But just as suddenly as Persey had found herself running uphill, the dynamic shifted. She’d passed the point of no balance return, and she had to lean back to keep from tumbling forward into the darkness of the open doorway.
“Son of a Shatner!” Neela cried. She lost her balance and slipped onto her butt, sliding all the way down toward the door. The faster she fell, the faster the room tilted until Persey was sure the whole floor would topple over and fall away.
“Shit!” Riot cried. Persey turned to find that he had flattened himself on the ground, his head just inches from the spikes.
“Go through the door!” Persey cried. Mackenzie, Kevin, didn’t matter. They had to even out the weight or Riot was going to get skewered.
Mackenzie, thankfully, was only thinking of herself and didn’t need to be told twice. She disappeared through the doorway, followed closely by Neela, who rolled rather than stepped off the Tilt-a-Whirl. The absence of their weight did the trick, and the room shifted back toward equilibrium again. But the ceiling hadn’t slowed, and Riot was only able to push himself as far up as his hands and knees to continue the trek.
“You can do it,” Persey said, turning to face him as she ducked into the doorway, careful to keep both feet on the tearoom floor so they didn’t lose Riot altogether.
“Come on!” Kevin held out his hand as Riot frantically crawled toward them on his elbows and hips, an army trainee doing the crocodile.
“He’s not going to make it,” Persey said, hoping that Riot didn’t hear her as she tried to guesstimate the distance left between spike and flesh.
Riot stopped crawling. “I know.”
“Dude!” Kevin cried. “What are you doing?”
“I won’t make it to the door in time.” He rolled onto his side, eyes flying across the ceiling as it rapidly approached. “But what if I don’t have to?”
“Has he gone mental?” Kevin asked.
As if in answer, Riot began to stretch his limbs in a variety of ways—one hand out before him, elbow crooked at a ninety-degree angle, a leg kicked back as if he was stretching while the other was hitched in front. Riot kept glancing back and forth between his weirdly stretched body and the lethal spikes, and just when Persey was about to look away because she couldn’t handle the idea of watching his impalement in slow motion, he called out excitedly. “I’ve got it. This is going to work.”
“What’s going to work?”
Kevin clapped his hand over Persey’s eyes. “Don’t look. You don’t want to see this.”
THUD.
Then silence.
“I’m okay!” Riot’s voice was excited, rapturous. Not even a hint of agony. Persey’s eyes flew open, and she saw that he’d managed to contort his body so that his sinewy limbs all fit in the gaps between the spikes that were now penetrating the floor. But they’d stopped, leaving a gap of about twelve inches between ceiling and floor, crisscrossed with the metal spikes.
“Now what?” Persey asked. It was a miracle that Riot was still alive, but how long would he stay that way? Would he have to lie there until they managed to escape and summon help?
“I think I can get to you,” Riot said, craning his neck in her direction. “I just need to get my shoulder around this one spike; then it’s almost a straight shot.”
“Really?”
“Yep. Pretty sure.”
“Dude,” Kevin said, repeating himself. “That is pretty badass. Do you think you could teach me how to curl my body up like a—”
But Kevin’s final thought was cut off by a sickening crack. He and Persey felt the floor shudder beneath them and just had enough time to leap into the open doorway before the two pieces of the tearoom—floor and ceiling—slammed together like a giant industrial garment press.
Persey heard a scream accompanied by the crunching of 206 human bones being pulverized all at once.
And then Riot was nothing but dust.
PERSEY CONTINUED TO STARE AT WHAT WAS LEFT OF HIGH Tea. From her vantage point on the other side of the door, she could see the seam where roof and floor had slammed together. They were totally flush, not a centimeter gap between the two. The force of the two pieces being clapped together pulverized everything. Tables, chairs, books. Riot.
He was still in there, just on the other side of this door, pinned like a pressed flower in a book but with significantly more blood and guts sprayed everywhere. Dead. Just