Calamity (Reckoners, #3)(61)
It was all powered by several thick cords that ended in a set of overtaxed power strips. Seriously, there were a ton of them. To plug in something new, you’d have to unplug two other cords, which I was pretty sure violated some law of physics.
Megan tried to get information out of a passing server, but was interrupted by a call of “There you are!”
We turned to face a towering chef who had to be nearly seven feet tall. The man stooped as he walked, to not bang his head on an old salt light fixture. His face was so pinched, he looked like he’d been drinking a lemon-juice-and-pickle smoothie.
“Stingrays?” he bellowed.
We nodded.
“New faces. What happened to Suzy? Bah, never mind.” He grabbed me by the shoulder, dragging me through the busy room to a smaller pantry on the side where they’d set out ingredients. A helpless-looking woman in a small chef’s hat stood here, overlooking a single tray of unfrosted cupcakes. Her eyes wide, she held a small tube of frosting in sweaty hands and regarded the cupcakes as someone might a row full of tiny nuclear warheads, each labeled Do not bump.
“Patissier is here!” the lurchy chef said. “You’re off the hook, Rose.”
“Oh, thank heavens,” the young woman said, tossing aside the tube of frosting and scrambling away.
The tall chef patted me on the shoulder, then retreated, leaving the two of us in the little pantry.
“Why do I get the feeling there’s something they aren’t telling us?” Megan said. “That girl was looking at these cupcakes like they were scorpions.”
“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “Right. Scorpions.”
Megan eyed me.
“Or tiny nuclear warheads,” I said. “That works too, right? Of course, you could strap a scorpion to a nuclear warhead, and that would make it even more dangerous. You’d have to try to disarm the thing, but wow—scorpion.”
“Yes, but why?” Megan said, setting her pack on the plastic-topped counter.
“Hmm? Oh, Loophole has executed three different pastry chefs so far for creating substandard desserts. It was in Tia’s notes. The woman really likes her cupcakes.”
“And you didn’t mention this because…”
“Not important,” I said, getting my own pack out. “We aren’t going to be around long enough to deliver any pastries.”
“Yes, because our plans always go exactly as they’re supposed to.”
“What? Was I supposed to take a crash course in decorating?”
“In fact,” Cody said over the line, “I’m not too bad at cake decorating, if you must know.”
“I’m sure,” Megan said. “You going to tell us about the time when you had to fix cupcakes for the Scottish high king?”
“Don’t be silly, lass,” Cody drawled. “It was the king of Morocco. Cupcakes are too dainty for a Scotsman. Give him one, and he’ll ask why didn’t you shoot the wee cake’s parents instead and serve that.”
I smiled as Megan unhooked the side of her mixer and quietly retrieved the pair of Beretta subcompacts hidden inside, along with a pair of suppressors. Her mixer wouldn’t work—its innards had been sacrificed to give us storage. That had seemed a reasonable risk to Tia, since the team doing the searching down below wasn’t likely to have access to electricity.
We each screwed a suppressor in place, then tucked our handguns into underarm holsters. I plugged in my mixer, which did work; the loud wrrr it put out gave us covering sound. I threw some ingredients into the mixing bowl just in case, then laid out the decorating tools.
Advantageously, our little pantry had its own door into the main room. I moved over to peek out while Megan tore apart her mixer’s power adapter and removed a small, boxy device much like a mobile.
I cracked the door to do a quick survey of the party. The kitchens were in the absolute center of the seventy-first level, which was important, since a portion of the floor outside rotated.
A revolving restaurant: one of those strange ideas from pre-Calamity that I sometimes had trouble believing were real. Once upon a time, ordinary people could have come up here for a nice meal while they looked over the city. The tower’s pinnacle restaurant was like a wheel, with the hub remaining stationary and the floor rotating in a ring outside. The outer walls were stationary as well. The ceiling rose in places two more floors to the tower’s roof; the partial levels above us were now being used only to position lighting.
The transformation into salt had positively ruined the machinery for the floor, particularly the motors and wires. Getting the place rotating again apparently required the effort of a work crew, engineers, and a minor Epic named Helium who had levitation powers. Loophole went through the hassle every week though, to make something special—something that would stand out. A very Epic thing to do.
I spotted the woman herself sitting at one of the tables on the rotating portion. She had a pixie cut and a slender build. A nice complement to the 1920s-style outfit she wore.
The party up here was more subdued than the one on the first floor; no loud music, just a string quartet. People sat at tables draped in white, waiting for food. In other areas, the salt tables and chairs had been moved aside to allow dancing, but nobody was bothering with that. Instead each table was its own little fiefdom, with an Epic holding court, surrounded by sycophants.