He took this moment to catch his breath and give his arms a rest. He wouldn’t have much of a chance to do that when he was swinging around, so he took whatever chance he could get. Looking around, he was truly captivated by what he saw.

Inverted hills and jagged peaks reached down into the sky below, like someone had ripped a chunk of earth out of the ground and was holding it high in the sky.

He didn’t know much about how the city he lived in came to be, Just that it was an isolated city state that appeared before the world’s destruction. As far as he knew, they were the only people to survive the apocalypse.

But looking at things from this angle truly made him believe the words of those religious zealots. How could humanity have accomplished such a thing? To build an island in the sky of this magnitude. Only a god could do something like this.

What amazed him more than the island above him was the clear blue sky below him. He had never seen anything like it. To him, the sky was always filled with smog and bright lights. He never knew it could be so beautiful.

I should get going now. Pulling his attention away from the beauties of nature, Ed psyched himself up to start his journey. Shifting to one side, he took a deep breath in as he wrapped himself around the rungs to secure himself in place before letting go with his left hand.

Quickly reaching around to the other side, he gripped back onto the rung, and one by one started pulling his limbs around to the other side. Looking behind himself, he was just about to reach out when he heard a sound coming from the hole above.

Shit. The sound was something Ed was familiar with. It was the sound of thrusters propelling someone through the air. The cop must have finally decided to join him and was now safely making his way down.

Looking back in a panic, he realised he wouldn’t be able to make it far enough away in time to leave the cop behind. He would still be swinging from rung to rung when the cop appeared, and that would just result in him being a sitting duck. Free for the cop to shoot down at his leisure.

He had to fight. He had to make a stand here and now if he wanted even a sliver of a chance to escape. Faced with no other option, he prepared himself.

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Light travelled down the hole until it met up with the sky below. The officers boots were the first thing Ed saw. The boots had built in thrusters, far more advanced and powerful than his own. Allowing the cop to soar effortlessly through the sky.

The boots were soon accompanied by the rest of him. And a gun pointed right at Ed’s face.

“Stop right there criminal scum! Return the stolen goods and you may yet escape with your life!” The guard stayed floating in the air, ready to fire his gun at a moments notice. He had Ed right where he wanted him, and there was no chance for Ed to escape, so he didn’t bother to waste any more bullets.

“Okay, okay. I give in! You can take it, just please don’t kill me!” Panicking, Ed begged, his body trembling.

The officer sneered at this pathetic display, already moving in to take the briefcase and arrest Ed. He didn’t know what was stolen, but Ed still deserved to be punished for daring to commit such a crime.

Lowering the power of the thrusters until they stopped, the man landed on the ladder across from Ed. Just as he grabbed on and was reaching for the briefcase, the ladder buckled under the added weight and several rungs came undone at the same time.

The two of them fell down for what felt like several seconds until the ladder slammed to a halt, rocking both of them like a punch to the gut.

The officer, not expecting it at all, was knocked of balance and had to use the boots to readjust. Gripping onto the ladder, something flashed past him before he could think, and then he felt a sudden pain in his neck.

While the officer was struggling, Ed had already prepared himself for it. He had pushed his legs through the gap and sat down, allowing him to free his hands for more important affairs. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his knife and before the officer could react, plunged the entire blade into his neck.

The officer went wide-eyed and tried to shoot Ed, but Ed had already grabbed the gun from him and unloaded all of the bullets into the man’s chest.

The officer’s dying body shot back with such force that the back of his head slammed into one of the lower rungs and cracked open. One of his legs was looped over the rung he was standing on, and for a moment, his body dangled precariously over the sky.

Unable to do anything, he took one final breath. His life was no longer in his hands. Taken away from him in a few swift seconds. He stared up at Ed with a mixture of hatred and regret before becoming completely lifeless.

Ed stared down in shock for a moment, not believing what he had just done. He could follow every choice he made from one to the next, but a part of him didn’t believe that he had actually gone through with killing a police officer. It was something that was just too hard to believe.

There was no way he should’ve been able to win. But his determination to stay alive pushed him to do the impossible. No one must ever find out about this. What was done was done. So now, he had to make sure no one else ever found out about what happened here today, otherwise everything would be in vain.