She was well aware as she crawled into the “no-go” zone. It was almost surreal, knowing that all it would take to raise the alarm was a subtle shift to the left, to the part of the runnel the overhang didn’t cover.
At one point during the crawl, the protruding asphalt directly above her shifted slightly, and asphalt particles fell onto her. For a moment she thought the entire section was going to collapse, and she quickened her pace.
Glancing over her shoulder, she was relieved to see it had not. “Watch that section,” she transmitted to Renaldo and Horatio.
As she neared the far side of the street, Will passed underneath a particular low section of overhang.
“It’s drooping,” Will transmitted. “Watch yourself, Chuck.”
Chuck kept his body flattened as he crawled beneath that overhang, but his head and back still rubbed against it, Rhea noticed.
The instant he was past, the asphalt collapsed behind him, forming a short gap in the runnel.
Chuck glanced over his shoulder. “Oh no. Warden… I…”
“It’s not a problem,” Rhea said. “Horatio, what are the chances of the satellites picking us up, if each of us is visible only for a few moments?”
“Low,” Horatio admitted. “Given the resolution requirements. But there’s still a chance.”
“I was afraid of that,” Rhea said. She frowned, considering the gap. Then she crawled to it and ripped the cape free from her wardrobe.
She pointed her pistol at the edge of the overhang before the gap and dialed the power output way down. She fired twice, slightly melting the asphalt at each spot, and then quickly pressed the edges of the cape to the surface. As the asphalt dried, the fabric became glued. She released it, and to her satisfaction, it remained attached.
“Chuck, catch,” she said, tossing the other end of the cape to him.
Chuck grabbed it, and then copied her example: he reduced the intensity of his pistol and fired it at the intact portion of the overhang on his side, then glued the cape to the molten areas, forming a roof over the gap.
“Let’s go,” Rhea said.
She crawled beneath the cape, being careful not to touch it, knowing it would be all too easy to rip away. The debris underneath her was even rockier than usual, thanks to the fresh collapse, but she made it across without issue. As did Renaldo and Horatio.
“There’s still a chance the satellites might notice the collapse, and the replacement fabric we erected,” Horatio sent.
“Yeah, what kind of a chance, point one percent?” Rhea asked.
“About that,” Horatio replied.
“I can live with those odds,” she said.
They reach the far side of the street and emerged from the tunnel next to the adjacent building, whose south side was still in the green. They hurried forward, making their way to the target building, and keeping within that green zone the whole way.
No scouts came to investigate.
They reached the target building and entered through a gaping hole in one wall. They found an unblocked stairwell and took it to the rooftop. The superstructures allowed the group to low crawl to one of the far walls, and when they reached it, they found a portion of the wall had broken off, giving them an unobstructed view of the partially collapsed skyscraper they had left behind.
Gizmo assumed a position on the rooftop of the opposite building while Rhea and the others hunkered down on the south sides of the various superstructures, so as to keep hidden from the passing satellites.
Rhea propped up against a gooseneck vent and settled in for the long wait. Will crawled to her side and produced her dismembered arm.
“Could you use a hand?” he quipped.
14
An hour went by without much fanfare.
In the first ten minutes of the second hour, the enemy scouts, moving from structure to structure, finally explored the parking garage, and after fifteen minutes of frenetic activity, with craft seemingly coming in from all sides of the ruined city, things calmed down.
Most of the drones landed on the rooftops immediately adjacent to the parking garage, and there kept watch; the remainder vanished inside the garage itself.
Will worked on reattaching her arm the whole time. It took him the full hour and required that he utilize his pistol as a makeshift soldering iron at certain points, but he succeeded. He was a skilled salvager after all, a man capable of reviving a near-death cyborg, rebooting her mind-machine interface, and installing a new body—so reattaching an arm with substandard equipment should have been nothing to him. And indeed, it was.
Some portions of the arm near the shoulder joint were still bent out of shape, and the key servomotors there had suffered some damage, so she couldn’t move it through the usual range of motion, but it sufficed for now. At least she had the X2-59 back. That was most important to her, strangely enough.
When Will finished working on her arm, he helped her don her camo top once more. The long sleeve slid over the limb, hiding the dents and scratches in the metal. She lowered her hood and gazed out into the street once more, waiting.
A half hour passed with no further observable activity at the parking garage.
“Wonder what they’re doing in there?” Chuck sent. He was seated on the south side of a small rooftop utility box, two meters from her gooseneck vent. While he could have easily spoken to her normally from that distance, he utilized the comm in order to keep his voice volume way down. Probably wasn’t necessary, but an over-abundance of caution was never a bad thing.
“Forensics,” Horatio transmitted from another vent beside her, this one rectangular.
“Maybe they’re trying to decide if we’ve been devoured or not,” Renaldo broadcast. He was lying against the wall that enclosed the rooftop itself, near the gap that gave a clear view of the parking garage.
“Oh, they’ve already concluded we’re dead, no doubt,” Will sent. He sat beneath a gooseneck vent directly across from Rhea. “They’re just staying to recover as much
