30,000 Feet

Chapter 8: The Gravity of Love

The Spire groaned, a deep, metallic scream that vibrated through the soles of their boots. With the graviton stabilizers shattered, the laws of physics in the tower were becoming erratic. Dust and debris didn't just fall; they drifted in slow, sickening arcs as the building tilted five degrees to the east.

"The elevator is slag," Kaelen said, looking up at the hollowed-out shaft where the train had embedded itself. "We have to take the maintenance spine. Sixty floors."

Sienna wiped the blood from her brow and looked at the swaying ceiling. "The Council’s inner sanctum is at the apex. If we don’t get there before the structural integrity hits zero, the whole thing is going to pancake into the Lower Wards."

They sprinted toward the service stairs, but the stairs were gone—sheared off by the impact. Kaelen looked at his magnetic climbing gloves, then at Sienna. He didn't say a word; he just held out his hand. She took it, and he hoisted her onto his back, her arms locking around his neck.

"Hold on tight," he growled.

Kaelen began the climb, his gloves thudding against the reinforced steel of the inner spine. Every few floors, the building would lurch, and they’d be tossed sideways, hanging over a three-hundred-foot drop into the flaming wreckage of the lobby.

"Kaelen, wait!" Sienna hissed when they reached the 40th floor.

She reached out, tapping into a junction box hanging by a wire. Her eyes glazed over as she interfaced with the dying system. "I’ve got the internal security feed. They’ve sent 'The Executioner' down to meet us. It’s an apex-class combat cyborg. It doesn't feel pain, and it doesn't lose."

"Then it’s never met me," Kaelen said, his muscles burning as he surged upward.

They burst through a maintenance hatch onto a narrow catwalk just as the Executioner descended from the shadows above. It was a terrifying fusion of black chrome and hydraulics, with a monomolecular blade extending from its forearm.

The tower shivered again, a massive support beam snapping like a toothpick. The catwalk they stood on tilted at a forty-five-degree angle.

Kaelen slid toward the edge, his boots sparking against the metal. He shoved Sienna toward a secure pillar. "Stay there!"

The Executioner lunged, its blade whistling through the air where Kaelen’s head had been a second before. Kaelen countered with his dual blades, the clash of steel and chrome sending showers of sparks into the dark. The fight was a blur of violence on a shifting stage.

As the catwalk began to tear away from the wall, the cyborg pinned Kaelen, its blade hovering inches from his throat.

"Sienna! Now!" Kaelen roared.

Sienna didn't have a gun, but she had the building’s code. She slammed her palm onto the junction box. "Zero gravity... activate!"

The graviton stabilizers gave one final, violent pulse and then inverted. Kaelen and the Executioner drifted into the air. In the weightlessness, the cyborg’s superior strength meant nothing. Kaelen used the momentum to kick off the wall, driving his blade through the Executioner’s core processor.

He grabbed Sienna’s hand as they floated toward the ceiling. "The stairs to the sanctum... there!"

Gravity slammed back into place as the system died. They landed hard on the 60th-floor landing, the doors to the Council’s chamber standing just a few feet away.