wriggled through the opening I'd created in the framework, and then stood on the windowsill with one hand on the framework and the other wrapped around the bar that connected me to the paracord.
I told myself that it wasn't going to hurt as bad as I thought it would, and then I stepped off into thin air.
My length of rope was just over forty feet long—long enough to be useful, but not so long that it would be impossible to believe I could have scavenged it from somewhere inside of the city. By the time I'd used several inches tying into the bars crisscrossing the window and several more inches securing the knot around the bar in my hand, there was a tad less than forty feet of slack racing past me as I fell.
I grabbed hold of the metal bar like a water-skier from back home, and locked the muscles in my hands and arms. Nobody—even an operative from the Society—was strong enough to absorb the forces involved in a one-hundred and twenty-five pound weight falling forty feet, but I came close.
It felt for a second like my arms were going to be ripped out of their sockets, and then the jolt of pain from my cracked ribs was competing with the agony shooting through my shoulders and up my arms. The bar tore itself free of my grasp, and then I was falling again—even faster this time because I was still carrying a significant amount of momentum from the first stage of my fall.
I had a split second to wonder exactly how hard I was going to hit, and then I crashed into a wooden shanty that had been built right up against the side of the building. It was sheer dumb luck that I'd found that window to jump out of, but the plywood roof was the only thing that allowed me to survive the fall as well as I did.
I hit with the unmistakable crack of breaking wood, and then screamed out as my feet made contact with the concrete and I felt the bones in my lower right leg break. It was a fracture rather than a complete break, so I knew I could still move. It hurt, but I needed to get to my feet if I wanted to avoid having Piter's goons shooting at me from above.
I made it half a dozen steps away from the building before a guard in all black appeared out of the darkness.
"Freeze!"
I knew that it was useless to try to explain. Every warlord in the city probably had the same industrial-strength paranoia when it came to people willing to desert one section of the city for another. I raised my hands above my head, grimacing from the pain, and waited for the guard to close.
He was much better equipped than anyone I'd seen on Piter's side of the barricade. Rather than just a collection of worn-out fabric, he had an actual uniform, including a utility vest and a rifle that looked like it was brand new.
Even more incredibly, he seemed to be by himself—something that would have been almost unimaginable for one of Piter's enforcers, all of whom probably had so many people gunning for them that they wouldn't dare walk around by themselves. He moved well too—almost as well as the Society weapons instructors who'd trained me.
Too bad he was no more than human.
I waited until he was within five feet of me and then threw myself to the right as I swept my hand across his barrel, knocking it to the side. He got a single burst of shots off—all of which slammed into the building I'd just left—and then my palm-strike took him in the base of the throat and he was gasping for breath.
Unlike the strike that I'd used against Bash, the base of the throat wasn't a killing blow, but I couldn't just leave him conscious and potentially able to follow me into the darkness once he recovered from the shock to his system. I slammed my forearm into the side of his neck, compressing the carotid artery and causing his body to react by decreasing blood flow to his brain.
My instructors would have killed him to make sure that he wouldn't be able to identify them later, but I wasn't one of them. There'd already been enough killing tonight.
I disappeared into
I told myself that it wasn't going to hurt as bad as I thought it would, and then I stepped off into thin air.
My length of rope was just over forty feet long—long enough to be useful, but not so long that it would be impossible to believe I could have scavenged it from somewhere inside of the city. By the time I'd used several inches tying into the bars crisscrossing the window and several more inches securing the knot around the bar in my hand, there was a tad less than forty feet of slack racing past me as I fell.
I grabbed hold of the metal bar like a water-skier from back home, and locked the muscles in my hands and arms. Nobody—even an operative from the Society—was strong enough to absorb the forces involved in a one-hundred and twenty-five pound weight falling forty feet, but I came close.
It felt for a second like my arms were going to be ripped out of their sockets, and then the jolt of pain from my cracked ribs was competing with the agony shooting through my shoulders and up my arms. The bar tore itself free of my grasp, and then I was falling again—even faster this time because I was still carrying a significant amount of momentum from the first stage of my fall.
I had a split second to wonder exactly how hard I was going to hit, and then I crashed into a wooden shanty that had been built right up against the side of the building. It was sheer dumb luck that I'd found that window to jump out of, but the plywood roof was the only thing that allowed me to survive the fall as well as I did.
I hit with the unmistakable crack of breaking wood, and then screamed out as my feet made contact with the concrete and I felt the bones in my lower right leg break. It was a fracture rather than a complete break, so I knew I could still move. It hurt, but I needed to get to my feet if I wanted to avoid having Piter's goons shooting at me from above.
I made it half a dozen steps away from the building before a guard in all black appeared out of the darkness.
"Freeze!"
I knew that it was useless to try to explain. Every warlord in the city probably had the same industrial-strength paranoia when it came to people willing to desert one section of the city for another. I raised my hands above my head, grimacing from the pain, and waited for the guard to close.
He was much better equipped than anyone I'd seen on Piter's side of the barricade. Rather than just a collection of worn-out fabric, he had an actual uniform, including a utility vest and a rifle that looked like it was brand new.
Even more incredibly, he seemed to be by himself—something that would have been almost unimaginable for one of Piter's enforcers, all of whom probably had so many people gunning for them that they wouldn't dare walk around by themselves. He moved well too—almost as well as the Society weapons instructors who'd trained me.
Too bad he was no more than human.
I waited until he was within five feet of me and then threw myself to the right as I swept my hand across his barrel, knocking it to the side. He got a single burst of shots off—all of which slammed into the building I'd just left—and then my palm-strike took him in the base of the throat and he was gasping for breath.
Unlike the strike that I'd used against Bash, the base of the throat wasn't a killing blow, but I couldn't just leave him conscious and potentially able to follow me into the darkness once he recovered from the shock to his system. I slammed my forearm into the side of his neck, compressing the carotid artery and causing his body to react by decreasing blood flow to his brain.
My instructors would have killed him to make sure that he wouldn't be able to identify them later, but I wasn't one of them. There'd already been enough killing tonight.
I disappeared into
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