an empty space where the elevator car should be.
The elevator shaft was dark and silent and the air was calm. Still, Ian carefully glanced up, checking to make sure he wasn’t about to be flattened by a descending car. “Stay here and keep the door open,” he said. Before I could protest, he hopped down into the shaft. The top of his head was below the door level.
The elevator car to the right was also missing, but the car to the left was in place. Ian slid between the left two tracks and scaled the elevator car with an ease that never ceased to amaze me. He disappeared from view and a few seconds later, the car moved upward.
“Ian!”
The car moved down far enough that I could see Ian standing on top of it. “I hope you’re not afraid of heights,” he said with a grin.
Heights didn’t usually bother me but I had a feeling that standing on top of an elevator car in a shaft that was nearly a kilometer deep was going to test that truth before all was said and done.
“Let the door go and I’ll open this one for you. Can you help Ferdinand over so I can grab him?”
I agreed and let the door go. It refused to close completely. By the time I’d helped Ferdinand hobble two doors over, Ian was waiting for us. The elevator car was half below the door, leaving a meter-long gap at the top. My brain gave me a vivid image of what would happen if the car moved upward while I was pulling myself through that gap.
Ian hauled Ferdinand up first while I kept a wary eye on the hallway. “Give me your hands,” Ian said.
I tucked the blaster in my belt and raised my arms. Ian grabbed me around the wrists and lifted me easily. Sharp pain lanced up my left arm from the blaster graze, but the bleeding had already stopped thanks to my nanos doing their job.
The top of the elevator had a short safety rail around the three sides away from the wall and a control box with a few manual switches. Ferdinand sat next to the controls in the middle of the car.
“How did you know about this?” I asked.
“I had an adventurous childhood, remember?”
Perhaps, but I’d been trained to break into buildings and didn’t remember anyone mentioning that elevators had manual controls on top. Or had they? I frowned as I searched my less than stellar memory.
Ian drew me closer to the center of the elevator car. “Stay away from the edges,” he said. I nodded my agreement, still trying to remember if I’d ever learned about elevators.
Ian pressed and held a button on the control panel. We moved upward with stomach-dropping swiftness. The bottom of the shaft fell away with alarming speed. I crouched down, then when that didn’t feel stable enough, sat on the roof of the elevator car, as close to the center as I could get.
Ian laughed. “It’s disconcerting at first,” he said, “but it’ll get better once you’re used to it.”
I’d take his word for it. Thanks to the smart glasses I could see, but I wasn’t sure that was actually a positive in this case. The frame holding the elevator tracks flashed by, punctuated every few seconds with an ominous creaking, grinding noise.
Ian glanced around, checked on Ferdinand, and looked up, waiting for the ceiling to come into view.
In a pitch-dark tunnel. Without smart glasses.
“You can see,” I breathed.
Ian cut a glance at me, then Ferdinand, but my brother hadn’t heard me. Yet Ian had. He nodded once, sharply.
I bit my lip to stem the tide of questions I wanted to ask.
We rode in silence for the rest of the trip. It took nearly fifteen minutes to reach the top. Ian stopped the car with our platform level with the bottom of the door. I’d lost signals during the trip, but now I could once again feel messages pressing against my skull.
“The soldiers are still on the first mine level,” I said. “Command pulled the fire team back and now it sounds like they’re planning an ambush. At least two teams, probably a fire team and a squad, so at least twelve soldiers. They are trying to capture us alive.”
The three of us versus twelve of them in fortified positions was not good odds, even if they weren’t shooting to kill. Ian must’ve decided the same thing because he was back to looking grim. He cracked