Emily Fields lowered her phone. The message from A didn't really matter. Any clue it might contain would be couched in deceit, and giving it any thought would just waste time the girls didn't have. The steel door in front of her looked half a foot thick but the sounds coming from behind it were perfectly clear. She didn't like what she was hearing but there was no choice but to go through it. Somewhere the other girls were opening a door to their own private hells.
The door led out to a factory floor, long but narrow. Machine after daunting machine gnashed away in a roar of metal hitting metal. That heavy steel door was in reality an access hatch, meant only to be used for maintenance when the machines were shut down. With them operating as they were, crossing this way meant sure death. A person would have to weave through each machine with perfect timing or be crushed, torn apart, or worse. One misstep and she would be turned into so much Emily flavored applesauce.
The first machine in the sequence was a series of wide, heavy pistons. The work crew that used this machine during the day called them simply "smashers", though their true name was much more technical. Now Emily stood only feet away from the smashers, and sweat began to bead up on the back of her neck. The pistons rose and smashed and rose and smashed.
No. No, I can't do this. Nobody could do this!
She wondered if this was A's final play. They had been put in bad spots before but this was
(I'm never going to see them again)
impossible. Was today the day they would all die?
Panic swept through, paralyzing her. She felt pressure around her chest and realized her own arms were wrapped in a tight vice. She didn't have to go through the machines, not really. She could stand safely where she was forever, but Hanna, and Spencer, and Aria? How much time did they have left, and were they standing stuck like this, or were they moving through their own torture chambers—striving—risking their lives?
She watched the first smasher come together again and again. One from above and one from below, meeting in the middle. She could feel its power even from this far away. Her mind flashed an image of her trying to jump through and not making it. How quickly her rib cage would be crushed, how completely her skull would be pulverized. Death would be instantaneous. This would be the only relief.
Time was ticking away. It was now or never.
Her arms loosened their grip. She could breathe.
Her hair would be a liability as it was, that needed to be fixed. She took the hair band from her wrist, and after a few twists it was up in a tight bun.
Swaying turned to bouncing from leg to leg as she watched the smasher come together and pull apart. Slowly the panic began to melt away. She warmed up her body this way before swim competitions too. It focused her.
The smasher was relentless.
Crash . . . crash . . . crash . . . crash . . .
Emily bounced and focused.
Crash . . . crash . . . crash . . .
Emily examined and studied
Crash . . . crash . . . crash . . .
Emily let her body take over.
What she referred to as her athletic mind kicked in totally and completely as it did during every race. It was like a jet pilot's visor coming down and locking into place. The athletic mind was in tune with every muscle in her body. She didn't quite know how it worked, but she didn't need to know. What it meant was she was ready for action.
She darted out in a blur of motion. The muscles in her legs stood out like ropes, their own kind of pistons. Her feet struck the ground in sync with the crashing of the smasher.
Crashstep . . . crashstep . . . crashstep . . .
And then she was in the air turning and rolling. Trying to make the jump like a dive, head-to-foot wouldn't have worked. The rhythm of the smasher was too quick. Her body knew this, and though she had never attempted anything like this before she had rolled through the smasher and out the other side with milliseconds and inches to spare. Milliseconds and inches, that's all any race came down to.
The second smasher was different, a single piston that shot from the ground up and impacted a flat stable surface. She studied this one for not long at all. Emily was up and riding the piston into the air without a thought.
Then she saw it.
Up and above the machines was a framework that she hadn't noticed before. A runner of steel beams that followed the ceiling and was outside the reach of the machines entirely. If she could get up there somehow she could run along the beams and be out of the room in seconds and without danger.
She rose higher and higher on the piston. There was no need to time it. Her body and athletic mind handled all of that. Moments before she would have been crushed she bent and leaped up and out. The apex of the pistons movement launched her farther than would have otherwise been possible.
She flew through the air up and out.
The steel beam was high and there would be only one chance, not grabbing it would be just as deadly as being caught in the smasher.
She stretched herself to her limits, up and out.
And then her arms were around the beam and she was hugging it for dear life. A second later her feet were around it too.
Emily lifted herself right side up onto the beam. It was wide enough for her to roll onto her back.
She wanted to rest for a while.
No. There's no time for that.
She needed to find the others, and if she rested the adrenaline boiling in her blood would cool. And she was going to need the power that it gave her in order to find A and take her down. A, Black Veil, and anyone else who tried to hurt her and her friends.
She got up and got moving.