IT’S BEEN MORE than three minutes.
Maybe the custodian is just another mind game Stokes is playing on me, a final screw-you—letting me think I have an ally with an escape plan. Then when I’m all in and chock-full of hope, he rips it away. Hands me back to Sherman and Wallace and their ice picks.
I extract the box cutter from my shoe just in case. Pull it open and drop it into the uniform’s front pocket along with the keys, scalpel, and flashlight. But I don’t move.
My heart’s thudding away, beating the drums for action.
Keep your shit together.
I dip my lids, clutch my Latin medal tight, and draw a couple of deep breaths. When I open my eyes again, it’s happened, what the custodian promised—
A blackout.
I ease the door of the custodial closet open and find the hallway lit by a single anemic red exit light, like some lesser corridor of hell. The faint chatter of the infirmary nurse calling the switchboard for information comes from down the hall.
Time to go.
I grip the key ring by the two keys Joe showed me and slip into the hallway, heading toward the east elevator.
But as I pass an opening marked INFIRMARY KITCHEN, I spy, inside the room, a small metal door with a little round window in its center.
The dumbwaiter.
I remember when I was a patient in the infirmary ward hearing Nurse O’Brien talk about checking the infirmary kitchen to see what food the cooks downstairs in the main kitchen had dumbwaitered up that morning. This tiny elevator connects the main kitchen to its satellites in the infirmary above and the Unit below.
Where Mary is.
The Unit could be just a few yanks on a pulley rope away.
Hmm. Bad idea?
Yes, a very bad idea.
If you go now, you get out clean. No more skirmishes. No more run-ins with staff. A decent chance of escaping here with the name Mary gave you.
Remember the name?
The whole goddamn reason you’re there?
I leave now and the nerds get the intel they need. Without me having to resort to violence. Without sullying New Bix. Worthy and I might still have a chance at a life … if the person on that scrap of streamer has the sample, if I can reach her before Stokes … if Kyung and the others can develop the cure … if I can get back here. So many ifs. But there’s a chance.
Down in the Unit, on the other hand, nurse’s whites or not, blackout or not, the staff will know who’s supposed to be there. I’ll be recognized, forced to fight them.
But also down in the Unit, Mary—still alive.
I could get her out. At least I could try. Wouldn’t New Bix try?
And before the voice can rebut, I’m opening the door of the dumbwaiter. It’ll be a tight squeeze. On one side of the car is the rope controlling it, leading to a pulley wheel somewhere in the shaft above.
I manage to fold myself into the cube, then shut the door, making sure none of my parts or clothing are sticking out, before pulling on the rope. The carriage drops slowly downward through the ink-black chute.
When the dumbwaiter passes the main kitchen, I see, through its porthole, two cooks having a blackout smoke, the embers of their cigarettes glowing in the dark.
Another dozen feet down, I reach the basement level.
I look through the window at the darkened Unit’s kitchen, searching for staff, but it’s empty, so I ease the door open, quietly step out, then creep to the door. Turn the lock and open it a crack. Like the infirmary’s hall, the Unit’s is bathed in the dim scarlet of its exit lights.
I say a silent thanks to Joe, whoever he is.
The Unit is its usual mausoleum quiet. Little difference for its patients between a blackout and their normal endless night. As I creep past the closed door of the slumber room, I hear two nurses conversing behind it, a few feet away.
Batshit madness, what I’m doing here.
I pass the empty dayroom, turn onto the Unit’s main hallway—and lay eyes on a cluster of naked patients standing around. There’s not a nurse in sight.
The women are soaking wet, drops of water sliding down the bony ripples of their rib cages. Damp towels lie at their feet, dropped and forgotten. Frida’s among them, agitated, pounding her wet head with her fist and making a low moaning sound. These were the Unit patients in the dining hall earlier.
But Mary Pell is not among them.
Under the sound of Frida’s moan lies something else—the hiss of showers going full blast. It’s coming from the closed door of the nearby lavatory.
I try the door and find it unlocked. Inside, steam from the showers and the dim red exit light have produced a crimson-tinged cloud my eyes can’t penetrate.
As I creep past the doorless toilet stalls, sinks, and benches, the sound of the showers grows louder. I pull out Joe’s flashlight and point it ahead, but its beam merely spotlights the vapor, turning it even more opaque—like high beams on a foggy night.
At the entrance to the showers, I hear a splash and a muffled cry.
Then a hard thunnnck.
“Mary?” I call.
Another splash.
I crouch down, aiming the beam below the red cloud at the less dense air near the floor—and spy a naked figure lying on the tile whose legs are still being hit with the shower’s spray.
I run over, kneel down, and turn the figure’s head toward me.
Mary. Staring at me with lifeless eyes. I’m too late. A quickly expanding halo of blood is coming from a wound in the back of her head. I put the flashlight down on the wet tile, and its beam throws Mary’s face into grotesque high relief. I gently coax her lids closed.
I could have prevented her fall if only I’d warned her. Or gotten here sooner … Gotten her out of this place … So many ways I have failed her. “Mary, I’m so sorry…”
Tears begin flooding my eyes for this prickly woman who saved my life. Maybe, hopefully, many lives—
Only if you get out of there alive with that name.
Someone needs to beat Stokes to her.
Otherwise it’s meaningless. All of it. I kiss Mary’s forehead, grab the flashlight, and am rising from the floor when I hear the squeak of rubber soles. A shadowy figure wielding a massive wrench emerges from the steam cloud.
Gibbs. The spatter of blood on her uniform appears black in the ruby darkness. Mary’s blood. The death certificate was wrong: Mary didn’t slip. She was killed by Gibbs.
She continues toward me. “What are you doing here?” she demands.
I don’t answer. Instead I slide my hand into the pocket of the nurse’s uniform. Grasp hold of the scalpel.
Feet away from me, Gibbs begins swinging the enormous wrench in an upward stroke toward my jaw like some unhinged golfer.
I dodge the tool at the last second then grab a hunk of the surprised woman’s hair. Yank her head back while my other hand brings the scalpel upward.
It would be so easy. One quick slash and I could avenge Mary. Start to make amends.
Don’t do it for Mary.
Or your guilt-fueled vengeance.
Do it ’cause Gibbs will kill you if you don’t kill her first—and the clue will die with you.
Do it!
But the voice isn’t in charge. New Bix is.
And she’s getting herself and Mary’s clue the fuck out of Hanover without more bloodshed.
As I shove the nurse down, her quick, grasping hands knock the scalpel from mine. I leave it. Race for the lavatory door.
“Come back here!” Gibbs roars from behind me, already in pursuit as I streak through the lavatory to the entrance. She’s no more than ten feet behind me when I leap through the open doorway, and I brace for the impact of her wrench—
But then the door miraculously slams shut behind me. A split second later, Gibbs and her wrench crash into it.
I turn to see which naked Unit patient has been able to pull this off.
But it’s not a patient.
It’s Nurse Wallace, already dead bolt–ing the door with her key.