incremental amounts. Persey held her breath. 185 million. 186…Neela froze with the tally just a few hundred pounds from their target, then shifted her weight onto her left leg. 187,716,250!
The sound of a heavy lock being thrown echoed through the tearoom; then the door swung open into the darkness beyond.
“NOBODY MOVE!” RIOT CRIED. THE MOMENT THE DOOR WAS open, everyone had subconsciously begun to move toward it, which rocketed Riot’s end of the floor upward toward the descending spikes.
Persey froze, then shifted her weight backward. Slowly the floor reached the horizontal. But the dilemma had been clearly illustrated by their collective impulse: every time one of them tried to reach the door, it would tilt someone else toward a pointy death.
“Neela should stay,” Mackenzie said. “She was supposed to die last time. It’s only fair.”
“Um, how is that fair, exactly?” Neela asked.
“No one has to stay and get impaled,” Persey said, not entirely sure how she was going to accomplish that mandate. “We just need to find something to balance the weight. Like a piece of furniture—”
“Which is all bolted down,” Kevin countered.
Yeah, I know. “Or…” Persey cast her eyes around the room, looking for anything they could use as a counterbalance.
“The books!” Riot cried.
“Oh my God!” How could Persey have been so slow? “Of course. That’s why they’re here.”
“Okay, but…” Kevin pointed up. The gleaming tips of a hundred spikes were just inches from his head now. “We need to do this quickly.”
With the books scattered across the tilting tearoom, this wasn’t going to be an easy task. They had to get everything piled up at Riot’s end of the room to act as a counterweight to the five of them as they all tried to make it through the door. Mackenzie, shockingly, refused to help, parking herself inches from the open door to ensure that no matter what happened, she’d make it out alive.
Neela did most of the hustling. Aside from being the shortest contestant left, thus able to stand upright long after the others were forced to crouch, she was also, essentially, superfluous weight, so as she moved back and forth, to and fro, across the room, and the shift in one person’s weight was easier to counterbalance than if Persey, Kevin, Neela, and Riot had all been schlepping those books around at the same time. She started with the largest volumes—Shakespeare, Byron, Tennyson—and with every additional hardcover added to Riot’s corner, he and Persey were able to move a little bit closer to an escape.
“Almost there,” Persey said after delivering all of Don Juan to the back corner. She had to crouch low, which affected her speed, and wasn’t entirely sure how many more of these trips would be possible.
“We’re almost there.” Riot was halfway across the room at this point, Neela having long abandoned that area as the shifting fulcrum took her closer to the open door. “We’re going to make it.”
But Leah wasn’t about to make it that easy. Almost as soon as the words left Riot’s mouth, the motor that powered the ceiling roared, the intensity of the noise indicating a new level of danger, and the ceiling began to fall faster.
“Shit.” Persey had an armful of books, but at this rate, there was no way she’d be able to deposit them at the other end of the room and make it to the door in time.
“Throw them!” Riot cried.
It was a good idea. They needed the weight of the books, not eBay-condition collectibles. She dropped them on the ground and with a swift series of kicks, sent the volumes careening toward the corner.
“Go!” Riot ordered, taking a few more steps toward the door.
Mackenzie and Kevin hadn’t waited. They stood as close to the door as they could without actually stepping through.
Persey eyed the distance between Riot and the door. “You won’t make it.”
“Perhaps,” Neela suggested, “if we move fast enough, Riot can outrun the acceleration of gravity. I mean, not really, but the appearance of it in this case, yes.”
“It’s worth a shot,” Persey said, though she didn’t think it would actually work.
“On three, then.” Riot edged closer to the door before he even started the countdown. “One. Two. Three.”
The angle of the floor shifted almost as soon as Persey began to run toward the door. She immediately felt as if she was running uphill, if the hill was magically growing steeper by the second, and the open darkness of the door began to disappear. They hadn’t distributed enough weight at the