No — no, he wouldn’t, Chapel had time to think, as he watched the edge of the stone top of the mountain come rushing toward them. He’ll kill us both!
But maybe for a chimera, death was preferable to being taken prisoner again. Malcolm ran full speed toward the edge, toward a drop of more than five hundred feet.
A fence ran around the edge of the mountaintop, a chain-link fence that looked about as sturdy as a lace doily from Chapel’s perspective. It would catch them if Malcolm threw himself over the edge, but with their combined weight and the chimera’s momentum Chapel was certain they would just tear through.
He had no choice. He told his arm to let go.
STONE MOUNTAIN, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+36:14
It was exactly what Malcolm had been hoping for. As soon as the pressure on his throat lessened, the chimera dug in his heels and skidded to a stop. But Chapel had no way to slow himself down, and he went shooting forward over Malcolm’s shoulders and head to fly through the air, carried along by inertia straight toward the fence and the edge.
He slammed into the chain link with a clattering rattle. Lasers and floodlights dazzled his eyes as he felt the chain bend and stretch. It was held up by a series of metal posts spaced about ten feet apart. The posts were anchored in the bare rock of the mountain, but they could only take so much stress. He felt the whole fence jump and dance as one post snapped off at its base, heard another one groan and shriek as the force of his impact bent it down and outward.
He dug his fingers into the chain link, desperate for any kind of purchase. One sharp end of broken chain link dug into his palm, and the pain blasted up his good arm but he refused to let go, refused to even slacken his grip. He felt greasy blood smear his fingers and knew he’d made a mistake.
The chain link began to tilt outward, a whole section of fence collapsing under his weight. He scrabbled to climb up as it bent and twisted, but he couldn’t make any headway — it was giving way faster than he could climb up.
Below him the section of fencing slammed against the side of the mountain, draping over the protruding rocks and stunted trees there. Chapel fought with his panicking brain, trying to convince it that the fence was now a climbing wall, that it gave him plenty of hand- and footholds to let him climb back up, onto the mountaintop.
He did one foolish thing and glanced behind himself. There was nothing beneath him but empty air and blazing lights, nothing but empty space between him and the tree-lined lower slopes of the mountain far below. It was not the kind of fall a human body could survive.
Look up, damn you, he told himself, and he forced his head to crane around and peer back up at the night sky and the top of the mountain. He told his artificial fingers to lock on to the chain link, then used his good hand to reach for a grip higher up. His fingers were sore and trembling and they were slippery with blood, but he forced them through the mesh of the fence, forced them to find purchase.
Carefully, slowly, he lifted his right foot and kicked at the fence to find a place to brace it, to support his weight.
Above him, Malcolm walked to the edge and looked down at him.
“You’re tough, for a human,” Malcolm said.
Chapel couldn’t help himself. “Your brother said the same thing right before I killed him,” he said, through gritted teeth. He forced the toe of his shoe into a gap in the fence. Pushed himself upward a few inches.
At this rate, some time next week he should reach the top.
Malcolm looked away from him, and Chapel worried the chimera would just leave him there and go finish off Funt. That wasn’t acceptable.
“Mind giving me a hand?” he asked the chimera. “So we can finish this like tough guys?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Malcolm told him. He had something in his hands. What was it? It looked like a black plastic box, about eight inches long. What the hell was it? “At Camp Putnam, the fences are electrified. If you touch them, they can burn your hand. We used to dare each other to go up to the fence and grab it with both hands. Somehow that was worse — if you had both hands on the fence, you couldn’t let go. You could feel the electric fire running through your body, but your fingers wouldn’t let go. You had to trust your brothers would knock you off the fence with a piece of wood.”
“That’s some kind of messed-up trust exercise,” Chapel gasped. He lifted his left foot, but it just slid off the fencing every time he tried to get a toehold.
“Some brothers would do it. Some of them would save you. Others wouldn’t. They would just sit there and watch while you cooked like a bird. It was an important lesson to learn. We were brothers, but we were not friends. We did not owe each other anything, even our lives. A chimera can only really trust himself. So when you told me you would help me, you would protect me, that’s what I heard. Don’t worry. I won’t let you cook alive.”
“Is there a point to this?” Chapel asked.
Malcolm held up his plastic box. Chapel saw now it had two metal prongs sticking out of one end. As he watched a spark jumped between them.
It was a stun gun. Capable of delivering fifty thousand volts of electricity to anything it touched.
“No,” Chapel said. “No, Malcolm—”
“A man in a stupid hat tried to use this on me, down below.” Chapel thought of the park ranger who’d failed to radio in. “It didn’t work. I’m guessing it must work on humans, or he wouldn’t have been carrying it. You’re tough, for a human. But humans just aren’t much, in the end.”
Malcolm lowered the stun gun and touched its prongs to the fence.
STONE MOUNTAIN, GEORGIA: APRIL 13, T+36:21
Chapel had been tased before. It had been part of his training, a ritual everyone in his Special Forces program had to go through. You had to know what it felt like, so if it happened in the field you would be ready.
Except there really was no good way to ready yourself. There was nothing you could do to brace against it. Nothing you could do to stop it taking over your body.
The pain was intense, worse than any kick in the groin, maybe worse, Chapel thought, than getting shot. It felt like your entire body was on fire all at once, like you’d been thrown into a furnace. Worse than that — like you were being burned alive from the inside out. Every muscle in his body twitched and cramped. His spine arched and his teeth slammed together, cutting deep into the side of his tongue. His eyes squeezed shut, and tears burst from under their lids.
It was a horrible violation for a man used to being in total control of his own flesh. He barely managed not to soil himself.
It was all over in a fraction of a second. But after that came the realization. The horror.
His good fingers had let go of the fence. His feet were kicking at air.
He didn’t dare open his eyes. The fall would be brief and the sudden impact would probably kill him instantly. A human body falling hundreds of feet had plenty of time to reach terminal velocity. There would be little left of him but a stain on the ground when he hit bottom.
Goodbye, Julia, he had time to think. I hope you—
Funny.
Definitely weird.
He didn’t feel like he was falling. There was no sensation of weightlessness, no rush of air past his face.
He opened his eyes and saw he hadn’t fallen at all. Looking up, he saw that he was dangling, limp as a rag doll, by one hand. His prosthetic hand.
Of course. The silicone skin that covered his robotic hand was an excellent insulator. The burst of electricity couldn’t get through even a thin sheet of the rubbery stuff. The fingers were locked in place, holding him up.