DUALITY /#Wattys 2021

Chapter 14

They ran down the stairwell, spiraling down and down, to the right and to the right, like an endless tunnel to hell.

Thinking of how high up they still were made her dizzy. At about Level Twenty, Ridley heard the stairwell door on Level Eighteen open. More and more running feet joined the chase, and with every turn down a new flight, they sounded closer and closer.

"This is never going to work!" Ridley shouted. "They're just going to start from the bottom and come up and trap us in the middle!"

"No, they won't," Reb shouted from behind her. "There are no floors the last three levels, and they can't come in here from level thirty."

Ridley threw him a panicked glance over her shoulder. "Then how can we get out?"

"We will. You'll see. Just keep going!"

When they hit Level Twenty-three, a guard burst through the door of Level Twenty-two. His boots clattered down the stairs, echoing off the walls. Ridley looked up.

A spasm of terror blasted her chest and arms. "He's right behind you!" she screamed.

Reb spun around, pulling a pistol from his hip holster, and shot the man. The thump of his body hitting the stairs echoed off the walls. A rain of return fire flashed past them from the flights above. Reb and Ridley hung as close to the center railing as they could, leaning over a very long drop, and the shots kept missing them.

Reb reached the landing to Level Twenty-four. As he turned to sheathe his weapon, the door opened and a second guard stepped into the stairwell, running right into him.

Reb took one big step left, and grabbed the man, a foot taller than he was, dragging him by the neck to the railing.

The sight so stunned Ridley that she stopped and stared. Reb ran the man up against the railing, pushed, and then grabbed a leg and hauled him over. A terminal wail echoed up the stairwell as Ridley watched his body plummet past her to the bottom. A flash of flailing arms and legs; and then a solid thud cut off his scream.

Reb saw her face and yelled, "For God's sake, Ridley, run!"

Ridley turned and ran. A cold dread gripped her chest; a cold sweat slicked her palms. The look in Reb's eyes as he threw that man over the rail freeze-framed in her mind. 

All the months he had drilled and trained her cell of Good Neighbors, he'd been so folksy and funny, and she had never seen that look. Ridley had never been scared of Reb.

And he was running right behind her, down to the very bottom of this hellhole.

A number flashed up—Level Twenty-five. The door opened, and three guards piled through. "Visual! We've got her!"

Ridley stepped reflexively to the wall, trying to avoid their grasping hands. Three red laser bolts pulsed over her head, three perfect shots. Their three bodies fell face down beside each other. Smoke curled from the hole in the nearest one's back.

She looked up. Reb held onto the railing with one hand, pointing his uniform pistol with the other.

"Get onto that railing and slide!"

Ridley jumped onto the railing and steadied herself with her hands. A glance up showed her Reb climbing on the railing behind her. Ridley's world narrowed to her hands on the railing, the turns in the stairwell, and her terror of the stranger behind her, of the footsteps above, and of what might happen when she reached the bottom.

More guards entered the stairwell above them, but she and Reb could slide faster than the guards could run, and the bodies on the stairs above slowed them down. Ridley heard one of them trip over the bodies and fall sprawling, his limbs slapping on the stairs; then she heard cursing as his cohorts tried to get around him.

Level Thirty flashed up. Ridley's hands and legs were cramping. Stiff, she dismounted from the railing. One last stairwell door loomed before her, with a sign: "Restricted Access." A tiny computer panel with an array of red and yellow lights recessed into the wall next to the door.

She tried the knob. Locked.

Reb's feet hit the floor behind her. "Get back," he said.

He drew a thin metal device from his hip pocket and pointed it at the panel. A beep sounded, followed by a flash of green.

"Go, hurry!"

Ridley opened the door, Reb close behind her. A narrow white hallway stretched before them; the clank of steel echoed as the door shut behind them. A moment later she heard the footsteps of their pursuers on the other side of it. The lever that opened the door rattled.

She grabbed Reb's arm. "Come on!" she cried.

"Shh!" He flattened himself against the wall and just stood there.

"But—"

He made a quick nod, as if to himself. "They don't have access," he said. "They can't follow us. With any luck, no one suspects we got in here."

"They will in a minute! They've got communicators and—"

He held up a hand.

Silence.

"Come on!" Reb gripped her arm with fingers that felt like talons and jerked Ridley down the corridor.

Reb used his device again to open a small door they came to on the right. He pulled her through several twists and turns and two more doors. The last one opened into a dank concrete area that looked like another underground garage. They came out behind a forest of yellow garbage barrels on wheels.

Reb motioned her down. "Shh!" he said. "Come on."

They squatted down and crawled between the barrels. The walls curved close around them, as if they were in a cave; it turned out to be a storage alcove that opened out into a much larger space.

They reached the edge of the stand of barrels, and Reb put out a hand. He crept to the front on hands and knees and peered out. After a moment he waved his hand back for Ridley to do the same.

The space opened up into an enormous cavern, a basement hangar that had to be half the size of the rest of the building. A hangar filled with—

Ridley's eyes darted here and there, not quite comprehending what she saw. Gray bullet-shaped craft with wings, enormous engines at the rear, and cockpits at the fore. Huge laser cannons hung beneath the wings. 

Warships!