Transparency by Charles Royce (children's books read aloud txt) 📕

hearing the alarm. People are still dancing and drinking.

“Stop!” Josh runs to the back of the atrium. “Stop the music. There’s a fire, please use the perimeter of the—”

“What?”

“Where do we go?”

“Where’s the fire?”

The voices circle around him. “Please proceed to that exit sign in the corner, please, hurry. Please don’t panic.”

He continues to usher people to follow the ones heading to the door. He finally makes it to the band. “Stop! Please! There’s a fire!”

The band stops. The people who are still dancing finally stop and look around, trying to make sense of the confusion.

“Fire!” Josh yells. “Everyone out now! Please! Let’s hurry along!” He pushes a small crowd further out of the center of the atrium.

He looks through the atrium ceiling at the giant logo hanging high above them.

SHAWN PULLS MRS. Maddox out of the stairwell onto the roof deck. Her husband comes up behind her, along with Pamela and the two bodyguards.

“I say we wait here until maintenance comes, just to be safe.” Shawn leans over the railing, looks at the sign. “It’s dropped a little bit more.”

“We can take the stairs,” Pamela says.

“You go on, dear,” Mrs. Maddox says. “I can’t do the stairs.”

“I’m not going to leave you and the vice president,” Pamela replies.

The bolt nearest Shawn gives way. The sign slightly drops and bangs up against the building. The railing shakes. The large metal logo is now hanging from one bolt.

“This thing is coming down,” Shawn says.

HOLDING JAMES WEST’S cuffed wrists with both her hands, Agent Pillsbury looks up out of the North Tower elevator. She sees movement to her left at the top of the Center Tower. The Élan logo is now dangling by one end, flickering as if it’s dying.

“Dear God.”

The sign falls, hitting the center elevator, sending sparks flying into the night sky. It bounces slightly, taking out its sister elevator to the right. The second bounce changes its trajectory, the sign falling downward toward the atrium.

STILL HERDING GUESTS toward the exit, Josh looks up. He sees the sign careening toward them from above. He falls forward to duck for cover, taking four guests with him on the way down. He lands on top of them as the crashing blow of metal and glass shatter down on the crowd. A deafening boom fills the room as glass continues to fall, the clinking and clanging echoing through the otherwise silence.

Josh hears only a ringing in his ears, followed by the moans of people beside him, the screams of people running past him. He opens his eyes. The scene before him is blurred, almost tunnel-like. Scattered around are several motionless bodies. As his eyes begin to focus, he sees Miss Harriet with her cane, trying to distance herself from the rubble beside her.

Josh jolts up, shuffling his feet between the people moving on the ground beneath him. He turns. Just ten yards away from him is the building’s gigantic logo, wrapped in the metal remains of the atrium, sparks flying from chandeliers half ripped from the ceiling. From Josh’s vantage point, the entirety of the metal structure is cockeyed, upside down, the “E” of Élan embedded about a quarter into the subfloor in a pool of surrounding concrete splitting before his eyes.

“The subfloor.”

Josh helps the people around him stand, then helps Miss Harriet up on her cane. He rushes her to the exit, then runs down the hallway to the control room.

JOSH OPENS THE doors to the control room, looks at the giant wall of screens. Some of the monitors are dead. The others are glitchy but filled with movement—people with red-hot thermal imaging running through the lobby, James West breaking free from Agent Pillsbury, Chris Dixon ushering a woman and her daughter down the sky bridge, Shawn and Pamela on the roof deck consoling Mrs. Maddox.

Tracy is on the phone, talking loudly. “Get them out now! I mean it!”

Tracy hangs up the phone, she can barely breathe. She looks at Josh. “The subfloor, Josh. The security guards were crushed. I can’t see the black box anymore through the rubble. ArchEngine says there’s a gas leak in the South Tower.”

Josh glances at the monitor, focusing on Sublevel One. He sees nothing but dust and what looks like a leaning pillar. “We have to get everyone out of the building now.”

“I just got off the phone with the hotel.” Tracy’s eyes are shifting back and forth. She’s using her fingers to count. “Hotel is evacuating. Mall security is getting everyone out and down the sky bridges to the North and South Tower elevators. Jamal is ushering people out of the lobby. I’ve got people running through the halls of the condos. I’ve called 9-1-1, the fire department is on the way. Can you think of anything else?”

Josh looks up at the roof deck. “Shawn.”

“Channel four,” Tracy says.

Josh turns to the channel. “Shawn. You have to get down from there. This whole building could blow any minute.”

“Blow?”

“Just get down from there! Use the stairs!”

“We can’t! The vice president’s wife can’t make it.”

“What about the bodyguards? Tell them to carry her!”

“She won’t do it!”

In another monitor, Josh sees a news helicopter off the Hudson River. “Hold tight, Shawn. I’ve got an idea.”

“Calling the news station now,” Tracy says. “Not sure if their helicopter has permission to land on a city building.”

“They do tonight.”

“How can I help?” Agent Pillsbury walks in. “I lost West.”

“We have bigger things to worry about.” Josh grabs the phone from Tracy. “Hello? Yes, we have a situation on that roof deck you’re filming. Yes, you’re filming the Élan International grand opening from your helicopter. Those people up there on the roof need to be evacuated now! There’s an emergency in the building. What? I don’t care! Those people on the roof deck include a former vice president and his wife. Yes, Roger Maddox. Hurry!”

Josh hangs up the phone, presses his ear. “Shawn. We have a helicopter coming in a few minutes.”

“In this wind?”

“Unless you have a better idea.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Shawn