Farisia Rising

The Chase

Cateye bounded up walls and across the faces of buildings innumerable—her twelve-inch spike heels supplementing where the grip of her claws failed. She mostly kept to brick, as it was pulpy and easy to dig into. And like an insect scaling with utter disregard for gravity, she tore along, bearing sideways, lifting and landing.

Windows blurred to singular streaks; sky became ground became sky. She twisted midair, in order to scan every inch of the panorama. There were no blind spots as she spun, for she whipped and pirouetted so quickly that she saw everything at once.

At last, the red rustbucket entered her field of vision, and she stalled, eagling her eyes. She loped along the side of a towering apartment complex, freeing her left hand and drawing a grapple.

She spun the grapple and hurtled it, catching it on a bannister across the way. The valley between high-rises was wide. And the valley floor was a twelve-lane road, parceled by median strips and the works.

Detaching herself, she fell freely till the grapple pulled taut, and lofted her in a downward arc. She waited for the rustbucket to pass under her, before readying herself to drop. Tearing the bannister free with the grapple, she lost her only suspension, and purposely, methodically allowed herself to plummet. Fifty feet and forty feet and thirty feet from the rustbucket, she took the grapple with the piece of bannister attached and lashed it like a great whip, the bannister smashing into their hood.

The rustbucket screamed to a halt, skittering sideways across two lanes. The typical reverie of honking followed, as if it was no more than a mundane inconvenience.

There came no explosion of pressure. So her suspicions were all but confirmed.

Cateye landed on the roof of their car, ripping a clawed hand up the windshield. It split like water, minimal resistance. She knocked the injured glass in, and used the cord of her grapple to garrote Reggie, before yanking him out onto the hood with her. She then tied the garrote tight around his neck, and leapt with him into the sky.

Eva's scream faded, swallowed up in the growing space between them.

The garrote had him like a leash, like a noose, bannister still cantering at the far end. The strange assembly mesmerized every spectator who saw it.

Cateye moved to lash it into the side of a building, some meters over—her way of destroying him from a safe distance. He would still die by her hand, and quite personally at that. But when the bomb inevitably detonated, she would be clear of its range.

The only inconvenience would be collateral. But her transportation was still docked at the port. She'd be gone before any government inquest could be made.

Reggie ragdolled through the air before adapting, and grabbing the cord tethering them. He broke it with his bare hand, freefalling briefly, then grabbing a window ledge. He pulled himself up in one seamless motion and mounted the thin ledge, steadying himself.

He was about twentysomething storeys off the ground.

With no claws to serve as holds, it seemed he was stranded. Until a rather brash idea occurred. He heaved himself into the window, shattering through into some poor old lady's living room. (He made sure the side of him that took the impact wasn't the side with the bomb.)

Fortunately her floors were carpeted, so his landing wasn't too rough. He untangled himself and swayed to his feet, noticing her cowering in the corner, fear mingling with the powder-blue of her eyes. She clutched a half-full basket of laundry in her hands.

He smiled and gave a thumbs-up.

"Thanks," he said.

And he ran out.