Frank Schätzing - Limit

Then, suddenly, the floor collapsed from under her feet.

A collective scream forced its way up to her as the cabin dropped another metre. Eva staggered, caught her balance, and saw that one of the brake shoes had opened up. No, worse than that, it had broken! In panic, she looked for a way out. Right in front of her eyes was the lower edge of the doors which led to the gallery. She wedged her finger between the gap, making a useless attempt to open them, but of course they didn’t move a single millimetre. Why would they? These weren’t normal elevator doors, but completely sealed-off bulkheads. As long as the system didn’t decide to open them, or unless someone activated them from the outside, she was only making a fool of herself and wasting valuable time.

‘Eva!’ She heard Sushma snivelling. ‘What’s happening?’

It was hard for her to ignore the poor woman, but she didn’t have time to tend to the others’ sensitivities as well. Feverishly, she searched for a solution. The still-intact wall, she now noticed, revealed a passage through to the E1 shaft, around a square metre in size. Several metres above, she spotted another passage, too high to reach, and the glowing and smoky fragments of the blasted-away cabin casing were splayed out in it. Feeling an unpleasant pressure on her chest, Eva turned to the other side to get a look at the E2 shaft. The entire upper section of the dividing wall had disappeared, replaced by a huge, gaping hole, the jagged edge of which was level with her forehead. She had to hoist herself up a bit to look over it. Vertical guide rails stretched down into the depths of the unknown. There were crossbars positioned at intervals in between, wide enough to be able to get a grip and a foothold on them, and on the other side of the shaft she saw—

A passageway.

A rectangular hole leading into a short, horizontal tunnel. It lay there buried in the wall, dark and mysterious, but Eva was pretty sure she knew where it led, and it was big enough for two people to crawl along it at once. With a little dexterity, they’d be able to get across to it.

The cabin creaked in its rails beneath her, metal scraping over metal. Mukesh Nair hoisted himself up through the hatch, raised his head and stared, aghast, at the glowing wreckage of E2.

‘Good God! What happened here—?’

‘Everyone out,’ said Eva. She pushed past him and called down to the others. ‘Out, quickly! And be careful, there’s burning debris everywhere.’

‘What’s the plan?’ asked Mukesh.

‘Help me.’

The elevator groaned and dropped a little more, while sparks rained down on her from above. In pain, Eva felt the dot-sized burns on her hands and upper arms. She had picked out a simple, sleeveless top for the evening, and now she was cursing herself for it. Hurrying, she helped Karla, Sushma and the alarmingly stiff Rebecca Hsu clamber out, until they were all standing on the roof.

‘Take your clothes off,’ said Eva, untucking her top from her trousers and pulling it over her head. ‘T-shirts, blouses, shirts, anything you can wrap around your hands.’

Sushma’s head jerked back and forth.

‘Why?’

‘Because we’ll burn our mitts if we don’t protect them.’ She gestured her head towards the gaping opening. ‘We need to get over there. Once you get to the other side, stay right up against the wall. There’s strutting between the elevator rails that you can grip onto to make your way along. Don’t look down, or up, just keep going. There’s a passageway on the other side, and I suspect it leads into the ventilator shaft.’

‘I’ll never make it,’ said Sushma in an anxious whisper.

‘Yes, you will,’ said Hsu decisively. ‘We’ll all make it, including you. And I’m sorry about before.’

Sushma smiled, her lips twitching. Without hesitation, Eva ripped the thin fabric of her top. It had been sinfully expensive, but that was irrelevant now. She wrapped the scraps around her hands and wrists and helped Karla deconstruct her own T-shirt while Mukesh assisted his wife. Hsu cursed as she stripped down to her underwear, despairing at the misappropriation of her cocktail dress. Mukesh handed her strips of his shirt.

‘Good’ said Eva. ‘I’ll go first.’

The cabin of the staff elevator shook. Eva clasped the edge of the destroyed dividing wall, pulled herself up and swung a leg onto the other side.

Not look down?

Eva, Eva. It was easier said than done. She suddenly felt queasy, and her courage disintegrated. The distant bottom of the shaft disappeared into the ominous darkness, and even the bars suddenly seemed disconcertingly narrow. Forcing herself not to look up at the demolished remains of cabin E2, she reached out, grabbed one of the bars and felt the heat penetrate the material wrapped around her hand. With her teeth clenched, she clambered right over to the other side and rested her feet on the hot steel.

Well, it wasn’t exactly a boulevard. But she was standing.

Resolved, she dared to take a step sideways and groped her way forwards until she reached the front-facing shaft wall. She bridged the corner with her leg and sent the tip of her foot searching for something to grip on to. Her upper body leaned backwards, the material of her improvised bandage slipped off against the steel of the brace. For a moment she feared losing her grip and clung on with her heart beating wildly. She couldn’t stop herself from craning her head back and staring at the underside of the glowing cabin. E2 was now directly above her, black and threatening, its edges fiery.

If the thing falls now, she thought to herself, at least I won’t have to worry about whether they still have the blouse at Louis Vuitton. Then she remembered that Rebecca Hsu had bought Louis Vuitton, years ago even.

Rebecca will just have to sort something out for me then, she thought grimly.

She tightened her grip. With one more courageous step, she reached the bars on the front wall. Quickly now! The heat was starting to get painful through the bandages, burn blisters were inevitable. They wouldn’t be able to last all that long in here, and to top it all off she had a sneaking suspicion that the smoke was making its way downwards now too. Arching her feet like a ballerina, she pushed her way past the lower edge of the elevator doors, then conquered the second corner as well. The opening was to her right, barely a metre away. Cautiously, she turned her head and saw Karla at the height of the doors, closely followed by Sushma, who had her face turned towards the wall and was obediently refusing to look up or down. Mukesh, who had just made it to the other side, secured himself with his right hand and helped Hsu heave her ample body across the ledge.

‘Take care of Sushma,’ said Hsu, ignoring Mukesh’s outstretched hand. ‘I can make it by myse—’

Her words were drowned out by metallic screeching. She hurriedly swung herself over the ledge. A crash and clatter sounded out, disappearing quickly into the depths as the staff elevator fell.

‘Everything okay?’ Mukesh’s voice echoed off the walls and was swallowed by the abyss.

Hsu nodded, trembling on one of the bars. ‘God that’s hot!’

‘Wait, I’m coming.’

‘No, I’m fine. Go. Go!’

Eva took a deep breath and pushed herself forward to just below the passageway. It was higher up than she had thought and she could only just peer over the ledge, but there were two narrow rungs built into the wall. With a chin-up, she managed to get inside. She crawled forwards and, almost immediately, her hands came up against a metal plate which sealed off the back of the passageway. To the side of it was a small control panel. Taking a chance, she pressed her finger on it, and at the same moment icy horror rushed through her.