Uriah and I jog to catch up to the members, along with the other initiates, who barely look in my
direction.
I look around as I walk. The Hub is behind us, black against the clouds, but the buildings around me
are dark and silent. That means we must be north of the bridge, where the city is abandoned.
We turn a corner and spread out as we walk down Michigan Avenue. South of the bridge, Michigan
Avenue is a busy street, crawling with people, but here it is bare.
As soon as I lift my eyes to scan the buildings, I know where we’re going: the empty Hancock
building, a black pillar with crisscrossed girders, the tallest building north of the bridge.
But what are we going to do? Climb it?
As we get closer, the members start to run, and Uriah and I sprint to catch them. Jostling one
another with their elbows, they push through a set of doors at the building’s base. The glass in one of
them is broken, so it is just a frame. I step through it instead of opening it and follow the members
through an eerie, dark entryway, crunching broken glass beneath my feet.
I expect us to go up the stairs, but we stop at the elevator bank.
“Do the elevators work?” I ask Uriah, as quietly as I can.
“Sure they do,” says Zeke, rolling his eyes. “You think I’m stupid enough not to come here early
and turn on the emergency generator?”
“Yeah,” says Uriah. “I kinda do.”
Zeke glares at his brother, then puts him in a headlock and rubs his knuckles into Uriah’s skull.
Zeke may be smaller than Uriah, but he must be stronger. Or at least faster. Uriah smacks him in the
side, and he lets go.
I grin at the sight of Uriah’s disheveled hair, and the elevator doors open. We pile in, members in
one and initiates in the other. A girl with a shaved head stomps on my toes on the way in and doesn’t
apologize. I grab my foot, wincing, and consider kicking her in the shins. Uriah stares at his reflection
in the elevator doors and pats his hair down.
“What floor?” the girl with the shaved head says.
“One hundred,” I say.
“How would
you know that?”
“Lynn, come on,” says Uriah. “Be nice.”
“We’re in a one-hundred-story abandoned building with some Dauntless,” I retort. “Why don’t
you
know that?”
She doesn’t respond. She just jams her thumb into the right button.
The elevator zooms upward so fast my stomach sinks and my ears pop. I grab a railing at the side of
the elevator, watching the numbers climb. We pass twenty, and thirty, and Uriah’s hair is finally
smooth. Fifty, sixty, and my toes are done throbbing. Ninety-eight, ninety-nine, and the elevator
comes to a stop at one hundred. I’m glad we didn’t take the stairs.
“I wonder how we’ll get to the roof from…” Uriah’s voice trails off.
A strong wind hits me, pushing my hair across my face. There is a gaping hole in the ceiling of the
hundredth floor. Zeke props an aluminum ladder against its edge and starts to climb. The ladder creaks
and sways beneath his feet, but he keeps climbing, whistling as he does. When he reaches the roof, he
turns around and holds the top of the ladder for the next person.
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