Darkness Girl: Trickster God

Chapter Twelve: The Irresistible Undercurrent of Betrayal

Regan gasped and sank to one knee. The acidic stinging from the poisoned needle was starting to reach her chest. She put a hand on her heart as it was suddenly gripped by stabbing pain. Her vision blurred in and out of focus. 

'Ugh, your backup plan has one hell of a kick,' she said to Nwoye's corpse. 

She looked down to where her hand was sitting in a puddle of blood. It seemed to glow unnaturally red in the darkness. She forced herself to focus and rose to her feet unsteadily. It wasn't safe here. If she was still around when the Unity transporters arrived, there was no way she could fight them off in her current condition. She stumbled across the roof, jumped down the exit hatch and landed clumsily at the top of the fire stairs. She almost stumbled into the wall and put a hand out to balance herself. Her fingers and toes were starting to go numb. She wondered how long she had before the poison reached her brain and she lost consciousness. 

The sound of heavy boots on concrete was echoing up the stairwell. She was too late. Regan suppressed her urge to lash out in frustration. Unity had picked their ambush site well. The fire stairs were the only way out of the gutted building, and now they were blocked off by the team of transporters. 

Regan ran down the stairs through the dark, empty skeleton of the building. The sound of the transporters coming the opposite direction was a throbbing drum beat in her ears. She picked a floor at random and turned into it. It was a vast, empty expanse, broken only by the occasional boxy, brick support column. The moonlight mixed with the glow of the city and cast a chaotic chessboard pattern of light and darkness on the dirty concrete floor. Regan sprinted to the window and looked down. There was a brick ledge below her that ran along the top of the window on the floor below, but it was barely three inches wide. 

Regan gave a brief hiss of irritation. 

The ledge was close to two metres below her. Even on a good day, it would be near impossible for her to drop down from above and land on it without simply slipping off. With her vision slowly turning into a blur, and her hands and feet becoming useless wooden stumps, it was more like an invitation to suicide. She was cornered though. Hiding was her only option.  

She realised she couldn't hear the sound of the transporters on the stairs any more. Her hearing had become a high pitched whining noise as if a jet engine was running next to her head. Her senses were turning off one by one. 

Regan placed her hands on the windowsill and swung her legs out over the edge with the careful deliberate caution of a drunk. Achingly slowly, she twisted and lowered herself down until she was hanging from the rough brick by her fingertips. 

She was suspended high above the street now. If she fell, she'd have plenty of thinking time to regret her decision before meeting the unforgiving asphalt below. She considered climbing back, but she didn't have the finger strength to pull herself back up. She knew the ledge was below her somewhere. She'd have to estimate the drop and pray that her balance was somehow good enough to do the equivalent of hitting the point of a pin with a knife blade. 

Regan released all the air from her lungs to flatten herself out and let her fingers slip from the ledge. 

For a moment, she felt suspended in time. 

There was a rushing sensation followed by a sharp jolt. Her boots slipped on the brickwork. She struggled to keep her balance and forced herself not to put her centre of gravity out by trying to grip the wall. After a few heart pounding seconds, she found her balance. Now she just had to keep it. 

Above and below her, the occasional flash of a torch glanced off the edge of a windowsill. The transporters must have found Nwoye's body, and they were searching for her floor by floor. Her legs shook with the effort of holding herself in place on the tiny ledge, but she stayed balanced. Regan wasn't sure how long it would take them to satisfy themselves that she wasn't there, but she hoped it was before she passed out from the poison. She felt the nausea rising in her stomach and clenched her teeth together to stop herself from throwing up. Her mouth tasted metallic. 

Regan waited. The seconds stretched into eternity. She wasn't sure how long she'd been on the ledge. It could have been a minute or an hour. She began to get dizzy. Her vision was now a swirl of unpleasant vomit-inducing colours. The soles of her shoes started to slip on the ledge. She had to get down right now. If she waited any longer she was going to fall. 

Using the last dissolving vestiges of her agility and coordination she dropped down and used the ledge to swing through the window into the floor below. She landed on her hands and knees and instantly threw up onto the floor. 

A light blinded her and she heard shouting that sounded like it was coming from under water. She tensed her jaw and gripped her sword. There were two blurry shapes in front of her. As they came closer, the torchlight pierced her eyes like nails. 

Regan fought on instinct alone. She rolled to her feet and drew her sword in a swift, vicious swipe. She felt it meet flesh. She tried to dart away, but an impact to the side of her head sent her reeling. The world went spinning and she collapsed onto one knee. Bile rose in her throat. She raised her sword to block the next attack and completely misjudged the timing. Another heavy impact brought the darkness welling up from underground to swallow her.