flesh that had a few moments before been a guy with a gun, opened the satchel hanging off my back and handed me a can of paint. I drew quickly, the first ward that came to mind - a cross within a cross, in bright blue paint. Someone was trying to force the door, slamming it back on the hinges, but as the last dribble of paint went on, the thundering stopped.
A voice from outside said, “Are there Aldermen in there, by any chance?”
It was a polite, well-educated voice. It knew the answer to its own questions. The paint on the door began to burn, to bubble and peel. I turned to the window and said, “Only way out.”
No one, not even sobbing Kemsley, seemed inclined to argue. Not any more.
“No way down,” pointed out Oda.
We strode to the window, slammed our palms towards the glass. Not touching, we didn’t need to get that close, the movement and the magic were enough. The glass burst out, not a shard left in the frame, and tinkled merrily away down into the swirling smog below. Oda leant out, tears - not of sorrow, but of pain and chemical suffocation - running down her dirty face, and said, “We don’t know what’s down there.”
“Gotta be better than in here.”
“We’ve no way down.”
“Don’t troopers carry rope?” We turned to look at them. They shrugged, and didn’t offer rope. “Terrific,” I sighed. I looked up to the ceiling, smelt paint simmering, roasting, heard Anissina say, “He’s coming through the door!”
I reached up to the ceiling. I could taste electricity, still feel it lending me a little more strength, a little more speed. Electricity that happy meant something friendly to carry it in. I heaved with all my strength, closed my eyes and told it to come to me, to bring its friends with it, strained and dragged until my head spun and my knees bent, felt dust falling in my hair and down my face, mixing with dirt, smog and tears, and here it came, the great coils of wire, twisting out of the ceiling, the floor, the walls, spinning and spitting like angry snakes on a hot plate, rising at my command. I waved furiously at the cables, commanding them towards the window, imploring, please, please, please be my friends . . .
Bricks tumbled from the walls, the whole building seemed to creak as length after length tore from the crackling gaps in the floor: a tarantula’s web, an earthquake’s playground of cracks rippling and writhing as the cables crawled at my command down the side of the building. I gestured furiously at the nearest trooper, “Get your arse down it!”
He looked with doubt for a moment at this snapping, angry coil vanishing into smoggy darkness, but good training and a better brain were his saviour, and he threw his leg over the window ledge and wriggled down into darkness without a word. Coughing and hacking, I gestured more troopers towards the cable, caught Oda as she staggered, legs wobbling in the fumes, and felt her immediately pull away from my touch, as if I was somehow dirtier than her. Even with death knocking, I had time to feel a soft warmth in my throat that might have on a better day been sorrow.
Then Anissina said, “The door!”
I turned, saw a flash of light around the hinges, heard the bolts snap, then bury themselves in the ceiling, saw Anissina stumble across the twisting floor as more cables crawled from beneath us and lashed out of the walls in a zigzag of twisted wire. I saw Kemsley raise a child’s face, too much going on for that mind of his to comprehend, look up towards the door, and see for a moment in it a man in a pinstriped suit, from whose chest thin wafts of paper tumbled where there should have been blood.
Then Kemsley started to scream, and it was the same pressed-down scream of Nair, of the soldier who had died, of lungs that couldn’t stop, of a throat drawn too tight for anything other than sound to escape, and I grabbed Anissina and half threw her out of the window, one wrist tangling in cables as she dropped, heard her shoulder crack and a cry burst from her lips, saw those mad red eyes that weren’t her own.
“Oda, get . . .” I began, but my words were lost in the sound of Kemsley’s scream, and there was Mr Pinner in the