The seventeen-story gamble is this:
I am on the top of a 43-story building. Men swarm into the ground floor.
They are coming for me.
My initial instinct is to somehow bar the broken doorway to the roof, but the men would overpower me and whatever haphazard barrier I could create. The next best option is to hide- not on the roof, where there is nothing but dust and bricks, and not on the top floor, where they are sure to check first. Which floor, then?
The nearer my hiding place is to the ground, the more likely I can sneak out during a more thorough search. The further down I run, the more chance I have of meeting them headlong. I settle on the 26th floor, seventeen stories down. It’s less than halfway, and ascending will be slower. I will have time to hide.
The stairs fly by and I fall several times, blinded by cobwebs and slipping in the dust. I burst into the empty office space of the 26th floor and flee down a likely hall toward a trickle of daylight. A building moves outside the windows, the lower strangers returning to their work. Cement and steel blot out the light like some industrial eclipse. The floor shakes like it has seen the end of the world.
A row of lockers stands uninstalled in the men’s bathroom. I shove my pack into one and press myself into another, falling back into it with ease, a crumple of cloth and bones.
I wait.
When the strangers find me (and they do) they spy the shadow first. It lies in front of the locker, the absurd silhouette of a man in a tight place.
-traveler
