The Descent

Chapter 27 - The Runner

As his foot made contact with the door, it swung open as if someone had opened it from the inside at that very same moment. Denton, not expecting such an easy entrance, found himself doing the splits on the floor as his foot slid from the door onto the floor before he lost his balance and collapsed in a heap on the floor. He groaned in pain and curled up in a fetal position, his hands between his legs.

He snapped out of the sudden pain when he heard a commotion from further inside the apartment. A figured dressed in a white t-shirt and jeans appeared through a doorway. He wore glasses and had shoulder-length curly brown hair that looked like it could use a trim. When he saw Denton on the floor, his eyes widened, and his mouth fell wide open.

"Hey, what's going on? Who are you? What do you wa..." The man stopped mid-sentence when he caught a glimpse of the gleaming gun on the floor next to Denton. He stared at it for a moment while his brain processed what his eyes saw. Then, he turned and ran.

"Hey stop, hold on," Denton shouted as he scrambled to his feet, wincing in pain as he stumbled through the doorway towards the living room. "We've got a runner," he shouted to Leah and Tanner as he hurried after the man through the apartment. He almost stopped in his tracks as he passed through the living room. On his right, the wall was covered by computers, monitors, and other electronic equipment. It was obvious they were in the right place. Now they just had to catch the guy. He continued through the living room, through the fluttering curtains and an open back door. "He's coming out," he shouted, hoping that Leah would be listening and ready.

As he stepped out on the fire escape, the rain and the wind once again found his face. Instinctively, he wiped off of his face and then raced towards the stairs that led down to the ground. He turned left to descend the stairs when he suddenly found himself flying backward and hit the railing. He grunted as he fell onto the metal grating, pinned down by a dark shadow.

"We need to stop meeting like this," Leah whispered with a smirk from on top of him, her face just inches from his. After an awkward pause that felt like it lasted an eternity, she rolled off of him and offered him a hand. He gratefully accepted.

"He went up," she said and pointed towards the sky and then took off up the stairs, each step reverberating through the metal frame of the fire escape. Denton sighed and followed close behind, periodically wiping the rain off of his face as he climbed the stairs two steps two at a time. He hadn't expected the man to run up. That had been a severe miscalculation on his part. Usually, the escape path from a building was down, not up. As he looked up, he could see the man climbing the stairs as quickly as his legs allowed, occasionally looking down to evaluate his advantage. Then, he disappeared onto the roof, ten floors up.

As Denton reached the last landing before the roof, a bald, bearded head with thick glasses on his nose popped out of a window next to the fire escape. "Hey, what's the 'acket out he'e?" he shouted and waved his arm at Denton. "Nothing to see, sorry, sorry," he yelled, jumped over the arm and continued up the last few steps to the roof.

He reached the roof only moments behind Leah. As he stepped off of the fire escape, his left foot slipped, and he continued forward through the air and landed in the middle of a puddle of water. The wind was knocked out of him as his body absorbed the impact and he exhaled a grunt, momentarily paralyzed from the impact.

"You alright?" Leah shouted and then after their target before Denton could answer. Denton struggled back onto his feet.

"Yeah, ok, I'm alright," he shouted after Leah. He paused momentarily and caught his breath as he gazed across the roof. Rusty air conditioning units were spread out with regular intervals, interspersed between satellite dishes and old-fashioned TV antennas. He'd have to be careful running across. He'd made a fool out of himself enough as it was and his body was protesting as a result. He saw Leah disappear behind a large, square structure in the center of the roof, likely the housing for the elevator machinery. He sighed and continued after Leah and their fugitive.