Page 86 of Coldwire
Either I get the truth out of him in three days, or NileCorp takes him away, and I live with never knowing.
We cross the first four buildings with no trouble.
Somehow, I’m shocked by the brutal wind on every swing, swallowing gulps of cold air repeatedly and then having to force down my hiccups upon landing. Each building was selected to be lower than the previous to build speed, andIselected them, so I don’t know why my stomach keeps dropping as though the plunge is unexpected. We want to be zipping as quickly as possible, lest some poor civilian glance out their apartment window and find themselves face-to-face with us in midair.
I roll out my shoulders, flex my palms. Just one more to go, and then the burning sensation ripping through my skin can rest. It’s a shame that no one brought gloves. Who carries a zip line but notgloves?
“Connected,” Miz calls. “We’re good.”
The final swing will get us next door to Threto’s facility. We couldn’t attach directly to the data center: the building was too low, standing at only six floors. Threto’s space is far smaller than Upsie’s too. No lawn, no perimeter fence, no vaulted ceilings where the sea breeze can float in on warmer days.
“Go first,” Nik says to her. He’s hauling Upsie’s server box around in the bag on his shoulders, so he’s moving especially carefully. “You can bring the line back with the drone as soon as we’re through.”
Miz makes a salute, then loops her rope around the zip line and jumps. She swings fast, but I notice the brief stutter in the middle, as though she’s caught on something before her momentum resumes, landing at the other side and hopping off. This final stretch is our longest distance yet, so she’s tiny when she waves back up at us to gesture that we can continue.
“Wait a moment,” I say, but my conviction isn’t strong enough. I haven’t fully understood what looks wrong—I don’t until Blare has already looped their rope around the zip line, clutching tightly on to both sides, and pushed off.
They get halfway along the zip line at a good speed. Then they start to slow.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Nik says at once, hurrying forward. “What’s going on?”
I know instantly what I did wrong. I ran calculations on our average weight, which is the only reason I decided to risk this final stretch rather than find another building in between. But Blare, being much younger, is also much lighter. The math didn’t work on them for this one.
“Take over the drone,” I command. “Bring it back.”
Blare is starting to squirm. They can’t hold on for this long. And if they let go…
“I swear, if you’re scheming something—”
“I am not scheming something with a kid’slife,” I spit, and it’s so vicious that Nik takes a step back. There’s no time to argue. I trust he’llwrest control of the drone from Miz, and I go for the outer pocket of his bag instead, yanking out a harness. I’m inside the contraption in a heartbeat, offering no extra thought for securing each buckle. I hear Nik yell for me to hold it, to give him a second, but Blare doesn’t have a second to spare, so I clip the harness onto the zip line, spinning the hook latch until it has closed.
Then, I dive.
The benefit of zip-lining with rope, at least, was that we stayed upright across the journey. If my air-swallowing problem was bad before, I can barely squeeze anything into my lungs this time, the cold wind piercing needles into my face. Three seconds, five, seven… Blare must see me coming, and in an act of trust that I can’t comprehend, they let go of the rope, their hands exhausted.
I catch them in the exact moment they begin to fall, one arm under their shoulder and the other gripping the bag they’ve got clipped across their torso. I don’t breathe until the harness slams to a halt at the end of the zip line and collides with the blocker. We both go crashing into the water tank that Miz fixed the zip line to, and while Blare falls to the rooftop—their bag taking the brunt of the collision when they roll onto their shoulder, groaning—I make a frantic grab for the top of the harness, pulling the release mechanism and freeing myself before I swing back over the edge of the rooftop.
I drop to the rooftop on my knees. The sting is brutal, but it is a good feeling. It means I’ve made it onto solid ground.
“Shit.”Miz hurries to Blare, hauling them upright. “Are you okay?”
“I think my palms have second-degree rope burn, but otherwise I’m not a pancake on the pavement, I guess.” They look up. Their eyes are wide. “You saved me.”
“You were only at risk because I left out a calculation,” I say, getting to my feet. My knees are bleeding under my clothes, and I’m startled for a moment because I can’t even remember the last time I got hurt like this.The academy, despite its exercises, rarely got us into scrapes, given that we spent most of our time up in virtual.
The zip line trembles. It pulls taut, and then Nik makes it across too, releasing his rope and neatly jumping off before he hits the water tank.
The night goes quiet. Only the hum of electric ads and electric stars. I heave a deep inhale, urging my pulse to slow.
“Everyone all right?” Nik asks evenly.
“Alive,” Blare reports. They clean off their elbows, then turn to me. “How did you get to me so fast?”
It’s because I sped myself up manually, I’m about to say. Then I realize that I didn’t actually deliver that instruction—I spoke half of the plan to Nik, and in my rush to get onto the zip line, I didn’t finish my thought. My gaze snaps fast across the zip line to where the initial end waits upon the previous building, and I spot the drone there, hovering with the line. It must have lowered again for Nik to get across, but the moment I’d attached my harness, I was going to tell Nik to use the drone to lift the line as high as it could go. My descent would be steeper, and I could get to Blare faster.
But I didn’t need to tell him.
Nik meets my eyes. I tilt my head.
