Footsteps, coming from below. Multiple sets, echoing up the stone stairwell in an even rhythm—this one definitely aclear 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 thepanel 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 onnotpanicking 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, Isaw 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.
