“Why are there so many here this late?” I wonder aloud. Luke doesn’t reply because he doesn’t know the answer any better than I do.
Handing me the two coils of rope from over his shoulders, Luke lets me start tying the harness knots while he aims his weapon down the hallway. There’s a silencer on the end of his long, sleek Glock, and his stance is relaxed as I fumble my way nervously through the knots.
I loop the ends around Luke’s legs and hips, making sure the knots will tighten under pressure and allow him movement. I do the same for myself and then take the hammer and pins.
“Take it easy, we’re not in a rush.”
Amazingly, he doesn’t sound sarcastic. The calm in his voice eases something inside me and I hammer the first pin into the metal grooves inside the shaft.
“It’s not every day you have to make harnesses out of ropes.”
“You’re doing great.”
That’s when we both hear voices. I freeze, nearly dropping the hammer down the shaft. Luke keeps his gun aimed and, as two men round the corner, he takes out the first and then the second with two perfect shots to the head. They drop like lead weights.
My body goes numb.
“Keep going,” Luke says, but I’m staring at the two dead men. “Josi.”
I blink, dazed. Find his face.
“Long, deep breath.”
He breathes in deeply, and I copy him, though I don’t think breathing will do me any good at this point. There are pins and needles in my fingers and toes. “Okay, now turn around and keep attaching the harnesses. Now.”
I turn with a jerking motion and wedge the second pin behind the steel brackets.
That’s when the elevator starts moving up. “Shit. It’s coming.”
Luke motions for me to get out of the way. “Stay flat.” I hold myself against the wall, not wanting to see any more shootings. My bottom jaw is trembling in this really weird way that’s making my teeth chatter.
The elevator stops at our level. Fuck. Of course it does.
It pings and the doors slide open.
One, two, three shots from Luke’s gun. A single yelp and then the heavy slump of bodies.
I squeeze my eyes shut as Luke climbs into the lift and uses one of the dead people to set the scanners to ascend.
“Wait,” I say. “Why are we doing all this shit with the ridiculously dangerous homemade harnesses when we could just ride the lift down to the bottom?”
“It could stop at any of the other levels on the way.”
“So? You’re happy to shoot everyone anyway.”
He looks at me, his eyes abruptly vacant. “I’d rather not shoot anyone, if it can be avoided,” he says in this flat voice.
I swallow, feeling nauseous. “So why don’t we climb on top of the carriage and ride it down?”
“And if someone presses for it to go up? We’d be crushed.”
“I don’t know if this will hold us,” I try desperately. “I haven’t tested the texture of the rope against the pins or what our weight and the movement of our descent will do to it – things have variables, Luke – anything might cause it to destabilize – ”
“So we’ll close our eyes and hope for the best.”
With the lift set, he climbs out and we watch the doors slide shut and then disappear upwards.
“Someone’s going to see all these dead bodies,” I say through gritted teeth as I loop his rope through the pin and synch it with a hang knot.
“Yes. But hopefully not before we gas them.”
“You hold this one,” I tell him, passing him the rope. “You let the tension go like this when you want to descend. You grip it to stop.”
He nods, taking the rope. I turn to attach mine.
“We just murdered five people,” I say numbly.
“This is an op, which makes that collateral, and we didn’t do anything – I did it.”
“It’s murder.”
We pull our backpacks on, check our weapons, check the ropes again and then we walk backward over the edge of the shaft. There’s sweat trickling down my neck. If this fails, it will be entirely my fault.
We’re both wearing gloves, but as we hold and release the tension I can feel the burn of it all the way through the material. The first moment of weightlessness causes my stomach to bottom out and I nearly pee myself with fear. But after the second release, and the third and the fourth, I’m starting to feel that weightlessness move inside me – it’s as though the fear is untethered and lifts free.
We have to make sure we don’t swing too wildly, but keep the rope in the one spot, which is harder for me as I don’t have as much weight to keep it steady as Luke does. It’s all hard, actually – a lot harder than it seems when you read about it in a book. My hands and shoulders are starting to really ache, and the rope is cutting into the flesh of my thighs painfully.
“Ah shit,” I gasp as my fingernail catches and rips off inside my glove. I scrabble to catch the rope but am flailing badly.
Luke reaches over and grabs my tension rope before I fall too far. I close my eyes and breathe through the pain before nodding for him to let go.
Above us something creaks and rumbles. We look up to see the elevator returning down the shaft.
I make a weird, strangled sound just as Luke shouts, “Go!”
We abseil as fast as we can – so fast we’re almost free falling. I can feel my rope working against the pin and know it’s about to come loose. I’m more concerned, however, about the elevator reaching where the ropes are connected, because as soon as that happens the pulley will unravel and we’ll be done for.
You just have to get as close to the bottom as possible before that happens, I tell myself. Minimize how far you fall.
My hands are burning terribly and we’re flying toward the ground, closer and closer to the bottom with every second –
The elevator hits the pins, knocking them free and all the tension goes out of the ropes –
I look once at Luke in the dark, our eyes meet, and –
We fall.
About Melancholy: Episode 2
The creature in that cage is an animal or a monster, or something in between. And when I look at him a reflection all too familiar stares back.
Josephine wakes early one misty morning to stumble upon a body, brutally murdered. She’s seen too many bodies like this before; she knows this kind of violence. She also knows, with perfect clarity, that the two newest members of the resistance will be the prime suspects.
How far will she go to protect Luke from the monster awakening inside him? And how long can any of them survive, trapped within the walls with a murderer?
For more information, please visit momentumbooks.com.au/books/melancholy-episode-2/.
About Charlotte McConaghy
Charlotte has been writing from a young age, and has written several novels in both the science fiction and fantasy genres, published internationally by Random House and Pan Macmillan.
These include Fury, Book One of The Cure series and Avery, Book One of The Chronicles of Kaya.
She studied a Masters of Screenwriting at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, and is the author of the Australian Writer's Guild award-winning screenplay Fury – adapted from her novel of the same name.
She now lives in London, writing novels and working on both film and television projects, as well as the upcoming graphic novel Skin.
Also by Charlotte McConaghy
Fury: Book One of The Cure
First published by Momentum in 2015
This edition published in 2015 by Momentum
Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
1 Market Street, Sydney 2000
Copyright © Charlotte McConaghy 2015
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, A
mazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.
A CIP record for this book is available at the National Library of Australia
Melancholy: Episode 1
EPUB format: 9781760082598
Mobi format: 9781760082604
Cover design by Matt O’Keefe
Edited by Jo Lyons
Proofread by Tara Goedjen
Macmillan Digital Australia: www.macmillandigital.com.au
To report a typographical error, please visit momentumbooks.com.au/contact/
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Charlotte McConaghy, Melancholy: Episode 1
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