Maybe another dozen feet. That’s all he needed. He braced himself with one knee locked and crooked around the rope and one arm twisted and holding likewise, and he withdrew his mask from the blanket-bag. One-handed and gracelessly, he yanked it over his head and kept on climbing.

The light swung back around and caught him in the eyes once more. He yelped and cried out, “What are you doing, man? I can’t see when you point that thing right at me! You trying to make me fall?”

“Naw, sorry. Just looking at your progress. You’re almost here.”

Before Rector could wonder about the particulars of “almost,” a hand jutted down into his face, smacking him between the eyes.

“Here, come on. Get up here, would you?”

“Yes sir,” he said, flailing about until he’d successfully snared the hand. A combination of his own wobbly inertia and the man’s help got him up onto a wood platform that felt rickety, looked rickety, and sounded rickety when it groaned under the added weight of Rector’s body. He stayed on his hands and knees until he shook off enough of the vertigo to stand. When he did, he was very, very careful to make eye contact with the gatekeepers. It was better than looking down at the ground.

He was right: Both of them were wearing gas masks—the slim-fitting kind that hugged the face without a lot of unnecessary valves, cogs, filters, and levers. These were lightweight, practical devices that wouldn’t help anyone survive long inside the city—the filters would clog in a couple of hours down at street level—but up high and half outside, they’d suffice.

Rector had heard enough from the chemists about how people rationed their filters and planned their masks. There was a science to it—a science everyone learned eventually, or else they joined the ranks of the shambling rotters down on the roads below. As this thought flickered through his head, he adjusted his own mask so it fit him better and seemed less likely to leak.

“Watch your wiggling,” the white man urged. He was precisely what Rector had expected: average height and size, with ratty brown hair and clothing that had been tied up tight at the wrists and ankles to keep the gas off his skin. The Chinaman was likewise no great shock, except that he was wearing almost the same exact outfit. In Rector’s experience, the Chinese population tended to dress differently, in outfits that had odd, chopped-off-looking collars and lines that white men more commonly wore to bed than out for business.

“I can see that, sir. And I will absolutely watch my step. And my wiggling.” Planting his feet on one board each, he balanced against the slight tilt of the platform and then took note of the gate itself. “So this is it, huh? This is how people are going to get inside and out?”