom of the car. He swung dramatically there, his legs kicking at the empty air below him. He joined the downward plummet of the car, rocked impotently by the swing of the cable. Elsie pressed herself farther into her crevice, preparing herself for the car’s arrival. It was now approaching her with the speed of a locomotive.

Elsewhere in the building, Joffrey Unthank watched the two stevedores as they marched out of sight down the hall. He knew he was trapped. Shutting down the elevator now would merely bring the two stevedores steaming back to him, demanding action and, more complexly, answers as to why the Machine Parts Titan was repeatedly turning on and off the service elevator. He could only watch. And wait.

He looked up at the security-camera feed of the elevator shaft; he saw the children cli

mbing. When the stevedores called the elevator, he saw the children panic in reaction to the movement of the car.

Move, he hissed to the grainy black-and-white image of the Unadoptables.

The car was heading down.

He realized that the children would not be able to get out of the way.

His fingers dove for the keys; he began madly jamming in his pass code. His fingers were shaking.

Tra la tra lee.

It was a hopelessly long string of numbers (why did they have to make it so complicated?); the keypad below his fingers seemed to shimmy and dissolve as he punched at the keypad.

ERROR, WRONG PASS CODE, read the screen.

He swore; he cracked his knuckles and tried again.

A shout sounded below Elsie. She looked down in time to see Harry fall away from his perch on the side of the wall; he’d been spooked by Ruthie’s scream and had looked up, momentarily losing his balance. He managed to catch his arm on a rung of the ladder, and Elsie could hear a thump resound through the chamber, and Harry let out a pained yelp. The boy swung there by the crook of his elbow, fully in the path of the charging elevator car.

“HARRY!” shouted Oz, dangling from the bottom of the car. He reached out his hand, valiantly. “JUMP!”

But Harry was stuck; he couldn’t manage to get his arm unlooped from the ladder rung. Elsie closed her eyes as the elevator rushed by her; she could feel the wind it carried with it, the acrid reek of grease and synthetic adhesives. She knew the car would arrive at Harry within seconds and would either crush him with its weight or knock him from his perch to fall some twenty-odd stories to the bottom of the shaft.