She ducked again, returning to the aisle bordering the wall. She knew it wouldn’t be long before the creature ferreted them out. Or creatures—she couldn’t be sure the heads belonged to the same beast.
Will was already leading the way forward—which was north, as it so happened—and when the wall fell away to the left, he turned that way, heading west along the new aisle formed by the cubicles and the northern side of the wall.
We have to get to the windows, Rhea sent.
I know. Will turned right when the next branch appeared and headed north once more into the aisle formed by the cubicles there. Several of the partitions forming the latter were decayed and collapsed, but they provided more than enough cover for the party, just as long as they stayed crouched. Up ahead, the shattered windows on the northern facade of the building offered a way out.
Rhea kept glancing over her shoulders, looking for signs of their pursuer, but spotted nothing. She crept over a broken desk in her path, and then a chair, being very careful not to make a sound. Will accidentally snapped a chair leg underfoot, and he flinched, freezing as the sound traversed the office space. But the bioweapons didn’t come.
The party members hurried forward, knowing that discovery was imminent. When they reached the smashed windows, it was only to discover two more bioweapons searching the street below, sniffing along the lower edges of the building with their multiple heads.
They’ve discovered our scent, I think, Will said.
Overhead, Rhea could see the canopy formed by the upper half of the building, which had crashed into the skyscraper across from them. There was an open window along that slanted exterior, a short distance from them.
Climb, Rhea ordered.
She shoved past Will and pulled herself onto the tilted canopy. She gripped a metal beam that ran the length of the building and used it to carry herself hand over hand toward the opening. She glanced down only once to confirm that the bioweapons hadn’t spotted her, and when she reached the jagged opening, she paused to punch away the glass, breaking away the pieces so that they slid inside, and then pulled herself through.
Worried that the creatures might have heard the sound of breaking glass, she clung there to the slanting floor and peered down. The Hydras hadn’t yet noticed. She turned her attention to the broken window she’d just left, in time to see Horatio swinging outside with Will hanging onto his backpack.
Horatio conveyed himself forward hand over hand just like Rhea had, and when the robot reached the gaping hole, he pulled himself through. Will climbed down, and patted Horatio on the shoulder.
All of the cubicles here were smashed into the wedge formed between floor and ceiling, courtesy of the building’s tilt, and Rhea climbed onto that debris. She headed for a centrally located wall, which contained the open door of a stairwell.
Inside the stairwell, she and the others climbed the steps with difficulty. Scaling the stairs that were aligned with the overall slope of the building was easy. But clambering those that went against the slope, well, meant she had to drag herself hand-over-hand again via the handrail until she pulled herself onto the next flight at the top. Will actually climbed the handrail himself this time, rather than hitching a ride with Horatio. At least at first: he only lasted for three flights of that before piggybacking on his robot friend once more. Rhea decided not to comment on that.
Eventually, after seesawing back and forth like that, they reached the broken door leading to the rooftop, which was slanted above the building it had fallen upon. Looking down, at the far edge of the sloping roof she could see the jagged remnants of the building below. The top floors had collapsed, thanks to the impact, but it looked like the debris that had formed because of that was only about one floor deep. Will could easily survive a jump from the edge of the current rooftop, to that area. But the question was, how stable was that debris?
Rhea pulled herself onto the rooftop, and then allowed her cyborg body to slide toward the edge of the building. She came to a stop when she hit the small wall at its brim. She glanced at the broken building below, running her gaze across the debris from left to right. She concluded that landing on the eastern side was the safest option—the corner frame piece looked fairly sturdy, at least compared to the debris that filled most of the floor. Once they reached it, they could climb down all the way to the street from there. Along a diagonal, of course, to move as far away from the bioweapons as possible.
Gizmo’s back, Will sent.
She glanced up and saw the drone barely visible as a black dot overhead. Gizmo had reactivated rotor noise cancelling, and had no doubt taken a roundabout route back to avoid leading the enemy to them.
She piped in Gizmo’s video feed, which gave her a view of the surrounding streets. Three bioweapons were still congregated to the south, around the first building her party had entered, while another four resided some distance to the west—perhaps where they had last sighted Gizmo.
The corner piece looks fairly sturdy, Rhea said. We can climb down there.
She crab-walked along that narrow wall that formed the edge of the rooftop. Meanwhile Will and Horatio slid down and stopped at the edge not far from her.
She reached the end of the current rooftop. Unfortunately, it didn’t reach far enough, and overhung at a
