Chapter 31 #3
There were no corridors or narrow stairways here.
Instead gears the size of carriages turned inches from the platform’s edge, their teeth interlocking with a precision that was so hypnotizing it terrified me.
Shafts and axles and counterweights moved in the dark, and the amber glow of magical energy pulsed through everything— metal and stone and the air itself, painting our faces gold as we rose.
Holy Hour, I wanted to remember this. As horrified as I was right now, I wanted to remember all of this so I could draw it. For better or worse, I wanted to immortalize every gear and every pin and every rusted surface on paper.
The more the boys pulled, the higher we went.
The hum of the tower had turned into a full-on roar now.
My chronobank vibrated in my pocket even though it was empty, and the air going down my throat had changed, too.
It was thicker, charged, and it tasted of something sharp and electric that made my tongue go numb. Then—
“Stop,” Master Talik suddenly said.
Russ and Seth released the chain right away. The platform shuddered to a halt, swaying slightly on its chains.
My eyes closed and a loud breath left me. I rested back against March’s chest, and he put his chin on the top of my head. We were somehow still alive.
Before us, the landing was wider than the ones below, with a single door across from us. It looked heavy. Iron-banded. Covered in inscriptions that didn’t look like anything other than bad drawings to me.
“Nobody moves past this door until after the burst.” Master Talik’s voice echoed in the tall ceiling, even against the loud humming.
“This is where we wait. Try to hold onto something to keep your balance.” He looked at us, his eyes wide, dark, focused.
“No matter what happens, do not, under any circumstances, open that door until I say so—and always watch the floor.”
I swallowed hard, and the words slipped from my lips even before I’d come off the platform. “How long until the burst?”
“Four minutes,” he said, without needing to check his clock at all. Like maybe he was actually counting the seconds in his head when he closed his eyes every once in a while and pressed his thumbs to his fingers regularly.
Four minutes.
We stood on that landing, pressed against the walls, gripping pipes and brackets and each other—and we waited.
March and I were on the right of the door.
He had an arm wrapped around the pipe, and the other around my body, while I held onto the same pipe with both my hands.
We were as secure as we were going to get.
Those four minutes passed incredibly fast and agonizingly slowly at the same time. There was no time to think about anything at all, to even try to get myself together—and I also remembered everything that had ever happened to me since my first-ever memory when I was four years old.
The hum built. The air thickened. My hair began to rise from my scalp—slowly, strand by strand, lifting away from my head as if gravity had lost interest and it no longer cared about keeping me grounded.
Then the metal door in front of us started to vibrate.
It might have been the strangest thing I’d ever witnessed. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth so that I couldn’t even speak if I tried. Not that I was trying—all I could do was hold on.
The others were the same. Our hair was in the air, floating, and the edges of our clothes had turned upward, too, and our entire bodies were turning lighter and lighter, and…
The building screamed.
That’s what it sounded like to me. A scream so deep and vast it wasn’t just sound, but a force. A pressure wave that slammed through the tower from top to bottom, shaking the walls, shaking the floor, shaking every single bone inside my body.
For a fraction of a second, the air turned to fire going down my lungs—and then it was over.
Just like that, it was done. My body weight felt normal, my hair fell around my shoulders and I didn’t feel like I needed to hold onto that pipe to make sure I wouldn’t float toward the ceiling anymore.
March and I looked at one another, breathing heavily, still unsure of what to expect from the next second, whether we should hold on or let go.
Silence in the landing.
Maybe not silence per se, but the building was no longer roaring or screaming, and that felt like silence by comparison. The door no longer vibrated. The air was cool as it went down my throat.
In theory, I knew what that meant—the burst had fired. The Great Clock had ironed out an hour for our realm.
Everything was going to remain calm for the next fifty or so minutes.
Master Talik was the first to move, to let go of the pipes he’d been holding onto, right next to the door. His skin was slick with sweat, his hair standing in all directions still, even though gravity had remembered how it worked once more.
His shaking hand closed around the handle of the big door. He said, “Don’t touch anything unless I tell you to.” And he pushed the door open.