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Financial District
San Francisco, California
Alice Linda waved to the young man. They hadn’t seen one another for several days. Not since he called to tell her the safety inspector wanted her butt in in her office ASAP. He returned the wave and started to walk in her direction. But something caught his eye, and he reversed his direction and disappeared from her field of view.
After punching the new code into the keypad, she could hear the electromagnetic door mechanism release its death grip on the door permitting her to pull it open. She entered the small office, closing the door behind her. The lock engaged with a loud click reverberating through the concrete structure.
That’s when she heard the young man shout followed by a scream that sent a shiver down her spine.
The offices of temporary construction with plywood walls over aluminum studs extended vertically just short of the steel beams holding the concrete floor above. Linda bent her knees and jumped into the air grabbing the bottom of the steel I-Beam overhead. She pulled her head into the cavity created by the steel. Looking out over the top edge of the plywood wall she could see the length of the parking level. Her view carried to the paved exit apron between the building’s reinforced concrete exterior wall and the adjacent street. There at the building’s drip line stood another Indian facing her young friend.
A second Indian? Linda did not believe in coincidence.
It started to rain, pour and the two men stood outside the garage. The images of both men faded from her view as the rain was now a solid sheet of water. The burn in her arms signaled her need to drop to the concrete deck. Back on the ground, she shook out her arms to loosen the stressed muscles before grabbing the bottom of the beam yet again to resume her surveillance of the parking garage and beyond.
Nothing. Both men were gone, but a trail of water lead from the entrance through the parking garage in the direction of her office. As she pulled her head closer to the aluminum pan holding the concrete floor above, someone tried to open her office door. She quieted her breathing and held her fixed position above the floor, in effect, engaged in the world’s most challenging pull-up.
Whoever stood outside her office entered a sequence of digits into the key pad and pulled the door. They must have used the old key code, because the electromagnetic lock continued its death grip binding the door to the frame. The person tried several more times before retreating.
Not wanting to make any noise, Linda focused on holding her position but the pain was becoming too difficult to ignore. Yet, ignore it she did. She was sweating heavily now, and the pain in her arms was spreading to her neck and back. Finally, when she couldn’t continue any longer, she silently dropped to the concrete deck remaining in a fixed, crouched position. She worked to control her breathing. Her oxygen level fell short of her body’s need and she started to see stars and floaters. Her discipline won the battle as her body lost the war. She slowly rolled over onto her side and into unconsciousness.
When she awoke, Linda was laying on the concrete floor looking at the ceiling above wondering how long she’d been unconscious. As she summoned the strength to stand, the stranger returned to the door. The tool the Indian used to pry the keypad from the three-quarter of an inch plywood popped the device. The pad remained tenuously connected to the door by a series of thin low voltage wires. He slowly knelt before the small diameter hole from which the wires emerged. He placed his forehead against the door’s surface. He scanned the interior room from left to right. Suddenly, the light in the room entered shadow.
He never saw it coming. Linda rammed the pencil through the hole and into his right eye. As she pushed the door open she continued to press the pencil through the hole. The Indian didn’t fall away faster than the door moved toward his head. So, Linda continued to push the pencil into Nelson’s eye.
As the door fully extended and its forward motion ended, the Indian continued to fall back toward the concrete floor. Linda took the opportunity to lift her right foot and kick the end of the pencil with the flat of her foot until it was fully embedded in his eye. She took off for the building lobby at a full run. There was safety in numbers. She was hoping the lobby was filled with construction workers.
Linda took the stairs as fast as her legs would carry her. Her lungs were on fire. As she approached the lobby landing she was once again seeing stars. No, no I can’t faint again. The doors separating the landing from the lobby weren’t yet installed. She flew through the empty frame and into the lobby on a full head of steam. Her mouth and throat were parched. Her arms, neck and back were sore from the pull-ups on the steel I-Beam. Her legs, knees, and thighs quivered on the verge of collapse. She was the epitome of a hot mess.
Hovering over a table scanning building blueprints and architectural renderings stood a small group of men amid a heated discussion. They saw Linda move in their direction and they clearly surmised her state of physical distress. Their discussion ended as each focused on her labored approach.
“Miss, are you okay?” one of them asked. Before she could respond, their eyes turned toward something behind her. Looking over her shoulder she saw what drew their attention.
Stumbling out of the same stairwell came the Indian. His right eye missing and a pencil sticking out of the socket. Blood poured down his cheek, staining almost all his chest, creating a solid field of red on what had been a white on white dress shirt. One of the men ran to his aid while the remainder stood glued to their respective positions around the tall table. The Indian’s gaze moved past the man running in his direction toward Linda, his prey. In one fluid movement, he pulled the Bull Pin used to align the holes of steel beams and collars from his tool pouch and punched the leading tapered edge into the gut of the good Samaritan who immediately fell by the wayside.
Linda had not wasted the moment by standing still. Instead, she continued moving toward the bank of elevators, stepped inside the closest one, and pressed the top-most button. The elevators and cabs were only recently installed. The retracting doors, fully opened, weren’t operable, yet. Nothing happened for what seemed like an eternity. The cab stood motionless for the time it would have taken for the doors to close passed, and the cab finally began to rise. The whole delay lasted two seconds.
The cab lacked any interior finish materials. The floor was plywood. The walls open while the structural vertical frames ended in welds connecting to the aluminum ceiling grid that one day would hang lighting and tiles. The elevator cab was now moving at its rated speed. She was flying to the 40th floor in an open cage with the wind and air borne construction dust and dirt flying about.
Linda brought her hands up to her face crafting a crude set of blinders to protect her eyes. As the floors flew by she could see workers on some of the higher floors. Most floors were stacked high with sheetrock for future walls, piles of aluminum studs, and innumerable five gallon tubs of drywall compound. Looking over the side she could see the lobby level retreating as the cab continued its rapid climb. The Indian waded into the pool of light at the bottom of the shaft.
The building’s architects designed two sets of elevators to service all 61 floors. The elevator gathering passengers at the lobby would transport them to the 40th floor and all points in between. On the 40th floor, passengers would move to an adjacent elevator to ride to all higher floors in the building. Linda saw the elevator doorways on the 40th floor were cordoned off by plywood walls. If she was going to ride the next elevator to the 61st floor, then she’d have to find another way to get to the adjoining cab. As her cab slowed its ascent, she positioned herself between two of the cab’s wall studs, and as her cab slowed to a stop, she jumped to the next cab over.
Her jump spanned six feet—longer than it sounds. She cleared the distance, but barely so, grabbing the slippery vertical studs along the exterior wall of the new cab. The unfinished edges of the aluminum slicing her hands as she maneuvered to keep from falling into the pit below. She wrapped both arms around a support hugging it to her chest. She was in a state of shock. Another Indian, this one homicidal. The pencil embedded in his eye socket. The blood. The way he gut-stabbed the construction worker running to provide him with help. This Indian was a mechanical terminator.
She felt his approach before she saw him. The air rushing ahead of the rising cab advertised its imminent arrival. Looking under her armpit she could see the Indian standing on the roof grid of the elevator climbing in her direction. Holy shit! She pulled herself into the cab and pressed the button for the 61st floor. This time, the cab took off without any delay, but this ride was only half as long as the last. And, in what seemed like a flash, the cab came to a stop on the 61st floor. Again, the elevator doors blocked by plywood barriers.
There was no adjoining cab waiting on the 61st floor.
To get to the next cab Linda would have to first jump to the ladder bolted on the side of the elevator shaft. The ladder extended the full length of the shaft, but using it for anything other than a jump-off point to the next cab was out of the question. She wasn’t going to outrun the Indian by betting she could climb the rungs faster, her hands like hamburger.
She leapt from the cab in the direction of the ladder. Unfortunately, her hands touched the wall behind the ladder between rungs. Her toes slipped on the landing from one rung to the next lower. Her hands frantically attempted to purchase a hold on the rung opposite of her face, but it was damp covered with dust, grime, and grease. The pain in her hands proved too much to ignore. She lost her hold and started to fall back into the shaft below.
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Nelson Tyendinaga stood on the cab’s ceiling structure with his arms folded against his chest. For an old iron worker accustomed to climbing the high steel without a net, riding the elevator cab was no more challenging than standing on terra firma. He willed his mind to ignore the pain and burning in what had been his right eye. As the cab climbed to the 40th floor he could see the woman lose her grip on the ladder and her fall backward into the shaft.
His cab came to a stop on the 40th floor as he watched the woman 21 stories above. He believed he could stand and watch her fall into the abyss without doing anything more. So, he stood unmoving as the top of Linda’s body moved like the second hand of a watch from the twelve to the six position. But instead of continuing to fall at the end of the rotation, she remained suspended. Her feet were wrapped around the rung on which she had landed as she hung upside down. Then, like a trained gymnast, the woman grabbed the rung nearest her extended arms, kicked off her footing and rotated yet again landing below in a secured position on the ladder. She hesitated only for a moment before she jumped the distance to an elevator cab parked on the 58th floor—a drop of fifteen to twenty feet.
Linda landed in a crouching position with her arms extended to secure her balance. She could see the Indian below and to the left several cabs away. Lowering herself through the ceiling and into the cab, she pressed the button for the lobby. This cab was a designated express elevator and it was programmed at this stage of the building’s development to drop like a stone.
Nelson watched and cursed as the woman successfully made the transition from a certain fall into a cab about to pass him on its high-speed descent to the lobby. For a moment, each stared at the other as Linda’s cab passed through the 40th floor. After the cab dropped past the Indian, Linda stepped through the open wall structure and lowered her body where she grabbed a hand hold on a floor truss supporting the cab’s plywood floor, her battered hands covered in blood, grime, and construction dust burning. To the Indian it looked like she threw herself over the edge and into the shaft.
Tyendinaga knew it was now or never. He leapt from his perch toward Linda’s cab. Flying through the shaft he closed the distance as the cab continued to drop beneath him. Nelson felt like he was flying.
His fall caught the cab and he landed on his chest with his legs dangling inside the enclosure. Willing his mind to ignore the broken ribs, he gingerly lowered his feet to the plywood floor. He slowly stood erect while he pondered his next move. The Indian failed to realize that he and Linda were separated by the same plywood floor. He stood on the plywood while she was suspended below.
Unlike the upper floors where the elevator doors were blocked by plywood barriers, all the lower floor doorways were open and navigable. As the cab plummeted to the lobby level, Linda started to rock her body toward the doorways and then away—back and forth grinding her injured hands. She managed to time it perfectly. As the mezzanine level approached and her rocking motion transitioned toward the open doorway, she opened her hands, relinquishing her hold on the floor truss. The trajectory and the motion of her fall carried her through the mezzanine doors where she came to a sliding stop. She sprinted toward the exterior doors leading to the commercial mall outside the building.
Nelson belatedly realized the woman used his cab to escape through the building’s mezzanine level. He was committed to ride several more floors to the lobby. By the time he could make his way back to the mezzanine, the woman would have made her way out of the building site and into San Francisco. From there she could be anywhere.