The Watchtowers- EarthWatch

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The Watchtowers- EarthWatch Page 10

by J D Cortese


  “For once, you two are making sense,” Agdinar said, and turned to face the hallway. “Nothing good is going to come from us staying here.”

  Tysa began to walk, her torso and head still wobbling as her foot wouldn't take much weight. Held by Sarinda's arm, she walked with her along the still-dark hallway.

  * * *

  They crossed the command center again, staying close and worrying at every step. Their whole group would look from afar like a troupe of balancing artists, walking along a tightrope.

  Tysa was the one who had an inkling about how to get out, and she moved in a straight line to a shaded corridor that opened into an even darker one. Agdinar and Sarinda didn't argue with her and just followed.

  As they approached the end of the next long corridor, Agdinar caught up with Tysa and placed his right hand on her shoulder, with enough pressure to make her stop. He waved back, toward Sarinda. It was time to think about their options. Their corridor was currently abandoned, but the intermittent noise of battle continued to come in waves.

  Agdinar started to walk in front of Tysa, checking for any nearby Hawks in his suit’s viewers. He kept a hand raised, directed back to Sarinda and signaling not to catch up with him. It only worked for a few seconds, and she started to cut the distance between them.

  The first set of windows was at the end of the fourth hallway they took, and Agdinar pressed Sarinda and Tysa to stay behind him while he checked the outside. It was enough with one of them being on the receiving end of any unidentified guns.

  “So, what's going on?” Sarinda asked, just as Agdinar came back close enough to hear her.

  “Kind of what I expected,” he said. “The police are staging an attack, trying to take over City Hall. It looks as if they’re doing this every week. Their regular match.”

  “You don't think they'll succeed?”

  “No way. It's just policemen and a dozen armed cars.” Agdinar was starting to get information from his suit’s long-range sensors; it was both confusing and worrying.

  Sarinda’s voice came with great concern. “But my father says the police force has special tanks, and huge attack drones.”

  “Maybe they left them in the shop,” said Agdinar, and then he saw, by the serious face Sarinda made, his attempt at levity had failed. “I meant that it would be a small crew,” he added, “and the Hawks outnumber them ten to one.”

  “More police will come,” Sarinda said. “I’m sure of it.”

  “We are not going to stay and wait for them,” Agdinar said, finally sure of something. He saw that Tysa had drifted past them and was close to the windows. “Get her,” he said to Sarinda, “so we can keep going. They will be back inside any time.”

  The noises coming from both staircases explained without words that the time they had was now equal to zero.

  * * *

  The Hawks made considerable noise while recovering from the routine police assault. They were yelling and making quite a ruckus as they entered the building in mass.

  Agdinar, Sarinda, and Tysa entered a large room at the end of the corridors, and they started to check its shelves and cabinets, searching for any usable weapon. Sarinda opened a window wide enough to look at the streets and froze. Tysa moved around in a daze, dragging her right foot and visibly slipping as she walked.

  Agdinar was trying to unearth useful tools. He discarded several items as potential weapons: a rod, as being too thin and flimsy; a mop, too weak and in worse shape than the rod; and finally, a long hook, possibly left out from the old mail delivery system. It would be good enough for stabbing someone, if Agdinar would've been inclined to risk stabbing an assailant who likely brought more than a knife to the fight.

  “I'm not sure we can do anything from here,” Sarinda said.

  “Yeah, I agree,” Agdinar said. “Is there a way to get out, by the window?”

  “We are close to the building's front,” she answered. “There’s a circular ledge there, but it is quite high and walking there sounds like suicide, especially with Tysa's foot.”

  Tysa suddenly demonstrated her unstable gait by almost tumbling over as she skirted a long table, completely covered by stacks of moldy paper that once had been judicial documents.

  The Hawks were restating their claim to the entire floor, scrambling and hustling all over the spaces outside their room. It was only a matter of minutes before they were discovered in a prominent first-floor office that was close to the stairs.

  “I guess it's the ledge then,” Agdinar said.

  “Are you crazy? We can't—” Sarinda tried to counter him, just to be interrupted by Tysa.

  “I take the ledge over going back to another cell,” she said.

  “All right, people,” Agdinar said. “Let's open the window and get some fresh air.”

  Agdinar had said that only to encourage Sarinda and Tysa. But he was fearful of what could happen—and terrified of the ledge, which he had seen from the ground. His suit was charged at the 10 percent level; Sarinda’s maybe 20 percent. If they were lucky, they'd have only one trick left in the sleeves of their nano-built clothing. And that might not be enough to survive.

  Chapter 18

  The street-side ledge was high enough in the building to plaster Agdinar against the wall. For someone who watched the city from high above the ground, heights would affect his balance and triggered an intense, cold-sweating fear. But there had been no argument about who should go first—him—and Tysa followed Agdinar, close enough to grasp his hand but not doing so for now.

  Below, the Hawks had reshaped the boundary of the junked cars, setting armed guards behind the barrier and advancing outward with two large blinded vehicles that, from above, resembled boats ready for a landing on the park.

  Everybody down there was busy, and they weren't going to notice them high on the ledge anytime soon. Policemen were absent from the mix and had likely shied away to the farthest side of the park across the street.

  Agdinar had spent too much time watching the spectacle and felt as if the building were tilting forward and pushing him into the vacuum.

  Sarinda was the calmest of the three, holding Tysa by the shoulder and moving on the ledge as if it were painted on a street's sidewalk. Her total lack of fear of heights made Agdinar even more dizzy.

  Agdinar’s undercurrent of fear scurried away the moment Tysa missed a step and started to fall forward. He grabbed Tysa's arm, and his back peeled off from the wall.

  Sarinda put her right hand in front of her friend, pushing Tysa backwards with the arm.

  The three-part moving structure they had formed adopted tentative configurations; it was an ensemble that could have a very, very long fall.

  Someone opened the window they had used to get out, but by breaking the glass pane with the butt of a long rifle. That Hawk was determined to come out after them.

  Another Hawk, carrying a long rifle, tried to get out behind the first but hesitated at the sight of the narrow ledge.

  Agdinar pressed Tysa against the wall, ready to use the invisibility triggering mechanism and take her with him. But that would have left Sarinda alone and subject to capture again.

  He was trying to make too many decisions about how to spend the last bit of charge on his suit. It wasn't enough to save them all.

  By having turned, his own feet were now too close to the edge and he didn't want to stare right ahead.

  “You, stop there,” said the first Hawk, as he stood with both feet on the ledge.

  As she turned to see the guard, Sarinda trembled and her body departed the wall dangerously.

  The second Hawk also now stood on the ledge, and he was steadying himself against the window's frame, fumbling with his weapon.

  “I said stop,” the first Hawk repeated. “You have to come with us inside.”

  “No, we won't,” said Sarinda.

  Tysa peeked over Sarinda's shoulder, studying the two men. They didn't look like the others they’d seen; they were wearing dynamic bulletpro
of suits, a quite advanced full-body armor that was an ancestor of Agdinar’s all-purpose suit.

  Agdinar was no expert in weaponry but knew that his suit had all kinds of emergency survival functions, and so might theirs. He needed time to think. “You two,” he said, “don't come any closer or we will detonate our armor suits.”

  The first Hawk, close enough to reach and get Sarinda, stared at Agdinar and took a step back. A few seconds of silent assessment went by.

  Sarinda turned to Agdinar. Her right arm was still holding Tysa, but she somehow knew about his ruse.

  Their risky stunt had worked. The first Hawk was telling his rifle-holding friend to get back in the building. They had seen their suits, and, as Agdinar guessed, remembered their own self-destruct explosives. Even better, he'd managed to make the Hawks believe he would use them.

  Agdinar knew that the break wouldn't last, and those gunmen below—some for sure snipers—would soon train their weapons on them.

  He had bought a minute or two. The distraction might leave him enough time to pull the last trick up his sleeve.

  The last, literally.

  “We need to get out of here,” he said.

  “How?” Tysa said and nudged his arm.

  “Yes, Agdinar,” Sarinda said, “I don't see how we can manage to get down there.” She pointed, without turning to look.

  “We are going to take a ride,” he said, and started to kneel.

  Tysa reached to him but then went back to hold herself against the wall.

  Agdinar knew what he needed to do, and also the cost. He would likely destroy his suit to save them—possibly erasing the possibility of running away on the AV, which only his suit could call back from where it was sitting pretty in a very radioactive street of Chinatown.

  He put together both hands as if praying to any god available, and he tried to remain calm.

  A little black snake first stirred on his right forearm and then crawled down to his hand, and then another one, and a third one. Soon they circled his wrists, and jumped away together.

  A fully-formed cord spiraled out of his arms, shaking his body with its twisting motion. The force got worse, and more dangerous, as the line thickened into a tensile band they could use to escape.

  It had happened so fast that Tysa and Sarinda barely reacted to the sight—a thick black cable had sprung from Agdinar and now hung in a slight angle, crossing the street and attaching itself to the ground of the City Hall park.

  “Let's go,” he said, leaning to deposit the cord on the ledge. It poured from his wrists to form a glue-like splash on the outermost corner of the ledge.

  His suit was now dead, and he wouldn't be able to restart it again. He could tell this just by its opaque blackness.

  As Agdinar stepped forward to grab the cord, trying to show Tysa and Sarinda how to use it, he froze. The height; the guns all around them; the violence everywhere in the park and the city.

  It all hit him hard. He couldn't breathe.

  He had been counting on their technology, the safety of their world, with his people watching from above like gods. His risk-taking had been limited to taking the elevator all the way down and borrowing the AV, always counting on Dhern’s help. And of course, he had his suit, a true jack-of-all-trades.

  Now, this was true danger, as his city was reeling against him. With the AV unreachable and his suit wrecked, there was no protection for him; if Agdinar fell now, he would die, and everything would be truly over. No stasis. No fixes. No way to come back to life.

  Careless. He had been careless and stupid.

  “Agdinar, what's up?” He heard a voice and turned to see the beautiful sparkle of Sarinda's eyes.

  He looked at her and at a disheveled Tysa, who was cornered against the wall, letting her friend stand past her.

  They were also helpless. Agdinar shuddered, unable to sustain Sarinda's sight. He turned his head down, closed his eyes for a second, and decided.

  “I was thinking how best to do this,” he said, taking Sarinda's hand. “The cable has a mechanism, and when you grab it, it won't let go after surrounding your hand. Just let your body fall, and it will take you down to the street.”

  She looked at him, frowning. “So easy, isn't it?”

  He guided her hand until it touched the black cord; it vibrated and released tendrils that caressed her hand.

  “It will now recognize you,” he said.

  “Like a trusted dog.”

  He let go of her body before she thought better of it.

  For a moment, Agdinar didn't know what would happen, and he gasped, his freed hands trembling in the air.

  A window exploded on their left, and two dozen Hawks below turned to see the commotion above.

  And someone was getting onto their ledge, carrying a transparent shield.

  Agdinar saw Sarinda depart, her hand handcuffed by a swirling mess of branches. She accelerated on her descent as if propelled by a jet engine.

  He turned to Tysa. They had run out of time.

  * * *

  Sarinda made her way down the coil, crossing the street much faster than any Hawk could train a gun on her. Agdinar moved closer to Tysa, worrying that he was leaving behind the only means of escape they had. He wanted to watch Sarinda reach safety, but his sight was frozen on the two Hawks who were trying to get around a scaffold to grab them.

  The Hawk in the front held a glassy shield and a baton. The baton suddenly discharged at full power, and a flash blurred his vision. Agdinar raised his hand, pointlessly trying to shade his eyes from the light.

  The next time the Hawks might not miss, and they didn't seem too concerned about what would happen if Agdinar got paralyzed and fell from the ledge. He felt the pressure of teeth on his mouth, the cheek muscles almost cramping from the tension.

  It was as good a sign as any that it was time to act.

  Agdinar shifted to the right and made a quick calculation about the pain to follow. He then launched the weight of his body against the closest of the supports holding the scaffold in place.

  One of the poles tumbled, and it let debris fall on top of the Hawks: the first Hawk got another pole right on his shoulder; his friend received a blow square on his helmet and fell backwards, to a distant ground floor that would definitively test how good his helmet was.

  The first guy was made from sterner stuff and, without looking back toward his gone partner, jumped two steps forward and started to turn around what was left of the scaffold's support.

  Agdinar and Tysa didn't have anywhere to go.

  Agdinar put his body ahead of Tysa's, trying to prepare for a desperate attempt at stopping the Hawk, who was unfortunately still carrying the electric pistol. He came to a stop just a step away from Agdinar and signaled with his discharger for them both to raise their arms in surrender.

  Just as Agdinar started retreating to avoid the aim of the discharger, the Hawk tumbled and crashed against his body, trying to grab him but rather—and unfortunately—starting a back-flip to certain death.

  “Hey, did you like that?”

  It was Tysa, and now Agdinar could see her left foot coming between his, the reason the armed Hawk had tripped and fallen.

  “You didn't have to—” he started and then stopped. It wasn’t the time for arguing.

  He took Tysa's hand and carefully propped her up. With his free hand, he pointed to the flimsy black coil that was supposed to save them.

  Tysa was quick to approach the edge, but then recoiled. It wasn't just the need of jumping to grab the cable; the barrage of gunfire that thundered below was clearly directed at them.

  The window on their left exploded.

  Small pockets were born all over the edge of their supporting high-in-the-air walkway.

  If one of these bullets hit the cord, they would be stuck—and soon also dead.

  “Give me your hand,” he said, while stepping closer to Tysa.

  Before she could do anything else, he rounded her waist with his a
rm and jumped.

  The cable surrounded his arm and wrist with tendrils, which moved much faster than what his scared eyes could see. The sudden stoppage and broad swing of the two bodies pained Agdinar's shoulder.

  * * *

  The ground came over them as fast as Agdinar imagined it did when free falling, but the landing—except for their bowling-ball rolling motion—wasn't as painful as it could have been. The coil had chosen a hidden spot between the old City Hall trees, something Agdinar had thought of and unconsciously relayed to his suit.

  The swarm of nano-robots that formed the coil had figured out how to take them to relative safety. Not bad for almost atom-sized minds.

  When he looked up toward the ledge, straightening a back in need of a day's rest, he admired even more the protection of his suit.

  A Hawk was trying to climb onto the coil and use it. A second later, the coil disappeared, spooling out with the speed of a whip. The poor guard found himself suspended in the air, falling and slamming explosively on a car's roof. Hawks were rushing to the help of the fallen guards, giving Agdinar time to find Sarinda and escape.

  He knelt as he saw a slithering bush of black cables, the still-functional core of the transfer coil. As the cables reached him, they formed a puddle and climbed onto his suit to replenish what had been lost.

  It had been just a moment of rest, and Agdinar knew it wouldn't last. The Hawks would find them soon.

  He walked to where he had seen Tysa lying on the floor. He found her nursing the now even more battered left foot; he helped her to stand. They were not going to get very far with Tysa in such poor shape, and he couldn't see Sarinda anywhere near their landing site. Agdinar knew there had to be a search party already heading their way.

  He turned, after hearing a weird vibrating sound. And then there was a beep, the kind of cute sound a child's toy would make.

  Just ahead of them, where the small park poured into Broadway Avenue, Sarinda was waiting for them.

  He smiled. She had stolen a ticketing cart, one of the electric mobiles the city officials used to drive around while extending tickets and fines to the few remaining city inhabitants. An old-fashioned idea—city cameras could gather automatically the same information from all over the place—but one that Sarinda's father had kept as a prop for tourists. Although, after the Descent, tourists had abandoned Manhattan South as much as the New Yorkers themselves.

 

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