novelraw Chapter 135: One
Chapter 135: One
"On my count," Zubair said, palm on the rope, shoulder braced to the frame. "One."
The door jumped in his hand.
Not shut.
Out.
A gust shoved a pocket of pressure through the gap like a fist. The hinge screamed. The rope went hard as a wire and kicked.
"Hold!" he snapped.
The first anchor groaned. Not loud. Enough. Metal shifted under the bolt with a sound like a coin being dragged across teeth. The carabiner gate bounced and didn’t seat.
"Gate," he bit out.
"I’ve got it," Elias said, already there, thumb jamming the sleeve down, wrist rolling the screw home. The line still vibrated under his glove.
The gust hit again. The door took it and tried to give it back. Sera’s glove slid on the edge of the seal; frost scraped; leather creaked.
Alexei stepped in and took weight against the slab, shoulder to steel, jaw set. "Got you," he told the door, or her, or both.
"Weight off the line," Zubair said.
Lachlan had leaned without meaning to when the door bucked. He heard the order and sprang backward like the floor had bit him, hands up, grin gone. "Off," he said, uselessly, but he was already off.
The second anchor sang a new note—high, ugly, not failure yet. Zubair moved two steps down the wall, palmed the steel upright, felt the vibration through the heel of his hand.
Not the glass... the frame.
"Back clip?" he asked.
"In," Elias said, voice tight. His eyes were on the knot’s bite, on the angle. "But the bolt’s... it moved, I think."
"Alexei," Zubair said, "door. Elias, on the top line. Lachlan, take the slack. Sera—frame, not seal."
She shifted her grip a hand’s width, from the door edge to the fixed steel, right where he wanted her. The wind took the hint and slapped the slab again; this time the force went into Alexei’s shoulder and the wall instead of into her hands. The glass chattered. The rattle hit a frequency he disliked.
"Anchor one," Zubair said, already crouching at the first bolt. He set his palm flat. Heat leaked in a thin breath through glove and into metal. Not enough to melt anything. Enough to make the steel talk to his bones. The threads were fine. The plate had flexed in its seat.
"Plate shifted a hair," he said. "It holds. We stop making it regret choices."
"Copy," Elias said. He took a half step to change the rope angle. The line’s hum dropped a pitch.
Lachlan fed slack like a magician throwing scarves, fast and smooth. "Talk to me, boss."
"Less," Zubair said. "Not loose. I said less."
"Less," Lachlan repeated, grin creeping back, and paid out exactly two fingers more.
Alexei gave the door a shove of his own, time with the wind’s pull, then muscled it back an inch. It felt like pushing a car uphill in neutral. "This building is stubborn," he said, pleased.
"Good," Zubair said. "Be stubborn with it."
He slid to anchor two. Same palm, same heat. The bolt here hadn’t shifted. The carabiner had slammed and bounced on the first gust and not seated. Elias’s fix held. He pressed harder, listened. Clean.
"Elias," he said, "count me the cyclic on the gusts."
Elias lifted his head, eyes narrowing, not at the glass but at the movement of frost along the edges of the pane. "Six seconds average," he said after a breath. "Seven. Back to five. Call it six."
"On the six we shut," Zubair said. "Alexei, take it live. Sera, your right hand. Lachlan, when I say pull, you pull. Not before."
"Track," Lachlan said.
"Tracking," Elias said.
"Da," Alexei said, baring his teeth at the door like it could know the shape of his mouth.
Zubair watched the frost lift and lay with the gusts, counted in his head with Elias’s cadence, felt the line’s hum settle into a pattern under his palm. Six. Six. Six.
"Now," he said.
Alexei shoved as the wind fell away. Sera’s right hand shifted and pushed where he’d told her. Lachlan drew slack fast and then locked his forearms, thighs braced. Zubair put his shoulder into the frame and dragged it across that last inch of stubborn.
The latch kissed.
The seal took.
The line went from a wire-twang to a low, steady pressure.
"Again," the building seemed to say, and sent a gust late. The door tried to leap and couldn’t. It shook instead and chattered out its frustration.
Everyone breathed out at once and pretended they hadn’t been holding.
"Anchor one?" Zubair asked.
Elias kept his glove on the gate. "Seated."
"Anchor two?"
"Clean."
"Your fingers?" Alexei asked over his shoulder to Sera, voice bright without being soft.
She flexed. Leather cracked a little where frost had eaten the seams. "Fine," she said.
Lachlan blew out his cheeks, then laughed, the sound pinging around the glass like a toy he’d bounced too hard. "That was not nothing."
"Not nothing," Zubair agreed. He didn’t smile. "Reset."
They took their positions down a notch from panic to ready. Zubair kept his palm on the frame and the other hand on the line until his bones stopped remembering the vibration as threat and started cataloging it as information.
"Zubair," Elias said, not looking at him but at the wall by the first bolt. "Do you hear that?"
At first he heard only the bridge: wind, glass, the light fixture keeping terrible time. Then, through the steel, a low sound rolled up from somewhere that wasn’t the air.
It wasn’t the familiar crack-bang of ice settling. Deeper. Slower. A push through a big body of something.
The plate under his hand ticked once, a tiny jump against flesh. The bolt didn’t move. The sound came again—far, like a truck two streets over in another city, except there were no streets anymore and no trucks.
He didn’t like the way it came through the metal more than through the air.
"Below," he said.
"Water?" Elias asked.
"Yes," Zubair said. He didn’t add more. They all knew what that meant without him making it a speech.