LET’S GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE

They crossed the room in a heartbeat, piling into the elevator. Marlow jabbed a hand on the button, waiting for one of those limbs to snake through the door, to wrap itself around his throat. He pressed the button again, and again.

“Come on, you piece of garbage.”

The doors rumbled shut and the elevator started to rise, whining in protest. Marlow slid down the elevator wall. It was too much. Something was rising inside him, something huge—surely too big, too powerful. It felt like a tsunami, and even with all the power of the world inside him he could not hold it back. He curled his legs up, pushed his face into his knees so that nobody would see the tears. But there was nothing he could do to hide the sobs that racked him, making his whole body shake. It was too much, too much.

He felt somebody sit down next to him. Somebody else sat on the other side, kicking off so much heat he might have been leaning against a radiator. Hands wrapped themselves around him from both sides, tight. No words, they just held him until the ocean calmed.

Of all the things Charlie and Pan had done for him, Marlow thought, this was the one that truly saved his life.

He scrubbed the tears away on his pants, blinked up at Pan. She was crying, too, her eyes red-rimmed with exhaustion and confusion. Sniffing, she gave him one last squeeze and let go. Marlow felt weirdly naked without the weight of her arms on his shoulders, like she had taken a piece of him with her.

Charlie was naked, and when he leaned in for another hug Marlow pushed him away.

“Dude, not until you’ve got pants on.”

And the thought of it—of sitting next to his naked best friend in the elevator from hell—made something else rush up his throat, a bark of lunatic laughter that exploded wetly from his nose.

“Gross,” said Pan, getting unsteadily to her feet. Her mouth was a thin gray line. Marlow didn’t want to know what she was going through right now, the horror of finding out she was one of the bad guys. He turned back to Charlie.

“Why were you prancing around in the altogether, though?”

Charlie sniffed, his tears evaporating from his skin. He looked down at himself as if truly noticing for the first time.

“I was wearing clothes,” he said. “They must have burned off.”

“Any excuse,” said Marlow as Charlie got to his feet, everything hanging out. “You got no shame?”

Charlie shrugged his skinny shoulders, his grin lighting up the elevator.

“Hey, it’s what God gave me.”

“He didn’t give you much,” said Pan.

“Hey!” Charlie said, finally slapping a hand to his crotch. His cheeks were glowing so much, Marlow thought he was about to burst into flames again.

The elevator rattled upward ridiculously slowly, grinding against the walls. How could it be taking so long?

“You think Ostheim’s coming after us?” Marlow asked.

Pan shook her head. “You saw him, all he cares about is the Engine. Christ. How could I have been so stupid?”

“It wasn’t your fault,” said Charlie. “He’s been doing this for so long. He’s fooled so many people.”

She shot him a look that could have blasted him out the side of the elevator shaft.

“I…” She swallowed, the fury leaving her face, leaving her with nothing. She put her head against the wall, her fists clenching and unclenching, over and over. “I was so sure. I never even thought to question him.”

“I don’t get it,” Marlow said. “We saw him, like a few hours ago. He was just this old dude. He had a comb-over, for God’s sake.”

“You must have felt him, though,” said Charlie. “Mammon always said that something as evil as Ostheim can be hidden from the eye, but never from the soul.”

Marlow thought back to that morning—it felt like a million years ago. When they’d arrived at the church in Prague he’d felt like his insides were being minced. But that had been the Red Door, hadn’t it?

“He used it to mask himself,” said Pan, slapping herself on the forehead. “That’s why he arranged to meet us there, so the stench of the door would hide him. Dammit, the door wasn’t even there anymore, why didn’t we just think?”

The elevator rattled so hard that Marlow thought it was going to come loose and drop them all to their deaths. Then the gears whined and it shuddered to a halt. Pan wrenched open the gates. Through them was the bullpen, drenched in darkness and silence. Marlow had been so caught up in the fight downstairs that he’d completely forgotten about the others. He shared a look with Pan, then watched her stick her head through the opening.

“Herc?” she said quietly. “You out—”

A gunshot, ricocheting off the outside of the elevator. Pan staggered in, a spark tearing itself from her fingers and zigzagging from ceiling to floor. Past the crack of thunder Marlow could hear somebody shouting inside the bullpen.

“Sorry, sorry, my bad!” Herc yelled.

Then his ugly face was there, peering inside. He offered them something that was probably a smile.

“Wasn’t expecting to see you all alive,” he said. “Thought it was him. I thought it was … Ostheim.” Marlow saw his face crumple under the weight of the truth.

“Then it’s a good job you’re an awful shot,” said Pan, barging past him. Marlow pushed himself up the wall and followed her. It was so dark in the bullpen that he could barely see, the light from the elevator a copper penny in an ocean of ink. It wasn’t a bad thing, though. The air was heavy with the stench of gunpowder and blood, and he could make out collections of broken parts scattered in the black. Whatever had happened up here, it had been bad.

“I’m sorry, Pan,” said Herc. “I couldn’t—”

Pan snapped around, jabbing a finger at him.

“Did you know?” she said, baring her teeth like a feral animal. “Did you know?”

“No!” said Herc, shaking his head, making sure to look her right in the eye. “I didn’t know, Pan. Ostheim showed up here and I thought … I thought he was here to help us, but he just … Christ, he just killed them all. Us, them. He didn’t care, he just mowed right through us on his way to the elevator. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

She swallowed, then scrubbed the back of a hand over her face.

“Holy guacamole,” said Truck, lumbering from the shadows. He scooped Pan up in a bear hug, putting her down again only when she started slapping him on the shoulders in protest. “Man, I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. What happened?”

“Ostheim,” spat Pan. “That asshole. I can’t … I just can’t…”

“Hey, kiddo, don’t go there,” said Herc. “None of us saw it coming.”

“But why?” she said, toe-to-toe with the big guy. “Why did nobody question it? Why didn’t you question it, Herc? You were supposed to be watching out for us. They died, Herc. All of them. And for what?”

Herc turned away, blinking. For all the gristle and all the scars, he looked about twelve years old in the half-light.

“Hey,” said Truck. He rested a hand on her shoulder and she shook it away. He tried again, more forcefully this time. “Hey, Pan. We can talk about this later. Right now, we got to go.”

He was right. The room was trembling, like the beginning of an earthquake. Marlow could barely feel it, but it was there, tickling the soles of his feet.

“He’s right,” said a voice, another person emerging from the dark. A girl dressed in black, a shock of red hair. “Ostheim will already be opening the gates.”

“You,” Pan said, jabbing a finger. The redhead stood firm.

“I what? You better watch the next thing that comes out of your mouth. You brought him here, you did this.”

Pan’s face crumpled, her shoulders sagging under a hundred tons of truth. She didn’t reply. How could she? The redhead was right. Pan had done this, and Marlow, and Herc and Truck. They might as well have opened the gates to hell themselves.

“Where is Mammon?” the redhead said. Nobody answered, and she put her hands to her face, groaning into them. “No, no, no.”

“Come on,” Herc said gently. “I don’t know how long we’ve got, but it isn’t much.”

“I took out some of it,” said Charlie. “I burned some of that bastard machine into dust.”

“Yeah?” said Herc.

Charlie nodded. “Not much, though. There was no time.”

“It might slow him down,” said Herc, dropping onto his knees and rummaging in his duffel bag. “I’ve got something else here that will help as well.”

“Where’s Taupe?” Pan said, staring into the dark with an expression that Marlow instantly hated—like she was longing for him. He’d almost managed to forget about the French guy. He was probably abseiling down the elevator shaft, about to single-handedly wrestle Ostheim into submission before carrying Pan off in those big arms of his.

Herc sighed, shaking his head.

“Caught a stray bullet,” he said, tapping his temple. “Right here. Never even knew about it.”

Oh. Marlow swallowed the guilt back down his throat. Pan’s face was made of stone again, her jaw clenched so tightly it might shatter.

“He would have been happy to know he’d died fighting,” Herc said. “If it makes you feel better.”

Not really, Marlow thought. Not at all. He’d died fighting for the wrong side.

Herc went back to whatever he had in his bag, a series of clicks and beeps from it echoing around the hall.

“What is that?” Charlie asked. Herc glanced at him, then performed a perfect double take when he noticed Charlie wasn’t wearing anything.

“Don’t ask,” said Marlow.

“Fair enough,” said Herc. “This, my friends, is a Mark-54 Special Atomic Demolition Munition.”

“A what?” said Marlow.

“A nuke,” Charlie replied. “Right?”

“A tactical nuclear weapon,” Herc confirmed. “Six kilotons of pure trouble for Ostheim.”

“It’ll take out the Engine?” Marlow said.

“It won’t even dent it,” Herc said, his knees popping as he groaned to his feet. “But it might bury that asshole for a while. Come on, we’ve got twenty minutes.”

He jogged back to the elevator, squeezing through the doors. Nobody followed him, the cloud of exhaustion that hung over them so heavy it was almost a physical thing. Marlow wasn’t sure he could move even if he wanted to. Herc looked out at them.

“I should add that this particular nuke was built in the 1960s,” he said. “And I can’t vouch for its reliability.”

That did the trick, everyone scuttling away from the clicking bag like there was a demon inside it ready to clamber out. Pan went in first, Marlow and Charlie almost wedging themselves as they fought to get through the gap. The redhead was next, standing in a corner and looking nervously at Pan.

“Room for a little one?” said Truck, barely able to haul his capacious frame inside. Herc thumped the button, the elevator wobbling up a few feet then falling still.

“Don’t you dare,” said Pan, so much violence in her voice that the elevator shuddered into life again, reeling them back to the surface. Nobody spoke, everyone thinking the same thing.

Keep moving, please don’t stop. Marlow could picture it, the day overhead. The craving he felt for sunlight was overwhelming, an addict’s need.

The elevator ground to a halt again and Marlow almost ripped the gates off completely as he clattered out into the corridor. Even here the ground didn’t feel particularly solid, the Engine a gaping maw directly below him. He flinched when he saw the girl up ahead. Claire was hunkered down, blinking at them through big, frightened eyes. She almost smiled, then leaned over and retched. A string of black bile hung from her lips.

“Told you we’d come back,” Marlow said, doing his best to find a smile. She got to her feet and wiped her mouth, her weak grin the next best thing to daylight.

“It is over?” she said, rubbing her stomach.

“Not even close,” said Herc as he walked past them.

“They led Ostheim right here,” said the redhead. “Did you see him?”

Claire looked at the floor, her eyelids blinking hard as if trying to scrub the sight of him from her corneas.

“He walked right past me, Jaime,” she said. She shivered, wiping away a tear. “I don’t think he even saw me.”

“He’s in the Engine,” said the redhead, Jaime. “He’s won, Mammon’s dead.”

“He hasn’t won,” said Marlow. “Not yet.”

“How’d you figure that?” Herc said.

“I’ll tell you on the way.”

They reached the Red Door, still hanging open. Beyond was the cathedral of candlelit rock, those fires roaring. They walked out together, Herc pulling the door shut behind them. The sound it made when it locked could have been a depth charge going off beneath the ocean. He didn’t waste a second, bolting between the columns and shouting over his shoulder.

“Hey, Red, you know the path out? I don’t feel like crawling through the Liminal again.”

“Left,” she yelled, and they jogged together. Marlow was running on fumes but the sickening waves of bad energy pouring out of the Engine were a powerful tailwind, propelling him around corner after corner, through seemingly endless corridors forged from bone. It took him a while to notice that the ground was sloping upward, slightly at first, then steeper.

“This one,” said Jaime. She had stopped next to an alcove in the wall, barely big enough to let one person through. They’d passed hundreds of them on the way.

“You sure?” asked Herc.

“With Ostheim behind us, not to mention an atomic bomb, I’d better be,” she replied, disappearing.

Herc grumbled something and followed her, and Marlow was next, almost tripping on the stairs. It was another spiral staircase, decorated with the dead.

“We came down this way,” said Marlow.

“No, you didn’t,” Jaime replied from up ahead, her voice echoing off the walls. “This place is a warren. Only a couple of paths actually lead to the Engine, the rest are traps. Get stuck in one, and you’ll be there forever.”

“Unless you punch through the wall,” said Truck.

They climbed in silence, their breaths ragged and desperate. Marlow lost count of how many stairs there were after two hundred, but there had to have been as many again. At one point he swore he could hear Truck sobbing.

Then they were out, squeezing from a narrow doorway into a tunnel. They were still underground, but Marlow could feel the change in pressure—no longer a mile of rock overhead. The cry of the Engine was still in his veins but it was quieter now. There was a sign on the wall that said something in French, a picture of an electric bolt. Pipes ran the length of the corridor. Beautiful, human pipes that carried electricity or water or gas to a world he’d been sure was lost to him.

And he was smiling before he remembered that the world wouldn’t be there for much longer. Not once Ostheim had opened the gates.

Marlow wasn’t sure how any of them made it up the last few flights of steps, but they did. Jaime reached a huge cast-iron door and tugged on it until it squealed open. A torrent of sunlight poured through, a river of it, wrapping Marlow in fingers of gold and pulling him out into the day. He dropped to his knees, pushing his face into the glorious heat, crying again.

“Hey, Marlow,” Pan said, grabbing his T-shirt, helping him up. “Nuke. About to explode.”

They were on a street next to the river, Paris laid out before them in shades of white and gold. Smoke rose from five or six places, the sound of sirens filling the air like birdsong as the Engine continued to pollute the air.

“Now what?” said Pan.

“Now we find transport,” said Herc. “Something big.”

“On it,” said Truck, wobbling up the street.

“Herc,” said Charlie. He stood naked as the day he was born, shivering despite the heat. “Won’t a nuke, you know, like, destroy the whole city?”

“No,” said Herc. “Too small, too deep. We probably won’t even feel it up here.” He checked his watch again. “Ten seconds.”

They counted down together, silently.

“That was almost disappointing,” said Marlow. “Did it go off?”

“It better have,” Herc grumbled. “Paid a goddamned fortune for it. Should be—”

The entire street bucked beneath Marlow’s feet, almost knocking him over. In front of them, the river surged up the sides of the banks, foaming in a frenzy as it crashed back down. The city beyond it looked as if it had hiccuped, everything bouncing once. Half a dozen buildings crumpled into themselves, sagging like they were made of cardboard. A cloud of dust rose, filtering the sunlight and turning the whole area red. Herc, though, had paled considerably.

“Whoops,” he said. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“Least that asshole Ostheim will be picking rocks from his hair for a while,” said Jaime.

Marlow heard the sound of an engine, the crunch of gears. He looked back to see an ice cream truck making its way toward them. The street was a patchwork of shattered asphalt, a busted fire hydrant spraying rainbows. Truck leaned out the window and flicked on the siren, a blast of “Pop Goes the Weasel” filling the air over the sound of a thousand alarms. He already had a cone in his fist, and he was grinning.

“Seriously?” said Herc.

“Best I could find,” he yelled through a mouthful of ice cream.

“It’ll do,” said Herc. “Everyone on board. Marlow, I need to know everything that Mammon told you.”

Marlow nodded, opening the side door and hopping up the steps into the back of the van. He sat on a box of cones and Pan squeezed in next to him, neither of them saying anything but both of them thinking the same thing.

There was still hope.

“We’re Hellraisers,” Herc said from the broken street. “It ain’t over yet.”

The old guy watched as they all clambered in. Charlie was last, and Herc’s face creased in disgust as he watched him climb the steps.

“First thing first, though,” Herc said, hauling himself up and slamming the door shut behind him. “We find Charlie some goddamned pants.”