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“Are you sure?” asked Veek.

“If someone stops and studies it, yeah, it might not hold up.” Xela said. “But for anything else it’ll be fine. And once they slap another coat over it it’ll be perfect.”

Tim switched to a different tool, a thick wire he pushed into the first of the pirate padlocks. He pushed down on the handle, shifted it, and pushed again. He bit his upper lip, tweaked his grip, and applied pressure a third time. The riveted padlock swung open with a heavy
clunk
. He hung it on a belt loop and bent to the last one, just beneath the doorknob. A minute later it was on his waist. He’d hung them in order, left to right along his belt.

Nate used a screwdriver to pry the over-painted hasps off the door and fold them back. He took hold of the knob and twisted. Decades of paint stretched and twisted. Something shifted and he held a ragged latex pouch wrapped around the glass knob. He pulled it off and twisted the knob again. It was resistant, as if the inside latch was carrying a lot of weight.

The door didn’t budge.

“Paint in the cracks,” said Veek. “It’s pretty much glued shut.”

Nate studied the seams. “Don’t suppose anyone’s got a knife on them?”

A matte knife slapped into his hand. “Don’t mess up the blade,” said Xela. “It’s my last one and I need it to trim off all the loose edges you’re leaving.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Got a bigger one in my place if you need it,” said Roger.

Xela beamed at him. “Are you arguing size with me now, sweetiekins?”

“Don’t even,” he said, shaking his head.

Nate crouched, flicked open the blade, and plunged it into the blobs of paint between the door and the frame. It was like working through half-dried gum. The knife slit some sections, stretched out others. He worked his way down the seam. He was reminded of an autopsy video, and the long incision down the torso. The paint came apart like cold flesh.

He paused to rest his hand and looked over his shoulder. Veek, Tim, Xela, and Roger leaned against the wall and watched him. Clive stood in the doorway of his apartment. “Don’t everybody help all at once,” Nate said.

“You’re the one with the knife, Shaggy,” said Veek. She held up her phone and snapped a picture of him. “For our exploration album.”

“I’ve got another matte knife,” Clive said. “Give me a minute.”

Nate shook out his fingers and attacked the paint again. He’d finished the long edge from floor to ceiling by the time Clive came back. He started on the top seam. He wasn’t halfway across the width of the door when his shoulders started to ache.

Clive crouched on the floor with a bright green knife. He sank the blade into the paint at the base of the door and dragged it toward the hinged edge. The paint opened up and some of it broke off in ragged clumps.

It took another few minutes for them to do the whole outline of the door. Nate handed his matte knife back to Xela. She eyed the blade and gave him a playful scowl. “This is why we can’t have nice things,” she said.

He smirked and looked at Veek. “How are we for time?”

“Oskar’s probably halfway to the store,” she said. “We’ve got maybe forty-five minutes, tops. Say fifteen minutes before Xela needs to start cleaning up after us.”

Xela saluted.

Nate set his hand on the knob. “Okay, then,” he said. “Let’s call it ten minutes to see what’s in here, get as many photos as we can, and get out. No matter how cool, no matter how weird, we’re out in ten minutes. Agreed?”

Xela held up her camera. Veek held up her phone. A scattering of confirmations came back to him.

He turned the knob. Again, it dragged, as if someone was holding the knob on the other side and resisting. Then he felt a
click
as the latch passed the locking plate.

The door yanked open.

Nate’s fingers were so tight on the knob it tugged him forward. Then he lost his balance and his grip got even tighter as he tried to stop his fall. The door swung all the way into apartment 14.

Someone—something—shoved him from behind. His feet left the ground and it took a moment to realize they weren’t coming back down. Nate spun around in the air and his only constant was the doorknob. He threw his other hand up and managed to grab the knob on the other side—the inside—of the door.

The air conditioner was on full blast. The air in the dark apartment was frigid to the point it nipped at his skin and bit at his eyes. It rushed and howled around him.

Xela was next to him. She wrapped her arms around him and screamed. She slid down to his waist and a naughty thought stood out amongst all the chaos. Then he realized she was being dragged away from him.

The air wasn’t rushing out of 14. It was rushing
in
.

He looked down at Xela. She had his legs in a death grip, digging into his thighs with her fingernails. He could see she was still screaming, but he couldn’t hear her over the roar of air washing past them. Her legs flailed behind her. One of her sneakers flipped off her foot and spun away.

In the distance past Xela’s feet he could see a brilliant shape of light, a fiery basketball with a swollen blister on it. It hurt to look at it.

Apartment 14 had no walls. It went on forever in every direction. Pinpricks of color, like distant Christmas lights, studded the expanse of darkness.

They were in space.

When the door swung open, Tim lunged forward. Nate plunged through the doorway and Xela stumbled after him. Tim caught himself on the frame and threw out a hand to grab his friends. It made his head spin. His balance was off.

A fierce wind picked up in the hallway. It was like the gusts in Chicago in the winter, the ones that blasted between skyscrapers and roared down streets so hard they were almost visible. Those winds had gotten inside the building and were racing past him into apartment 14.

Tim’s foot slipped, the air tore at his shirt, and he realized the wind was dragging him into 14, too. And even as the words
depressurize
and
vacuum
raced across his mind and were torn away by the relentless wind, he looked through the door and saw the distant stars and the double solar discs hanging in front of him. Nate and Xela flailed in deep space, tethered to the world by a glass doorknob.

His mind rebelled for a moment, but Tim was too well-trained to let the impossible shake him for long.

He glanced over his shoulder. Clive was braced in the doorway to his apartment, clutching the frame. Veek had sunk low against the wall and scrabbled on the hardwood floor, fighting the relentless winds. Roger had ended up on the opposite side of 14’s door across from Tim.

“Help me!” he yelled.

The sound of a dozen busboys dropping their trays filled the air as all four picture windows shattered in Debbie and Clive’s apartment. A kaleidoscope spun behind Clive, and the younger man winced as the glass slashed at him. It skimmed across the floor and toward 14’s door.

“Close your eyes,” Tim shouted at Nate and Xela. “Close your eyes and look away!”

He wasn’t sure if they heard him or just reacted to the endless wind, but they clenched their eyes shut. The shards whipped through the doorway and became a sparkling hail that flew out into space. One piece traced a line of red across Nate’s shoulder as it whizzed by. Another gashed his forehead. Xela screamed as they cut the back of her hand and sliced her calves. She slipped a few more inches down Nate’s legs. Her arms were below his knees now.

Another crash came from behind Tim, toward the front of the building. The hallway window sprayed more glass down the hallway. Debbie and Mrs. Knight shrieked. Clive looked that way and howled something.

Nate’s knuckles were white on the doorknob. His desperate grip wouldn’t hold much longer. Neither would Xela’s.

Tim kicked his leg up and swung it around the door frame. He felt gravity shift as he let his other leg come up to fall into 14. His stomach settled on the edge. It felt like hanging off the edge of a cliff, but his body was three feet above the floor of the hallway. He slipped and caught himself on his elbows.

He looked over—up—at Clive. The other man looked dazed. Papers were whipping around him as they were sucked out of his apartment and across the hall. Blood crept around his shoulders and soaked through his shirt. “Clive,” he hollered over the roar. “Anchor me!”

Clive shook his head, and for a moment Tim thought he was refusing. Then he realized Clive was clearing his head. The younger man pushed out of the doorway and slammed into the opposite wall. He threw himself flat and grabbed Tim’s forearms. They twisted their hands and seized each other’s wrists.

Something clunked and Tim saw Xela’s can of paint sliding across the floor. Halfway across the hall it flew into the air and vanished through the impossible doorway. A paperback book flew after it.

“Go lower,” screamed Veek. She was still braced across the hall, but her angle let her see through the doorway. Tim glanced over his shoulder just in time to see her glasses slip down her nose and vanish into deep space.

Something came rushing up the hall, over Clive’s shoulder, and hit Tim in the side of the head. It felt like metal and he got a quick glimpse of silver spinning past him. He looked down and saw Mrs. Knight’s cane whirling past Nate and Xela. It vanished into the darkness of space.

Roger had managed to move a yard or two away from the door. Now he ran forward and lunged at Clive. The winds pulled at him but his momentum carried him across the hungry maw of 14’s doorway. He slid along the floor, spun on his hip, and grabbed Clive’s legs in a bear hug. Past them Tim saw Debbie and Mrs. Knight trying to resist the pull of the wind. Debbie threw herself against the wall and wrapped her arms around her husband’s shoulders.

A sheet billowed out of Clive and Debbie’s apartment. It thrashed in the hallway for an instant, like an angry ghost, and was sucked away.

Tim looked into Clive’s eyes. The other man nodded. Then Tim took a deep breath and let himself slip past the door frame.

* * *

Nate looked back at the door and the wind whipped at his eyes. The wooden frame hung in space, like the mystery door at the start of the
Twilight Zone
. He could see the hallway through it, see Veek braced against the brutal wind. And if he looked past the frame he could see flecks of light and a sparkle of interstellar dust.

Nate’s fingers slid on the knob. He made them into hooks on the glass ball. It didn’t help. Things flew by too fast to see what they were. A few papers plastered themselves on his shoulders before leaping free and diving toward the stars.

Xela had thrashed and tried to climb his legs for a few moments. Now she squeezed his calves together so hard his legs ached. The wind pulled at her and tried to drag her off into space. He shot a glance down and saw her face pressed against his legs. She was almost silhouetted against the twin stars below her but he was sure her eyes and mouth were shut tight.

He saw flecks of ice on her eyebrows and lips. Frost formed in her blue hair. His toes were getting numb.

It’s cold in space
, he thought.
Even just a few feet into space.

He looked back up at the doorway and saw a pair of legs hanging down. A dark-soled sneaker was just above the doorknob. It was too far for him to reach. He saw Veek through the rectangle of light and her mouth moved in a scream. A moment later her eyeglasses flew by.

Something long and silver whizzed by him and the legs dropped about a foot. Then they came a few more inches. The sneakers brushed his elbow.

Someone flew past the doorway up above. It might’ve been Roger.

Nate took the deepest breath he could as the air rushed past him. He looked down at Xela. “Hang on!”

He counted to three and flung his hands from the doorknob to the legs. He got his arms wrapped around them but slid down the pant leg. Xela shrieked and her nails bit into his calves.

Whoever was hanging through the doorway flexed his feet up to make a hook. Nate’s arms caught on it and the slide jerked to a halt. Xela screamed again. She was crying. He looked down and ice sparkled around her eyes.

Something whacked him in the shoulder hard enough to make his collarbone ache. He glimpsed a steel padlock as it plunged into outer space. Nate looked up and saw three more hanging from the waist the legs were attached to.

He had a moment of wondering if they were expected to climb and then they were dragged toward the door. Tim’s legs went up a few inches, then a few inches more. The older man bent at the waist, folding around the door frame. Nate realized he was above the knob, alongside the door. He turned his head and saw the number 14 sitting sideways next to his face.

He heard a distant crash, a shriek, and more things flew past him. Bigger things. He caught a flash of red and a flutter of papers and something whacked his hip. They missed Xela and flew off into space.

Tim trembled and lurched up again. Nate felt Xela slip. He tried to bend his feet up the same way Tim had, but they were so numb he couldn’t tell if they moved.