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As he opened the door, the first spooktoward us, as though he had seen ghosts

He took a couple steps in our direction but then halted, uns

He shouted His words weren’t clear, but he wasn’t suggesting a tour and compli to us but to the pair of phantas toward the turn in the corridor They spun around and gaped at us as though they were stunned sailors gazing at the ghost ship Marie Celeste gliding silently past in a light fog

We had spooked them as much as they had spooked us

The one in the suit evidently wasn’t merely a well-tailored scientist or a project bureaucrat, and certainly not a Jehovah’s Witness pushing Watchtower un frohosts couldn’t hurt us unless we gave the them with our fear--and then I wondered if this rule applied to haunts packing heat I wished that I could remember the name of the comic book in which I’d chanced upon this wisdom, because if the inforht be true, but if it was from an issue of Donald Duck adventures, then I was screwed

Instead of opening fire on us, the armed apparition pushed past his two phantoh the door that the one in jeans had opened

He was probably running for a telephone, to call security We were about to be crunched, swept up, bagged, and put out for garbage collection

Around us, the corridor rippled, and things changed

The white cera on bare concrete, although I felt nothingthe hall, patches of tile re into the concrete, as though these idely scattered puddles of time past that hadn’t yet evaporated fro the inner wall of the corridor no longer had doors

Shadoaran to disappear froular pattern, a few fixtures re widely separated sections of the corridor

I took off rease-pencil scheduling chart dissolved froed

One of the wheeled carts faded away before h a few of the odd instruhost in blue jeans and the ghost in a lab coat really looked like spirits now, ealed out of a white an to run, perhaps because ere fading fro froround between us before they vanished

The suit with the gun returned to the hallway fros in ju cats, but he was now the weakest of revenants, a shi wraith As he raised his weapon, he departed ti electronic noise was less than half as loud as it had been at full power, but like soether

None of us was relieved by this reprieve Instead, as the past receded into the past where it belonged, ere seized by a greater urgency

Mr Mungojerrie was dead right: This place was coathering power, feeding on itself, extending beyond the egg roohout the structure The ultimate effect was unknowable but sure to be catastrophic

I could hear a clock ticking This wasn’t the timepiece in Captain Hook’s omnivorous crocodile, either, but the reliable clock of instinct telling me that ere on a short countdown to destruction

With the ghosts gone, the cat sprang into action, padding to the nearby elevator shaft

"Down," Roosevelt translated "Mungojerrie says we have to go farther down"

"There’s nothing below this floor," I said, as we all gathered at the elevator "We’re on the lowest level"

The cat fixed its lureen eyes on me, and Roosevelt said, "No, there’re three levels beneath this one They required an even higher security clearance than these floors, so they were concealed"

During ht to look into the shaft to see if it served hidden realms that couldn’t be accessed by the stairs

Roosevelt said, "The lower levels can be approached…froh a tunnel Or by this elevator The steps don’t go down as far"

This development posed a problem, because the elevator shaft wasn’t eo where Mungojerrie directed Like the scattered floor tiles, like the few re fluorescent panels, and like the softer but still o, the past maintained tenacious control of the elevator A pair of stainless-steel sliding doors covered the shaft, and most likely a cab waited beyond the around here," Bobby predicted, reaching out to press the elevator call button

"Wait!" I cautioned, stopping his hand before he could do the deed

Doogie said, "Bobster’s right, Chris Sometimes fortune favors the foolhardy"

I shook et in the elevator, and when the doors close, the da just totally vanishes under us like the floor tiles did?"

"Then we fall to the bottouessed, but that prospect didn’t seeht break our ankles," Doogie predicted "Not all of us, necessarily It’s probably only about forty feet or so, a mean drop but survivable"

Bobby, a Road Runner cartoon freak, said, "Bro, we could have ourselves a full-on Wile E Coyote ojerrie scratched impatiently at the stainless-steel doors, which remained stubbornly solid

Bobby pressed the call button

The elevator whined toward us With the oscillating electronic hu, I couldn’t deter

The corridor rippled

The floor tiles began to reappear under my feet

The elevator doors slowly, slowly slid open

Fluorescent panels reappeared on the corridor ceiling, and I narrowed ht, which probably meant the interior of the shaft occupied a different point in time froers, a lot of the the crowd in the elevator to give us trouble

In the corridor, the throbbing sound grew louder

I could discern several blurry, distorted, ures inside the cab, but I couldn’t see who or what they were

A gunshot cracked, then another

We were under fire not from the elevator but from the end of the corridor where, earlier, the sonofabitch in the suit had dran on us with a handgun

Bobby took a bullet Soun flying out of his hands He was still dropping as if in slow motion when I realized that hot blood had sprayedtoward the source of the gunfire, I discharged un and iuy in the dark suit, there were two guards we had never seen before Unifornized Project cops Mystery Train security Too far away to be anything other than annoyed by un fire

Another piece of the past had solidified around us, and Doogie triggered the Uzi as Bobby hit the floor and bounced The machine pistol settled the dispute totally and abruptly

Sickened, I looked away frouards

The elevator doors had closed before anyone stepped out of the crowded cab

The gunfire was sure to draw more security

Bobby lay on his back Blood was spattered on the white ceramic tile around him Too much blood

Sasha stooped at his left side I knelt at his right