Spade also noticed the keys, and he began moving madly around his cell as the elevator lowered, bringing them nearer and nearer.

"Atlasia. You forget that s.h.i.t I said. You forget it. You let me out of here. You let me the f.u.c.k out when you get ahold of those keys. Don't you leave me caged up in here."

Allander ignored him and reached for the keys with the metal arm, which he had been holding reverently. The p.r.o.nged end of the arm caught the ring easily. As he backed it away, the chain slid out of Greener's gory midsection.

Even the prisoners who could not see Greener's corpse had joined the clamor. Ironically, Claude Rivers, the only one with a good vantage point of what was happening, was dozing away in his cot.

"Hey, Greener, you all right down there? Move your a.s.s, it's starting to rain and we gotta get the Hatch sealed." Hackett's voice echoed down the Hole.

Allander tensed up and the metal arm struck the top of his food slot. The keys lost their hold on the end of the arm and fell to the platform. They barely caught, dangling halfway over one of the flat steel bars.

"You promise. You give me your word you'll let me go when you get that b.i.t.c.h or I'll yell like a beast to high heaven."

"Interesting simile," Allander hissed.

"What the f.u.c.k's keepin' you?" Hackett bellowed from above. "You throwin' a party, or what?" Because it was dusk and a storm was coming in, it was too dark for him to see down the Hole.

"I'm not joking here," Spade growled. "I'll f.u.c.k you."

"Sounds ravishing," Allander said dryly.

The other inmates moved frantically about their units, trying to figure out what, exactly, had happened.

Leaning against the Hatch, Hackett heard only the crash of the waves against the side of the Tower and the noise of the stirring prisoners. He gazed up at the dark clouds gliding ominously through the sky.

"Must've dropped a f.u.c.kin' loaf down the Hole," he said, settling back against the railing and lighting up another cigarette.

Spade cringed as Allander reached for the keys with the arm. "Come on, Atlasia. You got this. You got this now."

Allander struck the keys with the metal arm, but he missed the ring, and they shifted dangerously on the edge.

"You motherf.u.c.ker! You gotta be careful."

"Your perception of the obvious is admirable." Allander stabbed at the keys again, this time hooking the ring with the p.r.o.ng. Slowly, he brought the arm back, moving it hand over hand until the keys dangled just outside the bars.

They were right before him, just out of reach. He lowered the tilt of the arm and pulled it back sharply. The keys flew through the bars to his hand. Allander gazed at them affectionately for a moment, overwhelmed at all they represented. They glittered in the darkness.

Rising to his feet, Allander reached the keys through his door to the lock. On the way through, they struck the side of one of the bars and slid from his sweaty palm. He crouched and shot his other hand through the food slot, grabbing the keys just before they disappeared through the bars of the platform floor.

Spade let out a gentle moan.

"It's hard not to be in control, isn't it, Spade? Frustrating not to be in the driver's seat?" His hand tight around the keys, Allander gestured as though he were holding a steering wheel. He pretended to lose his grip on the keys again, and Spade fell to his knees with a bang, arms uselessly outstretched. Allander caught the keys easily with a sweep of his other hand.

He laughed at Spade's expression as he inserted the key. The gears in the lock clicked loudly. He pushed the door and it swung open, creaking at the hinges. It was the first time a unit door had been opened from the inside. Only the dead had ever left the cells.

"Now open me. Free me." Spade reached for him, his fingers grasping at the black s.p.a.ce in front of him.

Allander stepped onto the elevator platform and crossed the Hole, holding the keys inches from Spade's reach. Spade strained forward, turning his head and pressing his cheek to the bars.

"How much does all that exquisite muscle help you now, Spade? I'd bet that if your shoulders were a touch less beefy you could reach . . . the . . . extra . . . inch . . . to . . . the . . . keys." He swung them back and forth in front of Spade.

"You hand those. You hand them here, you motherf.u.c.ker, or I'll yell. I'll yell my f.u.c.king lungs out."

"Calm yourself." Allander laid a long, bony finger over his lips. "I'm going to dispose of the final nuisance above and the last thing I need is to be struck on the head by one of your wayward muscles. I'll see to you after I've handled him." He motioned upward with a flick of his head.

"Bulls.h.i.t!"

"Ssh."

"f.u.c.k you, ssh! Why the h.e.l.l should I believe you?"

"Because what choice have you got?"

"I could f.u.c.kin' scream-how's that for a choice?"

"Fine," Allander said loudly. Spade cringed, looking up the Hole. Allander crossed his arms, strumming his fingers. "Let's hear it."

Spade turned in a tight circle, then grabbed the bars, his chest rising as if he was going to yell. But he didn't. After a moment of silence, Allander placed the keys on the elevator platform by his feet. Then he stepped forward and extended his hand to Spade's unit. Spade saw that the keys were out of Allander's reach, and he cursed silently.

They gripped hands firmly around the thumbs, and Allander leaned forward, peering intently into his eyes. "I will free you," he said. "You have my word."

He clicked the top red b.u.t.ton with his other hand, and the elevator whirred and began to rise. Spade held Allander's hand until it slipped up out of reach. Then he began to pace.

8.

H A C K E T T heard the elevator engage. "About f.u.c.kin' 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 s.h.i.t, Mary Mother of G.o.d." His gun was immediately out, aiming at the mound as he fumbled for his walkie-talkie.

"Come in, G.o.dd.a.m.nit. 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.

"f.u.c.k, f.u.c.k, f.u.c.k!" 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 G.o.d," 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 pa.s.sed and he screamed as he saw them disappear below.

Allander looked at his hand, feigning shock. "Whoops."

"YOU MOTHERf.u.c.kER. YOU SENSELESS MOTHERf.u.c.kER!"

"Well, at least my actions have prodded you to use a two-syllable word."

"I'LL f.u.c.kIN' 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 f.u.c.king mook! How the f.u.c.k you like it down here? Always a tough guy. Well, look what happens to tough guys. Broken f.u.c.kin' 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. f.u.c.k 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."

9.

A L L A N D E R 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 trespa.s.s. 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 this time and place.

The top of the sun was still visible above the line of the horizon, though it was a blurry glow. As Allander scanned the sea for approaching boats, a flash of movement in the hills behind Maingate caught his eye. A person, no larger than a dot, was plummeting from one of the cliffs, like a folded bird. Then, a small streak of black threaded out above the figure and exploded in a point of color that grew like a blot from a fountain pen. Allander realized that he was witnessing a parachute jump rather than a suicide. He found the sight captivating; it was like watching a painting unfold on the darkening canvas of the sky. He watched long after the jumper had disappeared into the trees below before turning his attention back to the Tower.

He crossed to the small guard station and foraged through its drawers until he found the first-aid box. He threw bottles over his shoulder and they shattered on the ground behind him. When he came to the procaine hydrochloride vial, he stopped.

The Maingate physician had insisted it be present in case emergency oral surgery were ever necessary for the guards; in addition to being a contained security unit, the Tower had to be a self-sufficient medical station.

Allander withdrew a needle from the small packet and fit it gently into a plastic syringe. He punched the needle through the rubber top of the vial and withdrew some of the liquid, then cleared the air from the syringe. A few drops squirted through, onto the floor.

Taking a deep breath, Allander inserted the needle into the tip of the ring finger on his left hand. He waited for the numbness to spread and settle. After a few minutes, he removed a scalpel from its sterile package and dipped it in the container of alcohol. Then he made a neat incision, cutting diagonally through his fingerprint.

Since the anesthetic had not fully taken effect, he felt a painful tingling in the pad of his finger, but feeling suddenly rushed for time, he continued. Using tweezers, he pried underneath the skin, grimacing as he saw his flesh rise along the straight line of the cut. The blood came and washed over the end of the tweezers until it obscured his view.

Once, he felt the tweezers close on something hard and he pulled gently, but when the tweezers emerged from the b.l.o.o.d.y gash, they held only fleshy material that looked like gristle. Allander hadn't antic.i.p.ated that numbing the finger would have made it difficult for him to distinguish the location sensor from his own senseless tissue.

Beginning to lose patience, he pressed the tweezers in until they hit the bone. He applied too much pressure and they slid around the side of his finger next to his nail, pulling the flesh around and stretching the cut open. He heard a soft, metallic clink as the tweezers struck something distinctly alien, and he bit his lip in a mixture of pain and delight. Finally, working the tweezers around the metal, he withdrew the sensor, which was the size of a large pea. The flesh around the cut strained and whitened at the edges as he pulled the b.l.o.o.d.y orb through.

After pressing gauze to his wound, Allander wrapped it with medical tape, bandaging it thoroughly. Then he used the tape to affix the location sensor to the side of the Hole. It was close enough to its a.s.signed location that the difference in position would not be detected from the mainland.

He began to move at a furious pace, sprinting back to the guard station. He opened the control box, ignoring the flashing lights and the warning stickers. Finding the k.n.o.b labeled PUMPS, he turned it to DISENGAGE, then broke it off, flinging it out of the shed. It skidded across the top of the Tower and into the Hole. He found a pencil and jammed it in the hole where the k.n.o.b had been, breaking it and lodging a small piece inside. That would be enough to hold them off until it was too late.

His finger was starting to hurt. Blood leaked through the gauze and tape, but he ignored it-he was almost done now. He turned back to the controls, finding the section labeled VENTS. As the pounding waves rose against the Tower's side, he pulled the levers, one by one. Twelve . . . Eleven . . . Ten . . . Nine. Level Nine was the lowest floor to have vents, but it was almost always underwater, so its vents had never been used. They jammed halfway open.

A torrent of water blasted down the Hole, dousing the inmates through their cages. It struck the bottom and roared upward, snarling and swirling about the prisoners. They screamed in terror, many of them running in circles, regarding their walls and ceilings with wild eyes.

Safran was knocked across his unit with the first blast of water. His head was smashed against the bed, caving in at the temple like a deflated basketball.

Tommy froze as the water rose under his feet, driving him up. His mouth opened in a silent scream as he rode the ma.s.sive swell, his face striking the steel bars of his ceiling.

Allander rushed to the gaping mouth of the Hole and cried down: "WELCOME HOME, MY LITTLE ONES! WELCOME HOME!" What he said, however, was lost to the inmates, drowned out by the roar of the water and their own screams. Allander scampered away from the edge of the Hole.

On Level Three, Mills roared in terror as he watched the river of water flow past his unit. He looked down at his feet and saw the seething ma.s.s of liquid rising toward him through the bars of the floor. It deluged Level Two now, and it would be only another few seconds before it reached him.

He seized the unit wall fiercely with both hands, his hairy fingers squeezing the bars. The water flew up, striking his bottom and groin, and he bellowed in pain. He did not release his grip, even as the water yanked his body from the ground. The void over his head filled, and he slowly pulled himself back down to a standing position beneath the ocean's roar. He finally opened his mouth, forced to inhale, and a peace spread through his body as his lungs drew the water inward.

Cyprus moaned and paced madly about his unit, feeling the walls and jumping to grab the ceiling bars and hold his body up off the ground.

Above him, Spade laughed and stepped on his hands. "He got us, Aryan boy. He got us good," he called down tauntingly.

Cyprus squealed in pain and fear and collapsed to the floor. The water appeared to be moving more slowly now. It rose from Level Eight and when Cyprus's feet got wet, he screamed as if they'd been touched by acid. He jumped onto his bed.