Chapter 3 — The Well Next Door

Chapter 3 — The Well Next Door

01:07.

Lu Chi heard knocking.

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Three.

Pause.

Two.

Pause.

Three.

—

It came from the steel panel on his right.

Muffled. Knuckles, not fists.

Not loud.

Patient.

—

The first night he'd heard a car in the shaft and thought he imagined it.

Now he knew he hadn't.

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He didn't know whether the thing opposite was a person.

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The knocking came again.

A different rhythm: two long, one short.

Then it stopped.

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Lu Chi thought about it.

Took a wrench out of the bag and rapped twice on the wall.

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Short. Dry. Hard.

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Three taps came back instantly.

As if the other side had been holding its breath.

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He tapped twice again.

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Back came: three, pause, two.

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A monster wouldn't wait so politely.

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The knocking went on about forty minutes.

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Are you there (three). Alive (two). Safe (one). Danger (two). Wait (three fast).

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Then the other side went quiet.

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Then something went thump on the ceiling.

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He looked up.

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The inspection hatch — two feet of steel — was being pushed. A seam of light.

A hand came down.

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Gloved. White with a blue stripe.

Thumb and two fingers pinching, the rest hooked on the edge of the hatch.

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A hospital glove.

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He took the pry bar and stepped back.

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"Don't hit me."

A woman's voice from above.

Hoarse.

Like two days without water.

—

"I'm coming down first. Then you can ask."

"Explain first."

"I can't. One hand."

A pause.

"The other's on the rail. If I let go, you'll hear a thud."

—

Lu Chi looked at her a second. Put the pry bar behind his back.

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"Come down."

—

The hand withdrew. Fabric scraped.

Then somebody dropped out feet first, knees folding, and straightened.

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Thirties. Short hair. Very pale.

A dark blue surgical top under a windbreaker from somewhere.

A rope tied to the hatch frame.

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She untied it, coiled it, and looked up.

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"Han Qingwu. Emergency department."

"Car 472, next door."

"I've been listening to you for three days."

—

"Three days?"

"You made no sound the first day."

"But I heard your car in the shaft that night. Slow. Steady. Somebody in it."

—

"Second day you were knocking on things half the night. Twenty-odd times."

"That was me fixing a lock."

"I thought you were signalling."

She looked at him.

"I answered twenty-odd times. You ignored me."

—

Lu Chi was quiet a moment. "I thought next door was haunted."

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"Fine. Then we were both nearly stupid."

—

—

She put her pack down and opened it.

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Medical supplies. Syringes. Saline. Gauze. Gloves. Scissors.

And a small tin of tablets he didn't recognize.

—

"I went out on my first floor," she said.

"Empty. Nobody lived there. Food in the fridge, a full medicine cabinet."

"I took what I could carry."

—

Lu Chi looked at the tin.

"What's that."

"Antibiotics. Human ones."

She pushed it across.

"I'm not staying free. That tin's worth more than anything downstairs."

—

He didn't take it. "What do you want."

—

Han Qingwu looked at him.

"I want to know what to do."

She said it flat.

"I haven't slept a full night in three days. I know two things: the doors open, people die. The rest I've guessed."

—

—

That afternoon they laid out what they knew, item by item.

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Lu Chi went first.

The run. Ninety seconds. 23:50. Injuries leave marks.

He rolled up his trouser leg and showed her three fingerprints.

—

Han Qingwu pressed them with two fingers and looked up.

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"Pressure bruising. Very even — whoever made it wasn't fighting."

She took her hand back.

"You didn't run?"

"I ran."

"Then it's strong enough to hold a running man down and bruise him."

She let the trouser leg fall.

"That isn't a person. A human hand can't hold a running man."

—

Then she gave him hers.

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"I didn't know the doors open once a day."

When he explained the hourly three seconds, her eyes changed.

"I stood inside that door fourteen hours yesterday. I thought I'd wasted fourteen hours."

"I nearly took the door apart."

"You tried?"

"I tried. They don't move."

She raised her hand.

—

A fresh cut across the second knuckle, not scabbed.

"From the scissors."

She put her hand away.

"I stitched it myself. Four stitches."

—

Lu Chi didn't answer.

—

It occurred to him that his luck these two days had been a little better than this woman's. A little.

—

—

They put the rules in order.

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One. At 00:00 the doors open for sixty seconds.

Two. After that, on the hour, three seconds. Twenty-three more times.

Three. Doors shut means safe. Doors open means not.

Four. Stay inside and you don't die, and don't live. Nothing counted, nothing gained.

Five. Going out gets you things. Things become tallies. Tallies change the car.

—

"Five is a guess," Han Qingwu said.

"The panel says it."

"Is the panel reliable?"

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Lu Chi thought. "Don't know."

"Then we treat it as reliable until it lies to us once."

She said it like a note on a chart.

—

—

23:47.

—

Han Qingwu had retied the rope around her waist.

She was going back.

Her car had supplies, and she wasn't staking two days of food on a man she'd met two hours ago.

—

"I'll come at 23:40 tomorrow," she said.

"If I don't, assume I'm dead. Don't come looking."

"Why not."

"Because looking for somebody in a shaft kills two instead of one."

She tested the rope.

"Remember that."

—

She climbed out and pulled the cover shut.

—

—

23:50.

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The lights went out.

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Then he saw.

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Not a corridor.

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An open floor.

A high ceiling, rows of white lamps.

Under them, rows of tables.

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Things on the tables.

Water. Cans. Knives. Lighters. Rope. Clothes. Radios. Half a crate of steel pipe.

—

People sat behind the tables.

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Above the tables hung signs, white, with numbers on them.

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He saw himself between two tables with a bundle in his arms.

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Then he saw a hand close on his wrist.

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The hand was very white.

The nails clean.

On the left ring finger a gold ring, two characters cut into it.

—

The man was smiling.

He couldn't hear the voice, but he could read the mouth.

—

The man said: "This one. I'll give you ten."

—

Then he saw the knife.

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Not at his throat.

Lying on the table, point toward him.

The man's other hand was pushing it across.

Slowly.

With enormous courtesy.

—

The run cut out there.

—

—

He knelt on the car floor.

Blood from his nose fell on the three fingerprints from the first night.

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He touched his wrist.

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A red band, going purple.

Not fingerprints.

A grab mark. Five fingers, even pressure.

—

He went through it, item by item.

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A market.

Tables. White lamps. Numbered signs. People doing business with people.

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No water. No monsters. None of that smell.

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The only danger there was another hand.

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A man in a gold ring, smiling, saying I'll give you ten, pushing a knife across.

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He wiped the blood off his face, pulled the axe from his waist, and laid it across his knees.

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The clock read 23:58.

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He spoke to the doors, quietly.

The way a man confirms it.

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"Market floor tomorrow."

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He closed his hand around the haft.

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"I'm not losing anything."