Chapter 5 - The Trap in the Sky
Ten minutes before the power failure, Celeste had stepped out of her private office for a brief moment to grab a bottle of water from the executive kitchenette down the hall.
“Stay right here, Emma,” Celeste had said, kissing her daughter’s forehead. “I’ll be right back. Don't open the door for anyone.”
Moments later, the lights flickered and the building shuddered violently.
Hearing the muffled explosion from the lower levels, Emma panicked. The howling wind outside sounded like a monster scratching at the glass. Driven by a primal urge to escape the terrifying expanse of the forty-eighth floor, the eight-year-old girl grabbed her blue rabbit, slipped out of the office, and ran toward the elevators, hoping to find her mother or a way down.
She pressed the down button frantically.
To her surprise, the doors of Elevator Car 7 slid open immediately—before the master safety protocols could register the impending power surge. The car was empty and dark, lit only by a faint emergency floor strip.
Thinking it was her way out, Emma stepped inside.
The moment her foot crossed the threshold, the massive transformer blew in the basement.
The entire tower plunged into darkness.
With a grinding shriek of tortured steel and an ear-splitting pop, the elevator car lurched violently upward, caught in a surge of erratic backup current, before the emergency magnetic brakes slammed shut with bone-jarring force.
Emma screamed—a sharp, piercing cry of pure terror that was instantly swallowed by the roar of the wind outside.
The car shuddered and hung suspended in the pitch-black hoistway, forty-seven stories above the street.
The doors were locked tight, fused shut by the automated safety deadbolts. The emergency intercom panel sputtered a stream of useless static.
Inside the car, Emma curled into a tight ball on the metal floor, sobbing uncontrollably, clutching her blue rabbit so hard her knuckles turned white.
“Mommy!” she choked out, her voice barely a whisper against the deafening roar of the gale. “Mommy, help me!”
Up on the forty-eighth floor, Celeste returned to her office to find it empty.
Her heart stopped.
“Emma?” she called out, her voice echoing in the dark, cavernous suite. “Emma!”
She ran to the hallway, scanning the dim, red-lit corridor. She sprinted toward the elevator bank and saw the open doors of Car 7. Peering into the dark, empty shaft, she saw the top of the elevator car wedged a dozen feet below.
“EMMA!” Celeste screamed, her voice cracking with a primal, motherly agony that shattered her billionaire composure entirely. She dropped to her knees at the edge of the open shaft, reaching down into the void. “Emma, can you hear me? Baby, answer me!”
From deep within the black metal box below, a faint, muffled sob drifted up.
“Mommy… I’m scared… It’s dark…”
“Emma! Hold on! Don't move! I’m getting help!” Celeste scrambled back from the ledge, her hands shaking uncontrollably as she pulled out her phone.
No signal. The storm had knocked out the internal microcell towers. The landlines were dead. The intercom was unresponsive.
She was trapped on the forty-eighth floor with a dying phone, and her little girl was hanging suspended in a dark, unstable metal cage high above the city.
In a frenzy of desperation, Celeste remembered the business card in her pocket. She pulled it out, her fingers trembling so badly she nearly dropped it, and dialed the personal cell number of the only man in this fifty-story monolith who had ever made her daughter speak.
Down in the basement locker room, Andrew Cole’s phone vibrated violently against the wooden bench.
He pulled it out of his pocket and stared at the screen.
Celeste Kane.
May you like
He answered instantly.
“Cole,” Celeste’s voice was a ragged, terrified shriek. “You have to help me. Emma is trapped in the elevator shaft between forty-six and forty-seven. The power is dead, the building is locked down, and Vance is trapped in the security room. She’s alone, she’s terrified, and I can't reach her. Please… please, God, help my daughter.”
