Konecheck landed with a splash, spattering muck on Amos and Rona. That was fine. The prisoner made a big show of flexing his back muscles and stretching out his hands, then stuffed his first two fingers into the bullet holes, braced his other arm against the wall, and pulled. A normal person, it wouldn’t have done a damned thing, but the Pit wasn’t a place for normal people. The metal flexed, bent, peeled back to show a line of rungs. Curved metal with a little sandpaper texturing for grip. Konecheck grinned, the swelling of his injured face and the jutting beard making him look like something out of a sideshow. His fingertips were red and raw-looking, but as far as Amos could tell, there wasn’t any blood.
“All right,” Amos said. “It’s ugly as hell, but we got a plan. Let’s get out of here.”
The ladder was narrow and rough, and spending hours hanging off it didn’t make sense if they didn’t have to do it. Sullivan and Konecheck went up ahead, the guard with his gun to make the fingerholds and the monster to pry away the steel. Amos sat on the concrete floor of the hallway, his legs hanging out into the shaft. Morris and Rona stood behind him with Clarissa between them. Amos’ stomach growled. Ten meters up the ladder, the sharp attack of the gun came once, then again.
“I’m surprised it wasn’t harder to find a way out,” Clarissa said.
“Thing about prison,” Amos said. “It’s not like it’s supposed to keep you in all on its own, y’know? As long as it slows you down long enough for someone to shoot you, it pretty much did its job.”
“You’ve spent time inside?” Rona asked.
“Nope,” Amos said. “I just know people.”
Another two aftershocks came and went without knocking anyone off the ladder or collapsing the shaft. An hour later, the Klaxon stopped, the silence as sudden and unnerving as the sounding of the alarm had been. With it gone, there were noises in the distance. Voices raised in anger. Twice, gunshots that weren’t from the elevator shaft. Amos didn’t know how many people were in the Pit, prisoners and guards and whoever else. Maybe a hundred. Maybe more. The prisoners were in cells, he figured. Locked down. If there were other guards, they were making their own decisions, and no one suggested they go find any of them.
Two more gunshots from the shaft, a murmur of voices, and then a scream. Amos was on his feet almost before Sullivan’s body fell past. He landed in the muck at the bottom of the shaft. Rona cried out wordlessly, dropping down to him while Morris turned his flashlight up the ladder. Konecheck’s feet were two pale dots, his face a shadow above them.
“He slipped,” Konecheck called.
“The hell he did!” Rona shouted. Her gun was in her hand, and she was going for the ladder. Amos jumped down and got in her way, his hands spread wide. “Hey, hey, hey. Don’t get crazy here. We need that guy.”
“Coming up on level four,” Konecheck said. “Starting to see light up top. Hear the wind. Almost there.”
Sullivan lay in the muck, his leg folded unnaturally under him, and limp as a rag. He still had the gun in his fist. A yellow indicator on the side said he was out of ammunition. Sullivan had lived just long enough to stop being useful, then Konecheck had murdered him.
Asshole couldn’t have waited until they were all the way up.
“He slipped,” Amos said. “Shit like that happens. Don’t do anything stupid.”
Rona’s teeth were chattering with rage and fear. Amos smiled and nodded at her because it seemed like the kind of thing people did to reassure folks. He couldn’t tell if it was doing any good.
“Someone going to come help?” Konecheck called. “Or am I doing all this on my own?”
“Take Morris,” Clarissa said. “Two guns. One for the metal, one to guard him. It was a mistake. It won’t happen twice.”
“And leave you unguarded?” Morris said behind her. “Not a chance. No one goes without a guard.”
“I’ll keep her out of trouble,” Amos said, but the guards didn’t seem to hear him.
“Everyone up,” Rona said. “Everyone. And if anybody does something even a little bit threatening, I swear to God I’ll kill all of you.”
“I’m a civilian,” Amos said.
Rona pointed toward the rungs with her chin. “Get climbing.”