woke, panicked for a second by the feel of something pressed against his mouth. Then he realised it was Ella’s hand and relaxed. A few feet away, Drum shook Ninde awake, two enormous fingers sealing her mouth.
“Ferrets have broken through on the ground floor,” Ella whispered, just loud enough for everyone to hear. “We’ve barricaded the stair door, but they’ll probably swarm up the elevator shaft as soon as they can get into it. We have to move up to the roof.”
A loud crash echoing up from below punctuated her words, followed by a hiss as if steam was venting from a boiler.
“One just fell in the elevator shaft,” said Ninde sleepily, red knuckle in her mouth. “It’s not hurt, though. Just angry. There are four more on the ground floor.”
“Will they climb up?” asked Ella.
Ferrets hated heights and would never go beyond the first or second floor – unless forced to by a superior.
“Yes!” exclaimed Ninde, her sleepiness vanishing in an instant. “They know we’re here and they have orders to search the whole building, right to the top.”
“Even the roof?” asked Drum. He had his sword out and was honing the edge with a pocket stone, almost as if the Ferrets were seconds away rather than minutes.
“I think so…” faltered Ninde. “There is a very strong compulsion on them. It must have come from an Overlord, not just a Myrmidon Master.”
“Shit!” exclaimed Ella. She raised the witchlight higher, looking around at the dusty desks that surrounded them, searching for something useful among the blank computer screens and neatly ordered piles of meaningless paper. “We should have picked a taller building.”
Gold-Eye followed her gaze, wondering what she was looking for. He’d seen many rooms like this and they rarely had anything worthwhile in them. Clothes sometimes, and sweet food wrapped in shiny metal cloth. But nothing of any real use.
“Power cords,” Ella said suddenly, pointing at the thin grey cables that ran behind some of the desks, connecting computers and lights to plugs in the wall. “Drum, Ninde, find the longest cords you can – cut them away from the computers if you have to. Just make sure you unplug them first. There could still be power here.”
Drum and Ninde moved quickly to the task, and Gold-Eye moved to help also. But Ella stopped him with a quickly upraised palm.
“Gold-Eye. Can you see anything in the… what was it… soon-to-be-now?”
Gold-Eye shook his head. “It comes. I not happen it.”
“You can’t control it,” Ella said, mouth showing her disappointment. “Pity. It could have been useful. Just help get the cords then.”
Still a bit sleepy, Gold-Eye went over to Ninde and watched her pull the plugs out of the wall and then out of the machines, sawing with her sword if they wouldn’t come out. Since he had only his sharp-pointed spike, Gold-Eye assisted her by holding the cord taut to make it easier to cut.
They were sawing through one of the last cords when Ella suddenly thrust herself between them and pushed them towards the fire stair that led to the roof.
At the same time a crash reverberated through the room, accompanied by a furious hissing.
“Up the steps! Go! Go!” shouted Ella, turning back to the lower fire door, where Drum was frantically heaving a desk up against the shattered door. Half off its hinges, it was being further forced open by something large and sinuous, like a long, black-furred worm. Halfway along its length, paws like overlarge human hands were ripping chunks of wood and cement filler off the side of the door as easily as if they were pulling petals from a rotting daisy.
Drum held the desk against the door with one hand while extending the other, open-palmed, to Ella. She put one of the sawed-off cords in his hand, careful to keep the exposed wires forward. Then she ducked down and plugged it in – and Drum thrust it around the desk and into the Ferret.
Sparks blazed across the rippling flesh of the Ferret, the golden glow of the witchlight lost in a sudden blue-white glare. The creature shrieked with pain, spraying foul-smelling spit from its fanged mouth. Then it was gone, retreating back down the stairs.
Drum pushed the desk back, forcing the door into its frame, and cautiously looped the still-sparking cable around the door handle, which hung by a single screw from the ruined door.
“Might work again,” he said as he headed for the roof stairs. But Ella didn’t answer, letting him get ahead while she circled back every few steps to watch for a sudden rush from the Ferrets below.
A steel trapdoor opened on to the roof from the top of the stairs. As soon as Ella came through it, Drum slammed it shut with a deafening crash of metal on metal and slid the bolts home.
The roof was flat save for an air-conditioning unit that perched like a hunchback in one corner. That provided a bit of a windbreak, but it was still cold. A wind had come up to clear the fog, and the sky was clear, lit with stars and the reflected glow from those parts of the city where the streetlights still worked. The Overlords maintained power and light in much of the city, shutting it on and off from time to time for no apparent reason.
Part of their games, perhaps, in the same way that they controlled the weather. Bringing in fog from the sea; raising winds; shunting storms from one side of the city to the other, all for use as backdrops in the battles they played out with their creatures.
When those creatures weren’t employed hunting escapees from the Dorms…
“We’ve got a few minutes,” said Ella quietly. Only Drum noticed the telltale shiver of apprehension in her left hand.
“First we need to get these cords tied together into a rope long enough to reach across the street.”
“What!” exclaimed Ninde, looking out over the roof at the adjacent skyscraper, its dark bulk towering over their current building. “I am… not going to climb across a five-floor drop on an electric cord!”
“That or the Ferrets,” said Ella firmly. “So start tying. Sheepshanks, I think. Gold-Eye, do you know any knots?”
Gold-Eye shook his head. The automated schools in the Dorms had taught him reading, writing and arithmetic, for the Overlords liked a reasonably agile brain as raw material for their creatures. But he’d forgotten a lot of that in the struggle to survive – and knots had never been part of the curriculum.
“OK, see if you can find something like a brick or pipe to throw – we’ll have to smash a window for Drum to send the rope through.”
Gold-Eye grinned to show he understood and started to look about for anything useful. A pile of half-seen stuff in the shadows under the air-conditioning unit looked interesting, so he headed over to make a closer inspection.
As he passed the trapdoor, it shook, bolts rattling. Then it began to bow outward and the steam-hiss of an angry Ferret came through. But the trapdoor and bolts were solid steel and they held – for the moment.
“Hurry up!” said Drum as Gold-Eye passed. His eyes were on the trapdoor, sword held at the ready.
Gold-Eye
