Chapter 8 - The Dark Shaft
Emergency red auxiliary lights flickered to life inside the elevator cab, casting long, eerie shadows across Marcus and Lily. The digital indicator panel above the doors was completely black. Above them, through the perforated roof hatch, came the unmistakable whine of a motorized descent winch.
"They cut the mains," Marcus whispered, pulling a compact tactical flashlight from his pocket and securing it between his teeth. "They’re rappelling down the shaft to breach the roof."
He knelt down and lifted Lily onto his shoulders. "Reach up. Unlatch the emergency escape hatch."
Lily stretched her arms up into the darkness, her small fingers finding the cold metal latches. They were stiff and coated in grease, but she pushed with all her might. With a rusty squeak, the hatch popped upward. Marcus lifted her through the opening onto the oily, corrugated steel roof of the elevator cab.
Moments later, Marcus hoisted himself up beside her. Looking up the cavernous vertical shaft, they saw three beams of light descending fast from the 30th floor, sliding down high-tensile steel cables with mechanical precision.
"They'll be on us in thirty seconds," Marcus said. He looked around the narrow concrete walls of the shaft. Five feet away from the elevator cab was an open maintenance access grate leading into the municipal storm-drain bypass system that ran beneath the skyscraper.
"You have to jump first, Lily. I'll catch you on the other side."
Lily looked down into the pitch-black abyss between the elevator roof and the ledge—a drop of twenty stories to the basement floor. Her stomach dropped into her throat. "I can't, Daddy. I'll fall."
Marcus grabbed her shoulders, forcing her to look directly into his intense, unflinching eyes. "Look at me. Look at my eyes. Have I ever let you fall?"
She shook her head, tears cutting clean lines through the soot on her cheeks.
"I will catch you. One, two, three—jump!"
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Lily pushed off the metal roof with everything she had, soaring across the terrifying void. For a split second, she felt weightless in the dark. Then, Marcus’s hands snatched her wrists mid-air, his momentum swinging her safely onto the concrete maintenance ledge. He leaped across an instant later, landing heavily beside her.
Automatic gunfire peppered the top of the elevator cab they had just vacated, sparks spraying like fireworks. Marcus slammed the iron grate shut, locking the latch from the inside. They were inside the forgotten tunnels beneath the city.
