She was right, of course. I was probably as safe here as I could have probably been anywhere in the world, but there was something about the eerie quiet that surrounded us.
I stood for a long time, listening to the sound of my heartbeat - a rhythm that hadn't slowed in months until . . .
"There," I said again, and this time Macey stopped too.
"Maybe it's a furnace of something?" she asked as the sound got louder.
I held my breath. "That's no heating unit."
"How much longer, Liz?" Bex asked.
"Almost got it!" she called, reaching as far as her thing frame would go, but still the book stayed out of grasp.
"Liz," I said again. The noise was growing louder, and it came with more regularity. "Liz, how long would it take you to bring the laser grid back up?"
"Two minutes." She said.
But in the depths of the space, the noise growled to life again. I looked at Bex and Macey. "We don't have two minutes."
In that moment there were a lot of fears that came to mind: What if there was some backup security measures that we hadn't neutralized and we were about to be gassed, crushed, drowned, electrocuted, pinned, or trapped?
What if the Circle had tracked me into the depths of our school and, knowing that I was locked away from my mother and our guards, had found a way inside?
What if it was my mother, and we were caught . . . busted?
But despite my crazy fears, there was one thing I knew for certain: someone else was trying to get into Sublevel Two.
"You can do it, Lizzie," Bex shouted up. "Just . . . hurry. And maybe move a little to the
-"
Bex pulled the rope to the right, but either she underestimated her own strength or overestimated Liz's weight, because next I saw a blond blur swing past the shelves and stop to hover somewhere over the section dedicated to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The mechanic whirring had grown louder, and now we could tell it was coming from somewhere in front of us.
"Are those . . ." Macey started.
"The elevator shafts?" Bex guessed.
"I think so," I said. "Do you think it's -"
"Townsend," we all said in unison.
"But how is he planning on getting around the security measures down here?" Macey asked.
I shrugged. "Either he knows we've already done it for him . . ."
"Or he doesn't care," Bex said, staring at me, and I couldn't tell from the look in her eyes that neither of us knew what was scarier.
A small pile of dust had started to appear on the floor, and I noticed the small hole that was appearing in the stone wall. Agent Townsend was drilling his way out of the shaft and into Sublevel Two.
I spoke over the sound of the drill and the panic of my pounding heart. "We gotta go!"
The operatives realized they were about to have a very hostile encounter with a very angry teacher-slash-possible-enemy-agent, so they utilized a number of highly recommended covert tactics.
1.Operative McHenry said, "Are you ready yet? Are you ready yet? Are you ready yet?"
in rapid succession until Operative Sutton was, in fact, ready.