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He caught the bottom stair and strained to hold it low. It hung at Briar’s waist level.
“Up.”
Briar nodded and slung her rifle over her back, freeing both hands for climbing.
It wasn’t fast enough to suit the man, who reached up with one broad palm and heaved it against her rear. The added jolt boosted her enough to fasten both hands and both feet securely onto the structure, so she wasn’t prepared to make any complaints about the ungentlemanly gesture.
Her body’s weight was pendulum enough to hold the stairs in a hovering position over the street. When the man’s weight joined hers, the whole structure creaked and jerked, but held steady. The folding stairs did not wish to hold them both, and they made their displeasure known with every ominously squeaking step.
Briar tuned it out and climbed, and the stairs rose up underneath her like a seesaw as the man behind her caught up to her heels.
He patted at the back of her boot to get her attention. “Here. Second floor. Don’t break the windoiv. It lifts out.”
She nodded and hauled herself off the steps, onto the balcony. The window was barred but not blockaded. Down at the bottom, a wooden latch had been affixed. She pried it up and the window popped out of its frame.
The man joined her on the balcony, and the steps bounced up behind him. Having lost their counterweight, the springs that dropped and lifted it coiled back into place and remained firm, holding the stairs beyond the reach of even the tallest rotters with the longest arms.
Briar lowered her head, turned herself sideways, and wiggled inside.
The armored man squeezed himself in after her. Much of the urgency had drained away from him; once he was above the rotters and safely inside the old bank building, he relaxed and took a moment to adjust his accoutrements.
He unhooked his armor and stretched his arms, and cracked his neck from side to side. The clawed hammer with the rope required rewinding, so he twisted it between his palm and his elbow until it made a loop, and then he clipped it back onto his belt. He reached into a holster over his shoulder and set aside a tube-shaped device that was longer than his thigh. It was shaped like a huge gun, but the trigger was a brass paddle and there was a grate across the barrel that was not altogether different from the grate in his mask.
Briar asked, “Is that what made the noise? The one that stu
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “This is Dr. Mi
“Three minutes?”
“Three minutes, give or take. That’s right. The power supply’s in the back end.” He pointed to the handle, wrapped with tiny copper pipes and slender glass tubes. “It takes forever to charge the thing back up again.”
“Forever?”
“Well, about a quarter of an hour. Depending.”
“On what?”
He said, “Static electricity. Don’t ask me any more than that, because I don’t know the particulars.”
She politely admired the blasting device. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Who’s this Dr. Mi
“He’s an ass, but sometimes he’s a useful ass. So now I have to ask, who are you and what are you doing here, in our fine and filthy city?”
“I’m looking for my son,” she dodged the first half of his question. “I think he came here yesterday; he came up through the old water runoff tu
“Tu
“Now they are, yes. Earthquake.” She leaned against the windowsill and sat there, too exhausted to bother with too many words. “I’m sorry,” she said, and she meant it for a variety of reasons. “I’m so… I knew about the city — I knew it was bad in here. I knew, but…”
“Yeah, it’s that ‘but’ that’ll kill you if you’re not careful. So you’re looking for your boy.” He checked her up and down. “How old are you?” he asked outright, since he couldn’t see her face very well behind her mask.
“Old enough to have a son who’s dumb enough to come in here,” she countered. “He’s fifteen. Have you seen him?”
“He’s fifteen — that’s the best description you got?”
“How many random fifteen-year-old boys can this place possibly get in a week?”
The man shrugged. “You might be surprised. We get a lot of stragglers from the Outskirts coming in here, looking to steal or barter, or learn how to process the Blight for sap. Course, most of ’em don’t live too long.”
Even through her visor, the man saw Briar’s eyes narrow. He quickly added, “I don’t mean your kid didn’t make it; that’s not what I’m saying. He only got here yesterday?”
“Yesterday.”
“Well, if he’s lived this long he might be all right. I haven’t seen him, but that doesn’t mean he ain’t here. How’d you get inside?”
“I hitched a ride with a sky captain.”
“Which one?”
“Look.” She stopped him with a worn-out wave of her hand. “Can we talk? Can we do this somewhere else? I need to get out of this mask,” she pleaded. “Please, is there somewhere I can breathe? I can’t breathe.”
He took her face in his hand and turned it this way and that, examining her mask. “That’s an old model. A good model, sure. But if your filters are clogging up, it don’t matter how good it is. All right. Let’s go downstairs. We’ve got a sealed pod here in the bank, and a co
The man led her downstairs, not holding her hand or dragging her, but waiting when she lagged behind.
At the entrance to the main hallway, where there were no windows to let in any light, an oil lantern had been left beside the door. The man took it, set it alight, and held it up to brighten the way to the basement.
While Briar watched his big, bobbing back stomp through the halls and down the stairs, she told him, “Thank you. I should’ve said so sooner, but thank you, for helping me out down there.”
“Just doing my job,” he said.
“So you’re the Seattle welcome wagon?”
He shook his head. “No, but I keep my eyes open for noisy newcomers like yourself. Most of the kids, they slip in easy and keep their mouths shut. But when I hear gunshots and things breaking, I’ve got to come take a look.” The lantern’s flame wavered. He shook the light to swirl the oil. “Sometimes it’s somebody we don’t want here and don’t need here. Sometimes it’s a little woman with a big gun. It’s something new every day.”
At the first floor there was a door with all its loose bits sealed by pitch — and treated leather flaps around every crack.
“Here we go. When I open the door, you move quick and get inside.” He handed her the lantern. “I’ll be right behind you. We just try to keep the door shut, if you get my meaning.”
“Got it,” she said, and took the lantern.
From a pants pocket he withdrew a ring with a dozen black iron keys. He picked the one he wanted and pushed it through a rubber seal where Briar wouldn’t have thought to put a lock; but he turned the key and a mechanism clicked, and the door loosened when he bent his elbow.
“Count of three. One, two… three.”He tugged the latch and the door sucked outward with a pop.
Briar sidestepped her way into more darkness, and as promised, the man in the armor darted in behind her, then swiped the door back into its seal and locked it behind them.
“A little farther,”he said.
He took the lantern again and led the way, through some leather and rubber flaps hanging down in strips, and down another short corridor. The corridor ended in a strange-looking door that looked more like a cloth screen than an ordinary barricade. It was fitted with the same treated flaps around its edges to create the seal that the other underground doors all shared; but this one was porous.