At least Wolgast couldn’t look down. He was sweating hard now, his palms and fingers slick on the rungs as he pulled them farther up. His arms were trembling with exertion; the crooks of his elbows, where he held each rung when he traded hands, felt bruised to the bone. There was a moment, he knew, when the body simply reached its limits, an invisible line that, once crossed, could not be uncrossed. He pushed the thought aside and climbed.

Amy’s arms, crossed behind his neck, held firm. Together they ascended, rung by rung by rung.

The fan was closer now. Wolgast could feel a thin breeze, cool and smelling of night, spilling over his face. He craned his neck to scan the sides of the tube for an opening.

He saw it, ten feet above him: beside the ladder, an open duct.

He’d have to push Amy in first. Somehow he’d have to manage his own weight on the ladder and hers as well, while he swung her out from the ladder and into the duct; then he’d climb in himself.

They reached the opening. The fan was higher than he’d thought, another thirty feet above their heads at least. He guessed they were somewhere on the first floor of the Chalet. Maybe he was supposed to go higher, find another exit. But his strength was nearly gone.

He positioned his right knee to take Amy’s weight and reached his left hand out. A featureless wall of cool metal met his fingertips, smooth as glass, but then he found the edge. He drew his hand back. Three more rungs should do it. He took a deep breath and ascended, positioning the two of them just above the duct.

“Amy,” he rasped. His mouth and throat were dry as bone. “Wake up. Do your best to wake up, honey.”

He felt her breathing change against his neck as she tried to rouse.

“Amy, I’m going to need you to let go when I say. I’ll hold you. There’s an opening in the wall. I need you to try to get your feet into it.”

The girl gave no reply. He hoped she had heard him. He tried to imagine how this was going to work, exactly—how he was going to get her inside the duct and then himself—and couldn’t. But he was out of options. If he waited any longer, he’d have no strength for any of it.

Now.

He pushed with his knee, lifting Amy up. Her arms released his neck and with his free hand he took her by the wrist, suspending her over the tube like a pendulum, and then he saw the way: he released his other hand, let her weight pull him away and to his left, toward the hole, and then her feet were inside it, she was sliding into the tube.