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Chapter 2
Someone’s Fault
Frost and Free ran back up the stairwell as the horde of guards rushed towards them—crashing into the corner like a tidal wave.
“Plan?!” Free looked back as him and Frost reached the landing of the eighteenth floor, seeing that the guards had quickly recovered and were heading straight towards them again.
Despite the guards trampling over each other, the frenzied horde was orderly and silent. Like a centipede—each guard acted as a leg, and when one guard fell another would take their place.
“Maintain distance and get to floor twenty-six, there is an opening in the stairwell we can jump out of,” Frost said.
“Then fly down to the Camper? I don’t think I can carry you that far."
“Do we have a choice?”
Free looked back again to see that the guards were only one floor below and quickly gaining on them, “I guess not, but we gotta actually make some distance to maintain.”
“Hmm,” Frost stopped abruptly before kicking the wall next to them—shattering off a chunk of concrete and hurling it at the horde, collapsing the stairs below, “That should work.”
Both picked up the pace, Free eventually getting ahead of Frost as they made it to the twenty-second floor—before being ambushed by guards bursting out of the walls.
Quickly, Free transformed his hand into a hammer and wacked them back to whence they came like oversized moles. Frost aided in this as well but couldn’t score as many as Free while also keeping up the pace, kicking three or four by the time they reached floor twenty-five.
“Get ready,” Frost said.
“Aw man, and I was just about to get a fifty-hit combo,” he unformed his hammer hand, and the moment he reached the stairs to twenty-sixth floor—he leaped up its steps while flicking his hair back, splitting it in twain as his body flashed a brilliant red.
Like strips of clay being molded into shape, his hair transformed into massive bat wings which sprouted out of the sides of his head—then struck a pose in midair before barely missing the landing.
Just as Frost described, there was an opening perfectly punched right into the stairwell’s wall, leading directly to the outside.
Peering over its edge, Free realized that they had to be hundreds of feet up in the air, as dust clouds hid the ground below with only flickers of green light being seen from beneath it.
Thankfully, Free was still able to spot the mall which the Camper was parked in, “It’s a long way, but luckily there’s a straight path from here to the mall, I think we can make it—”
Frost pulled him back from the edge, jumping in front of him and kicking something that was emerging from below, making a hearty crunch as their foot made impact.
Fortunately, the noise was that of hard plastic and not their foot shattering. Unfortunately, it was a guard, and only one of the thousands that were scaling the building, some forming into groups of living ladders to help the others climb even faster.
Then, looking down again, they both realized that the green lights were moving.
“Are all those…” Free looked in horror.
“Guards,” Frost answered.
The horde did not just surround the skyscraper—it surrounded the entire cityscape. Seemly multiplying at a rapid rate and leaving them with no safe place to land, especially near the mall. Worst of all, these possibly millions of guards were all heading directly towards them like a swarm of insects.
“How in the—whatever, no time to think. This planet somehow gets worse and worse.”
“Yep.”
Free tapped his head, “New plan, let’s keep going up until we get to the rooftop, maybe there’s something—”
Almost on cue, footsteps from the floors above manifested out of nowhere, at least a hundred guards were making their way down the stairwell. Unless they wanted to fight trough the horde, they were left without any options.
It seemed that Frost was ready to do so, but Free knew that even though Frost was relatively strong in comparison to the guards—who were strangely frail—there was no way that would make up for the number difference.
Once again, he looked out to the cityscape, and just as before it was swarming with guards, but something caught his eye. Right below was a flagpole poking out the skyscraper’s side, it was partly decayed but well secured. Then he noticed that right above them was piping that looked like it was about to burst.
“Maybe that’s not the only way up,” Free said.
“Hmm?”
“We’ll dive down and use that flagpole as a spring—rocketing us up while you burst those pipes with your ice, which should buy us extra time.”
“Are you sure that will work?”
“Better chances than fighting our way up, and worst-case scenario we at least look cool before we die.” Free presented his hand to Frost, “Now come on, no time to waste.”
“…Alright,” Frost shrugged as they grabbed his hand.
Free stretched his wings wide and then leaped off the edge with Frost hanging onto him, diving straight down to the flagpole then grabbing it—flexing it downward as its base cracked, nearly pulling out of the wall.
For a moment Free thought it would surely break—but then it rebounded, launching him—and Frost who was calmly hanging on for dear life—towards the sky like a firework.
“Your cue!” Free yelled as they rapidly approached the exposed piping.
“Mm-hmm,” out of their hand Frost let out cascade of snowflakes which shined like sparks of blue sliver. The snowflakes landed gently on the pipes before dissolving into nothingness, it seemed have to no effect.
“Was that a dud?”
“Just wait.”
As quickly as it had hastened, their ascent slowed. The air had become strangely thick, like a force was pushing down on them from above—They came to a complete stop, Free having to flap his wings to maintain altitude as the guards closed in, climbing up even faster than before.
“Undershot it, but we can—"
“Free. Brace yourself and keep your wings spread,” Frost said as the pipes began to hiss.
“Gotcha… Wait why—”
The pipes exploded from pressure—demolishing an entire chunk of the skyscraper below them and acting as an updraft which launched them upwards, even faster than before—shattering the skyscraper’s windows with just the shockwaves they left behind. In only a split second they crested over the skyscraper’s rooftop—overshooting it by a few yards.
But with a flap of his wings Free stopped their ascent—reversing it into a rapid descent. Now only a few feet from meeting the hard cold concrete of the rooftop, he steered into a dumpster full of trash bags—cushioning their fall.
Free poked his head out of the trash pile, shaking off moldy cardboard and bags of shredded paper, “You alive?”
“Yep,” Frost poked their head out as well, although their horns caught on some stray netting, dragging them back into the trash, “…Can I get some help?”
“Yeah yeah, I got ya.”
While he helped untangle Frost’s horns, Free couldn’t help but take glances at the sky. During the rush he didn’t notice how it had changed, it seemed that the laser’s sickly green had been cut by a sky-blue aurora, as if the sky was fractured between the two—the green glow hiding the stars while the aurora revealed them.
As for the rooftop, it was flat and barren but spanned far past the horizon line. With no guards in site, the only worrying thing of note was the laser, which, while oddly cold and dim up close, illuminated the rooftop as if it was day.
“We are running on borrowed time,” Frost snaped Free out of his trance as they ripped off the rest of the netting.
“Right. As always,” Free transformed his wings back into hair as he and Frost climbed out of the dumpster.
But when they touched the ground, Frost fell to their knees—hacking up a jet-black coolant and their breath becoming labored as vapor escaped from their jacket.
Free formed his hand into a fan as he kneeled to examine Frost, “How are you overheating already?”
“I’m—I am fine,” Frost’s temperature suddenly dropped back to normal as they wiped the coolant off their jaw and stood back up.
“Yeah, sure… We’ll look at that when we get back to the Camper. Speaking of, I think I have a plan,” Free turned away from Frost and towards the horizon…
…to see a bar of rebar flying straight towards him—only inches away from his eye.
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