Memento Mori

2.7 - THE FIRE

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The office building is the half-finished dream of some Shimano Industries middle manager with a heart too good for his corporation. Originally intended for their staff who live in the Vector Seven block, its funding was slashed, kneecapped, then beheaded, leaving the slanted tower a derelict maze of empty hallways and endless corridors, fifteen stories tall. Hungry firelight smears a shifting carpet through the shattered windows of the tenth floor. I pause only for a moment to take in the view as Lain and I slip out of the locker room, emerging in the offices along the outer edge of the tower.

I'm sweating from the first moment. Never felt heat like this. Like the air itself is melting. Far below, the heart of Dax's territory burns like freshly stirred coals. Nothing was spared the fire. I bite back a curse as I see Dynasty's handiwork for myself. Those orange bastards. The apartments and houses below didn't belong to gang members- they belonged to Venters who were lucky enough to find work in the overcity. People who had gotten a handhold out of the grime. That's who the syndicate is torching.

I get the message. Loud and fucking clear.

Thick clouds of char and smoke obscure the streets closest to the tower. Those further away are ghost-town empty. No Dynasty enforcers roaming openly, breaking down doors, searching for the remnants of Dax's gang. Bad sign. Only two options. Either they've already found Krey and pulled out, or they're hiding from something while they finish the job.

I wave Lain away from the windows, pulling my cape over my mouth to stifle a cough. Bright embers wash through the broken glass behind me like waves of fireflies. A few of them catch in my hair as I pad back towards our entrance, then jerk to a stop when Lain catches my wrist.

Her oil-slick skinsuit drawn over the bridge of her nose, only her eyes peeking out. She pulls it down to her chin, wetting her lips with quick run of her tongue. "Be real, Mori. This whole block is a lost cause. There's no way your guy is alive."

"You hear that?" I let her hold my wrist, listening to the crackling fires in the distance, eerie creaking of metal heating and cooling. Echoes of drywall collapsing on the lower floors. But nothing more. "That's a shooting range silence. Krey's signature. Something big fired just before we got here. The streets aren't crawling with enforcers because they know he's going to fire again soon, and they're keeping their heads down. He's here."

"Great. Sure. Then how the hell do we find him?"

I know a few spots Krey could be hiding in, but they're all scattered minutes away from each other. Think, Mori. What do I know? Dynasty's in hiding, moving door to door. Keeping out of sight. Of what? The only thing that a hard roof can protect them from: something above. An executioner nestled in his high ground.

"We look up," I murmur, glancing at the ceiling, then back to the burning cityscape. There's only a handful of buildings that stand tall enough to look over the entire block, and only one of them has a view like the one I'm standing in. We're at the center of the block. Every street is oriented around this tower like the spokes of a wheel. And Krey knows he's got an exit here.

I step back to the window, judging the angle over the rest of the city. Not quite high enough- he'd have to be one or two floors higher to hit a perfect shot across the entire block, and he's more than talented enough to pull that off. Plus, he wouldn't want to be far from the locker room.

"He's in this tower," I say, shifting back to an unenthusiastic Lain. "Two floors up, tops. If Dynasty pushed in from the metro stop, he'd want to hit it with a view on the east side. We're looking for a window on the outer walls."

After a brief moment of consideration, Lain nods for me to get moving. "Fine. Let's find a way up. Lift shaft's empty, I'm assuming?"

"Still has some handholds, last I came through." Holstering my gun, I lead the way into the shadowed interior of the tower. Fire silhouettes us from the side in the brief moments where we dash across the eerily empty halls. Boots flowing quietly, muffled taps, ghosts in a graveyard. Shadows always stretching towards the center of the tower. My mind analyzes the smallest details of my surroundings with a survivor's efficiency and guides my footwork without consulting the consciousness. Sagging debris, molten chunks of metal, rips in the carpet, discarded wood blocks, I slip over them all in a river-smooth silence.

The lift core was originally meant to be a bank of four different elevators, each facing a cardinal direction. Only the metal frames of their entrances were ever installed. Clearing the plaza with my eyes, I head to the nearest and lean into the darkened dropshaft, searching for the handholds on the other side. There's enough knots in the core's inner wall to get a firm grip. Then I'm climbing. Hand over hand, foot over foot, testing each hold before I rest my full weight on it. We're almost to the twelfth floor when my entire body freezes as I hear Lain hiss out a curse beneath me.

A horrific screech of shearing metal rips down the elevator shaft a moment later. Eyes wide, I glance down just in time to see her falling away from the wall, arms flailing, a broken chunk of machinery plummeting past her outstretched hand. I throw out a leg and gasp when her hand finds my ankle with a death grip, almost ripping me from the wall too. My fingers dig in for purchase. Barely repaired shoulder tears to the joint, nearly yanked out of its socket by the doubled weight. But I hang on. Breath caught in my throat, Lain hyperventilating as she jerks back to the wall and clings to it like a toddler to mother.

Far, far below, the shard of metal slams into the wall of the shaft like a boom of distant thunder. And then it keeps falling. Echoing, ricocheting, banging all the way down to the bottom of the tower.

Lane spits out another curse, voice shaky. "...Someone's going to hear that."

"No shit. What the hell happened?"

"I was just climbing after you," she gasps. "Forgot how small you are. Didn't realize it was snapping till it was already gone."

I can still feel the echoes emanating from below. "Forget about being quiet. We need to move."

I jerk my eyes back to the next landing, just a few handholds up. Testing what reserves of strength I have left, I surge up the last few feet and roll into the twelfth floor's lift core. Gun out, already up and swinging, clearing every corner of the fire-striped room as I rise from a knee, poncho swishing around my hips. Lain crawls up a moment later with her garrote out and ready. After a shared nod, I have her watch our backs and as we push into the east-wing corridor.

Almost entirely dark in this part of the tower, most windows boarded over. A squatter's camp, going by the empty food cartons and moth-eaten sleeping rolls abandoned in the rooms we drift by. The nearing firewall already swept away the vagrants. I keep the 6-Teba at my waist, finger on the trigger, sweeping each door on left and right as we pass. Feet moving faster now, ignoring the debris I crush under my boots, fleeing the noise we left in the elevator shaft.

The narrow walls drop away as we emerge into a barren forest of cubicles on the perimeter of the tower. Wide open ceilings, thick pillars of raw material bent by disrepair. Thin slits of fiery light lick through gaps in the boarded-over windows, filling the space with a false amber sunset. Dusty motes plume upwards in my wake. They settle again as I swing into a thin beam of firelight that stretches from the cubicles straight to a cutout in the windows, slowing to a stop.

Ahead, a library reading nook cut into the boards that overlooks the burning cityscape. Once a vagrant's view, now nest to a brooding bird of prey. And curled inside, a young man with eyes riven red by smoke and grief, sneering at the fiery city like a stained-glass gargoyle.