Chapter 14 - The Hanging Shaft
The barrel of the heavy revolver gleamed under the harsh white glare of the tactical spotlight.
Emma stared up into the dark barrel, her heart beating so hard against her ribs it felt like it would burst through her chest.
There was no cover inside the four-by-four steel box of the elevator.
She grabbed Ethan and shoved him behind her back, using her own body as a human shield against the bullet.
"Shoot me, Sterling!" Emma screamed up at the hatch, her voice filled with raw, defying fury.
"Shoot me, but you've already lost!" she yelled into his face.
"The server room is reduced to ash! The evidence is gone, and your private guests are running like rats!" she taunted him.
Mr. Sterling's face twisted in pure, unadulterated rage. His gloved finger tightened slowly on the heavy trigger.
"You worthless little worm!" he spat, preparing to fire.
Before his finger could complete the pull, a sudden loud alarm shrieked throughout the elevator shaft: STRUCTURAL FIRE DETECTED - AUTOMATIC SHAFT VENTILATION ACTIVE.
The thick, black chemical smoke from the burning server room deep below had finally travelled up the main elevator shaft.
A massive wall of suffocating black smoke shot up the vertical shaft like a chimney, spilling violently through the open top hatch.
The blinding smoke hit Mr. Sterling square in the face.
He coughed violently, his eyes burning as he stumbled backward on top of the elevator roof, dropping the heavy crowbar down into the car.
The heavy iron bar fell straight through the open hatch, crashing onto the metal floorboards right at Emma’s feet.
Emma didn't waste a single millisecond.
She snatched the iron crowbar off the floor and stood on her toes, reaching up through the open roof hatch.
She grabbed the edge of the open hatch and pulled her body upward with a desperate surge of adrenaline.
"Emma, no!" Ethan cried from below.
"Stay down, Ethan! Stay inside!" Emma barked down to him as she hauled her upper body through the roof opening.
She pulled herself onto the roof of the elevator car, standing in the middle of the dark, smoky shaft.
Five feet above her, Mr. Sterling was leaning against the steel wall of the shaft, coughing desperately as he tried to clear the smoke from his eyes while holding his revolver.
He saw Emma climb out of the hatch and raised the gun with a trembling, smoke-blinded hand.
Emma didn't give him the chance to aim.
She lunged across the slick metal roof of the car and slammed the flat end of the heavy iron crowbar into his wrist.
CRACK!
Mr. Sterling shrieked in pain as the iron bar smashed his wrist bone, dropping the heavy revolver down the dark shaft.
The gun plummeted hundreds of feet into the subterranean water below, vanishing forever.
Mr. Sterling growled like a cornered animal, throwing his heavy weight forward and tackling Emma onto the metal roof.
They crashed hard onto the top of the elevator car, rolling precariously close to the open edge.
Below them, a two-hundred-foot drop into the pitch-black shaft yawned open like a giant, hungry mouth.
Mr. Sterling wrapped his large hands around Emma’s throat, pressing his thumb joints hard into her windpipe.
"I will throw you down this shaft myself!" he gasped through his burning throat, his eyes bloodshot and insane.
Emma clawed wildly at his face, her fingernails tearing long, bloody gashes across his cheeks.
Her vision began to dim as her lungs were starved of air, black spots dancing across her eyes.
She couldn't breathe.
Her strength was rapidly fading into nothingness.
With her last remaining spark of consciousness, Emma reached out her trembling hand along the metal roof, searching blindly for a tool.
Her fingers closed around a heavy steel emergency release pin mounted to the main suspension cable clamp.
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It was the manual override pin designed to drop the elevator car in an absolute emergency.
Emma grabbed the iron ring of the safety pin, looked Mr. Sterling dead in his bloodshot eyes, and pulled the pin free with a sharp, violent jerk.
