45

 

I RUN INTO the elevator lobby. Slam up against the glass door. Peer down the atrium. At first, I can’t quite comprehend what I’m seeing. The elevator, stripped of walls and roof and reduced to a platform, is rising toward me, about twenty floors below. White-pale blobs swirling on the platform. And for just a millisecond, there is a part in the bodies and I catch a glimpse of Sissy. Her face oddly placid.

The gun fires in my hand before I’m even aware of aiming or pulling the trigger. The bullet punctures a hole into the soft, pale mass, a meter from Sissy. The bodies ripple like a flag in the wind; one body keels over and falls off the platform, down into the atrium, splattering when it hits the marble floor of the lobby. But the other bodies seem unaffected as ever.

I pull the trigger again. Click. The chamber is empty.

The elevator, still ascending, is now about fifteen floors below. Too far below to leap—from this height, I’ll likely bounce right off the platform and down the atrium to my death. But there’s no time to spare. I bend my knees, leap out. Wind gushes through my clothes; my lungs ram up my throat. I plummet, arms pirouetting, toward the ascending platform.