It was exactly halfway up the skyscraper that Gaylen wondered if he was going to make it at all. The stairwell landing listed the number fifteen in three languages, meaning there were fifteen more to go. And he was already wheezing, his legs stiff and pained from the ascent, and the flight across multiple city blocks that had preceded it.
What a mess. What an utter and total mess. The fact that this one wasn’t even his fault was no comfort; he was still set to be the one to pay the price.
The stairwell walls were plastered with sound-absorbing panels, for whatever reason, but they were low quality, befitting the neighbourhood. The sounds of his pursuers were muffled, but he could hear them all the same.
Should have taken the elevator, you stupid bastard.
They could have hacked into it before he made it to the top. Then he’d have been helpless inside a small metal box, as it descended back down into the lobby, and an impromptu firing squad. But that was after-the-fact thinking. The simple truth was that the stairs had been closer, and his animal survival instincts had been doing the thinking, as opposed to his wits. At least he wasn’t the only one. The blame could be shared.
Brennsla was doing about as well as he was, and her wheezing mixed with his, as both echoed dully off the plastered walls. Kapadians were noted for their endurance; that was their whole thing. But Brennsla had bad habits, and she’d been tired at the very start of all this. Combined with a frame that just wasn’t well suited to running, and this was the result.
“Well… keep going… damn it,” she gasped, and pointed up with her free hand. Her other one held a large pistol. Gaylen had one of his own, but it sat in a holster; they wouldn’t survive this by shooting. Not against these kinds of numbers.
He did keep on going, and Brennsla followed on his heels. Her heavy footsteps played their part in the dull din of the stairwell, and his mind, quite against his will, took note of how much heavier they’d gotten since the first few steps.
“This is bad,” she said for the fourth time since the pursuit had begun with an ambush near an outdoor market.
“It’s bad,” he agreed.
The Slashers were still coming, getting louder. Their outfit culture really embraced stimulants as a work tool. The bad kind, that did more than just give the body an extra boost. It was why Gaylen believed all the out-there stories about them.
They reached the sixteenth landing, and he once again lifted the comm up to his mouth.
“Jumpers,” he said on the outfit’s collective frequency. “Coming for the liftoff.”
As before, there was no response.
They reached the seventeenth landing, and as they went for the eighteenth one he tried yet again.
“Jumpers! Respond! Evac!”
“No use… Gaylen,” Brennsla wheezed.
The defeat in her voice made him look back, and something in her face matched the tone.
“They’re gone. Bugged out.”
“Someone… might be left,” he insisted, but heard the doubt in his own words. “Mardus, maybe,” he went on. “Or… or…”
“Bad outfit…” the wheezing, sweat-streaked woman said, as they reached the eighteenth floor. “You… know it. I… know it.”
“Save your breath,” he said.
The Slashers were getting closer. The chems in their system, the poisons that made them cross lines even the gangs normally didn’t, were driving them on relentlessly. The two of them were going to get caught. If they just kept on running it was inevitable.
Gaylen tried to dig through the fear and exhaustion for some clever solution, but it was another uphill struggle. There was another stairwell in the building; and for a couple of seconds he considered using it to go back down while the Slashers kept on going up. Then he remembered the shout of “Split up!” he’d faintly heard as the gang burst into the lobby.
Damn it!
All they could do was to keep going, and hope that the drugged-out monsters wouldn’t think to use the elevator themselves. Brennsla continued to slow down. Her feet slammed down more clumsily each time, booming her full weight. And the Slashers kept getting louder.
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“You’re… delaying,” Brennsla said as they reached the twentieth floor. “For… my… sake.”
“Of course I am!” he replied through the pain and fear. “You don’t like it, you j… you just… speed up!”
He tried the comm again.
“Jumpers! We are nearing the roof!”
“They can afford… to lose… a pilot… and a street thumper…” she pointed out, and Gaylen hated how right she was. The Jumpers were a loose bunch, from what he’d seen so far.
Safety in gangs, they said. Safety in numbers, and a crew to back you up. But the Jumpers were the only reason he currently had armed killers on his tail.
Shit, shit, and shit.
Maybe they should actually enter one of the floors. He knew next to nothing about what they contained, but there might be cover to be found, and hiding places to even the odds in the fight that seemed inevitable.
But there were at least a dozen of the bastards, he reminded himself as they reached the twenty-first floor. And they were moving up two different stairwells. The two of them would be under attack from two directions, and-
Actually, it was three directions. The door out of the landing was flung open, and through it rushed two men in those dumb sashes the Slashers used to identify themselves. Wild, bloodshot eyes, and short, heavy chopping blades completed the look.
They had thought to use the elevator
Brennsla raised her gun, but the swipe of a blade knocked her aim sideways. Her bolt hit the man in the arm, but armour kept the limb in one piece, and the drugs let him ignore the pain.
Gaylen didn’t even try to make the draw. The chop that came at him wasn’t skilled, but then he didn’t have much space to move. His agility did make up the difference, and the blade hit nothing but handrail.
Meanwhile, Brennsla’s armoured jacket caught her opponent’s blade in its fibres, and she got hold of the man’s weapon-arm.
Gaylen’s opponent swiped again, and again, driving him backwards, up the steps. Street-bought battle chems could provide energy, sure enough, but they tended to be awful for precision and thinking both. But there was no time at all for Gaylen to be clever or patient, playing a game of wearing down and waiting for the perfect moment. These two had backup coming, within seconds, and so he had to leap at the first window crack of opportunity.
He went at the guy, in the instant between swings. His fingerless gloves weren’t specifically designed as armour, but the fake leather was sturdy enough to hold up against an edge of plain steel for a moment. So with one hand he bought himself enough of an opening to get inside the guy’s greater reach, and smashed him right into the jaw.
His hands were good as new; fully recovered from the reconstructive surgery needed after all that barehanded punching in the Deep Streets. Which meant, even with all that hard-earned knowledge in how to land a hit, the impact hurt him right back.
He landed another hit, but the man’s drug-fuelled brain remained semi-functional and he remained on his feet. Gaylen had his arm around the Slasher’s weapon arm, controlling it, and while the man struggled with frantic energy it wasn’t that hard to tip him in the wrong direction. The Slasher’s skull met the stairwell wall, and that finally wobbled him enough for a throw into the handrail. It was low enough for the man to go over, and he plummeted down twenty-one storeys.
The other one, meanwhile, was getting a lesson about rushing into melee with a subtype that had a major strength advantage. Tired as she was, Brennsla still outweighed the scumbag, and just as he couldn’t tear his blade-arm free from her grip he couldn’t use his other one to stop her gun-arm from moving.
She shifted her pistol inexorably, until the muzzle reached his head, and she pulled the trigger. Everything above his neck exploded into superheated particles, and the rest of him flopped down.
The others were still coming, of course, and they’d seen their comrade drop by. Their voices rose in angry cries, and plasma bolts started flying. Some went into the handrail, some stopped at the stairs directly above, and others went all the way into the ceiling at the top.
They gave Brennsla one last burst of energy, and gave Gaylen an idea. He let the large woman get past him, then quickly knelt down and fired a shot through the stairs. The angle was far off from the ascending gangsters, and he saw Brennsla giving him a raised eyebrow look. He fired off another one like it, then leapt over several steps and joined his comrade.
They reached the twenty-second storey, and at the twenty-third Gaylen heard the metallic wrenching he’d been hoping for. It was accompanied by pained, startled, yells, as if several people had fallen and crashed.
Gaylen was able to force forth a grim smile.
“I shot… the beams,” he said, and gave a step beneath his feet a little stomp. “Not… quite enough to… sever them.”
“Clever,” Brennsla said, and forced a smile onto her own broad, sweat-lathered face. “You can… be a clever guy… G…”
She gave up on the praise, and Gaylen didn’t mind. The panelling muffled the chorus of pain and confusion and fury down below, but he could still hear it. They weren’t giving up, and no doubt neither were those who had taken the other flight of stairs.
The Slashers started shooting again, and they’d given up on aiming. The shots punched through the stairs themselves in random spots, passing through several layers of metal on their way up. They were going for saturation, and betting on it hitting something.
Gaylen flinched and pressed himself up against the wall. It was probably a hopeless gesture, but his body wanted to live and he could not override it.
The Slashers kept shooting, and shooting, burning and scorching the stairwell. Gaylen and Brennsla fired back, just as randomly, putting more holes into the stairs that were their only escape. He had no idea if they hit anything; he just kept pulling the trigger. But whatever the Slashers were using down there was more powerful than their two little street pieces, with far more penetration. And a bigger capacity.
Inevitably, Gaylen eventually pulled the trigger to no effect. He was out. He started moving again, and only now considered that he should have snatched up the headless man’s gun before running.
“Come on!” he shouted, and Brennsla started moving, just as their luck ran out.