AbductiCon

by Alma Alexander

  “I’ll go deal with the signs,” Luke said. “Mike… do me a favor and run up to the Green Room of the con – it’s 1–303, right there on the third floor – and find a guy by the name of Simon Ballard – he’s head of the con security – get him to deal with clearing that particular elevator lobby, only people with legitimate business permitted to enter, no gawkers. Go! We’re it, there’s no help coming. We need to get on with this. If it is mechanical then the Lord alone knows what went wrong and I don’t want that thing dropping down like a rock with those people still in it. Go, go, go! If you need any help, grab any of the staff and tell them it’s on my authority!”

  The maintenance crew scattered, and Luke loped back to his own office. At his computer, he called up a blank document and typed in OUT OF ORDER in large black letters and then set the printer to cough out multiple copies. He grabbed a handful of sheets even as they slid into the tray and handed them to the nearby receptionist with a roll of tape and instructions to tape a sign on every elevator door in Tower 1, starting from the top floor and going down. When she ran with those, Luke himself grabbed the remaining signs and started from the lobby, and then up.

  About ten minutes later a small and worried knot of people gathered together outside the crippled elevator on the third floor. It included Simon – who was overheard muttering darkly about not having enough people to cordon off any more hotel floors to general traffic – and Dave, and one or two other able–bodied volunteers who had turned up in case any assistance was required but who prudently kept out of the way in the meantime until they were needed.

  Andy and a pair of waiters he had collared as minions had hauled up a crowbar, a cordless drill and screwdriver, a couple of flashlights, and two short ladders. He was an unlikely superhero – stocky and grizzled, with a worn tool belt around his waist over his blue overalls.

  “Right, then,” he said. “I would have preferred it if we had that key – among other things it’s supposed to turn the elevator right off if it’s used properly, so it isn’t likely to shift when you’re in the middle of doing something iffy, and that’s without screwing with the electrics – but needs must… Okay…”

  “Wait,” said a commanding female voice from behind him. “Someone tell me what’s going on?”

  “Elevator incident,” Andy said.

  “The elevator appears to be stuck,” Luke said, turning to face Andie Mae. “There’s people in there.”

  “I think Xander’s in there,” Dave said.

  “We need to get the doors open, ma’am,” Andy said. “Now.”

  “Oh, God,” Andie Mae said, biting her lip and flushing. “It isn’t as though we haven’t enough to… are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

  “No, ma’am,” Andy said, “but one way or another we need to haul those folks out of there, and we gotta try. Excuse me…”

  “Oh, for a sonic screwdriver,” murmured Simon, watching Andy grip the business end of the crowbar and apply it to the space where the silver doors of the elevator came together.

  “You can’t just sonic–screwdriver your way through life,” Dave said, and Simon laughed.

  “Where’s Libby when you want her?” he said. “That’s the sort of quote that would make it straight into the ‘Overheard in the Corridors’ part of her beloved newsletter…”

  “You okay?” Dave said suddenly, aware that Andie Mae’s had lost color just as quickly as it had flamed into her cheeks, and now looked rather pale and wan.

  “Fine,” she said. “I’m fine. I just perhaps shouldn’t have tried that last cocktail last night, that’s all.”

  “That’s okay. We all feel a bit fragile,” Dave said.

  Andie Mae glanced at him, from out of the corner of her eye, and then dropped her lashes. “That isn’t… really…”

  The elevator doors creaked and then jerked apart, leaving a narrow sliver of a gap. Andy pushed at one wing, trying to force it wider, and Luke leapt to help, pushing the other wing in the opposite direction. For a moment neither man seemed to be able to move the doors at all, and Dave stepped forward to Luke’s side of the door to add his own strength to the effort as necessary.

  “Use force, Luke,” he muttered.

  The doors finally gave, and they pushed them apart wide enough to have an opening they could look through. Andy, on the lip of the landing level, peered into the shaft.

  “Worst possible position,” he said. “It’s squarely between the floors. We can’t do anything from below – there’s too great a gap, and someone could easily slip through the gap between the car and the landing while we’re hauling them out. Too dangerous. And look – it’s a little off–square, hanging there – I doubt that we can get that inner door open safely enough for people to…”

  “Anybody there?” came a muffled voice from inside the elevator, in response to that succinct summation.

  “We’re coming to get you,” Dave hollered. “Hang on!”

  “Somebody go tell Luis to cut that power,” Andy said. “We’re going to need to go down on the top, and haul them out through the hatch. Just as well I brought those ladders. But we’re going to be working in the dark, down there – it’s going to be a mess of…”

  “Can we be of any assistance?”

  The voice was courteous and pleasant, and the three at the elevator doors turned to see who was speaking, coming face to face with the android known as Boss. It was only Simon who happened to be looking at Andie Mae at the moment Boss had spoken, and thus he was the only one who saw the expression on her face undergo a couple of interesting changes. But Boss was speaking again, and Simon filed the information away for later.

  “My associates can help,” Boss said. “We may be better equipped for this kind of task. I will summon them.”

  Andy, who had not met the androids before, stared openly – and was even more taken aback when Bob and Zach, the two under–droids, stepped smartly out from the stairwell and came to stand beside their superior officer.

  “Please tell us what needs to be done,” Boss said.

  “Uh – somebody better go tell Luis – we’ll need that power off, now,” Andy stuttered.

  Simon gestured to one of his security people. “Go. Tell the man.”

  “We’d better warn them, in there,” Dave said. “They’re going to freak out if the lights suddenly go out on them with no warning.” He went down on one knee and thumped on the lift doors. “Guys! Guys! Help is on the way! Lights may go out – don’t panic! Someone’s coming! Can you hear me? Everyone okay in there?”

  “Hurry it up!” a faint voice – Xander’s – came back, muffled by the doors.

  The hoistway doors jerked suddenly inwards, just an inch or so, and Dave stumbled back instinctively, tripping on his own heel and falling on his ass inelegantly before scrambling back up to his feet.

  “Whuh–uh?” he said. “That thing just tried to kill me!”

  Boss stepped forward and folded one hand on the edge of one of the doors. “It will not happen again.”

  Andy swiveled his head around to listen. “There. Hear that? I think that was the power. Okay. Now we need to work fast. Somebody needs to climb down to the top of the elevator – there’s a, a thing, like a control panel or something like that, it needs to be set to maintenance mode rather than operating mode – I’ve got a ladder – here – and a flashlight – ”

  Boss made no move or sound but one of the other two androids, Zach, approached the edge of the landing level and picked up the ladder, sliding it down until it rested on the top of the elevator car and leaning against the lip of the landing level.

  “The flashlight will not be necessary,” Boss said.

  “Maybe not for your guy, but we’ll need it for the people there to see what they’re doing,” Andy said.

  “This is logical,” Boss said. “Take the flashlight.”

  Zach accepted the flashlight and descended the ladder into the shadows. They heard him step off onto the car roof, his footsteps
heavy, and Andy called down,

  “Be careful! Stay off the sheet metal, walk on the support struts or you’re probably going to go straight through!”

  “The switch you spoke of has been set as you requested,” Boss said.

  “There’s an emergency access door,” Andy said. “It’s secured – I don’t know how – bolts, or screws, or something – need to get that open, and then there is the ceiling panel of the car right underneath, you need to get rid of that, it won’t go through, you’ll have to push it in, just warn the guys underneath to go into the corners and protect their heads when it comes down…”

  Small clunks and grinding noises came from the shaft, and then a clang as something metallic was opened and dropped onto some other metallic surface. Then Zach’s voice, from below, warning the occupants of the car as Andy had suggested. Then a crash and a splinter. Then silence for a moment.

  “Everybody okay?” Dave called out from behind Andy.

  Xander’s voice, clearer now, came floating back out.

  “It’s pitch black in here right now – ah, all right, I can see the flashlight – just get us outta here!”

  “Second ladder,” Andy said, motioning behind him. “Pass down the second ladder. We need to get that through that hatch and they can climb up and out – carefully – this thing doesn’t look very solid – it’s at a funny angle…”

  Several helping hands passed the second ladder down into the hatch, and Zach received it and passed it down into the elevator car.

  “In theory we should have at least one more person assisting from the inside – my son says that there’s a firefighter who goes down and helps them get out – but we don’t have time,” Andy said. “Guys – can you hear me? – climb out, one at a time, very slowly, very carefully, I’ve another flashlight up here you’ll see where you’re going – but hurry up about it?”

  “Well, do it slowly or hurry up?” Xander asked from inside the elevator, aggrieved. “Where’s that ladder – Vince, you’re closest – go first – get out of here…”

  “Coming up,” Vince Silverman’s voice said from the darkness.

  The people on the landing floor held their breath, but the first rescue went off without a hitch, almost an anticlimax – they heard someone scrambling on metal, and then climbing the ladder, and then Vince Silverman’s disheveled head popped out from the hole.

  “Well, hello,” he said. “A welcoming committee.”

  Dave extended a hand and Vince took it, hauling himself out of the elevator shaft and dusting himself off as he got to his feet.

  “You all right?”

  “You guys sure know how to throw a party,” Vince said. “I’m fine. Get your friend Xander out of there, though, he’s starting to go a little spare…”

  “Who else is in there?”

  “That kid – what’s his name – Marius something – ”

  “Sam’s protégé,” Andie Mae said. “I remember him, he was up in Callahan’s last night. That’s it? Just the three of you?”

  “Just us. We were on our way to the panel – and Xander said…”

  “Xander! Come on up! We’re waiting for you!” Dave called out into the shaft.

  “Did somebody say there’s a kid in there? Shouldn’t we get the kid out…?” Andy said, rousing.

  But there was more scrambling below, and it was Xander’s head that popped up next, wide–eyed and ashen–faced. Dave helped pull him up all the way, and Xander collapsed in a boneless heap on the flowery hotel carpet, rubbing his temples.

  “Dear God, that was unpleasant,” he said conversationally. “There’s one more…”

  But Andy suddenly lifted his head, and then jerked back from the edge of the landing.

  “Watch it! Cable! Get away from the doors!”

  Everyone dived for cover as they all heard it now – a whipping, whistling, swishing noise, just before something blurred past their field of vision and fell into the dark below, hitting the elevator car with a stomach–churning crash and then tumbling off falling somewhere below making more noise as it bounced off walls and other cables. The car shuddered and dropped a couple of inches. Andie Mae cried out.

  And then there was silence.

  Xander was still sitting there, frozen and staring; Andie Mae stood with both hands over her mouth, as if she had been trying to stuff her cry back inside. It was Dave who stepped forward, very carefully, and called out in a voice which was commendably calm and level,

  “Hello? Down in the elevator…?”

  “They are safe,” Boss said.

  In echo of that, Marius’s voice, sounding thin and reedy, came up out of the shaft. “I think we’re all right. Your guy jumped in here before that thing hit, and didn’t get creamed. But if it’s all the same I’d like to come out now…”

  “I think we lost the ladder from the car to up here,” Dave said. “Unless it’s just fallen on top of the car…?”

  Andy sidled up and shone his flashlight down into the shaft. “Looks a mess,” he said. “Be careful where you step. Looks like there are edges that you don’t want to – maybe if your guy came up first, and handed you up to us – ”

  There was a moment of silence, and then, in the beam of Andy’s flashlight, they saw Zach emerging from the opening on the top of the car. He made a gesture, presumably to Marius who was still in the elevator car, to stay down until he steadied himself and found his footing, and then motioned for him to come up. They watched as Marius, his hair dusted with debris until it looked disconcertingly white in the flashlight beam, climbed slowly and carefully from out of the elevator car. He finally emerged, standing with one hand on the low safety railing around the roof panel and one clutched around Zach’s wrist, and looked up into the light, squinting and blinking.

  “I don’t see the other ladder you were talking about but it will be fine – someone just give me a hand…”

  Dave and one of Simon’s security people knelt on the lip of the landing and reached down; with a bit of help from Zach, below, Marius locked his hands around both his helpers’ wrists and was hauled out bodily until he rested on hands and knees on the floor, panting.

  “Well,” he said, “thank you. That was an adventure. Get the other dude out I have a horrid feeling that with that one cable down that thing is hanging by a cobweb thread.”

  “It isn’t,” Andy said helpfully. “There are a number of redundant cables – but still, point well taken. In theory we should at least secure that hatch….”

  “In practice, that hatch is probably in six pieces,” Xander said. “A steel cable just smashed into the thing. We’re lucky the whole thing didn’t go down with it. You okay, kid?”

  “Perfectly,” Marius said, but his breath still caught a little at the word.

  “Maybe we should get the doc to look you guys over,” Dave said. “Just in case. “You know, if this were a real rescue they’d probably have EMTs with oxygen tents out here for you guys or something.”

  “We’re fine,” Vince said. “We’re all perfectly fine and in one piece.”

  They had hauled Zach out of the hole now, and Marius’s head came up, eyes narrowed in sudden and concentrated attention. But nobody noticed him looking, or what he was looking at… nobody, that is, except Boss, whose pale eyes went inexorably from Marius’s face to the thing that Marius was looking at.

  Zach’s right hand.

  Which was missing two fingers.

  It was done as smoothly as anything, and nobody even realized that it had been done, but Boss stepped away from the outer hoistway doors which shuddered again as he let go of them.

  “Perhaps it would be best if we closed these,” Boss suggested. Zach, without being prompted, took hold of the other side of the door, and between them the two androids physically pulled the two wings together until they almost met in the middle. Boss removed his hand, but Zach kept his own in the crack between the doors just that little bit too long; and it was only then, when he removed his hand from the now
closed gap between the two wings of the door, that someone focused on that hand.

  “Your fingers! What happened?” Dave exclaimed, staring at Zach’s maimed limb.

  “Accident. Please do not concern yourself. We can replace the missing digits,” said Boss. But his eyes went to Marius, briefly.

  Marius met them, and then looked down, flushing. He stuck his hand into his pocket, and closed around the thing that he had picked up on the floor of the shattered elevator car when the cable came tumbling down and Zach dived into the car to escape it.

  A single android finger.

  Marius knew he should volunteer the information that he had it. He knew without a shadow of a doubt that he should surrender it. And yet he did neither of those things. It seemed as though something greater than himself had gripped him, had closed his throat to sound, had closed his mind to the sense of the right thing to do – or perhaps he was listening to something telling him the right thing to do, it was just not the same thing that his usual instincts would point him to.

  The android known as Boss appeared to be content not to force the issue, at least not here and not now. He turned away while everyone else was gathered around Vince and Xander and quietly, unobtrusively, pointed the index finger of his right hand at the line where the doors met. A quiet crackle emanated from his hand as he drew that finger, without quite touching the metal of the doors, from the top to the bottom, and then, when he was done, turned his head a little to look at Andy, the handyman, the only one who was paying any attention.