Link City

Off Of the Ledge *

  Chapter 21: Off Of the Ledge

I didn't scream. My eyes closed of their own accord and I hugged my knees to my chest. We'd been so close. So close to sunlight, so close to freedom. I was too shell shocked to notice that there was no wind whipping by my head. We weren't falling half as fast as was physically possible.

“Skye?” My voice came out a squeak.

She lay beside me on the door, looking up.

“Yes?”

“We're still alive.”

“Yes.”

“Where are we going?”

“Down.”

Almost as she uttered the words something in the shaft changed and suddenly something was plummeting towards us. I screamed because I was sure that it was going to hit the edge of the door and knock us both to our deaths, but it missed by just a hair.

It was a human body. It had fallen fast, but I knew who it had been. I had been Donald, wire thin glasses still stuck on his face, limbs limp, not flailing. He'd been dead already when he passed us, then disappeared into the blackness I could not see through, even with the dim, red lights. I heard him hit the bottom though, faintly, letting me know that we were still incredibly high in the air.

“I don't understand.” I felt like I was going to cry. “Skye? What's happening?”

She sat up like she was about to speak to me, but then the lights turned off, and the humming which I'd forgotten was there ceased. And it was darker than I realized it could be, and quieter than seemed possible. We also weren't falling any more. We were moving slowly, down, at the speed at which Jesse and Dustin had climbed before the elevator was switched on.

“I think they just shut off the down function.” Skye said, as an answer to my previous question.

“Are we going to go back up again?”

She shrugged. I knew although I didn't really see. My eyes were adjusting to the dark, but there was only so much they could do in the pitch black.

“They must be trying.”

She sounded so calm. How was that possible? How was she doing that? I needed her to keep talking. I knew she liked the silence, I knew her that well after only a few days. But I needed to know she was there in the dark, that I wasn't alone, floating in space.

“What do you think happened?” I asked, suddenly realizing how uncomfortable I was, but terrified to move for fear of breaking the delicate balance that had already been upset by the shutting off of the elevator.

“If I had to guess?” I could not read her facial expression in the dark. “I'd say Donald was the mole.” I'd already subconsciously, at some level, realized that. “He must have realized how much he screwed up and did the only thing he could at this point. We were the only people he could stop, so he stopped us.”

“Now he's dead.”

“Yes.”

“He must have done something to the elevator.” I mused. “Or they would have made it start going up again.”

Skye did not respond. Since I had not asked a question she must have felt she did not have to, but I would have much preferred if she did.

“Do you think they can fix it?”

I listened to her breathing for a moment, how it changed every time it seemed like she was about to speak. Time was relative, but it felt like a long time before she finally said a word.