Oh.
Oh.
Oh, no.
I stagger to my feet. Edgar clings to me and I scoop him onto my shoulder, where he’ll be safe.
“What is it?” he asks.
“We have to get out of here,” I say. “Right now.”
“All right. Did you come up with a brilliant escape plan in the last five seconds?”
“No.” I put a hand to the wall, steadying myself. “But we have to get out of here. I know what Vale’s after.”
The hallway is lit only by the soft emergency lights. They are embedded in the floor, tracing a path to the exit doors. I stride down the hallway.
I don’t have a plan. I don’t have weapons.
But I’m Augusta Pine. And if anyone can wreck a criminal’s day, it’s me.
I dig into my shoe and come up with Matthew’s ringware. I slip it back onto my thumb and flick my hand.
The building’s blueprints appear before me, tracing lights along hallways and through the walls. There are old notes—probably left over from whoever built this place when it was a hotel. “Come on,” I say, even though Edgar has no choice but to cling to me. “We’re getting out of here.”
“The stairs?” he asks.
I shake my head. “If I were Vale, I’d leave someone there to kill anyone who might try and escape. Or maybe she zip-tied a grenade to the doors so anyone who pushes them open sets it off. We’re not going that way.”
I retrace the path I took when I was fleeing both Corey and the lockdown. Exposed ductwork gleams overhead and the smell of damp chlorine reminds me that the pool is one floor above. Every door is locked shut tight: several storage closets, a door at the end of the hallway with metal bars keeping it shut, one room labeled “Sewer Access,” and another entrance to the generator room. The hallway forms a rectangle, and if I continue, I’ll end up exactly where I started.
And then I see the door I jammed open.
“All right,” I say. “Let’s see what we’re working with.”
“Maybe there’s something useful inside,” says Edgar. “A room full of power tools.”
It’s not full of power tools. It’s a laundry room. I am greeted by the smell of discarded dryer sheets and moist fabric. The wall is lined with washers and dryers, there is a table with a forgotten basket of clothes, and at least one of the washers is quietly leaking trails of water. “Okay,” I murmur. “Okay.”
My gaze sweeps over one of the larger vents. Dryers have to blow their hot air to the outside, right? The blueprints glow in my visor, and I see where the vents emerge: on the western edge of the apartment building.
I squat down by one of the dryers. “Maybe we could use these vents to get outside.”
“These vents are too narrow for you to fit.” Edgar crawls higher on my shoulder. There’s a distinct edge of frustration to his voice. “And I can’t fly through them. Not with my broken wing. It would take hours for me to crawl.”
There has to be something. Some way out of here. I refuse to be trapped in a laundry room while Hannah Vale and her not-terrorists win.
The blueprints are little help: All I can see are lines and handwritten notes and—
Along the farthest wall, there is a large, rectangular blank space. It isn’t labeled, and above it, there’s what looks like an elevator shaft. I blink and flick the blueprints from my vision.
Two planks of plywood have been nailed to the wall and painted white to blend in—a landlord special.
“What do you think’s behind that?” I ask.
“Only one way to find out,” says Edgar cheerfully.
I take a screwdriver from the janitor’s cart and manage to jam it under the edge of the plywood. Then I wrench as hard as my shoulders will allow. For a moment, nothing happens. Then something splinters, paint cracks apart, and the wood comes partly free of the wall.
