“See you at the bottom.”
The rope swung me back and I planted my feet solidly on the cliff face.
Letting the rope slide slowly through my grip, I descended, scraping my armoured feet against the rock.
Falling was something I’d grown accustomed to and even at such a height the harness quelled any lingering fears about an untimely demise. From gravity at least. My trepidation came from what might lay in wait at the bottom.
Dropping directly onto the apartment complex that housed the Tree would have been ideal, but now that I was on the cliff face I could see why we hadn’t done that. While the cliff did stretch out further over Old Town to my left, I could see where parts of the cliff had crumbled, rocks falling and shearing off lower parts of the cliff face en route to the bottom. Along with the potential of triggering further rockfall, we would have had to be lowered through open air instead of having any control over our footing.
I continued my controlled descent with deliberate hops. We were in the shadow of the Sill now and finding my footing required focusing solely on finding the small differences in shades of black.
Any minute now the ground would be in sight. But every time I looked below there was nothing but deeper darkness.
Zola made a small strained noise above me and I looked up. He had missed a step and spun so his back bumped against the cliff. He struggled for a moment, straining to haul himself back to face the rocks. It became apparent to me that he was gripping the rope gingerly because he risked cutting it with his nails if he grabbed it wrong.
Zola righted himself just as I kicked out and found nothing to place my feet on.
I spun, flailing for a second, lurching downwards as I partially lost my grip. My feet landed on something, but that something was beneath me. I looked down to find the masked soldier looking up at me. I was standing on his shoulders. He had one hand wrapped around my ankle. He slowly let go and raised a finger to where his mouth would be. Quiet.
Then he pointed towards the cliff.
There was a depression in the rock, a crater where a large section of the cliff had broken off. It stretched long and wide.
I stifled my breathing.
In the deep, dark center of that crater two massive eyes stared back.
We didn’t move.
The eyes moved strangely, tilting slightly towards each other and the illusion was broken. We were looking at a pair of enormous moth-like wings. The patterning on the wings was incredibly lifelike and if not for the slight movement, I would have continued to believe it was a giant face. Not that the alternative was much better. The outline of the gigantic insect became clearer the longer I stared at it with bated breath. Its long antennae twitched with every pulse of the Tree.
Zola was still descending. I raised a hand, trying to move glacially slow. Extending a bony branch upward, I manipulated it to wrap around the rope for support. I winced every time the branch cracked as it shifted. Eventually it met resistance and then broke under Zola’s shoe. Zola slowed to a stop as bits of bone sprinkled across my shoulders. I pointed towards the Moth. It remained where it was aside from a slow rhythmic fluttering.
The soldier began to descend once more, letting the rope rasp against his gloves as quiet as a whisper. I followed suit, occasionally accidentally bumping the top of his bag with my feet.
A noise sputtered out from the darkness. The Moth reacted, its feelers twitching rapidly. I looked frantically for the source. It was loud but far away, not on the cliff face but somewhere in the shadows of the buildings visible below. That was a relief at least. But that sound… It sounded like a generator being turned on.
Then light exploded out from a rooftop, blinding me.
There was a rush of wind and the rope jerked violently. I lost my grip and spun, falling. The rope whizzed noisily through the harness. The rope caught on a bone near my neck, eliciting a high-pitched whine from the friction. I pinched the rope by moving my head to that side, then tried to raise my hand to grab it when suddenly my fall was stopped in a lurch.
The tops of the buildings spun dizzyingly around beneath me. I could just barely see the spotlight in the corner of my vision arcing out, lighting up the cliff face starkly. There were shouts coming from the rooftops.
I craned my neck to see what had stopped my fall. It was the soldier, twisted up in the rope like I was. Only he wasn’t moving. His helmet had been knocked off his head and his eyes were closed save for a sliver of white beneath his eyelids.
Now everyone on my line was a sitting duck for whoever was manning that spotlight.
The rope shivered and Zola lowered towards me.
“Nick, are you okay? That thing shook the rope like crazy when it flew past. I thought we were all going to fall.”
I shook my head, panting as I tried to untangle myself. “The guy below me was knocked unconscious. He’s jamming up the rope, I can’t go down.” One of my arms was trapped in the ropes and I couldn’t find a position where I could free it.
Something cracked across the rocks, kicking up a plume of dust near Zola’s face.
“They are shooting at us!” he cried out.
The spotlight had illuminated the other lines and so I could see as one of the neighbouring lines opted to stop descending and instead return fire from where they hung on the rope.
Another shot crackled past my head. We were too far away to be hit easily, even if we were totally exposed. Someone was bound to get lucky eventually.
“Drop me,” I said, mouth dry.
“What?”
“Drop me. Cut the rope with your nails. We’re only a few floors off of those rooftops below us. I’ll live.”
“We need you more than just alive, Nick,” Zola said in a panic.
I mustered up resolve in my voice as I wrapped my free arm around the unconscious soldier. “Zola. Do it.”
From the corner of my eye, something moved towards us. A massive face in the dark.
“Wait!”
Too late, the rope snapped. I plummeted, wind whistling through gaps in my armour. The Moth changed its flight, diving down. It loomed large before slamming into me, knocking the breath out of my lungs and the soldier slipped from my grasp. My vision suddenly filled with nightmarish insectoid legs all grasping at me.
The rope tangled up in the bone armour went taut, pressing my right arm against my chest with the weight of the soldier still attached below. I only had one free arm to push away the jerky limbs that dragged me closer.
The whole body of the Aberrant was covered in short haired fur and as we struggled in the air, tiny hairs dusted over me.
Then one of them got in my eye.
Pain shot straight through my skull. For a moment I’d thought I’d been hit by a stray bullet. Then another piercing spot of pain touched my side and then my arm. Closing my eye did nothing to block out the pain. Limbs scratched against my armour, frantically pulling me closer while simultaneously losing grip on me. The weight of the soldier dangling below fought against the Aberrant. Through teary eyes the world was a nauseating whirl of insect limbs and darkness.
The spotlight hit us for just a moment and I saw the Moth’s face. Two massive black orbs adorned the face like black holes. Fur obscured almost everything else, save for a mouth with no opening, only flat teeth arranged in a ragged circle, the middle just a disc of exposed flesh. It was enough to make me shiver uncontrollably. The mouth moved, seemingly constantly uttering something I couldn’t hear over the rushing wind.
Another hair found my skin and I spasmed. I began assimilating, no longer caring if we were dropped. The pain had to end. Luckily absorbing the hairs seemed to work and I managed to clear my vision, enabling me to grab hold of one of the ever-moving limbs. The chitinous limb began to deform as I absorbed it. Kicking up my feet, I pushed against the main body with my legs. Eventually with a wet sound, the limb fell out of its socket.
I lurched downwards only to be caught a split second later by the other legs. I faced the city now, the tops of the buildings were close enough I could almost reach down and touch them. The line shuddered as the unconscious soldier bounced off of one.
I reached behind with difficulty and grabbed hold of the tip of another limb. It tried to pull this limb away and ended up pulling me uncomfortably close to the face.
“Comes… Gnash… Choose…” I could hear the words through the sealed mouth. It was a horrible voice, like it was mashing up the words before spitting them out. The Tree’s rhythm pulsed heavily in my head.
The weight of carrying two people proved too much, now with one limb lost. We sagged in its grip. Another rooftop came close and I seized a chimney top. The brick that I’d grabbed came off into my hands and I smashed it into the face of the Moth. Finally, it let go.
We dropped and hit the rooftop, kicking up dust. The soldier slid towards the edge, knocking loose shingles free. I rolled and planted my feet, trying to find purchase. Too late. The soldier fell off the side. The rope threatened to yank me over as well, but my heels dug into the eavestrough just in time, the metal creaking loudly in protest.
Please hold. Once I managed to get my trapped arm in a position where I could firmly grasp the rope, I slowly and painstakingly freed myself by sawing at the rope with Shaped serrated bone, all the while glancing around to see if the Aberrant was coming back around. Minutes ticked by and the Moth didn’t show itself again. Eventually, I hoisted the soldier back up to the rooftop.
Miraculously, he wasn’t dead. His chest rose and fell and his face, while bloodied, was in good shape. I noted one of the Moth’s hairs on his eyebrow and tried to pick it off. My adrenaline-riddled fingers proved too clumsy and I knocked it onto his eyelid.
He reacted immediately, flinching and twitching. A second later he gasped in pain, eyes flying open. “Fuck! Ah! What the fuck!”
“S-sorry!” I stammered, unsure of what to do.
He glared at me through one eye watering in pain as the other was clenched shut. He slung off his pack, which was very long, sticking out past his head. Procuring a water bottle, he splashed his eye. This did the trick and he let out a relieved breath.
“What’s the situation?” he asked while digging around in his pack.
I viewed the cliff face. The spotlight was still slid across the rocks as sparks of light erupted from the hanging soldiers returning fire.
“They knew we were coming. We’re fish in a barrel,” I said miserably.
The man slid out a long barreled rifle from his pack and proceeded to attach a stock and tripod to it before placing it on the ledge. He lay down on his stomach and nestled the gun into his shoulder.
I watched nervously as the gun fired once, twice, a third time, echoing into the night. On the third shot, the spotlight went dark. The gunfire from both sides stopped immediately, no one wanting to reveal their location to their enemy.
The soldier raised his gun and looked back. “You’ll meet back up with the squads if you head down to the streets. I’ll stay up here and provide cover. Once you rendezvous, you can head towards the objective.”
I glanced back towards the apartment complex. Some of the windows showed light from behind drawn curtains, but there was no movement from what I could see. But they would know we were coming.
“Are you sure?” I asked, pointing skyward. “That giant moth is still out there somewhere.”
“Noted. We can’t afford to wait patiently and clear every threat. Do your job and do it quick. That’s the way to keep casualties low.
His surety was infectious and so I readied Locust Legs before leaping to a neighbouring roof. Ready, jump, ready, jump. I made good progress back towards the cliff. Hopefully Zola wasn’t left hanging. The moth had carried us a fair distance and now I wasn’t sure which line was his.
One of the lines had met the rooftop of a small church. H.E.S.P. operatives were moving down the slanted sides and then using extra ropes to descend to the street. I leaped, landing on the far side of the rooftop, grabbing hold of a weathered stone feature of the architecture. Several soldiers trained their guns on me, but then lowered them as they recognized my Shape.
“Did you make it down okay?” I asked.
“Yes,” a soldier responded. “Are you moving with us? We are going to approach the target before regrouping with the others.
I shook my head. “I need to find my original line. An Aberrant attacked and the rope was cut. I don’t know if the rest made it down.”
He gestured to his left. “I saw the flying Aberrant. One line between here and yours.”
I nodded in thanks and left, getting a powerful leap off of the slanted roof. Flying across the buildings, feeling the power in my limbs, I knew I could keep going. A fragment of a memory from the Moth stuck in my brain, like a piece of gristle stuck in my teeth. A bird sitting on a windowsill and the unnerving resentment of watching it. A simple animal, more free than me…
The next H.E.S.P. group had already made it to the ground and were moving towards the apartment complex. I flew over them and made my way to the next rappel point.
On the street, I saw one soldier on his own. I jumped and caught the side of a fire escape railing and used it to slide down to him.
He flinched and then relaxed. “We gotta get them down stat!” he shouted, sounding a bit rattled. Can’t blame him for that. He thrust the length of rope at me that had been severed by Zola.
I took it and leapt back up to the roof.
Finally I spotted Zola, still dangling in the shadow of the cliff. It was so high up, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever jumped that high before.
Gotta try.
I tested the limits of the tension I could store in the locks around my legs made of bone and chitin. The Shape didn’t look much like it had when I had started. A constant chain of minor adjustments that I wasn’t entirely in control of had led to this. The construction was complex, organic, near instinctual to the point where I didn’t understand the inner workings. I wondered if Nell would know either. Release. I ascended with skin-rippling speed.
Zola’s eyes widened in surprise as I caught onto the end of the rope and swung there, catching my breath.
“Nick!”
“Think you can tie the rope back together?” I asked, panting from my exertion.
He took the severed rope and managed to get a knot that looked more trustworthy than if I had done it. I tested it first, sliding easily back to the ground. Everyone else on the line soon followed suit, detaching their harnesses as they reached the knot and continuing without them. One soldier helped another get down while nursing a bullet wound in their arm.
Once everyone made it to the bottom, H.E.S.P. quickly got into formation around me and Zola. Guns splayed out, covering every possible attack point.
“Proceed as planned,” one of them said to me.
So we moved as a unit into the streets beyond, monsters crawling behind every corner, just out of sight.