Ping.
I turn around. It takes me a second to notice it.
The glass elevator. It’s open now. Was it open before? I can’t be sure.
“Hey, Sissy, come here. ” I move toward the elevator, glancing from side to side. She mumbles something in reply. I’ve taken this elevator many times in the past. It’s the only way to reach the top floor. It travels along duo traction rails that rise all the way to the top floor. I used to love riding it as a child, the sensation of flying as the floor of the lobby dropped away and you sailed up the atrium like a bird. I’d stare out, face pressed against the glass, sometimes gazing at the floor of the lobby, everything down there diminishing, fading away.
I stand straddling the precipice of the elevator car. “Sissy, over here,” I say again. I hear her shoes click against the marble floor and echo up and down the atrium. And that’s when I see something odd. Inside the elevator car. A security key is inserted at the top of the operating panel. It’s where my father used to insert his top-security key to gain access to the top floor. I step into the elevator to take a closer look.
“Gene!”
I turn around at the sound of her voice. She is walking toward me. No, she is running, alarm rippling across her face.
And, too late, I see why.
The doors are closing. With wicked speed.
“Gene!”
Too late, I lunge forward. The doors clap together, and before I can reach the panel and start mashing buttons in panic, or kick at the doors, the elevator ascends. With sudden force, as if I’m being catapulted into the air. Sissy falls away until she is only a dot, her cries (“Gene! Gene! Gene!”) fading, diminishing.
Thirty-nine
THE ELEVATOR ZIPS past every floor. Only as it nears the top, my ears popping, does it slow down. The glass doors open. The sun, hovering over the lower skyscrapers, shines directly into my eyes, burning a rust-red tint into my eyelids.
The elevator lobby on this floor is empty. On the far side, a reception desk and a small glass sculpture of the Ruler that’s been there for years. Otherwise, nothing. The glass wall across the reception area is angled, and I see ghostly reflections of the floor beyond, faint outlines of desks and chairs. Nothing moves.
I stay pressed against the back wall of the elevator. Reaching out, I start pushing the L button on the panel. Nothing happens. Push the CLOSE button. Nothing.
I look down through the glass floor. I see Sissy below, tiny as a nit, standing by the security desk.
“Push the CALL button by the elevator!” I yell down. She doesn’t move. “Sissy, push the CALL button!” I shout again, cupping my mouth. I see her move toward the wall. But nothing happens. The doors stay open.
I punch a f
ew buttons in frustration. Nothing.
“Epap!” I shout out to the empty floor lobby. “It’s Gene. Epap! Are you there?”
Silence.
I study the panel, wondering if there might be some way I can pry it off, trip the wires behind. That’s when I see the intercom. I push the orange button. “Sissy, can you hear me? Go to the security desk! I’m using the intercom. Go to the security desk!”
Below, the tiny dot that is Sissy races toward the security desk. A few seconds later, her voice crackles through, static distorting it.
“Gene!”
“Sissy, the elevator’s stuck on this floor! See if you can find some external controls at the desk. ”
“—kay—” A crash of more static, obliterating her voice.
“Sissy, can you hear—”
“Help me. ”
Those words. Not from the intercom panel. Not Sissy’s voice. But spoken with clarity and within close proximity. From somewhere on this floor.
“Help me!” Louder now, the fear in the voice obvious. The owner of the voice now obvious, too.
“Epap!” I shout. “It’s Gene! Come here, Epap, to the elevator!”
But he keeps on shouting, yelling as if not hearing me. “Help me! Help me!” His distress crescendoing into raw panic.
Sissy’s voice breaks out of the intercom. “Epap?! Oh crap, that’s his voice, that’s Epap—” She is shouting until she’s cut off again by static.
And still Epap keeps shouting. I peer out the elevator doors, trying to see him. But the angle is all wrong. I can’t see the rest of the floor unless I step out.
“Epap!” I shout. “Come here!”
But he only keeps shouting, his words overlapping with mine. “Help . . . don’t, please don’t, no!!!” he screams.
And then I’m sprinting out of the elevator, out onto the glass floor.
And as soon as I’m out, the elevator doors, as if waiting this whole time, snap shut behind me like a steel trap.
Forty
BUT THERE’S NO stopping me. I race forward, past the elevator lobby, hopelessly lulled deeper into the floor by Epap’s pleading voice. I can see right through to the far side of the floor because everything is made out of glass. I sprint past the eight office suites, all identically decorated, and sparsely so: a desk, a chair, a deskscreen, and little else. No sign of Epap in any of them. Splintered flares of dusk light refract off the walls, the color of rust and blood.