Chapter 33
When we walked out of the room, we saw that the platform wasn’t there anymore.
My legs near gave until Master Talik told us to follow him a little to the right where a stairway was, half hidden in the corner of the stone wall.
Apparently, the platform went back down on its own when it was left up there for too long.
Nothing to worry about, he said, so I didn’t.
The stairs were old, half broken, but they were wide enough so it didn’t feel like suffocating. Every step we took echoed in my ears, though—like a warning. But I only realized why when we were two or three floors down, and Master Talik stopped.
He froze mid-step, one hand on the rusty railing, his body going rigid in a way that made everyone behind him stumble to a halt.
“What—” Anika started, but Master Talik threw a look back at her that clearly said shut up and don’t move.
Then we heard it, too.
Footsteps, coming from below. Multiple sets, echoing up the stone stairwell in an even rhythm—this one definitely a clear warning. Every step was perfectly in sync with the next, so I doubted it was maintenance.
“Back up,” Master Talik whispered. “Go back—now.”
We did.
Quietly, carefully, pressed against the walls as we climbed back up the stairs, we went back. March and Seth were ahead of me now, both of them with the plaques under their arms—Seth had taken a few from March before we found the stairway—and the others were behind us.
We made it to the landing of the floor over us, then stopped to wait for Master Talik, to see where he wanted us to go next.
I was sweating. Shaking. My heart was pounding—yet somehow the thoughts in my mind weren’t chaotic. Somehow, strange voices in my head weren’t screaming at me to run right now.
Master Talik took us down the only narrow corridor that extended from that landing, straight into a door on its other side lined with pipes. He pressed himself back and waved for us to get in, too, then eased it shut behind us.
My eyes were closed and I held the air in my lungs for a good moment, just until I got myself under control.
Then we heard the footsteps growing closer—but not in our direction, at least.
“Soldiers,” whispered Master Talik. “It’s most likely a routine post-burst inspection.”
“How many?” Russ asked.
“Two, maybe three.” Master Talik breathed in deeply, and the footsteps outside grew more and more distant.
I breathed easier, too, but…
“How long will they take?” March asked.
“No longer than ten minutes.” Master Talik flinched, and I saw it clearly though his hand-lantern was pointed at the ceiling. “But if they go all the way into the room and find the panel open, they’ll lock down the tower.” A deep sigh. “We can’t wait.”
The room we were in was full of wooden racks, those full of gears and devices covered in rust, but there was no time to wonder. Master Talik let us out again in the next beat, and we all pretended to believe that nothing was going to go wrong. We pretended this was part of the plan all along.
What other choice was there?
Then we were walking single file through corridors and maintenance passages, narrow and hot, with the ceiling low like it was a living thing pressing down on us.
I didn’t remember half the corners we turned or the doors we entered as all my focus was on not panicking right now. Not letting myself think.
But I did see the door at the end of the passage we were in.
Heavy. Iron. Sealed with a gear-lock that was very similar to the one up there on the column of the Distributor.
Master Talik was already in front of it, reaching for his belt.
A bad feeling settled in my gut even before I knew what was happening. Mimi and I were the last ones in line behind March and Seth, so it was easy for me to turn to see if someone had followed.
Nobody had—we were all alone.
But that wasn’t what the feeling in my gut warned me about.
Master Talik turned to us, and he was tall enough that I saw his face with clarity. I saw his wide eyes and open mouth, the lack of color on his cheeks.
“No,” he whispered, and the sound of it raised every hair on my body to attention.
“What?” asked one Hand or the other.
“My tools,” the old Timekeeper said, and in my mind, I saw a flash of the Distribution Room, the open panel, the tools to the side. “I…I-I forgot my tools.”
Holy Hour, we were doomed for real.
“Can’t you open it with magic?!”
“Can’t you break it?”
“We have magic, too—if we hit it all at once—”
“Impossible.” His voice rang in my ears like a bell. “It’s impossible. All these locks are made of sequences, not just magic. I need my tools.”
Master Talik looked on the verge of tears.
I had two options before me—start crying, start panicking, running—or.
Or I could think of a solution.
Yes, it seemed like the end—we were in the tower and there were soldiers out there and chances were they were going to ring the alarm when they saw the panel, and we couldn’t get out in time without the tools—but that’s the thing.
The tools weren’t just gone. They were up there still.
They were up there.
“I’ll get them.”
The others had been talking, but I didn’t hear anything. When I spoke, though, they all fell silent. They all looked at me.
“I’ll go get the tools, and you wait here.”
“No.” March. “The soldiers—”
“I can take care of the soldiers,” Silas cut him off, moving closer to us through the others. “All I need is magic—I can take care of the soldiers while Ora gets the tools.”
And that was enough for me. “We can do it.”
In fact, the very idea that I would be doing something instead of sitting here, waiting, diluted my panic and my fear almost all the way, replaced it with excitement.
“Then I’ll come with.” March turned to Russ with the plaques, “Hold onto these till I get back.”
Russ grabbed them from his hands without hesitation.
“I’ll go, too. Just in case,” Mimi said.
“Here,” said March, offering Silas something next—his chronobank. “Use every last second of Sparetime if you need to.” Then he nodded his head back to Mimi and me. “They come first.”
“Agreed.” Silas took the chronobank from his hand eagerly. “I’ll lead, you follow. Let’s do it.”
“Be careful,” Master Talik said. “Just…be careful. Watch the floor and mind your every step. Run if you have to—but don’t get caught.”
Don’t get caught. The words echoed in my mind, wiping out all other thoughts. The four of us nodded.
“We’ll be waiting,” the Timekeeper whispered.
Then we were on our way.
We moved fast.
Silas led, far from the boy he was yesterday, who needed a cane to walk—farther still from the boy we’d found in that pocket in the Labyrinth with a grinning cat on his lap.
March’s chronobank was firmly in his fist now, and he took us right back where we came from—the stairway, the only way up and down other than the platform hanging on the chain, which was down there on the seventh floor still.
The soldiers hadn’t used it—they’d chosen the stairs.
I wasn’t sure whether that was for better or worse.
My legs burned and my lungs ached, but I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t panicking. I was focused, running the same speed as Mimi as we followed March and Silas—which was saying something, since she was a Club.
The walls around us had started to hum again, faintly, the way they had been doing before. Before the burst. I didn’t think about that, of course, because we had time. We had to have time.
Right now, to me, there was no version of this where we wouldn’t make it.
Then we heard the voices.
I wasn’t sure how many stories we’d climbed—the stone walls all looked the same, the rails rusted everywhere equally—but then we heard the voices.
We stopped, pressed against the wall, breathed slowly so we could better focus on our ears. Definitely voices—and they were coming from right above us. They were close, possibly one flight up.
That’s because we’d made it almost all the way to the top—the landing in front of the Distribution Room door.
Two men, by the sound of it. Talking casually, lazily, like they were in no hurry. And they’d definitely stopped in front of the door. They hadn’t gotten in. They hadn’t even opened it—because if they had, they’d have already sounded the alarms.
“...told Corrin he’d cover the next shift, but you know how he is.”
Laughter, low and easy.
“He still owes me for last week. I swear, the guy’s clock runs backward.”
“True. Did you hear what they did to Taliah, though…”
We looked at one another, and Silas brought a finger to his lips to tell us to keep quiet.
I could almost read the words going through his mind—or maybe I was just imagining the whole thing.
But for a moment there, I could have sworn that he, too, was thinking—hoping that the guards only stayed out there and then left.
He was hoping they wouldn’t open the door at all.
I prayed and prayed—to Time and the moon and anybody who cared to listen.
Then…
“We best get down there. The charge will start soon,” said one.
My heart jumped.
“Let me just check the Distributor real quick…”
Footsteps.
Silas was already running, no longer bothering to keep silent.
Everything happened so fast. Silas ran up the stairs, and March was right behind him, and Mimi was behind them, too, while I was still pressed against the cold stone wall, trying to get myself together.
Noises. Shouts. A bright teal light pulsating from somewhere over me.
My instincts finally kicked in, and then I was running, too, up the stairs and onto the landing, just in time to see the ribbons of teal magic extending from Silas’s hand, shooting straight for the faces of the soldiers.
Definitely soldiers—with silver armor decorated with red, and wide eyes and open mouths, one of them by the half open door of the Distribution Room, the other in the very middle.
Safe to say they didn’t see it coming. Safe to say, when Silas’s magic—his magic is teal-colored, his magic is teal-colored, his magic is teal-colored—attacked them, they tumbled back and fell, on their knees first, and then on their sides, eyes blinking, mouths moving without sound.
Mimi and March were already on them, grabbing the swords attached to the belts around their hips. A scream gathered in my chest for a split second when I thought they’d kill them, but died on my tongue when they used the handles of the swords to knock the soldiers out. Both at the same time.
The sound of the metal rang in my ears.
Silas turned to look at me, breathing heavily, barely standing now, and said, “Go!”
I ran.
Time could have passed slowly or fast and I wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.
I felt each time my feet hit the floor, and my eyes were locked on the half open door of the Distribution Room, and my ears were full of that humming that grew louder and louder, but my step didn’t falter. I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t distracted.
The room was vibrating when I went through the threshold.
I felt the shift in the air clearly, but even that didn’t make me stop.
The humming was deeper in here, stronger, but it made no difference.
Gravity still held, and I was moving, and I’d be long gone before the charge was done. Long gone before the burst happened.
The tools were right where Master Talik had left them, scattered across the base of the Distributor, beside the open vault panel. I dropped to my knees, grabbed them and stuffed them into the pockets of my coat. My hands didn’t shake. My eyes barely blinked.
The floor beneath me hummed harder, but that was okay. I was already on my feet again, body light as a feather, and I pushed the panel closed, too, before I turned for the door.
Silas and Mimi were right there, waiting, and March was right behind them, a sword in his hand, both the soldiers spread on the floor at his sides, unconscious still.
“Move!” he said, and I didn’t hear him, but I read the word on March’s lips.
I was moving. I was running.
Twenty feet.
Fifteen.
Ten—it was my heart that counted the steps, and my legs held me. My body was strong and my blood rushed and my mind was clear and the tools were in my pockets.
I was fast. I was careful. I didn’t stutter, didn’t hesitate.
Yes, I did everything right—except one thing.
I forgot to watch the floor.
A second too late, Master Talik’s voice echoed somewhere in the back of my mind. A second too late my foot faltered and my mind ordered my body to fall back. A second too late my eyes noticed the crack on the floor, right there in front of the door like it was its threshold.
It hadn’t been there before, but it was now. And when I stepped on it, the crack expanded beneath me like a mouth.
Darkness, then light.
Warmth, then cold.
A hand wrapped tightly around my wrist—March was there, somehow. March was always there, his face red, his eyes bloodshot, his teeth gritted.
The strangest thing, but he was holding me up. He’d caught me—his grip iron, desperate, absolute. My fingers locked onto his sleeve on instinct. For one impossible second, we held on to one another.
But it wasn’t enough.
Or it was—but it was that second too late.
His sleeve tore. March’s fingers slipped.
The last thing I heard was him screaming my name.
Then I was falling.