Jefe winked broadly at him, grabbed his belt and, before Snow could react, he leapt for a nearby chain, Snow hanging from his left hand. There was a split-second when he thought Jefe had lied and the joke was on him, but he felt a severe jolt that stopped his fall, the belt buckle digging into his gut with such force, he couldn’t breathe. Once he recovered he saw that they were descending at a rapid clip, the floor growing larger and larger. This time he didn’t shut his eyes – he yearned for the floor, he wanted the floor above all things, he willed it to rise to meet him, and when Jefe deposited him on the concrete, when the rough surface abraded his cheek, he almost wept with relief and lay there soaking up its beautiful wideness and firmness. He remembered Yara and looked for her. Spied her thirty feet above on a ledge, on the wall that portrayed clouds at dusk. She stared at him – he couldn’t make out her expression, but a bolt of terror shot through him, as if she had beamed it into his heart. Jefe flew in swoops and ascensions high above, sticking close to the wall, and then went higher yet, out into the center of the shaft. Something was different about his flying. It was less dervish, less spectacular than earlier, having a languorous air that reminded Snow of a trapeze artist doing lazy somersaults, relaxing, gathering momentum for his next show-stopping trick. Panicked, realizing what that trick must be, he sprinted to the panel and started to enter the code, but blanked on it. Her birthday. Seven . . . seven something, he thought. Fuck! He racked his brain. Seven thirteen ninety-one. He put in the numbers and his forefinger hovered over the keypad as he tried to locate Jefe among the chains. Spotted him descending from the heights, from the wall across from Yara, tumbling and twisting, a mad Olympic diver committed to a suicidal plunge, already halfway to her, more than halfway . . . Snow jabbed the Enter key, knowing he was too late.
Had he thrown in one less tumble, one less frill or flourish, Jefe might have saved himself. As it was, his momentum almost carried him out of danger. The grinding noise stopped abruptly and his graceful run became floundering and disjointed high above the concrete floor. His fall lasted two or three seconds, no more, but the replay, when Snow summoned it, took much longer to unwind. Jefe flung out a hand, snatching at a chain still attached to the ceiling, his fingertips grazing the links, and he went down without kicking or flailing his arms, his body describing a simple half-roll onto its side. He gave no outcry and impacted with a sickening crack, a leg touching first, as if he had made an effort at the end to land on his feet. He sagged onto his back so that, if he were still aware, he would have seen the chains collapsing, appearing as they descended to coalesce into a cloud of silvery serpents with long, lashing tails, their lengths all entangled. They smashed into the concrete with a clashing sound, dozens of them striking out in every direction as they hit, one leaping straight at Snow, cobra-quick, missing him by inches. Then it was quiet. An ominous quiet despite the happy result it represented. The lair had been made over into a piece of Gothic art, a stage set for the final scene in a surrealist play, a grim medieval fable whose ending was open to interpretation. A considerable fringe of chains remained connected to the ceiling, curtaining the huge photomurals, and a pall of concrete dust was suspended throughout the lower third of the shaft, a lunar fog partially obscuring the mountainous heap of chains that lay dead center of the floor, like a burial mound intended to confine some immortal monster.
Yara called out to Snow, telling him to bring the machete, and he shouted, ‘Not until you’re down!’
‘The machete!’
Stubbornly, Snow asked what he should do to help her down. She stood pressed flat to the wall on the narrow ledge, arms outspread for balance. He knew she must be afraid to do so much as nod for fear of toppling off the ledge, yet she briefly lifted a hand to point at the mound of chains. He saw nothing and said, ‘What are you pointing at?’
‘He’s alive! Look at the chains!’
‘Where? I don’t see anything!’
‘The pile of chains! The section nearest me! Just look!’
He could detect nothing, no trace of blood, no sign of a living presence, but came forward, stepping over outlying snarls of chain shaped like the ridged and twisted roots of a metal tree, like crocodile tails, like the spines of antediluvian creatures whose heads were buried beneath the spill of silver links. The mound was three times higher than his head and shed a cold radiance. He began to circumnavigate it, pacing slowly, warily, alert for movement, yet seeing none.
