Lilly shrieks, looks like she wants to turn around. But the other wire is still approaching from behind.
“Watch the ones ahead and I’ll watch our backs!” I yell at her, and we run together, me stumbling over my feet trying to look back over my shoulder. The original wire is moving faster than the others. I see it shimmering ten feet away, speeding toward us. I fall and pull Lilly with me. Wriggle onto my back, knocking my elbow hard on the floor. The wire passes a hair’s breadth above my nose. I’m up again, leaping the second wire, ducking under the third. Lilly’s not with me anymore. She’s wailing, on and on, like a siren, but where? Is she hurt? I can’t see anything. I can’t look back.
A fourth wire is coming toward me, three feet above the floor. It slices through chairs, another vase. It’s vibrating, shivering back and forth, blindingly fast. Will is ahead of me. He’s running straight for it. And there’s another wire. A fifth wire I didn’t see, sliding low over the floor. He’s going to duck the high wire and the low one is going to take off the soles of his feet.
“Will, look down—” I whisper.
He’s four feet away.
“Will, jump!”
A second before the wire catches him, he sees it. Leaps. The one following it dips down. And somehow he’s turning, spinning onto his back, still in the air, slipping over both wires. He hits the floor, rolls, and he’s running again, full speed for the golden doors.
The hall is a grid of wires now. Nine. Ten. Dropping out of the wall above the doors and speeding toward us. They’re not following a pattern. Some are going forward, some back. Some shift in their tracks, clacking a foot higher. I don’t know where anyone is, can barely see in the blackness.
“Jam the tracks!” someone’s shrieking. “We need to jam them!”
It’s Lilly, behind me.
I drag myself across the floor toward the wall. Look up.
“What is this place . . .” I breathe.
What I thought were decorative inlays in the panels is a network of grooves, a complex track system going up about six feet. The wires are attached to wooden nubs. I watch one of them buzzing along its track toward me. There’s a clicking sound. It’s like it knows I’m here. The wire shifts into a new lane a foot lower.
This place was designed to kill.
“Anouk!”
I duck the wire. Spin. Lilly’s heaving something onto her shoulder—a chair. She throws it at the nearest wire and for an instant I want to scream at her. The chair touches the wire. It’s intersected neatly. Butchered chair legs come sliding across the floor toward me.
Oh. Jam the tracks. I get it. I grab a leg and mash it into the track just as a wire swoops overhead.
It doesn’t stop. The chair leg, pinched between the nub and the wall, goes squealing away down the tracks. Somewhere to my right I see Jules, a ragged outline in the gloom, ducking a wire. Will up ahead. Lilly behind me.
I hear a sharp ping. The jammed nub has stopped. But only on one side. The nub on the opposite wall is still moving. I watch the wire stretch, creaking. . . .
“DOWN!” I scream, and everyone drops and rolls into a ball just as the wire snaps and goes whipping back through the wall. Something snatches at my ankle. Blinding pain explodes up my leg.
I push myself onto my hands, clenching my jaw. I see what’s coming.
We’re dead now.
An entire wall of wires, eight feet high, two inches between each wire, is speeding toward us down the hall. There’s a space where the broken wire should be, but it’s five feet off the ground. The gap’s only six inches wide. There’s no way we can get through that.
Will is running back to us. I glance over at Lilly and Jules. I can’t see their faces, but they’re just standing there in the dark, calm suddenly, staring as the glinting wall approaches. I wonder if this is how death happens. Minimal drama. A simple cause and effect, and the universe ends for you. I see our bodies after the wires have passed through them, blood spattering our faces.
I close my eyes.
Another earsplitting clack.
And I’m seeing light. Not light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel crap, but actual golden light, blazing through my lids.
My eyes snap open. Two inches in front of us, the wires have stopped.
Sconces are flaring to life along the walls, spreading down the hall. The chandeliers are blooming into balls of light high above. Sweat drips off my face. The wires hover, shimmering. And all we can do is stand there, four in a row, staring into the blazing, beautiful glare.
Palais du Papillon, Salle d’Acajou—126 feet below—October 23, 1789