to arrive. The rain stopped just as the sky dimmed from lavender to slate, the cloud cover blotting out the sun and the moon. The sun was due to set at 18:05. At 18:00, they left. They would have thirty minutes before the security lights came on.
They headed for the dam, the curving 2,000-foot wall with its six sluice gates like lidded leaking eyes, rust-coloured stains yawning down under each of them. They jumped the gate and snuck along the top of the dam, hunched over, cleaving to the low wall. The sky growled and flicked out a silvery tongue but held its spit. When they reached the middle of the dam, Jacob started placing cams and nuts in cracks. Joseph held back, crouching and handing Jacob anchor gear and rope. He was afraid of heights. Naila wasn’t a big fan either – she’d been slightly skittish ever since her fall from the jacaranda tree – but she distracted herself by tightening her harness. Jacob handed her the ATC belay device and jumar. She girth-hitched a sling to her harness and threaded her rope through the ATC. Then she straddled the wall, took a breath, and lowered herself into the chasm.
* * *
She zipped down – Zhrrrrrr-rrrrrrrrrr-rrrrrrr-fuck she had lost control of the rappel-rrrrrrr-rrrrrrr-rrrrrrrrrrrr-rktch – until the knot at the end of her rope finally stopped her. She gasped at the jolt to her crotch and waited for the swaying to stop. She looked up at the dam, which merged strangely with the sky – the same dark grey – and made her feel like the whole world had tilted vertical. A knot of puke rose up her oesophagus. Then there was a flash of light and she saw the seam dividing the dam from the sky.
She swallowed. Was that lightning? Mmmhmm, the sky rumbled in confirmation. Two more flashes above, smaller and more permanent: the guys’ Beads. She turned hers on too and glanced at her fingerless, palmless glove – she’d cut out a square patch in the centre for her Digit-All screen. 18:11. Shit. She switched her Bead to torch mode and scanned up the dam towards the sluices. There.
She raised herself up slowly. Zhr. Rrr. A minute later, she was hovering in front of the two middle sluice gates. They were enormous – almost thirty feet across – each with horizontal metal grids and a jutting lower lip of concrete. Between them was a ten-foot wedge-shaped wall. Her goal was to place a transmitter in each one. The rain started spritzing again. She unzipped her hip bag and pulled out the first transmitter. She activated the magnetic clamp on it and reached out for the sluice, but it was too far – the curve of the dam’s edge suspended her a few feet away. She heaved herself towards the dam, grunting as she kicked her leg out uselessly. Fuck. She tilted her head back. The rain touched soft fingers to her face. She clicked on her Bead. 18:14. Sixteen minutes. She dialled Jacob’s Bead.
‘Sup, comrade,’ he whispered.
‘I’m too far from the dam. I need you to rock me.’
‘I got you,’ he said. She could almost hear the smile in his voice at the implication.
She heard Joseph’s anxious voice – ‘What the fuck is going on?’ – then the line cut.
She felt herself swaying side to side and spinning as if Jacob were pushing her on a tyre swing. She giggled. The rain fell harder. She turned to the sluice as it zoomed towards her, reached out her hand and stuck the transmitter to a metallic protrusion on its inside wall. She tugged the rope – next – and Jacob tugged it back – Roger. She felt the vibration of the rope above as he dragged it ten feet against the edge of the dam to pull her in front of the other sluice.
The rain was pouring now and she could barely see. She couldn’t get a grip on the zipper of her hip bag, either. She pulled off her glove with her teeth. She unzipped the bag with her bare fingers, pulled out the second transmitter and turned on its magnet. She tugged the rope twice, hoping Jacob would understand the command. He did – she began to sway to and fro now, nearer to the dam each time, until finally she reached out her arm and—
Zhrrr – she slipped down and her knuckles slammed into the concrete wall below the sluice, ripping off a layer