A few seconds later Lucy reached the opening, let the rifle fall against her back by its strap, and jumped after her, catching the ladder hard with both hands as the Hybrid crashed into the corridor behind her. Her hands caught the metal ladder hard enough to sting through her palms. The whole shaft smelled of hot machinery, dust, and old grease. Above them, the bright strip of corridor light cut across the opening like a wound in the dark. Below, the elevator roof sat several floors down, a dull rectangle surrounded by black concrete walls and cables that vanished up and down into shadow.
"Get down fast!" Lucy snapped.
"That’s what I’m doing," Sydney shot back, already climbing with Zakthar slung awkwardly against one side. "But reassure me about something. Hybrids don’t know how to climb ladders, right? Please say yes."
Lucy looked up.
The Hybrid had reached the opening and was staring down at them with those dead white eyes, its lipless mouth hanging open while a low growl rolled out of it and bounced around the shaft.
"Aren’t you supposed to be the expert in that kind of thing?" Lucy asked.
"I am not that kind of expert. I’ve never seen Infected climb down ladders, and honestly I would love to keep it that way because that is a horrifying thought."
"Stop talking and move."
Sydney kept climbing anyway, still somehow sounding half irritated and half joking even with an alien hanging off her and death looking down at them from above. Lucy genuinely did not understand how she did that. Military discipline, fear, exhaustion, none of it had ever produced that kind of attitude in anyone Lucy had known. Sydney sounded like a woman late to a train, not one climbing down an elevator shaft with a monster overhead.
"Move where?" Sydney called down. "The elevator roof? Because I don’t love that plan."
Lucy didn’t answer right away.
Landing on the roof would be bad. If the Hybrid jumped after them, the extra weight might wreck the whole thing. Even if it held, they would be trapped on top of a steel box with nowhere good to go. Lucy kept one hand on the rung and reached with the other for the Colt at her side.
The Hybrid shifted.
Lucy felt it in her gut before it moved.
"Watch out!"
She locked one hand higher around the rung and braced.
The Hybrid launched itself down the shaft.
It came with both arms spread wide, aiming to snatch her off the ladder and take her with it. Lucy saw the path of it instantly. Her body reacted before thought had time to get in the way. She drove one boot hard against the side of the ladder, kicked herself upward, and swung her body out and up in a tight, brutal movement that left her hanging almost upside down for one breathless second. The Hybrid’s huge hands cut through empty air exactly where her torso had been.
Then gravity took it.
The thing dropped past her with a furious snarl, flailing once as it tried to correct itself in the shaft. One arm reached toward Sydney lower down, but it missed by inches. Then the Hybrid crashed onto the elevator roof with a thunderous impact that shook the whole shaft.
Metal screamed.
The roof buckled.
The creature smashed through the top hatch and disappeared into the elevator car itself, and the whole elevator lurched downward maybe twenty feet in one ugly grinding drop before the emergency brakes caught and slammed it to a stop.
"Shit," Sydney breathed.
Lucy pulled herself back into proper position on the ladder and looked down, listening.
No movement from above. No immediate second jump. Just the groan of stressed metal settling back into place.
"We’re good for the moment," she said. "We leave. Now."
"Where?" Sydney asked, still clinging to the ladder with Zakthar in one arm. "You want to climb back up?"
"No. We leave the hotel. We’ve got the Starakian."
She meant it plainly, but the second the words were out she saw the look that flickered across Sydney’s face.
A tired sigh came out of her.
"I know what you’re thinking," Sydney said. "And yes, I’m worried. But I trust Ryan. He’s the protagonist of the show. He’ll survive somehow. So yes, we go down."
Lucy had no idea what that meant, but she nodded anyway. Then she pointed with the Colt toward the floor just below them. "Can you open that elevator door?"
Sydney glanced down, measured the distance, and gave a sharp grin that came out of nowhere. "Easy. Catch this idiot first."
Before Lucy could object, Sydney casually threw Zakthar upward.
Lucy’s stomach dropped.
She caught him by the front of his shirt at the last second, his body jerking in her grip while he dangled over the shaft with a startled curse. He wasn’t very heavy, but that didn’t make the catch pleasant. Her shoulder nearly wrenched out from the sudden pull.
"Are you insane?" Lucy hissed.
"Yes," Sydney said. "You just noticed?"
Then Sydney moved.
She turned her feet on the ladder, faced the wall, and pushed off in a clean jump down toward the elevator doors below. Her boots landed on the narrow lip in front of them with perfect precision. One hand shot out to steady herself against the shaft wall. Then she jammed her fingers into the thin gap between the doors and pulled.
The metal doors resisted.
Then they slid apart under her force.
The opening revealed the tenth floor corridor beyond, dimmer than the twelfth but still lit enough to see. Sydney leaned in, checked left and right in one fast glance, then looked back up.
"We’re good he—"
A savage growl boomed up from below.
Sydney’s expression changed at once.
She leaned out and looked down past the elevator roof.
"Shit. That fucker’s alive."
Lucy already knew it would be. A fall like that might kill a man. That thing was not a man.
The sound came again, louder now, mixed with violent metallic pounding. The Hybrid was moving inside the damaged elevator car. A second later there was a crash from somewhere lower in the shaft, like it had ripped through another set of doors to get out.
Sydney let out a disgusted breath. "He’s definitely climbing back up to join us. I really hate clingy men."
"Stop talking and catch him," Lucy said, loosening her hold on Zakthar.
She let the Starakian drop.
He fell only a short distance before Sydney caught him against her shoulder, grunted, then dragged him through the gap and dumped him onto the tenth-floor carpet with no particular care.
Lucy descended fast after that, boots finding the rungs without hesitation. When she reached the level of the opening, she kicked away from the ladder and jumped through into the corridor beside Sydney.
"Move," she said. "It’s getting worse."
"We’re taking the stairs, then?" Sydney asked, looking down the hallway. "Because that Hybrid is probably headed for the stairs too."
"He’s several floors below us. Fifth or sixth, maybe. If he starts coming up, we’ll hear him first."
Sydney nodded once.
"Yeah. Right."
Then both of them went still.
Not from fear exactly. From the same thought arriving at the same time.
Several floors down.
That was where Christopher, Rachel, Cindy, and Ivy were.
Sydney turned to Lucy so fast her hair whipped across her cheek. Lucy was already looking back at her, the same realization written plain on her face now, stripped of all sarcasm and all control.
"Those idiots are right in his path," Sydney said.
Lucy grabbed her rifle off her back and started running toward the stairwell door with Sydney already moving beside her with Zakthar on her shoulder.
Chapter 392: Taking The Golden Nugget Hotel [8]
7 min read