He didn’t want to dislodge himself with any sudden movement. He gradually brought one leg up and got it over the lip. He was spreadeagled, one foot dangling, one just about maintaining its grip. He moved his hand higher, feeling for anything that might improve his stability.
Then he let go of the eaves, and he didn’t immediately slide off.
He was up. Destroying part of the roof was going to be inherently noisy. There was nothing he could do about that. Better it was done quickly.
He eased out the machete, and using his fingertips to guide him, he squeezed it gratingly between two tiles just shy of the ridge. He lifted it a little way, then used his hands to heave it out. The other tiles around it clattered back into position, and he rested the loose one against his knees, letting gravity pin it.
Once one tile had gone, the next one was more straightforward to access. The clinking and rattling of stone increased as he worked, levering out tiles and stacking them next to him. As soon as he moved, they’d all fall off, sliding along the roof and off on to the ground.
A gunshot, distant, lonely. The last one. If she had any sense, she’d now run, as far and as fast as her legs could carry her. She might still get away. And if she escaped the anti-magic area, she’d be uncatchable, so long as she didn’t come back for him. It was something that he’d tried to make her promise, and she’d deflected him each time. She was smart and devious, traits which cut both ways.
He returned his attention to his own predicament. If the ground was the same distance down inside the building as out, then he’d only have a short drop. If there were automatic alarm systems attached to robotic guns, he’d not land alive. Keeping the tiles propped up against his knees, he leaned forward and looked into the hole he’d made.
He could see precisely nothing. No hint of any features, just perfect darkness.
And then, since he’d just thought of it, he slipped the bangle off his wrist, held it over the hole and dropped it. The tiniest of tinny rings came back almost immediately, and there was no roar of gunfire or silent glowing lasing.
There was prudence, and there was prevarication, and he was in danger of slipping from one to the other. He manoeuvred himself above the hole, letting the loose tiles slide away when he had to get his feet through.
They scraped away down the slope of the roof. The first one flew off the eaves and, a moment later, thudded to the ground. All the others, some dozen or so, pitched after it and clacked and dinked on top of each other, snapping and shifting the growing pile of broken stone until the last one dropped and shattered.
Immediately, a questioning voice called out, was answered, and another shouted for a light.
Dalip bent his knees and let go.
The impact was hard and it hurt, jarring everything from his heels to his jaw. He landed on his side, and lay in the dust while he collected his wits and wriggled his toes to make sure nothing was broken. He was in one piece. He rolled on his hands and knees, took a second to sweep the floor for his bangle, then a second more when he couldn’t find it at the first attempt.
He slipped it on and stood up. He staggered, dizzy and disorientated, and for a moment he thought he was being gassed, just like the pirates. But it was just the absence of any reference points, and it was difficult to tell which way was up: when he found the wall and leaned against it, the feeling subsided. He became aware of a tiny red light in the distance. Because it was so dark, he couldn’t tell how far away it was◦– it seemed to float in mid-air, his eyes skittering off it into the surrounding void.
The light blinked at him, and he walked slowly towards it. He noticed that he was on a slope, and was going uphill. The dot resolved into a circle of red enclosing a white bar. The display it was on was dirty, encrusted with an age of accumulated dust. Dalip wetted his thumb and ran it across the little screen.
It now gave enough light to show the immediate surroundings. He was the other side of the door he’d failed to open, and he was looking at an electronic lock of some kind. A cable◦– a power cable◦– ran away from it, along the wall, where it was suspended in successive bows down its length.
Would it fail open, or fail locked? If it unlocked itself, he was in the same position as he was with the power on. They could open it, and he couldn’t. He twisted a length of the cable in his hand and jerked it, once, twice, and it came loose. The light diminished, then winked out. He half-expected the sound of opening bolts, but it died quietly. If it had remained locked and they now had to break in, he’d bought himself some time.
Then with his back to the door and his feet pointing down the slope, he started walking. He ignored the noise of increasingly urgent hammering behind him. He knew he was close to his goal, because ahead of him was a cold, blue glow, a disorientating fog in his vision.
He almost walked into the wall in front of him, and as he groped around, one of the objects he touched moved slightly. He felt it, and it was big and flat and cold and hard. He pushed it again, and it behaved just like a self-closing door would. The gap next to it seemed to indicate that it had once been a pair of doors, but was now just one.
Beyond it was a space, tall and wide and profoundly deep. He could hear a single tone, low and constant. The blue shine was everywhere, coming from everything: it made him feel sick and blind simultaneously.
He ran his fingers along the edge of the door, and moved around it, his feet scuffing on the floor, searching for obstacles.
There was a click, and the lights came on, all at once. He let out an involuntary gasp, and he covered his eyes. He had to wipe away the tears and squint through his fingers before he could see even vague shapes.
The walls were white, the ceiling too far away in the brightness to discern, the floor covered with a smooth linoleum-type surface that reflected everything. There was a raised area dead centre, a series of circular steps topped by a flat dais, and behind it, other… things: short hexagonal columns with control panels on the sides, and cables snaking away from them. It was as bright, clean, and clinical as a laboratory.
He heard the door at the far end of the corridor finally give, heard the shouts and the running feet. If he was going to do any breaking of his own, he was going to have to hurry. He started across the sterile expanse of the floor, leapt the first step of the platform, and realised that there was a round pit in the middle of it. In that pit was a ball made of darkness and blue sparks in continuous motion.
If the ceiling lights had been bright, the electric bolts tearing along the surface of the sphere left after-images so sharp they hurt. He was dazzled, confused, entranced. This had to be it. This was his target, and he couldn’t even look directly at it.
When he was dragged down and landed hard against the bottom step, he could barely tell what had happened. But by concentrating between the flashes burned into his retina, he saw a man grappling with his legs. He kicked out, knocked him back, and swung wildly with his machete, missing but forcing his attacker further back.
He was hit from the side, and he staggered. The glint of metal shone through as it was raised high above him, seemingly near the lights far up in the ceiling, but that gave him time to roll aside and drag his own weapon through the air. He felt resistance, and that man fell away, only to be replaced by another.
Fighting by instinct alone, Dalip used the impression of his opponent’s form to guide him, as to where to block, where to move. Then there were two, and it wasn’t double vision. He retreated and parried, advanced and thrust, swinging his blade twice as fast to compensate. One of them slipped, and he drove into the space where he expected the man to be. Strike, withdraw, block and counter-blow. Even though he couldn’t properly see, he recognised the other man’s desperation. But his partner intervened, stepping between them.