The penitents closed the door over her. Bracing her arms, Amy tried to get leverage and push against the lowering wood, but she was fighting gravity. There were too many of them, they were too heavy, and they were pushing down too hard. She managed to stiff-arm the door, holding it up as if bench-pressing it, but she started to feel her elbows bending in the wrong direction, ready to snap. The penitents showed no sign of relenting, so she relaxed her arms and the lid slammed down, a concussive blast of air striking her across the face.

Amy heard something slamming into the surface over and over: BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! In the tight space, each blow was like a gunshot at point-blank range. It was the sound of nails being driven into her coffin, sealing it shut. Hammering filled the Showroom floor, and the Beehive was alive with the sound of toil once more.

16: Ingalutt

Finally the hammering stopped, leaving only a great silence. Amy was completely immobilized in a wooden box roughly six feet long, twenty inches wide, so shallow that her face touched the lid. It had the dimensions of a coffin, but she knew right away that it was a Liripip, one of the most popular sellers in Wardrobes.

Amy couldn’t bend her knees and her right arm was pinned underneath her body. She pressed her left hand against the lid of the wardrobe, but with no leverage it was like trying to move a mountain. Her breath rasped loudly in the tight space. She tried to think rationally. She told herself she couldn’t possibly run out of air. There was no way a major corporation like Orsk would make a wardrobe that was airtight. What if a child crawled inside?

But what if this particular Liripip was built airtight by accident? What if the penitents had encased it in sheets of plastic shipping wrap? What if they planned to bury her somewhere in the Beehive? Or what if they hoisted her to some distant shelf in the massive Self-Service Warehouse and left her there? Would anyone be able to hear her? She could be trapped up there for months before someone found her.

Amy screamed. She thrashed and struggled, bruising her shoulders against the sides of the box, but it was no use. She could barely move. And the less she could move, the more she needed to move, the more she needed to get out right now.

That’s when she felt the water.

At first she thought it was sweat—but it was too cold and there was too much of it. A chilly hand wrapped itself around her right thigh. It was so frigid her feet began to shake inside her Chuck Taylors, and if there had been any light she would’ve been able to see her own breath.