“Here, please,” Peter gasped.
Clare jogged after him and directed her torch where he pointed. A hulking, cylindrical shape—the generator, Clare guessed—took up part of the wall. Peter wrenched a lid up to reveal a blank dashboard. He pressed a button, pulled a switch, then stepped back.
Clare glanced around, expectant. In the torch’s light, she could make out bulbs in the ceiling. They stayed dead. The machine was quiet. The only noises came from the wind screaming against the tower’s walls, the muffled drum of rain, and the near-constant, bone-shaking thunder.
“Come on, come on.” Peter returned to the machine, pushed the button, and flipped the switch again. Sweat trickled around his wide eyes.
Clare felt the knots in her stomach tighten. The hollows haven’t figured out how to open the doors yet. They weren’t smart enough. But not all of them are mindless. All it would take is one of the clever ones to be in the crowd, to realise the power had gone out…
Peter looked at her, and she could see her own thoughts reflected in his eyes. The dead generator was a ticking bomb.
Chapter Forty-Seven
“Maybe… maybe something came loose inside it…” Peter pulled off a second cover, exposing more of the machine’s insides. He ran his hands across the tangle of wires and pistons inside, wiggling wires, searching for any kind of weakness. Clare did her best to keep her torch focussed on his work. His hands were shaking.
“Your fuse is gone.” Dorran, unfazed, stepped past Clare and gently tapped one of the little glass cylinders near the control panel. “Do you have a replacement?”
Peter blinked at him then began nodding. “Yeah, yeah, there should be replacements somewhere over here—”
Dorran followed him to the back wall. Plastic trays were attached to an alcove above a bench. They began opening them and searching the contents.
“Bring the light over, please?” Peter waved Clare forward. He and Dorran were working on opposite ends of the bench, so Clare scoped around for the best angle. She found a chair, dragged it forward, and stood on it, so that her light washed down over their heads.
Something heavy banged below them, and Clare flinched. She tried to tell herself it was just one of the trapped hollows. The ground floor was so far below that even if the hollows had broken in, she wouldn’t know for several more minutes. The thought wasn’t at all comforting.
“Found it.” Dorran pushed away from the bench and jogged to the machine.
Clare leapt off her seat and followed. He worked quickly. The old fuse popped out, and the new one slid into its place in seconds. Then he pressed the button and pulled the switch, like Peter had done just minutes before. The machine made a choking, gurgling noise, then a deep, steady hum rose. Lights blinked on above them. Clare let her head sag, eyes closed in relief.
“Wow.” Peter swiped the back of his hand across his forehead, his grin falling back into place. “You’re a useful guy to have around, huh?”
Dorran made a non-committal noise. He slipped his hands into his coat pockets and stepped behind Clare, a discreet message that he was passing the conversation back over to her.
She turned off the torch and handed it back to Peter. “Is there any way to make sure the doors stayed secure? Beyond, uh, waiting to see if anything comes up the stairs?”
“I’m sure you’ll be happy to hear there is.” Peter placed the torch on a bench and crossed to the wall. Eight little green lights shone from a display. “These babies reckon we’re safe. They monitor the locks. If any of the windows were open, they would have turned red.”
Clare nodded, relieved. Now that the urgency was gone, she was starting to feel shaky. “You said the generator went out twice before. Is it likely to do it again?”
“Uh…” Peter grimaced as he dragged his fingers through his hair. “Maybe. The storm definitely isn’t good for it. But I mean, as long as the hollows don’t figure out what they need to do…”
The silence hung for a moment. The maintenance room didn’t have any windows, but Clare could still feel the thunder shaking the building.
Peter worked his jaw, seemingly trying to balance what he said next. “On your way here, did either of you encounter any hollows that seemed… more than the others?”
“Yeah. Smart ones.”
“Good. You already know about them.” He folded his arms, rocking lightly as he stared at the generator. “I didn’t want to fearmonger. As long as it’s only the dumb hollows outside, I don’t think we’re in too much danger. They just push and beat their fists. But the smart ones are what I’m really frightened about. They won’t be able to do much to get inside if the locks are in place. But if they see the power go out… or if they figure out how the locks work…”
Clare shivered. “I’ve only seen a couple of them. Are they common?”
“No idea. There would have been a lot in the beginning. But now?” Peter slowly lowered the lids on the generator, running his fingers over the metal. “I know where they came from, at least. The thanites work better with some blood types than others. People with AB-positive blood transform faster and usually have more pronounced mutations. On the other hand, people with AB-negative blood mutate more slowly and usually retain most of their mental functions.”
Clare frowned as she tried to remember her own
