Deserted Highways

She's Gonna Cut You Down

room.

"They're gone," she said into the silence and she stood stock still, listening for more footsteps, voices, anything. "Time to go," she told Jace, pulling her phone from her pocket to check the time.

"Two hours," she said, tucking the note Jace's mom left into her pocket to ponder over later. "Let's go. Keep quiet."

They edged out of Jace's mother's office, and Kaelie handed Jace her bone handle knife, pulling another out of the small sheath that hung around her neck. She knew that the Hunters had left this floor, but she doubted they left the hospital, they were trying to wait her and Jace out, smoke them out of the building, and Kaelie wasn't going to let that happen. They would take the elevator, quick descent, less time between floor, less noisy than clambering down the stairs.

She pressed the button to call the elevator, tapping her knife against her other palm in her nervousness. The doors finally dinged open and she yanked Jace inside, slamming the door close button and then hurriedly smashing at the number one to bring them to the first floor. It was silent for a few seconds and then the elevator lurched, sending Kaelie crashing into Jace and knocking them both to the floor.

"Oh Jesus fuck," she muttered, pushing at the buttons though she knew it was futile.

"What happened? Kaelie, what's going on?" Jace asked her, his tone hushed, worried.

"They shut us down," she said, distracted, trying to use the tip of her knife to pry the control panel off the wall.

"What do you mean, shut us down?" Jace said, and she could hear panic tinging his voice.

"I mean, they shut off the elevator," she responded, poking her tongue between her teeth as she finally pulled the metal panel away with a small screech.

"We're stuck?" he asked, frantic.

Kaelie turned to face him at the new tone in his voice. His eyes were wide, pupils dilated and nearly overtaking the gray, his hands were shaking. "Jace," she said slowly. "Now would be a bad time to let me know if you've got a thing about small spaces."

Jace let out a short laugh, brushing his hair off his face. "Well, um- then I don't have a thing about small spaces?" he said, his voice questioning and too high.

"You've got to be joking. Out of all the shit you've been through with us, with me, since we met, this is where you're gonna lose it on me?" she said. She fiddled with the wires inside the panel she'd pried off, but she gave up after a few moments. It was going to take too long, and they didn't have that kind of time. The elevator lurched, dropping a few inches and Jace yelped. Kaelie growled, frustrated, and she looked around the cramped space again.

"Plan B, I guess," she muttered to herself. She slipped her knife back into its place around her neck.

"What do you mean Plan B? What is Plan B?" Jace asked her as she pulled a chopstick out of her hair.

"Well, love, we gotta find some way out of here, unless you'd rather wait for us to hit the ground at the speed of gravity and liquify our insides?" she quipped. She sighed, trying to rein back her irritation. "I have to pop off one of these tiles, we need to climb out and hold onto the cable so we can climb down once it crashes. If we're lucky, there might be some sort of ledge or lip inside the shaft that we can stand on to wait it out, otherwise, it's really gonna fucking hurt to hold on to those cables when that thing goes down."

As if to mark her words, the elevator shrieked as it dropped several more inches, and Kaelie absorbed some of the momentum in her legs, but Jace fell to the floor again. Kaelie climbed nimbly onto the narrow railings that ran around the inside of the elevator box, balancing carefully as she rose to her full height. She reached above her head with her chopstick, wiggling it between the tile and the metal frame of the elevator.