The Girl Who Started the Revolution

7 | n i g h t m a r e

"If Hell existed, I think this would be it."

Cyrus didn't respond to my complaining as we ascended the elevator shaft like a mountain, using the silver-coated cords for support along the metal wall. The heat emanating from below us made it feel as if we were in one of those deserts that Mother used to tell me stories about.

"Hell does exist." Cyrus' voice was strained below me, and I could imagine his face soaked with sweat. We had been climbing for at least fifteen minutes. "And it's probably way worse than this."

"Nothing's worse than this."

"Hell is worse than this."

"Okay," I groaned, "can we stop talking about Hell?"

"You were the one who wanted to talk about Hell in the first place."

"Well, I don't want to talk about Hell anymore!"

A tirade of laughter came from below me. The air was stuffy, sweat was pouring down into my suit, and that idiot was laughing? How psychotic could he be?

I kept climbing despite his laughter. Hand over hand. The cords were becoming slick beneath my grip and I was beginning to feel the onset of something my mother told me was claustrophobia, even though the New United World worked so hard to dispose of that condition.

"You can do this, Lira," I muttered to myself over and over. "One, two, one, two, one—"

Cyrus snorted, though I could hear his heavy breathing. "Lira?" he asked. "Lira as in 'Lira the Liar'?"

"I'm not a liar!"

"You told me you came to read a book," he said, "not to steal one."

I ignored him. He didn't know my reasons. Besides, I wasn't lying. I would have read the book, too. Now I guessed I would never get the chance if we didn't make it out alive—which we wouldn't.

We passed a sideways elevator shaft, and I took a deep breath of the fresh air that blew in through it. We kept going, ignoring the elevator doors of 63 and 65. We would reach the top level and get to the heliport.

I started to smell the smoke from the library. Dang, that chem gun makes it burn quickly.

"It's only a couple more floors," Cyrus called from below. His voice echoed in the steel chamber. "We can make it."

As luck would have it, that was when the cords started to vibrate.

Normally, a vibrating cord isn't a bad thing. It usually means that someone below you is, you know, shaking it or something.

This was not the case.

The cord wasn't just vibrating. It was trembling. And trembling meant only one thing.

An elevator was traveling up the cords.

"You've got to be kidding me!" I screamed into the narrow space of the shaft, clinging to the quivering cords for dear life. "All we needed was five more minutes! FIVE!"

"Get to the nearest door," Cyrus hollered. "Now!"

I moved as I had never moved before. Even then, the time it took to move just five feet up was agonizing. The elevator was coming up fast. It must have been a lift that came through that side shaft we passed. "We'll never make it!"

Cyrus moved with such speed that I didn't even realize he was next to me. "Get going!"

As he moved past me, it only made me angrier. There was no way on earth a cyborg would ever outmatch me. My hands started to go numb as I shoved one hand over another. The door was only fifteen feet away.

Brrrr, brrrr, brrrr.

The rumbling of the elevator was jarring my bones now. I glanced below to see it coming up at several miles per hour. Oh no, I thought. I'm really going to die.

Ten seconds until it would hit.

I'd never thought about dying before.

Eight.

Sure, I'd thought of other people dying. But this was different.

Six.

Death had never been so close to me before. It was like it encompassed me in an iron grip that was impossible to escape from.

Four.

The door was right there, waiting unopened. Cyrus had reached it and ripped through the metal to reveal light. But I was so far behind him.

Two.

I was leaping in large bounds up the shaft, barely even touching the wall as I used my momentum to push myself from foothold to foothold.

One.

The door was just within my grasp.

Zero.

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A/N: Hey guys! Sorry for the late update. I'm in the middle of nowhere with limited internet access!