Extinction by J.T. Brannan Page B

knew she would have less than a minute to escape.
    Slipping her lithe body through the bars, she quickly got through to the outside of the ride, clinging tight to the struts as she looked at the small stalls beneath her. She knew she could climb down in a couple of minutes, but she also knew that this would be far too long; she only had about thirty seconds left before the killers would be there.
    The sound of a ricochet and the hot spark of damaged metal jolted her, adrenalin flooding her system once more, rocketing her heart rate and making her palms instantly slick with sweat. She almost lost her grip and went sailing to the ground below, but just held on, years of climbing instinct hard-wired into her.
    Sniper
, she thought, and knew the people after her must be getting desperate. The shooter must have been positioned to fire at the inside of the tracks, and the shot had come through the scaffold at her, which explained how he’d missed. The guy must be an incredible shot just to get close under such conditions. Then there were more shots, sparks from the metal struts hitting her skin and burning her face.
    Her reaction was instantaneous, and utterly unexpected to her pursuers. Taking one single, deep breath, she crouched down and jumped from the scaffolding towards the park below.
    The sniper watched as his target jumped from thirty feet. What was she thinking?
    His view wasn’t ideal, the heavy metal of the scaffold obscuring much of it, but he could see that the woman hadn’t fallen. No, she had bent at the legs and intentionally
jumped
. Had the shots scared her into trying a suicidal escape?
    Despite the extremely demanding conditions, he had still been disappointed to have missed. Anderson had ordered him to take the shot as soon as he knew the woman was heading away from the other agents, and he had done so, knowing that hitting her would be a miracle but wanting to do so all the same. It was not in his nature to accept missing his target.
    But perhaps he hadn’t had to hit her anyway; she would be stone-cold dead as soon as she hit the concrete even without a bullet inside her.
    Alyssa had purposefully propelled herself forwards, away from the scaffold, hoping to make several feet of distance as she plummeted earthwards.
    As she sailed through the air, she prayed she’d jumped far enough; and then she was there, her feet reaching the stretched canvas roof of one of the amusement stalls on this side of the ride.
    The fabric bent, and Alyssa’s heart dipped as she thought it would tear; but then she used the stored energy in her legs to jump again, pushing down against the taut canvas to dispel the force of gravity, and managed to somersault forwards, turning in mid-air to grab hold of the edge of the roof and swing her body round and down until she let go and dropped to the ground amidst a group of startled onlookers.
    She saw the crowds parting beyond her and realized that the killers would be on her in seconds. Ignoring the offers of help from those around her, she turned to face the opposite direction and ran, pushing through the mass of people, desperate to get away, her heart pumping so violently she thought it was going to explode right out of her chest.
    ‘Status?’ Anderson asked twenty minutes later, every nerve shredded.
    He knew the answer before it came through to him. ‘Negative,’ the reply came. ‘We lost her, sir. She’s nowhere to be found.’
    Anderson didn’t even bother to reply, just thumbed off the radio and sat back in his chair. How had the operation gone so badly wrong? Picking off two defenceless subjects while both were strapped in place should have been child’s play. Who could have predicted that the woman would have jumped off the damned ride?
    But he should have predicted it; that was his job, after all. It didn’t matter in the slightest that it was a rushed operation, set up in only a matter of hours; Anderson knew he could have handled it better.
    After Janklow went