Shade’s Children

Still a bit sleepy, Gold-Eye went over to Ninde and watched her pull the plugs out of the wall and then out of the machines, sawing with her sword if they wouldn’t come out. Since he had only his sharp-pointed spike, Gold-Eye assisted her by holding the cord taut to make it easier to cut.

They were sawing through one of the last cords when Ella suddenly thrust herself between them and pushed them towards the fire stair that led to the roof.

At the same time a crash reverberated through the room, accompanied by a furious hissing.

“Up the steps! Go! Go!” shouted Ella, turning back to the lower fire door, where Drum was frantically heaving a desk up against the shattered door. Half off its hinges, it was being further forced open by something large and sinuous, like a long, black-furred worm. Halfway along its length, paws like overlarge human hands were ripping chunks of wood and cement filler off the side of the door as easily as if they were pulling petals from a rotting daisy.

Drum held the desk against the door with one hand while extending the other, open-palmed, to Ella. She put one of the sawed-off cords in his hand, careful to keep the exposed wires forward. Then she ducked down and plugged it in – and Drum thrust it around the desk and into the Ferret.

Sparks blazed across the rippling flesh of the Ferret, the golden glow of the witchlight lost in a sudden blue-white glare. The creature shrieked with pain, spraying foul-smelling spit from its fanged mouth. Then it was gone, retreating back down the stairs.

Drum pushed the desk back, forcing the door into its frame, and cautiously looped the still-sparking cable around the door handle, which hung by a single screw from the ruined door.

“Might work again,” he said as he headed for the roof stairs. But Ella didn’t answer, letting him get ahead while she circled back every few steps to watch for a sudden rush from the Ferrets below.

A steel trapdoor opened on to the roof from the top of the stairs. As soon as Ella came through it, Drum slammed it shut with a deafening crash of metal on metal and slid the bolts home.

The roof was flat save for an air-conditioning unit that perched like a hunchback in one corner. That provided a bit of a windbreak, but it was still cold. A wind had come up to clear the fog, and the sky was clear, lit with stars and the reflected glow from those parts of the city where the streetlights still worked. The Overlords maintained power and light in much of the city, shutting it on and off from time to time for no apparent reason.

Part of their games, perhaps, in the same way that they controlled the weather. Bringing in fog from the sea; raising winds; shunting storms from one side of the city to the other, all for use as backdrops in the battles they played out with their creatures.

When those creatures weren’t employed hunting escapees from the Dorms…

“We’ve got a few minutes,” said Ella quietly. Only Drum noticed the telltale shiver of apprehension in her left hand.

“First we need to get these cords tied together into a rope long enough to reach across the street.”

“What!” exclaimed Ninde, looking out over the roof at the adjacent skyscraper, its dark bulk towering over their current building. “I am… not going to climb across a five-floor drop on an electric cord!”

“That or the Ferrets,” said Ella firmly. “So start tying. Sheepshanks, I think. Gold-Eye, do you know any knots?”

Gold-Eye shook his head. The automated schools in the Dorms had taught him reading, writing and arithmetic, for the Overlords liked a reasonably agile brain as raw material for their creatures. But he’d forgotten a lot of that in the struggle to survive – and knots had never been part of the curriculum.

“OK, see if you can find something like a brick or pipe to throw – we’ll have to smash a window for Drum to send the rope through.”

Gold-Eye grinned to show he understood and started to look about for anything useful. A pile of half-seen stuff in the shadows under the air-conditioning unit looked interesting, so he headed over to make a closer inspection.

As he passed the trapdoor, it shook, bolts rattling. Then it began to bow outward and the steam-hiss of an angry Ferret came through. But the trapdoor and bolts were solid steel and they held – for the moment.

“Hurry up!” said Drum as Gold-Eye passed. His eyes were on the trapdoor, sword held at the ready.

Gold-Eye shuddered and sprinted the remaining few yards. In the starlight he could see several pieces of steel pipe that would make good window breakers.

If anyone could throw them across the gap, he thought, as he dragged one back to where Ella and Ninde were almost finished tying the rope together. He hoped they knew their knots. It was a long way to the ground.

“Good work!” said Ella, taking the pipe and hefting it easily in one hand. Then she walked right up to the edge of the building, the toes of her boots meeting the edge of emptiness that marked the five-story drop to the street.

The building across from them was all glass and steel, stretching up at least twenty more floors.

Lots and lots of glass. Floor-to-ceiling windows, the blinds still drawn back to catch sunlight that wasn’t there.

Ella looked at the window immediately opposite for a moment, imagining how it might have been. With the lights on and people bustling behind the glass, clutching papers, talking on the phone…

Her parents had both worked in buildings like this. She had dim memories of going up in the elevators, of looking out through a window just like that one…

The bolts on the trapdoor suddenly screamed in protest. Gold-Eye and Ninde both let out strangled, frightened yells… and Ella threw the pipe as hard as she could towards the window.

It flew true, glittering with reflected stars, smashing through the window in a blaze of shards. Clouds of smaller splinters followed the big shards down, strange snow falling from starlight into shadow.

“Drum!” shouted Ella, holding out one end of the rope. “Think it across!”

“Throw it first,” said Drum, that clear, almost angelic voice still seeming out of place in his great body. “It’s much easier.”

Even before he finished speaking, Ella was throwing the end of the rope, hurling a loop of it out towards the gaping hole where there once had been a window.

Halfway across, the rope end suddenly faltered and hung suspended, like a snake waiting to strike. Then it lunged forward through the hold, to lash about in the room beyond.

Gold-Eye could no longer see it, so he watched Drum instead and saw the sweat burst out on his smooth face, beads glittering, running together to form rivulets that soaked his shoulders, turning green cloth to black.

His hands were twitching too, fingers crossing and circling in a strange arabesque – and Gold-Eye realised that Drum’s hands were mimicking what his mind was doing. Tying the rope to something in the room across the street.

“It’s secure,” he said finally, hands falling flat to his sides. He looked terribly weary, as if he’d just run for miles with something fearful at his heels.

“Thanks,” said Ella, but it was an automatic, perfunctory expression. She was already tying the rope at their end to a sturdy antenna mounting and checking the tension. Unfortunately, the makeshift rope seemed to have a tendency to stretch.

“We’ll have to go hand over hand,” she explained. “But use your feet as well for safety. Then, at the end, you’ll have to swing down into the room. Be careful to aim for the centre of the hole. And remember to swing forward… or it’ll be a very long drop. Ninde, you go first.”

“I will not!”

“Shut up and get your hands on the rope,” commanded Ella. “Can’t you hear those Ferrets? They’ll be through—”

Even as she spoke, the trapdoor sounded with a sickening boom and one of the restraining bolts screeched, stretched… and let go.

Held only in one corner, the trapdoor buckled inexorably upward to show the white teeth and red eyes of the Ferret blow, brilliant against the darkness of the steps. Drum stepped towards it, thrusting with his sword, and it ducked back down, the trapdoor falling shut behind it.

Without another word, Ninde launched herself on to the rope, twining her legs around it and pulling herself along with her hands.

“Like a rat on a hawser,” muttered Ella, but she seemed to be saying it to herself. So Gold-Eye didn’t ask her what a hawser was. He already know about rats.

“Gold-Eye! You’re next!”

Gold-Eye knew better than to argue. He’d seen what Ferrets could do to people. Did do to people.

Thinking about that got him halfway across before he even realised that the rope was swaying, the knots stretching, the ground swimming into focus so far below.

Then he made the mistake of stopping and looking down.

For a split second the idea of a possible fall seemed almost attractive. It would be an easy end, better than having his blood slowly drunk in some dark Ferret nest till there was just enough to keep his brain alive for use in the Meat Factory.