Crash!

  Finch burst through the door and onto the circular catwalk at the top of Greyspire tower, her swords drawn and ready for combat. As she heatedly scanned the platform, Thresher huffed through the doorway behind her, his blade hanging limply in his hand.

  “Oh my gods—finally!” he panted. “Are they up here?”

  “Shh—” Finch raised a fist, signaling for him to stop.

  “Right.” Quickly choking down his fatigue, Thresher focused up and readied his sword.

  The pair took up defensive stances, waiting for an ambush from the two fugitives of the Redland Runner. They waited, and they waited.

  Nobody came for them.

  Silently, Finch lifted two fingers and gestured to the side. Thresher nodded, and the pair split up. Slowly, they prowled along the circumference of the lookout, closing in on the side unseen from the doorway—the last hiding spot in the tower. Tensing their blades, the pair lunged around the edge in unison.

  All they ran into was each other.

  “Gah!” yelped Thresher in a spike of fright. Noticing nobody else there, he threw his sword back into its casing and groaned. “Ahh, shit. I knew it. We came up here for nothin’!”

  Looking similarly dismayed, Finch sheathed her weapons and removed her radio. “Captain Volff, come in,” she spoke firmly.

  “…What took you two?” replied Siegmar through the other end.

  Thresher scoffed from the background. “Let’s see him climb up a hundred godsdamn flights and see how fast he can do it.”

  “Tell Thresher I can hear him.”

  Thresher grimaced and let out a panicked meep.

  “You get ‘em?” Siegmar asked, getting back to business.

  “Negative, Captain,” reported Finch. “They are not here.”

  “…What?”

  The expeditioner rubbed her clean-shaven head. “I do not understand it,” she said, looking towards her partner, who offered an equally bemused shrug. “We have searched the entire spire and did not see any sign of them. It is possible they are not inside the tower.”

  Siegmar sighed sharply enough to cut steel—nothing could ever just be easy. He stormed over to Dez and Jira.

  “Enough wasting my time,” he softly growled at the pair, doing his best to temper his growing agitation. “The Ziedler girl and your acquisitions officer—Where are they?”

  “I don’t know!” insisted Dez. “They—they wandered off. You know how kids are. Ya turn your back fer one second and they’re gone.”

  Siegmar grumbled. “For a card player, you’re an awful liar.”

  “Uh, well, those ain’t quite the same thing,” said Dez. “Ya see, uh, when it comes to cards—”

  “Stop.” Siegmar vented out an exasperated breath, straining to lighten his tone. “Listen Dez, I like you, always have, but this whole thing, well, it is what it is. So let’s not make this harder than it has to be.” He leaned in, his voice taking a turn for the threatening. “Nobody needs to get hurt.”

  Jira lifted her head, glaring at him with defiant eyes. “Where is your decency?” she spat. “How dare you threaten your peers.”

  “Look, I ain’t the villain here,” said Siegmar. “You went and kicked the hornet’s nest, you betrayed the Union. Now, I don’t aim to threaten anyone, but don’t think I won’t put one in your leg if you try somethin’ stupid.”

  “Hm,” grunted Jira. “Spoken like a true mercenary.”

  Siegmar’s eye twitched, a nerve touched. “You think this is fun for me?” he growled behind his teeth. “You think I want to be here? I was supposed to be halfway across the wasteland right now, workin’ a job that was gonna keep us goin’ for months. But then you lot had to go and steal from the corps and fuck everything up for us. So now I gotta suck up to Verloren and play bounty hunter, otherwise our stocks’ll dry up in a fortnight.”

  “…Is that true, Captain?” asked the female twin sheepishly.

  Siegmar clenched his jaw, realizing what he’d let slip. “Search the settlement,” he snapped, thrusting a finger towards the pair. “Those two girls must be hiding around here somewhere.”

  The twins promptly stiffened to attention. They performed a quick salute in unison before dashing off into the village, disappearing from sight.

  Siegmar shut his eyes, swallowing his frustrations. “I don’t have a choice,” he seethed. “I turn you in, collect that reward, then at least my crew gets to keep on eating.”

  “But… Siegmar, don’t ya see it?” Dez pleaded, scooting forward on his knees. “This is just what Verloren wants. They get us fightin’ each other over a bit of coin—that’s how they win. We can’t let ‘em. The Union’s gotta be strong!”

  Siegmar simply glared at him. “Last I checked, you weren’t in the Union.”

  Dez sulked—Siegmar had him there.

  “…Captain?” crackled Finch’s voice through the radio. “What are your orders?”

  Siegmar drew in one last calming breath before raising the transceiver to his mouth. “Use your vantage point to scout for movement in the town,” he instructed. “If ya don’t see anythin’, turn over the tower again. Check every corner. We’ll find ‘em.”

  “Copy that, Captain. Out.” Finch pocketed her radio. She snapped her palm out at Thresher. “The binoculars.”

  Her partner remained motionless, angling his ear towards the edge of the lookout.

  “The binoculars,” she repeated impatiently.

  “Hold on a sec,” said Thresher, raising up a delicate finger.

  Finch grumbled. “What is it?”

  Thresher leaned closer to the railing. “You hear that?” he asked, attuning his ears to parse through the constant rush of the wind.

  “Hear what?” said Finch, joining him.

  “I’m not sure…” He frowned, picking up on a strange, swaying tension between gales, barely audible. He took a step closer to the edge of the railing, unknowingly planting his snakeskin boot inches away from the knot of a rope tied to the bottom of the bars.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  The rope threaded down the tower, pulled taut by Kaelis and Sheah’s weight. The two women hung lightly in the breeze, their arms and legs wrapped vigorously around the braiding. Slowly and silently they shimmied down the line, putting distance between them and the snooping expeditioners, all while diligently ignoring the threat of messy death a hundred stories below.

  Kaelis led, carefully winding her way down the rope, pressing her feet against the stone to keep them from swaying. She glanced down, doing her best to resist the vertigo, searching for their means of escape: a window, the way back into the barracks just below the tower lookout. Once inside, they could slip behind their hunters, and make their escape. The hardest part would be actually getting there, though.

  Kaelis finally spotted the opening a few meters below and off to the side, just barely out of reach. She bit her lip in frustration—miscalculating their position, she’d accidentally tied the rope on the wrong post.

  “Sheah,” she loudly whispered, carefully controlling her volume. “There’s the window.” She looked up at her teammate.

  Sheah continued to clutch the rope with all of her might, her fine gloves removed for grip, her trembling knuckles ghostly white. Fearful tears glued her eyes shut as she whimpered to herself empty words of comfort.

  Kaelis gingerly lifted her hand and tapped her teammate’s shoe. Sheah twitched at the touch.

  “I’m gonna have to swing us over to it,” Kaelis announced.

  “O–okay…” whispered Sheah.

  “Just keep your eyes closed, you’re doing great.”

  Kaelis inched her way down the rope and kicked off the wall, enough to imbue them with some momentum. Gently, she arced back and forth, shifting her body weight as she did, getting closer to the window with every swing. After a number of unsuccessful attempts, Kaelis finally managed to plant her toe onto the windowsill. Digging her sole in, she steadied herself and maneuvered her other foot onto the stone, followed by the rest of her body.

  “Come on,” she quietly called, safely standing on the window’s inner edge. “It’s only a little bit further. You got this.”

  “Mhmm,” Sheah moaned. She slowly crawled her way down the rope, one finger at a time.

  Siegmar prowled the plaza like a wolf, scanning every corner for movement, his troubles digging ditches across his forehead.

  “Uh, listen, Siegmar…” said Dez, watching his comrade as he paced back and forth with militant precision. “I’m sorry about this whole mess, I really am. I admit it, Ms. Ziedler got in a bit over her head. She made a mistake, did a bit o’ colluding with a broker, and when we realized what’d happened we mighta agreed to sweep it under the rug. But that were all we did, I swear it. We didn’t steal nothin’ from Verloren, we never betrayed the Union, and we definitely didn’t mean fer all this to come down on your shoulders. If we could undo it all, we would, believe me.”

  “Don’t make this worse,” grumbled Siegmar, refusing to look Dez’s way.

  “I get it, yer angry, I would be too. But please, ya gotta listen to me now. Ya have to let us go. Our lives are in danger. Verloren ain’t just lookin’ to slap us with a few fines. You turn us in, and they are gonna kill us.”

  Siegmar huffed. “Tch. That’s your worst lie yet.”

  “I ain’t lyin’! I swear it!” Dez asserted. “Please, don’t do this. I’m beggin’ ya! Don’t ya see what’s happenin’ here? Verloren’s on the warpath, and anyone that gets in their way is gonna end up dead.”

  “You really expect me to believe that?” Siegmar turned to face Dez, his brows pressed together in doubt. “Verloren doesn’t kill people.”

  “But they do! I know, it sounds crazy—just two weeks back I woulda said the same thing. But now I seen the truth.” Dez threw a pair of pleading eyes at his comrade. “Siegmar—they killed the broker. They figured out he was workin’ with us, and murdered him in the night. If you hand us over, we’re in fer the same fate. Ya gotta help us out here. Please.”

  Siegmar folded his mammoth arms and stood there for a moment, his face contorted in consideration. Finally he raised his head.

  “…No,” he softly declared. “No. I don’t buy it. You can’t talk your way out of this one. Karsten Mueller took his own life after he was caught, and that’s the truth of it.”

  Jira lifted her head for the first time in minutes “And you believe that?” she asked.

  Siegmar took a long moment to reply, a glimmer of doubt twitching behind his eyes. He shook his thoughts from his head. “…Look, I wish it didn’t have to come to this, but now I gotta do what’s best for my crew. Like it or not, you’re outnumbered and outgunned. There’s no runnin’ from this one. So let’s just end this whole thing right here and now. Tell me where the rest of your team is.”

  Jira shot a breath through her nose. After a beat, she looked up, a sly glint in her eye. “…Okay,” she surrendered. “We’ll come peacefully.”

  Dez snapped his head towards his partner, bemusement slapping over his face. “Jira?” he asked, concerned for her mental wellbeing.

  “Let me call the girls.”

  Siegmar threw back his shoulders with a single, sated chuckle and marched over to where Jira sat. “Where are they?” he grilled.

  Jira gestured her head to the small storage shack positioned next to the bridge. “They’re in there,” she revealed. “I told them to hide when I heard your horn.”

  Siegmar pointed to the building incredulously. “…In there?”

  “Aie.” Jira raised her voice, shouting towards the hut. “Girls, you can come out! We surrender!”

  “Jira, what are you doing?” whispered Dez through his teeth, his eyes swimming in panic—was she trying to get them all killed?

  “It’ll be okay,” she whispered back, giving Dez an assured look.

  Growing pale, Dez pursed his lips.

  Jira called out to the building again. “Come out! It’s safe!” After several seconds with no response from within the hut, Jira shrugged. “I don’t think they can hear us.”

  Siegmar looked back and forth between Jira and the building, narrowing his eyes suspiciously. Sliding a stout sawed-off shotgun from the holster at his belt, he stuffed two slugs into the barrels and cautiously approached the shopfront.

  Siegmar wrapped his fingers around the doorknob, the rusted latch swallowed by his hulking hand. Slowly twisting the knob, he eased the door open a crack, its hinges braying as he pulled.

  Crash!—The wounded deer-shaped Unbound threw itself against the door, swinging it open violently, slamming it against the clay wall of the shack. Siegmar, unphased, took a readied step back as the Unbound reared and lunged at him.

  Siegmar threw out his hands, catching the snarling Unbound mid-air, holding it out as it wriggled and snapped its multiple mouths. Muscles bulging, he mustered his might and lifted the mutant beast high over his head. With a mighty cry he smashed the creature straight into the ground. The Unbound heaved, dazed and frazzled by the blow, its body broken. It thrashed fiercely, attempting to stand, its limbs now too shattered to support itself.

  With fearful desperation, the Unbound raised its head and trumpeted a clarion call into the air, reverberating across the town, trailing deep into the recesses of the mountain. Siegmar threw his boot against the creature’s leg, pinning it in place, and unloaded both barrels of his shotgun directly into its back. The beast collapsed, splattered against the stonework, a pained rattle venting from its deformed neck as it slowly ceased twitching.

  Jira dropped her shoulders, a look of profound disappointment etched on her face. That didn’t go as planned.

  Siegmar swept back his thick dreadlocks and turned his glare towards Jira. His face speckled with flecks of blood, he responded to her ruse with a cocksure grin.

  “Yeah, you thought you could get one over on me, did ya?” he blared, vengefully marching over to his deceptive captives.

  Suddenly, a distant cry echoed across the settlement: a high-pitched, gravely shriek. Siegmar planted his feet, whipping around, his body brimming with tension. A handful of equally horrible screams call out in response, seemingly coming from all directions, and growing louder.

  Siegmar clenched his jaw.

  “Oh, fuck me…”

  “C’mon Boss, you got this,” encouraged Kaelis, one hand wrapped around the rope, the other reaching out towards her comrade.

  “Yes…” breathed Sheah, her feet clearing the top edge of the window frame. “I have got this…”

  “You’re so close, just a few more fee—” Just then, the slam of the door hatch sounded from above them. Kaelis froze. A muffled voice emerged from the top of the tower.

  “Yeah, I don’t know,” said Thresher as he casually strolled down the stairs. “It was probably just my imagination I guess…”

  Kaelis stood perfectly still, praying that the incoming expeditioner might not notice the brightly dressed woman standing squarely on the windowsill. As the man rounded the side of the stairwell and came into view, he shot a glance towards the barracks below. He and Kaelis immediately locked eyes.

  Thresher took a full second to process the bizarre sight before him. “…Hey!” he finally shouted. Pivoting, he called up to his partner. “They’re hanging off the side. Reel ‘em in!”

  Acknowledging, Finch hurled herself back up the stairway, returning to the lookout. “On it!” she announced.

  “Sheah, we gotta go!” Kaelis hopped off the sill and into the room.

  “I am trying!” Sheah responded, her feet nearly touching down onto the stone.

  Kaelis anxiously eyed the stylish expeditioner as he rushed down the long spiral stairway at a frenzied clip. “Hurry!” she cried at Sheah. Reaching in, she grabbed her comrade’s tailcoat, guiding her down onto the brick. “I got you,” she assured her. With her feet firmly on the windowsill, Sheah let go of the rope.

  Thresher jumped over the final few steps and landed on the floor with surprising grace. He charged at Kaelis, shoulders forward, bellowing a shrill war cry. Kaelis whipped around to face him, too late to react.

  The man leaned in and plowed his shoulder into Kaelis’s stomach. Winded, she reeled, stumbling backward. Her head slammed straight into Sheah’s legs, knocking her away.

  Sheah desperately flailed her arms around, failing to regain her balance. Tipping backwards, her toes lifting from the stone, she fell out of the tower with a blood-curdling scream.