Chapter 34 · The Hold That Won't Release

"Somebody's driving this board," Torin said, "and it isn't me."

His hand hadn't moved off the valve wheel. The needle above us kept crawling, slow as a clock nobody wound, climbing toward a red line that used to mean full shutdown before tonight turned it into something worse.

"Then whoever it is knows we're standing right here." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "Turn it. Now."

He turned it. The needle didn't care. It kept drifting, and the pipe under my palm gave off a low hum that had nothing to do with anything Torin was doing with his hands.

Then the wall speaker cracked to life over our heads, tinny and bored, some rink tech reading a script he'd read seven hundred times. "Ladies and gentlemen, please clear the ice. Puck drop in three minutes."

Game seven. I'd almost forgotten there was a game happening twenty feet above a room that smelled like rust and somebody else's fingerprints.

"We go up," Torin said. "Now.