Cautiously, she opened that door and stepped into another quiet hallway. A line of residential doors greeted her in both directions. She chose to run to the right. She was relieved to see an incinerator door at the end.
She raced toward it, hoping she could crawl inside the shaft, climb down to the incinerator room, and get out through some basement egress. Most basements had ancient, forgotten openings. She’d used them plenty of times in buildings when different theta wave receivers had been on the fritz, which had happened more times than she could count.
When she got to the incinerator, she slid to a halt in front of the TWR. She closed her eyes, concentrating, sending the thought for the incinerator to open. It didn’t. She heard it whirring and clicking on, listening to her, but it wouldn’t obey her commands. She tried again, with no result. She opened her eyes, muttering a curse. Of course she didn’t have access here in the PPC tower. They probably had a select few workers who could move around the building. The usual commands were not going to work.
She had to try a work-around. Glancing back down the hallway, she found it empty. She closed her eyes again, sending the incinerator a conflicting message. She told it to open and close at the same time, to begin and end incineration simultaneously. It whirred and clicked, and she smelled an electrical fire.
Reaching into her bag, she pulled out her multitool and flicked open a blade. She pried off the plate covering the TWR. Flames smoldered inside, so she blew them out. The incinerator door lock disengaged. Then she replaced the cover, making it look just the way it had before she’d hacked it.
She slid inside the incinerator, pulling the door shut just as she heard the stairwell door bang open around the corner. She froze, barely breathing inside the tight confines. With the TWR fried, she hoped it wouldn’t malfunction and switch on suddenly. Outside, footsteps ran in the opposite direction. She used the time to switch on her headlamp. The shaft led straight down to the ash collection area in the basement. She shinnied along the warm metal, past the body disposal area and into the narrow shaft that the ashes blew through.
She stopped when she heard the footsteps double back and head nearer. She switched off her light, holding her breath in the dark. The shaft was unbearably hot. Beads of sweat ran down her back.
“Anything?” a voice yelled.
“Negative, sir,” said a man so close to the incinerator door that she opened her eyes wide in the dark and hoped with everything in her that he would move away. “This hallway is clear!”
The footsteps ran back. She heard the stairwell door thunk open, then swing closed again with a clank.
She switched her light back on, chasing away the darkness. She shinnied to the edge of the shaft, peering down into the abyss. Her headlamp couldn’t penetrate it.
Carefully she swung her legs over the edge, then lowered herself into the vertical shaft. She braced her back against one wall, her feet on the opposite, and began crawling down.
Steadily she worked her way to one floor, then another. She was down five floors when she heard an incinerator door open somewhere above her. Light flashed inside the shaft.
“She must have gotten into one of these,” a voice barked. “Send a man up and a man down.”
She froze. She was trapped. In the shaft above her she saw a headlamp flashing, and the metallic thudding of someone crawling in after her. She rushed down to the next floor and climbed into its corpse deposit area. Switching off her light, she lay on her stomach in front of the door and quietly lifted it up, grateful for the fail-safe built into the incinerators that allowed them to be opened manually from the inside in case someone got trapped. This floor was dim and quiet, another residential floor.
She slid out, shutting the door behind her and gazing around in horror. Where could she go now?
Suddenly the PRD the producer had given her vibrated in her pocket.
She jerked it out, bringing up the floating display. His face hovered above the device. “I’m unlocking a door for you,” he whispered, his face close to the camera. “I can see where you are through my PRD.”
The door to her right clicked, and its biometric scanner glowed green. She heard footsteps, and the stairwell door on her floor banged open. She had one second to decide.
She glanced back at the incinerator door, then turned and fled through the unlocked unit. The door whooshed shut behind her, locking just as the men turned down the hallway and ran to the incinerator door.
“Climb inside! She’s not down to the basement yet, so she’s got to be between these floors.”
She peered through the view porthole, seeing two men lift open the incinerator door and crawl inside. As they slipped out of sight, she turned slowly. The living pod was dark. She saw no glow from a visual display, heard no hint of movement from an occupant.
Willoughby flashed back on the display. “Most people are sleeping right now. Try to be as quiet as possible. I’m going to get you out of this building.”
“Why are you helping me?” she whispered.
“I believe your story. We’ve got to get the word out somehow, and that doesn’t involve your brain getting . . .”
“My brain getting . . . ?”
He didn’t answer her. After a moment of silence, he said, “Listen. We won’t know how to stop that asteroid here. But there are others who might.”
“What others?”
“We call them the Rovers. I’ve heard stories that they continued to learn, that their knowledge of science hasn’t dwindled.”
“Where are they?”
He frowned. “That’s the challenge. No one knows. Though I might be able to find a lead. But . . .”
“What?” she whispered.
“They’re not inside the city.”
She gaped. How could anyone not be inside
