“GILLIAN!” ERIC AND SAVANNAH BURST THROUGH THE DOOR, BOTH YELLING their heads off. “Let’s go! Those guys are in the tunnel.”
I wiped the tears out of my eyes and wheeled the chair around. They were a mess—sweaty and breathing hard, with long streaks of dirt marring the shimmery silver of their suits. Savannah’s hair was frizzing up around her head like a white-blond puffball, and where their faces weren’t flushed from exertion, they were covered in dust.
“Wow!” Howard was right behind them. “Look at all these tapes.” He grabbed one labeled Space and Near-Planet Colonies.
“Take it with you,” Eric said. “Take whatever you want.” He started filling his pockets with his own collection of videotapes and other records.
“Nate’s trying to screw the grate back in,” Savannah said. “He thinks it might give us a little extra time.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but no sound came out. I knew I should tell them what Fiona had said, what she’d threatened to do. I knew we should take a vote, just like we had with the guns.
Nate poked his head in the room. “We gotta go, guys. I can hear them back there. They don’t fit quite as well as we do, but they’re still moving.”
I took a deep breath, and it all poured out in a rush. “Fiona says if we don’t turn ourselves in to her at the turbine in an hour she’s going to seal us all in here to die.”
They all stared at me, wide-eyed.
“Are you serious?” Savannah whispered.
I nodded, miserable, and tucked my chin into my chest. Of course they were going to vote to surrender. If I spent a few seconds thinking about it, I’d do the same. And then Fiona would steal all of Dr. Underberg’s inventions and Dad would still be ruined and this was all for nothing.
Nate pursed his lips. “Well then, we’d better hurry.”
“Yeah,” Eric agreed. “We only have an hour to get to that third exit.”
“More like fifty-eight minutes,” Howard said. “But yeah.”
I raised my head, looking at them in amazement.
Savannah grabbed my hand and squeezed it. She was wearing her suit’s silver traction gloves. “You’ve plotted the way, right?”
I pulled out my directions. Then I heard it—the sound of thumps and grunts and echoing, metallic curses. Fiona’s men.
“Now or never, Gills,” Eric said.
Okay, then. I clutched Underberg’s treasures through the silver material of my pockets. “Now.”
WE RACED DOWN corridors and up flights of stairs. Thirty seconds after we’d left the Comm room, we heard the clatter of metal.
“They kicked down the grate,” Nate panted as we ran up another set of stairs. “Run!”
So we ran, as quickly and quietly as we could. With any luck, the men wouldn’t guess what way we’d gone.
One more hallway filled with intriguing doors I didn’t have time to explore and we burst into another stairwell. Right on the other side of this landing, according to the map, was the elevator for the third exit. Nate and Eric sprinted over to the doors, but they were jammed.
“Up another level!” Nate shouted, and we all took to the stairs.
Thankfully, the next level was clear and we came pouring out of the stairwell. The elevator stood there, the up arrow lit in the friendliest shade of white I’d ever seen. We were going to make it.
“At last!” Savannah cried as she jammed her palm against the call button on the elevator.
Nothing happened.
“No!” Nate pounded the metal double doors. “Open, you dumb thing!”
“Nate,” said Howard, placing his hand on his brother’s arm. “Listen.”
I held my breath. I could hear it, the sound of machine parts whirring. The elevator was coming down, floor after floor through the darkness. But I heard something else, too—the sounds of boots on the staircase we’d just left.
“They’re coming,” I said, in a tone somewhere between a whisper and a cry.
Instantly Nate and Howard threw their weight against the stairwell door, while Eric, Savannah, and I looked for something to block it. The rooms on this hall seemed to be living quarters of some kind. There was a sofa in one of the rooms, but it was too heavy for us to lift. Savannah was dragging out a metal bed frame when the Nolands yelped and the door seemed to jump off its hinges.
“Open up!” yelled Clint, or maybe it was the other guy.
“Or I’ll shoot!” No, that one was definitely Clint.
“Step away from the door, Howard,” Nate said calmly, even as he flattened himself against it. “And get your thing ready.”
What thing?
“Is that elevator coming anytime soon?” The door jumped again, and Nate braced his feet against the floor.
Just then, Nate went flying across the room and the door burst open. We all screamed and jumped back. The two men stood there, wearing heavy-duty black suits and holsters with all kinds of tools and implements hanging from them: grappling hooks, compasses, walkie-talkies, utility knives, and yes—guns. Their head lamps speared our eyes. Nate pushed himself to his feet and stood in front of us, which was when I realized that we’d all kind of huddled there, across the hall from the elevator. Nate spread out his hands, as if gathering us behind him, and yeah, he was big, compared to us. But he wasn’t that big.
“Travis,” said Clint. “Contact Fiona. We’ve got them.”
The other guy—Travis—pulled out his walkie-talkie. Just then, the elevator door dinged open.
The two men looked behind them at the sound. For a second, I saw it—lit from within with the same orange-red emergency lights as the rest of this level. There it was, just on the other side of those men. Our ticket out of here.
And then everything went blinding white.
“Run!” Howard shouted. I blinked but only saw a flock of gummy pink flashes that were probably my corneas exploding or something. Still, I turned away from Clint and Travis and started stumbling. Someone grabbed my hand—maybe Savannah?—and pulled me along.
“What was that?” Eric cried. I could barely make out the outline of his body as we careened down the hall.
“Keep running!” said Nate—if the giant silver blob attached to the end of Eric’s arm was actually Nate. I blinked furiously and ran to keep up with the giant silver blob I thought was Savannah.
“Stairs,” she warned me. Not that it mattered. I could hardly feel them under my feet as we went down one, two . . . three at a time. My eyes started to clear as we passed out of the stairwell and back into the giant main chamber of Omega City. The floodlights still angled against the roof of the cavern, bathing the boxy trailer buildings and the floodwaters in a soft blue twilight. It seemed like ages since we were here last. I rubbed my aching eyes and looked again. We were now on the opposite side of the city from where we’d entered near the turbine.
“Come on,” said Nate. “The flare won’t keep them for long.” We started down the nearest metal walkway.
“Howard had a flare from one of the survival kit things we found in the mess hall,” Savannah explained. “We made some plans to defend ourselves while we were waiting for you and Eric in the movie theater.”
“Apparently!” I gasped.
As soon as we were off the walkway, Nate and Howard started yanking at levers near the handrails, and with a groan, the whole thing separated from the building and went crashing to the wet stone floor below.
And then we were off again. We were crossing our third walkway when we heard shouts in the cavern and knew Clint and Travis were catching up again.
“I can’t run much more,” gasped Savannah.
“You eat too much pizza,” Nate replied, and kept running.
“Yeah,” Eric said, out of breath. “And whose fault is that?”
Next, we went down a flight of stairs. Howard, coming last, pulled a bottle of something out of his pocket and poured it on the steps behind him.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Machine oil,” he said. “Found it in the gym by the weights. Maybe they’ll slip.”
“Are you kidding me?” I asked as we took off again.
“Are you complaining?” Nate replied. “Save your breath and sprint.”
But despite the Nolands’ best efforts at booby traps, Clint and Travis were gaining on us. We couldn’t keep quiet as we pounded over the metal walkways, and neither could they. Their clanging and banging echoed through the cavern, ever louder and ever closer.
“Not to ruin the fun,” Eric said, “but we do know where we’re going, right?”
“Exit four.” Nate’s face was grim, his eyes intent on the path in front of him. I imagined he’d spent quite a lot of time studying the map while Eric and I had been underwater. His hair and face were drenched with sweat, but he showed no sign of slowing down. The rest of us didn’t dare fall behind now.
I couldn’t get the image of that elevator out of my head. Right there, open, and fully operational. We could have rushed inside. We could have pressed the button. What if I’d surrendered to Clint and Travis on the condition that they let my friends go? They could all have been on the surface already.
“There they are!”
A cracking sound echoed loudly off the rock walls.
They’d found us.