The Wire Hanger

Chapter Twenty-seven

“Good enough,” said David. He held out a harness and I stepped into it. When he buckled the straps across my chest, Noah handed me the device he’d been holding, the plain black plastic box.

“Okay. When you get up there, you’ll see a part of the floor – their floor, your ceiling – that’s glass instead of concrete. We need you to get as close to that as you can. Then you’re going to press this button and stick it right next to the glass. Their defences are weakest there so I’ll be able to get the signal.”

“Easy enough,” I said, my knees shaking beneath me.

“No time to waste,” said Obadiah. He took aim at the top of the tower with the thing that looked like a gun, and I watched with awe as something soared out of it and affixed itself hundreds of metres above us.

“Exactly how high is that?” I asked.

“We’ll tell you when you’re back down,” said David with a grin that was not completely kind.

Obadiah attached my harness to the rope that now hung from the tower. “I’ve got remote access,” he said, showing me the controls in his hand. “I’ll send you up as slowly as I can so you don’t get a head rush. You’ve got your earpiece so we’ll be able to communicate. Watch out for the elevators. Ready?”

“Um,” I said, but my feet had already left the ground. I twisted my head around frantically to meet Noah’s eyes, which were wide but determined. He gave me a thumbs up and then he was too small for me to see the details.

I turned my attention to the vast gray tower rushing by me. To my left was the line of glass for the elevators, which we’d managed to avoid in our run from the decrepit aquarium. I heard a faint humming that started to grow louder, and I realized that an elevator was on its way up, not ten feet from me. I knew Obadiah would be able to see it from the ground, so I just held my breath until it passed me, and then all I could hear was the air rushing past my ears as I went up and up and up. I didn’t look down.

“Do you see the glass?” asked Obadiah in my ear. I craned my neck to look above me.

“Yep, incoming.” My ascent slowed. “A little bit further. Tiny bit. That’s good.” I balanced my fingertips on the concrete above me, swaying in my harness. The wind was much stronger up here and my hands were starting to go numb, the right one clamped around the black device Noah had given me. Just a little to the right was the glass floor, with the occasional pair of soles crossing over it. I pressed the button Noah had shown me and sticky tabs shot out of the bottom, startling me so that I nearly dropped it. Fortunately my frozen hand had slowed my reflexes. I reached up over my head and pressed the tabs to the concrete, then cautiously took my hand away. It stuck.

“Done,” I said to Obadiah. A rush of elation overtook me. That hadn’t been so hard.

“Fantastic,” said Obadiah. “I’m bringing you down now.”

I held onto the rope with both hands and prepared to be lowered. There was a jerk, causing my heart to leap into my throat, and then I started to ascend.

“Obadiah,” I said, my voice suddenly very high, “wrong way.”

“I’m aware,” he snapped. I could hear a muffled din on his end of the line, as though everyone were shouting at him. I kept on going up.

“Obadiah,” I said again, “the glass. The observatory thing.”

“Just hang tight,” he said, his voice still terse. “We’ll get you down.”

But I kept going up. Suddenly I was face to face with the broad glass wall of the observatory at the top of the tower. The rope juddered to a stop and I hung there, twisting in the freezing wind, looking in at the Protectors’ headquarters. There were banks of computers, screens, and what looked like an old fashioned switchboard. Everything was faced away from me so they couldn’t see me hanging there – a tiny, terrified girl suspended what had to be half a kilometre in the air. It was almost funny, imagining their faces if they happened to turn around, except for the fact that I would almost certainly be dead.

Of course, if Obadiah couldn’t get me down, I’d be dead either way. I clung to the rope and tried to breathe steadily. The Protectors rushing around inside, pointing at the screens and bending over keyboards, were almost indistinguishable from each other, all of them in the elite uniform – black with a silver slash. Almost unconsciously, I looked for my father’s familiar shape, but I didn’t see him. There was something unnerving about their similarity, as though they were all clones of one another – they were all pale, and while hair colours and styles varied, there was no one who looked like me. Or Noah.

I listened to the indistinguishable chatter over my earpiece. Noah would fix it, I told myself. He would figure out a way to get me down. I watched as the Protectors inside the observatory suddenly snapped to attention, parting down the middle as a smartly-dressed woman appeared from an interior office. Her hair was white-blonde and shining, and although I couldn’t hear her heels from outside, I could easily imagine the sharp clacking they made on the polished cement floor. Her face was angular, with a sharp, overlarge nose, and something about her gave me a tight feeling in my stomach. I was afraid of all these silver-slashed Protectors, and they were afraid of her.

“Don’t look up, don’t look up,” I started chanting. I didn’t dare look away myself, in case that movement somehow caught her attention. I was still swaying on the end of my rope, hands firmly locked in place. The wind was so strong that it began to look as though the room inside were turning. In fact, it was turning quite a lot. I wondered whether the wind were pushing me to one side.

Then with a hot jolt of fear, I realized: the room was turning. I remembered how it looked from below – a doughnut atop a tower. And the room was rotating, a design that meant it could look out over the lake bed and the rest of the city. And me.

“Obadiah,” I nearly shrieked. “They’re going to see me.”

“Almost got it,” said a voice, but it was Noah’s now. “Just give me one –“

But his sentence was cut off by a sudden jolt as I dropped ten feet at once, almost in free fall. I spun crazily in place, feeling like I might throw up. That wouldn’t be pleasant down below. But I was out of eyesight now, dangling precariously just below the windows. I tried to stuff my heart back in place. The rope lay against a cement pillar, one of the bulwarks holding the doughnut observatory in place, so at least that wasn’t visible. I could see the city laid out before me, shining and beautiful, in an elegant grid that tapered off to the north and west and east. Looking over my shoulder, I could see the lake bed, dry and dusty; there were ships moored there, half-covered in sand and grit, and further out what looked like a small airplane. It felt like there was something missing, though, something I had expected to be there, but the blood was all rushing out of my head and I couldn’t think.

“Noah,” I said nervously.

“It’s okay,” he said, his voice low and reassuring in my ear. “Just a little glitch. Are you moving now?”

“Nope,” I said. Something thumped against the observatory glass over my head and I clutched the rope tighter. “Don’t drop me this time.”

“I promise,” he said. “Now?”

And, mercifully, I began to descend. “Yeah,” I said, “now.”

There was a loud exhalation in my ear. “And you’re all right?”

“I’m going to kill you when I get down there,” I said, “but yeah, I’m all right. I don’t think they saw me.”

“But you’re okay? You’re not hurt.”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

Another sigh of relief. “So,” he said, “how’s the view?”

“I could do without it,” I said, and he laughed.

            He kept chattering away, keeping me company as I descended. When my feet finally hit the ground my knees gave way under me and I collapsed in an undignified heap, but not even David had a disparaging comment to make.

            “You did great,” said Obadiah, “but let’s not hang around, yeah?”

            “Yeah,” I said, breathless. Adah unclasped my straps, and Noah held my hands as I stepped out of the harness.

            “Same way we came,” said Obadiah. “Noah, tell us when?”

            He let go of my hands somewhat reluctantly and consulted his watch, then craned his neck to peer up the side of the tower. “Fifteen seconds, then we run.” The seconds went by, and we ran.