Sparks showered off the vertical iron guide-rails in a shrieking blue waterfall.
Heavy Bus-Freight Elevator #00 plummeted downward through the darkness at twenty feet per second.
Above them, forty feet up the brick-lined shaft, the roof of Terminal 9 collapsed into the Marrow River. The impact sounded like a muffled artillery barrage, sending a shockwave of cold air and pulverized lime dust rushing down over the elevator cage.
“Mac! Are the backup brakes catching?” Julian Vance shouted, gripping the front scissor-gate with both hands.
“The hydraulic shoes are chattering on the rails!” Mac Cole roared from the driver’s pedestal. “They’re slowing us down, but we’re still dropping like a lead safe!”
“How fast are we falling, Mac?” Lin Mei asked, bracing herself against the fare-box stanchion.
“Twenty feet a second!” Mac yelled back, his prosthetic arm locked against the Bendix valve. “At this rate, we hit the bottom in less than twenty seconds!”
“Hold Clara’s headrest!” Elena Rostova cried from the wheelchair bay.
