Earthbound (The Reach, Book 1) (48 page)

Knile considered.  “Well, Mr. Wilt, I’ve been running a few scenarios over in my head, and I don’t like where any of them are going.  The way I see it, if this Tucker guy of yours is up there, you’re going to put me down like a rabid dog without a second thought.  I become excess baggage to you, a third wheel.  There’s no point letting me go.  On the other hand, if Tucker
isn’t
there, which sounds the more likely option, you’re going to use me to get what you want, and then what?”

Wilt looked at him evenly.  “You’ll be free to go.”

Knile laughed.  “Really?  You’d just leave a loose end lying around like that, huh?  Because you’re a nice guy.”

“Once I’m done with you, it makes no difference to me whether you’re dead–”

“Or alive.”

Wilt grated his jaw and climbed down another rung.
  “Stop this stupidity, Knile.”  He brandished the gun again, pointing it right at his captive’s face, but Knile could see the doubt in his eyes.  Something had happened to Tucker, and now Wilt’s last hope of escaping Earth was clinging to the wall of the Reach below him.  “If you do as I say, you have a chance of surviving, Knile.  If you don’t, you die right here.”

Knile shrugged, savouring the desperation that was creeping into Wilt’s voice.

“You put a bullet in my head after I do what you want, or I splatter on the streets of Link like a fucking water balloon.  What’s the difference?”

“Knile–”

“See you later, fucker,” Knile said, and he took his hands from the rung at his waist and spread them wide, like an Olympic diver about to drop backward from the edge of the ten-metre
platform.  His face was calm, his eyes closed.  His head tilted backward and his body swayed, tipping past the point of no return as he began to fall out into the void.

“Stop!” Wilt roared, and he lurched desperately downward and clutched at Knile’s outstretched arm, striving for purchase before his captive fell to his death.

Suddenly Knile’s body stopped at a forty-five degree angle, as if he was a marionette whose strings had gone taut.

Something metallic glinted at Knile’s waist, hooked around one of the rungs, and then Knile was coming back at Wilt
.  Knile moved like a viper, hauling himself upright and grasping Wilt’s shirt, then wrenching himself backward again, using his full weight to dislodge Wilt from his perch.  Wilt, already overbalanced, could not maintain his one-handed grip, and he was ripped away from the rungs and sent flailing out into thin air.  The gun flew from his grasp and spun away into the nothingness.

Knile braced himself, keeping his fist in Wilt’s shirt, and as the larger man dropped past him he swung him sideways like a ball on a string.  Wilt cried out and clawed at Knile’s face, but Knile kept his focus, snaking out his free hand to the pocket in which he’d seen Wilt place the passkey.  As Wilt swung back again he grasped the passkey and deposited it back in his own pocket in one fluid motion.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he thought:
All those years of pickpocketing just paid off
.

He released his grip on Wilt’s shirt and was just about to voice a farewell quip when Wilt’s hand clamped onto the back of his neck, and those fingers of steel dug into his flesh so hard that he could barely breathe.

Knile felt his belt start to give, where the carabiner he’d taken from his backpack and looped around the rung strained at the leather.  It was the only thing keeping the two of them from falling to their deaths.

His elation at retrieving the passkey was short-lived, now replaced by a surge of utter panic.

“Clever,” Wilt snarled below him, lifting his other hand toward Knile’s neck in an attempt to secure his position.  Knile found the shiv at his belt and flashed it defensively, gashing Wilt’s forearm, but Wilt barely seemed to feel the strike, backhanding Knile across the cheek with staggering force, enough to make him almost pass out.  Fighting the blackness at the edge of his vision, Knile slammed the shiv into Wilt’s chest twice, then
as the third blow struck home, Wilt’s free hand clasped around Knile’s wrist, immobilising it
.  The shiv remained buried
deep within his body.

“That’s enough of that,” Wilt said through clenched teeth, raising his face to Knile’s and smiling at him sinisterly.  “You almost got the best of me there.”

“I’m not done yet,” Knile choked, still struggling for breath with Wilt’s hand around his neck.  He tried to pull the hand away, tried to pry the fingers upward, but they weren’t budging.

Wilt swung his legs back toward the wall, but in his desperation he kicked too hard and snapped the rung in two.  The pieces dislodged from their mounts and spun away below.  Wilt was left without anything on which to place his feet, so he continued to hang there with Knile as his only tether.

Wilt coughed.  Knile saw that there was blood on his lips.

“I underestimated you,” Wilt said in a conversational tone, as if they were a couple of businessmen sitting down to discuss their latest transaction, rather than two men desperately trying to kill each other.  “You understand what it takes to succeed, don’t you, Knile?  You’ve done things that you’ve regretted, things that have made you hate yourself.  I can see it in your eyes.”  His grip tightened and Knile tried to pull the hand away from his neck again.  No chance.  “You’re like me, aren’t you?  You know the price you have to pay to outlast the others.  To overcome.  You know what it’s like to sell your soul in order to see your dream come true.”

Wilt’s words made Knile feel oddly sick
.  He felt repulsed by them, disgusted that a monster such as this could possibly think the two of them were alike.  Knile knew that he had done some things he’d regretted, things he wasn’t proud of, but he was no Alton Wilt. 
He was not some callous madman who trod over everything in his way to get what he wanted.

He had no idea why Wilt had chosen this moment to try to create an affinity between them, and he didn’t care.  He wanted nothing to do with him. 

Knile tried to voice his feelings, to put Wilt in his place, but he found that he had lost the capacity to respo
nd.  There was no air left in his lungs, and the blackness was closing in on him.  Wilt’s shirt was covered in streaks of blood.  It dripped from his boots and fell through the air like droplets of crimson rain.

“I respect that, Knile.  I respect a man who’s willing to…”  Wilt trailed off, his eyelids fluttering.  His grip finally began to weaken and he licked his lips, then came back to full alertness with a start.  “No.  I can’t leave her,” he said.

Knile choked and gasped, feeling unconsciousness descend upon him.  The last thing he saw before he blacked out was Wilt’s eyes fluttering again, and then a serene look came over the tall man’s face.

Knile remotely heard a voice, which he thought might have been Wilt saying something incomprehensible.

“I’m coming, Elia.”

Knile came to with a gasp.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been out.  It might have been seconds or minutes.  The only clue he had was that the light still seemed the same as before, so the odds were that not much time had passed.

Choking in great lungfuls of air, he tried to take stock of what had happened.

Wilt was gone.  Amazingly, the bloodied shiv was still clutched in Knile’s hand, stringy red globs seeping and dripping from the blade at the touch of the wind, spiralling through the air.

Then, far below, he saw the limp form of Alton Wilt plunging toward the ground.  The man made no sound – he did not scream or call for help, did not wail in terror.  He almost seemed tranquil, accepting of his fate, his arms spread loosely at his side as his sleeves flapped madly around him.

Even though he was receding further every second, becoming more difficult to see, Knile had the feeling that the man was looking at him, staring forlornly as he fell away to his death.  Knile glared back, defiant, revelling in the joy of having overcome his adversary, of having survived.

Whether Wilt had passed out due to blood loss, slipped, or simply let go, Knile would never know.  All he did know was that, one way or another, he wasn’t coming back.

Knile turned back to the wall and took a moment to gather himself, sucking in more air as the tremors in his hands subsided.  Then he shakily unhooked the carabiner.

He began to climb.

42

Knile’s hand clutched the wire rope of the balustrade that marked the edge of the Atrium, and he wearily pulled himself up over the edge.  Falling to safety on the other side of the railing, he lay there for the briefest moment to catch his breath before climbing back to his feet.

He was here, finally.  The Atrium rose up around him, the Stormgates within his reach.

The vision before him was enough to make his breath catch in his throat.  The Atrium was a large, open space a little more than one hundred metres across, surrounded on its outer edges by seven great arches that afforded a panoramic view of the horizon in all directions.  Set into the pillars of these arches were elevators from the lower levels, their ornate chrome doors glinting in the twilight.  It was through these that the more conventional passengers and visitors were able to access the Atrium, some of whom were here now, wandering about with their respirators equipped as they admired the view of the darkening sky.  There was little else they
could
do, since access through the Stormgates was not permitted without passkeys.  Unlike the Enforcers, the citizens were allowed to be here, albeit for short durations, and many came just to stroll around the perimeter and look out upon the vast stretches of land that led out to the horizon, dreaming of what might one day be.

The Stormgates themselves were tall arches of black steel, within which pulsed blue energy fields that formed the gateways to what lay beyond.  Together they constituted a ring around the central column of the Atrium, a thick pillar that contained the only elevator that led to the Wire.  Knile could see two of the Crimson Shield standing there attentively behind the Stormgates as they kept an eye on those moving about on the edges of the balcony.  He lifted his eyes and followed the curve of the column, and where it ended he could see a ring of red sky through the perspex windows that encircled the elevator.

It was perhaps the contrast of that deep red sky from outside and the glowing blue of the Stormgates that had first struck Knile and taken his breath away.  The Atrium was indescribably beautiful at this time of day, a fact he had failed to notice the last time he had been here.

Knile realised that people were staring at him, not just with curiosity, but with bug-eyed, outright shock.  He looked down at himself, then allowed himself a brief smile.  These people had just seen him scuttle over the lip of the Atrium, and it was probably natural for them to assume that he had somehow climbed all the way from the base of the Reach like a spider, appearing finally at the top, dishevelled and exhausted.  There was also blood on his shirt and trousers, which could only have added to the mystery of his sudden emergence.

Fair enough.  I probably look bad enough for them to believe I just climbed three kilometres
, Knile thought.

He looked down at his watch.  Only a minute and a half until the Stormgates reversed.

Shit.  Where’s Ursie?

He began to move toward the Stormgates, looking about for any sign of the kid.  If she’d followed his instructions, she should have faced a similar climb to what he himself had just made, but from a different direction.  A vision flashed through his mind, one of Ursie plunging through the air much like Wilt had done, and he felt a wave of guilt wash over him.

Had he done the right thing?  Or had he knowingly sent her to her death?

No
, he thought. 
I did the right thing.

He knew that he’d given Ursie a tough assignment.  She was clearly not good with heights.  However, with everything that had happened in the last hour, there had been no other option available.  Knile couldn’t be there to hold her hand the whole way with everything against him.  This was her burden, something she had to do by herself.

But she was nowhere in sight.