—felt her right arm open up—
—skidded to the nearest bathroom. It was the girl’s room; there was only one door and it didn’t lock. Hwa pushed Joel toward the back stall and locked the door behind them.
“I thought we were going to the elevator!”
Hwa held up her arm. It was as though a mouth had yawned open across her flesh. Yellow globules of fat dangled from underneath her ragged skin. “Plan’s changed.”
Joel went even paler than usual. “Oh, no.”
“Yeah, karma’s a bitch,” Hwa said. “Shouldn’t have showed it off to you.”
“We have to apply pressure.” Joel grabbed her arm and held it. His hands shook. He seemed entirely too focused on his hands. “Wait. I have a better idea.” He put Hwa’s hand over her wound and held it there. “Hold on.”
Hwa watched him hop off the toilet and open the stall door. “No, don’t!”
He darted out and she heard a rough scraping sound and a few grunts. Finally there was a terrible screech, and he came back into the stall with a maxi pad in each hand. “I got the extra absorbent kind.”
Hwa forced her grimace into a grin. “Nice work.”
Joel removed the tie pin from his tie, loosened the tie, and pulled it off without un-knotting it. He tore open the packaging around one pad and frowned at the wad of antibacterial memory foam in his hand. “That’s it? That’s the best they can do?”
“Hey, those were miracle Space Age fibres, back in the day.”
“Wow. No wonder you’re so pissed off, all the time.”
Joel wrapped the pad over Hwa’s wound. Then she helped him slide his tie up her arm. He tightened the loop around the pad and then wrapped the rest of the tie’s length around her arm and tucked the end into the wrap.
“Can you still move your fingers?” he asked.
Hwa flexed them. “Yeah. Thanks. You’re kind of a genius.”
Joel shrugged. “I know. That’s what my test scores say.”
“Seriously?”
“Pretty much. I have a certificate and everything.”
She licked her lips. The wound in her arm was now more of a dull, throbbing ache. She could work with that. But only so much. “Well, you got any genius ideas for getting us back into that elevator? I can’t force the doors with this arm.”
Joel pulled the tie pin from his pocket. “Actually? I do.”
*
The elevator had two access mechanisms: a standard chip-reader, and an old-fashioned lock-and-key system for when the power went out. Hwa stood guard as Joel worked the pin into the elevator’s key slot.
“This always looks easier, in the dramas,” Joel said.
“Don’t force it,” Hwa said. “Just feel around gently until you feel something push back.”
The doors chimed open. They fell inside, and Hwa slapped the “door close” button. Then she looked up at the ceiling of the elevator. There was all kinds of shit up there, wedged up between the lights and the plastic panels that were supposed to protect them. Pencils, rubber bands, dead flies both organic and robotic, even a pink assignment sheet with the word GULLIBLE written across it in green marker.
Hwa pointed. “Jump up there and take down one of those panels.”
Joel reached up and jumped. It took him a couple of tries, but the panel fell open and showered him with dead flies and paper clips. “Now what?”
Hwa told him how to turn the lights off and gain access to the ceiling panel that would pop open the trapdoor on top of the elevator. She had to kneel down and let him stand on her knee to do it, but he had good hands and worked fast. Soon he had the trapdoor open, and after he climbed up through it, he helped her get up there, too.
“Hold on. Let me get into blueprint mode, here.” Hwa found the blueprint icon in her vision. The school being a publicly funded building, it had to release all its plans. So she could see where all the shafts and ducts went. It took her a moment to orient herself, but the light booth was unmistakable. And as she suspected, it had a major HVAC duct sitting right up on top of it. With the stage lights, the auditorium got awfully hot during performances. The only way to control the temperature was to force the air one way or another. And the only way to do that without impeding anyone’s view of the stage was to stick a big fan on top of the light booth.
Hopefully the quarantine would last long enough that none of the fans would be spinning while they were in the ducts.
She pointed at the spiny ladder leading up the shaft. “Okay. Let’s go.”
*