Chapter 33 · Third Slot

"It should've opened." Torin's voice came out flat, like he was talking himself out of panicking. He still had his key jammed in the housing, wrist locked at an angle that had to hurt.

"I turned mine." I hadn't let go of my own key either. My knuckles had gone white around the bow of it. "You turned yours. That's the whole mechanism. Two keys, one turn, lien restored. That's what Doyle's paperwork says."

"I know what the paperwork says." He pulled his key free and the metal rasped against the pins like it was fighting him on the way out. "I wrote half of it."

Above us, muffled through eight feet of concrete and compressor housing, the building shook. Overtime crowd noise, feet on risers, somebody's horn going off in a rhythm that meant a goal, meant a save, meant something up there mattered and down here nothing had moved.

I didn't step back from the panel.