Chapter 8
Hackett heard the elevator engage. 'About fuckin' time,' he muttered, and peered over the edge. He saw a mound in the center of the elevator, covered with a blue jail-issue blanket.
'Oh shit, Mary Mother of God.' His gun was immediately out, aiming at the mound as he fumbled for his walkie-talkie.
'Come in, goddamnit. Come in now. Over.' But the thunder brewing in the sky had given way to a rain shower, broken now and then by bolts of lightning. The reception on the handset was shot, and only static poured out.
'Fuck, fuck, fuck!' Hackett smashed the walkie-talkie on the railing. He looked longingly at the emergency phone on the wall of the shed, but then he glanced back down at the rapidly rising elevator and knew there was no time. He couldn't even check the location sensors to see which prisoner was on the loose.
His gun stayed fixed on the rising blue pile, which became clearer as the scant light from the sky spilled over it. Rather than rising to its usual perch ten feet in the air above the Hole, the platform clicked to a stop barely two feet above the top of the shaft.
Hackett fought to keep his hand from shaking. 'Come out. Uncover yourself now! There are three of us up here and we have you surrounded.'
Silence.
He advanced to the elevator, then stepped up onto it, his eyes locked on the blue blanket. His footsteps were measured and steady as he crept silently forward. The rain fell gently across his face, and he felt drops moving down his neck and mingling with the sweat on his back.
Behind him, an arm slid, spiderlike, out from the two-foot gap under the elevator, and Allander's head emerged after it. Allander strained to pull himself out from where he hung on the crossing support bars beneath the elevator. He managed to roll silently through the gap to the top of the Tower.
Hackett approached the blanket. His left hand inched forward, still shaking, as he held the gun steady in his right. He yanked the blanket back, revealing Greener's lower body. 'Oh my God,' he gasped.
Behind him, Allander pulled himself silently to his feet. Hackett started to whirl around but Allander ducked and swept his feet with a glancing kick, pulling the guard's legs out from under him. Hackett hit the ground flat on his back, banging his head.
Before he could raise his gun, Allander was in the air above him. He landed with the point of his knee squarely on Hackett's neck, collapsing his windpipe. Hackett twitched twice, then was still. His arms fell to his sides, the gun snug in his hand even as it clicked to rest against the metal.
Allander smiled. 'I guess it's true. A veteran doesn't relinquish his weapon.' He pried the gun from Hackett's grip and set it down beside him.
Then he paused and looked down tenderly at the fallen man. Reaching forward, he hugged him around the chest and neck, curling up on him momentarily as if to draw warmth from him. Hackett's head bobbed in the embrace, his blank eyes gazing ahead. After a moment, Allander got up and raised the elevator to its resting position ten feet above the Hatch.
Spade spied Allander's dark figure silhouetted at the top of the Hole. 'Come on now, Atlasia. Your word. I have your word,' he cried, his voice pleading now.
'Indeed. I said I'd free you, and I will. You just have to be less
… literal.'
Allander smiled as he extended his arm over the Hole and opened his fist. The keys fell from it, rotating end over end as they plummeted into the darkness.
Spade roared below him, reaching desperately through the door at the keys, his fingers splayed, his shoulder and cheek mashed against the bars. The keys brushed his fingertips as they passed and he screamed as he saw them disappear below.
Allander looked at his hand, feigning shock. 'Whoops.'
'You motherfucker. You senseless motherfucker!'
'Well, at least my actions have prodded you to use a two-syllable word.'
'I'll fuckin' r-'
'You'll what?' Allander yelled, crouched intently over the Hole, the veins in his neck bulging with blood. Spade halted mid-sentence, shocked by the rage in Allander's voice. 'You'll what? I apologize, I didn't quite catch that. Somehow, I'm failing to see the danger in your threats.' He leaned forward and gazed into the Hole. 'I couldn't even retrieve those keys now if I wanted to. And I certainly don't want to.'
The prisoners below Spade recognized Allander's voice, and peered up the dark shaft. The Tower erupted with noise, like a madhouse on the evening of a full moon. Despite the clamor, Claude Rivers slept on in Unit 11A. Spade strained to shout at Allander above the din, but realizing he could no longer be heard, gave up and settled heavily on his bed. His head collapsed into his open hands as he tried to shut out the insanity.
Allander roamed around the top of the Tower, laughing at the submachine guns hanging limply in the shed and digging through Hackett's tool kit. He pulled out a pair of wire cutters. The rain had momentarily stopped, as if gathering strength for a larger downpour.
Running over to the top of the Hole, Allander lowered the elevator and rolled Hackett's body off before raising the elevator again. Then he kicked the sprawled corpse over to the Hole, where it dangled over the edge. He laughed, and uttered a brief introduction. 'Hackett, the Hole. Hole, this is Hackett.'
Placing his foot firmly on Hackett's behind, he shoved once and the body fell over the side and dropped into the void. It landed with a loud thud at the bottom, where it lay like a discarded marionette.
The inmates went crazy, shrieking as the body plummeted past them. From Level Two, Tommy and Safran could make out the outline of the body below them, and they screamed with delight.
'Hackett, you fucking mook! How the fuck you like it down here? Always a tough guy. Well, look what happens to tough guys. Broken fuckin' neck in the sewer of a prison. By choice too. Could've just stayed on the outside, been a family man. Station wagon with wood paneling, picnics with pasta salad and marinated chicken.' Tommy shook his head.
'Stupid. Fuck you quiet, Tommy.' Safran glared across the Hole at Tommy through the tangle of black hair hanging over his eyes. 'Stupid food all you say. All you say about. Food.'
Chapter 9
Allander stood on top of the parapet of the Tower, balanced on one foot. A surge of energy flowed through his taut muscles and he rolled his head back, letting his hair catch in the wind.
Seeing the Tower from above for the first time, Allander felt its power entering his body through his feet and legs, rising through his groin and stomach into his rib cage. Now, standing on top of man's greatest effort at order and hierarchy, he felt a sense of domination.
The Tower was a prison, but to him it was also a house of worship, a place to celebrate man in divine trespass. It was a building of history, for all its inhabitants were caged by and for their pasts. They spoke only of memories, skewed interpretations whispered by their minds.
Above all else, Allander realized, the Tower was wildly and beautifully masculine. They had built it to restrain the human spirit, to punish those who danced to a different beat, to still the music that came to them in the dead of night. They never appreciated the fact that Allander had never shut his eyes to the secrets of the human soul. He had listened to the quiet babbling of creeks running deep through the crags of his mind. He knew that he was something grander, more majestic, than their prison built of rock and steel. He was a Tower of flesh and blood, rising above the emotional quagmire through which other men limped, thoughtless and impotent.
He inhaled deeply, pulling at once the dank air of the Hole and the fresh ocean breeze into his lungs, feeling them merge, absorbing them into his body as if to incorporate some part of the Tower, to integrate some piece of
