So many stairs. These weren’t normal floors—they went on forever.
By the third, my legs were burning. By the fourth, Anika was breathing through her mouth, and Silas was gripping the railing so tightly his knuckles had turned white. By the fifth, even March had to wipe the sweat from his forehead.
But Master Talik never once missed a step, and he didn’t stop until the fifth-floor landing.
Not to encourage us, of course. “Too slow,” he whispered. “We have eleven minutes before the burst. Either walk faster or go back.”
With that, he started ahead again, onto the sixth floor, then the seventh, and we had no choice but to rush our steps. My muscles complained, and the others muttered under their breath, but we were moving, matching his pace, and before we knew it, we were on the seventh floor.
It was wider here than it had been lower, and a short corridor seemed to lead to an even wider hallway beyond. But that wasn’t where we were going. Instead, Master Talik stepped into a narrow alcove, a recess in the wall hidden behind a pipe junction.
Inside it was the strangest platform I’d ever seen, metal, roughly six feet square, suspended by chains that disappeared into the darkness above.
“What isthat?” Mimi whispered—she and Seth were the only ones who weren’t breathing heavily. And Master Talik, too, which made me crazy curious.
“A freight lift,” the Timekeeper said. “The maintenance crews use it for heavy gear. It’s manual, but it’s fast.”
“It looksloud,”said Russ as Master Talik worked the old rusted handle to pull the door open.
“It is,” he said. “Which is why we’re grateful everyone within earshot is currently dealing with a conduit malfunction.” He threw a quick look back at Russ, then pulled the metal door with all his strength.
It gave.
There was no time for questions. He made sure we knew that by waving his hand to tell us to hurry up. The platform was even smaller on the inside, but we made it in, all of us pressed together so tightly I could feel Mimi’s heartbeat against my shoulder and March’s breath on the back of my neck. My body came alive with memories, but the fear and the anticipation quickly drowned out everygoodfeeling I momentarily remembered.
The floor of the platform groaned under our weight, and the chains creaked, and I was eleven-hours certain we were going to start falling soon. It was too much, we were too heavy, and the only reason why my knees still held me was because I was sandwiched between March and Mimi. Something metallic popped in the darkness above, and I wondered why I hadn’t passed out yet.
But Master Talik did not seem concerned—well, moreconcerned than usual.
Instead, he said, “Russ, Seth—on the chain.” He was looking at the thick iron chain hanging from a wheel mechanism on the right side of the platform. “Pull together and keep the rhythm steady. Don’t jerk it.”
The boys looked like they were about to cry, but they grabbed the chain anyway. Braced their feet as well as they could. Pulled.
The platform lurched upward with a shriek of metal on metal that echoed like a scream.
I bit my tongue to keep from crying out and squeezed my eyes shut as tightly as I could. The sound bounced off the walls, off the pipes, off the gears turning in the dark above us, but thank Time it didn’t go on forever, like I feared. Instead, it settled into a grinding, rhythmic groan as Russ and Seth found their rhythm.
Pull, rise; pull, rise; pull, rise…
Once we started moving up, we realized the shaft was open. Even the door wasn’t part of it, wasn’t attached to the front like I thought, but remained on the seventh floor. No walls, just the tower’s inner skeleton exposed on all sides, and I forgot how to breathe again.
There were no corridors or narrow stairways here. Instead gears the size of carriages turned inches from the platform’s edge, their teeth interlocking with a precision that was so hypnotizing it terrified me. Shafts and axles and counterweights moved in the dark, and the amber glow of magical energy pulsed through everything— metal and stone and the air itself, painting our faces gold as we rose.
Holy Hour, I wanted to remember this. As horrified as I was right now, I wanted to remember all of this so I could draw it. For better or worse, I wanted to immortalize every gear and every pin and every rusted surface on paper.
The more the boys pulled, the higher we went. The hum of the tower had turned into a full-on roar now. My chronobank vibrated in my pocket even though it was empty, and the air going down my throat had changed, too. It was thicker, charged, and it tasted of something sharp and electric that made my tongue go numb. Then?—
“Stop,” Master Talik suddenly said.
Russ and Seth released the chain right away. The platform shuddered to a halt, swaying slightly on its chains.
My eyes closed and a loud breath left me. I rested back against March’s chest, and he put his chin on the top of my head. We were somehow still alive.
Before us, the landing was wider than the ones below, with a single door across from us. It looked heavy. Iron-banded. Covered in inscriptions that didn’t look like anything other than bad drawings to me.
“Nobody moves past this door until after the burst.” Master Talik’s voice echoed in the tall ceiling, even against the loud humming. “This is where we wait. Try to hold onto something to keep your balance.” He looked at us, his eyes wide, dark, focused. “No matter what happens, do not, under any circumstances, open that door until I say so—and always watch the floor.”
I swallowed hard, and the words slipped from my lips even before I’d come off the platform. “How long until the burst?”
