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store rooms. No way out.
    Whoosh.
    The door from the hall opened behind me and the spear guys stepped in, crouching low, with crossbow guys behind them, aiming over their heads. I ran for the far door, expecting to be a pin cushion at any second.
    “Archers! Bring her—!”
    “Wait! Don’t kill her!”
    I don’t know who said it, but I was on their side. I felt exactly the same way.
    “Wound her only! She is to be taken alive!”
    Okay, so not exactly the same.
    I slammed through the door as crossbow bolts zipped past my ankles and skipped off the floor. A blast of cold air hit me like a frozen fist, and the air-conditioning noise went from distant vacuum cleaner to in-your-face jet engine.
    I squinted my eyes against the wind and ran out onto a metal catwalk that hung in the middle of a huge dark open space which went down so far I couldn’t see the bottom, and up so far I couldn’t see the top, and curved around to the left and right so far… Well, you get the idea. It was a big place, but also funny shaped. It was like a big hollow ring that encircled the water-filled atrium and the hallways around it like the space between the inside surface of a thermos and the outside, if you can picture that. And it was so loud I couldn’t hear myself think.
    The noise was coming from huge turbines which filled the ring like—okay, how am I gonna describe this? Have you ever seen the redwoods, up in Sequoia National Park? All those huge-ass trees, all standing a little bit apart from each other and going up forever before they have any branches? Well, imagine you’re halfway up one of those big bastards, with miles of trunk above you and below you, and you’ll get the general feeling, only here, the tree trunks are huge stacks of turbines, piled one on top of the other in endless columns and big around as houses, and all roaring like dragons inside heavy steel superstructures. Now imagine that, in between all the sequoias are other, thinner, trees, just as tall, but only as big around as your average grain silo, and looking like gigantic chrome Slinkies—big silver coils, dripping with condensation, that go up and down into the darkness just like the turbines. I don’t normally have much fear of heights, but all that black space below me was making me a little weak in the knees, and I felt like clinging to the railing like it was a life preserver. Seriously, the place had a sense of scale like the Grand Canyon.
    Unfortunately, the guys behind me weren’t giving me any time to pull myself together. They spilled out of the service hall like an orange and white tide and started taking more potshots at my legs. I jumped to the end of the catwalk as bolts shot past me into the void, and found a spiderweb spiral staircase twisting down out of the darkness above and screwing down into it again below. It looked about as sturdy as a tinker-toy fire escape, but I didn’t have much choice. I skimmed down the steps four at a time as I looked for a way out. It was freezing in that place and I wasn’t wearing a stitch. My goosebumps were getting goosebumps. On top of that, the roar of the turbines felt like it was shaking me apart. My teeth were rattling in my head like castanets.
    There was another catwalk a few twists down, but more guards were charging out of the service door at the end of it, so I kept going as they shouted after me.
    “She’s heading for the nineteenth floor!”
    Was I? Okay.
    The next catwalk was empty. I took it, hissing in pain as I ran across the cold grating with my ice-block feet. A bolt shot down from above and I flinched into a railing. It’s amazing how cold makes every pain worse. I felt like I’d been rung like a bell. Everything throbbed. I picked myself up, groaning, and kept going.
    The guards charged onto the catwalk behind me. I threw open the door at the end and stumbled into another service hall, moaning with relief as my frozen body hit the warmer air. This time I didn’t bother checking