D. MacHale - The Pilgrims of Rayne

“We’re on top of the clouds,” Siry gasped.

He wasn’t far from wrong. The elevator had opened at the uppermost point of the pyramid. Centuries of erosion had eaten huge holes into the steeply slanted walls, which meant we were looking over Rubic City from the highest point possible. To say it was breathtaking is a huge understatement. Laid out before us was the entire city. Beyond that was the ocean. The skyscrapers that seemed so immense from ground level now looked like Lego toys beneath us. I was both awed and saddened. Not many people get the chance to see something like this. Cities are staggeringly huge and complicated creations. Seeing it from so high up gave us that perspective. That sense of awe made it all the more painful to know it was a city of the dead.

There might have been ten feet of floor between the elevator doors and the outside wall. Or what was left of it. The floor itself wasn’t in much better shape than the rotten walls. I looked down to see big chunks of floor missing.

“Careful where you step,” I cautioned.

I worried that it wouldn’t matter how careful we were. The whole floor looked as solid as a piece of dry paper. Neither of us was too quick to leave the elevator, until the doors started closing.

“Get out!” I shouted.

We both hopped out. I held my breath, fearing the floor would collapse under our weight. The elevator doors closed. We heard the sound of the car descending. I had no doubt that it would soon return, loaded with Flighters. Or dados.

“Now what?” Siry asked.

It was looking as if I had led us into a dead end. My escape plan had only delayed the inevitable. We were still prisoners, only with a better view. I walked cautiously across the floor toward the destroyed, slanted wall. The wind blew through the holes, making whistling sounds. I cautiously peeked out of the hole and down the side of the pyramid. The sight made me nearly lose my balance. It was like my inner ear suddenly went all wacky. I pulled myself back in and closed my eyes to fight the vertigo.

“What did you see?” Siry asked.

“It’s a long way down,” I said, with my eyes still closed. “I think the angle of the wall threw me off a little.”

That’s when the idea hit me. I took a breath, opened my eyes, and peered back outside. This time I knew what to expect, so I wasn’t as rocked. There was no way to judge how high up we were. The wall wasn’t straight down, because it was a pyramid. It angled out. Centuries ago the surface was slick and black. Now it was a mess of holes. Some big, some not. Chunks of framework stuck out everywhere. It looked more like a chopped-up field of garbage than the wall of a pyramid.

To me it looked like an escape route.

“We’re climbing down the outside,” I announced.

“What?” Siry shot back with horror.

“The angle of the wall isn’t that steep. There’s plenty to grab on to. Unless you’ve got a better idea, I say we go for it.”

Siry joined me at the hole and peered out. He took a long hard look at the surface, then a long hard look at me.

“You’re crazy, you know that?”

“Yeah, but in a couple of minutes that elevator is going to hit bottom and Saint Dane is going to get on and bring up some of his pals to take us back. Which way do you want to go down?”

Siry looked sick. I probably did too. I wasn’t as confident in this insane plan as I was making it sound. Without waiting for Siry to make a decision, I stuck my foot out of the hole, turned back toward Siry… and stepped out onto the face of the pyramid. At first the biggest problem was the wind. I was able to get a foothold on a piece of frame and felt pretty secure. But I was afraid the wind would blow me off. I flattened my belly against the steep wall, trying to create as much friction as possible.

“Don’t look down,” I called.

“Don’t worry.”

I carefully started to climb down. It was all about finding secure foot- and handholds. The surface of the pyramid was chewed up, creating several of each. I didn’t stop to think about how insane this was. I was hanging against the outside of a building a hundred stories in the air. I wasn’t afraid of falling. I was afraid of sliding. One false step and I knew I’d start a slide that would be impossible to stop. It would be just as bad as a fall.

Siry was right behind me. Or right above me. Or… something. You get the idea. If he lost his footing, he’d come sliding right down onto me and bye-bye both of us.

“You okay?” I called up.

“I’m still here” was his answer. Good enough.

I always had four choices of where to go next. Between my two hands and two feet, one of them kept finding a lower perch. It was working. We were moving down. I was beginning to think our biggest worry was going to be Saint Dane discovering us creeping down the outside of the building, totally defenseless.

It wasn’t. I heard a wrenching crack sound.

“Ahhh!” screamed Siry. He lost his grip and started to slide. A moment later he shot right past me. I reached out to grab him. Bad move. The moment I let go with my left hand, I felt myself sliding too. I had to quickly pull my hand back and grab on, or I would have gone down right after him. I watched in horror as Siry picked up speed. Looking down, I realized the idiocy of our plan. Seeing him slide away, and looking beyond him to the ground so far away, brought the vertigo back. The only way I could keep from losing my grip was by closing my eyes and pressing my cheek against the skin of the pyramid. I wanted to pound my fist against it in anger.

I heard a crash and a scream from below. It didn’t sound good. Do crashes and screams ever sound good? I took a few deep breaths and looked down to see… nothing. gone. That seemed impossible. No way he would have fallen out of sight so quickly.

“Pendragon?” I heard a dazed voice call.

“Are you all right?” I called back.

“The wall caved in. I’m inside.”

He was alive, at least for the moment. I started moving again. Slowly, gradually, I made my way down toward Siry’s voice. I had gotten only a few yards when I realized that the surface of the pyramid was becoming unstable. Before I could think of some way to deal with that, the panel beneath me cracked and caved. I fell into the pyramid, tumbling down in a shower of black tiles. I landed next to Siry, who was sitting up, alive but dazed. The two of us stared at each other.

“Let’s not do that again,” he said.

We were fine. Stunned. A little cut up, but fine. I saw that we were in one of the cubicles that held two jump tubes. “What are those?” Siry asked.

He pointed to the two round hatches on the wall that covered the tubes. They were closed. I wasn’t about to open them. I didn’t want to know what was inside. The control lights were dark. The jumps had been over for a long time.

“Jump tubes,” I explained. “Where the people entered Lifelight.”

“People are in there?” he asked.

“Not anymore.” I didn’t go into any more details.

I stood up cautiously, making sure my bones were intact. I had a few scrapes, but that was all. Siry got away even easier. We had lived through an impossible stunt, but were still trapped inside a dado-infested pyramid.

I gently pushed the door open. The first thing I saw were two dados marching by. I froze. Had they seen me? No. Or they weren’t looking for us. Either way, they didn’t stop.

Peering out showed me that we had slid about a quarter of the way down the pyramid. My idea ended up not being that crazy after all. Sort of. Okay, maybe we were nearly killed, but it helped us to get away. At least for a while. We were in the dead center of the long balcony, with jump rooms spread out to either side of us. The balcony was about six feet wide and looked out over the center of the pyramid. The place was alive with dados. They walked slowly and methodically along the balconies that ringed the inside of the pyramid. Many more marched along the catwalks leading to the center tube and the elevator.