Chapter 31 #2
Everything changed with the second.
Alarms rang unlike anything I’d ever heard before, a rhythmic clanging coming from somewhere inside the tower itself. I was pretty sure every single person in Neverwhen could hear it, if not the entire Clockrealm.
The guards were already moving, running toward the other side, shouting orders I couldn’t hear over the sound of the alarm.
“Now!” Kohen suddenly said, when my limbs were still frozen. “Go, go, go!”
Master Talik was already moving. He crossed the open ground between the shop and the tower’s eastern wall in seconds, moving faster than I’d ever have expected. His hand-lantern was raised, his key in the other hand, and he looked like a man on a mission for real.
The only reason I was able to follow was because March pulled me forward, and then my legs remembered what it was like to walk, to run across the cobblestones as more and more steam came out of the grates everywhere on the street.
We heard nothing over the alarm, not even when Master Talik opened the door. He pressed his back to the side of it and waved for us to get through fast, eyes on the plaza behind us.
The tower. We were entering the actual tower below the Great Clock. The thought hit me hard just as I passed the threshold.
Then way too soon, and much later at the same time, the door closed.
The sound of the alarm was muffled now, distant, no longer threatening to make my skull burst. All of us were inside—except Kohen. He’d remained out there.
Part of the plan, part of the plan, I told the panic building up inside me. So far, everything had gone according to the plan. There was no reason to believe that something wouldn’t before this whole madness was over, was there? No, not yet.
“Stairs,” Master Talik whispered once we weren’t breathing like we’d been running marathons for days. “Stay close to me, don’t touch the walls, and mind the floor.”
I looked at March. He looked at me. In the darkness of the small space that door had led us to, with the hum of the Great Clock vibrating through every surface, his eyes were the only thing I could see clearly.
Nobody said another word.
Together, we began to climb.
The service stairway was barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side, and the stone was old, cracked, slick with condensation that dripped from the pipes running along the ceiling.
Pipes everywhere.
Master Talik climbed ahead of us, his hand-lantern illuminating the way, and he walked like he’d been here a hundred times before, his every step precise. Meanwhile, I kept expecting the stairs to swallow me with every new step I took.
Sweat on my brow, on my back, making the shirt stick to my skin in an uncomfortable way.
The hum grew louder as we climbed. Not in my ears, but in my chest and my teeth, even my fingertips.
To think that the actual Great Clock was right over our heads was overwhelming all on its own, so I didn’t.
I just kept my mind on the stairs and on March’s hand in mine.
So many stairs. These weren’t normal floors—they went on forever.
By the third, my legs were burning. By the fourth, Anika was breathing through her mouth, and Silas was gripping the railing so tightly his knuckles had turned white. By the fifth, even March had to wipe the sweat from his forehead.
But Master Talik never once missed a step, and he didn’t stop until the fifth-floor landing.
Not to encourage us, of course. “Too slow,” he whispered. “We have eleven minutes before the burst. Either walk faster or go back.”
With that, he started ahead again, onto the sixth floor, then the seventh, and we had no choice but to rush our steps. My muscles complained, and the others muttered under their breath, but we were moving, matching his pace, and before we knew it, we were on the seventh floor.
It was wider here than it had been lower, and a short corridor seemed to lead to an even wider hallway beyond. But that wasn’t where we were going. Instead, Master Talik stepped into a narrow alcove, a recess in the wall hidden behind a pipe junction.
Inside it was the strangest platform I’d ever seen, metal, roughly six feet square, suspended by chains that disappeared into the darkness above.
“What is that?” Mimi whispered—she and Seth were the only ones who weren’t breathing heavily. And Master Talik, too, which made me crazy curious.
“A freight lift,” the Timekeeper said. “The maintenance crews use it for heavy gear. It’s manual, but it’s fast.”
“It looks loud,” said Russ as Master Talik worked the old rusted handle to pull the door open.
“It is,” he said. “Which is why we’re grateful everyone within earshot is currently dealing with a conduit malfunction.” He threw a quick look back at Russ, then pulled the metal door with all his strength.
It gave.
There was no time for questions. He made sure we knew that by waving his hand to tell us to hurry up.
The platform was even smaller on the inside, but we made it in, all of us pressed together so tightly I could feel Mimi’s heartbeat against my shoulder and March’s breath on the back of my neck.
My body came alive with memories, but the fear and the anticipation quickly drowned out every good feeling I momentarily remembered.
The floor of the platform groaned under our weight, and the chains creaked, and I was eleven-hours certain we were going to start falling soon.
It was too much, we were too heavy, and the only reason why my knees still held me was because I was sandwiched between March and Mimi.
Something metallic popped in the darkness above, and I wondered why I hadn’t passed out yet.
But Master Talik did not seem concerned—well, more concerned than usual.
Instead, he said, “Russ, Seth—on the chain.” He was looking at the thick iron chain hanging from a wheel mechanism on the right side of the platform. “Pull together and keep the rhythm steady. Don’t jerk it.”
The boys looked like they were about to cry, but they grabbed the chain anyway. Braced their feet as well as they could. Pulled.
The platform lurched upward with a shriek of metal on metal that echoed like a scream.
I bit my tongue to keep from crying out and squeezed my eyes shut as tightly as I could.
The sound bounced off the walls, off the pipes, off the gears turning in the dark above us, but thank Time it didn’t go on forever, like I feared.
Instead, it settled into a grinding, rhythmic groan as Russ and Seth found their rhythm.
Pull, rise; pull, rise; pull, rise…
Once we started moving up, we realized the shaft was open. Even the door wasn’t part of it, wasn’t attached to the front like I thought, but remained on the seventh floor. No walls, just the tower’s inner skeleton exposed on all sides, and I forgot how to breathe again.