Static Hour

Rooftop Run

Midnight found them on the service gantry that connected their building to the one behind it, a narrow steel bridge meant for maintenance crews, not for two people crossing in the dark with a bronze wrapped in a laundry bag between them.

"Stay low," Kamsi said, not looking back.

"And don't look down until you're across. Looking down is how people fall."

"I studied art history," Adaeze said, matching his pace.

"Nobody taught me how to cross a gantry at midnight."

"I'm teaching you now."

The wind found them halfway across, sharp and sudden, carrying the smell of rain that hadn't fallen yet and the distant thrum of traffic on Herbert Macaulay. Adaeze's fingers tightened on the rail. Below them, four floors down, an alley ran narrow and dark between the buildings, lit only by a single security light that flickered like it was considering giving up entirely.

She did not look down. She looked at him instead, at the set of his shoulders, the easy balance of a body that had done this before, many times, in worse weather than this.

"How long have you been doing this?" she asked.

"Long enough that the falling doesn't scare me anymore."

He glanced back at her, and in the weak light his face looked younger than it had in his apartment, unguarded in a way she suspected he didn't allow often. "The catching does."

She didn't have time to ask what he meant. Her foot found a gap in the grating she hadn't seen, the metal shifting under her weight in a way it wasn't supposed to, and the world tilted sideways all at once.

She didn't fall. His hand closed around her wrist before her body had finished deciding to panic, and then his arm was around her waist, pulling her into him hard enough that her palm landed flat against his chest and stayed there, feeling his heart going as fast as her own.

"I told you not to look down," he said, low, close enough that she felt the words more than heard them.

"I didn't."

"Then look at me."

She hadn't realized she wasn't. She lifted her eyes to his, and the moment stretched longer than it should have, longer than a rescue required, his hand still at her waist, hers still flat against him, the two of them balanced on a gantry that suddenly felt very small.

His gaze dropped to her mouth, just once, just for a second, and something in her chest went perfectly still, waiting.

Then headlights swept the alley below.

He moved first, pulling her flush against the wall of the building beside them, both of them pressed into shadow, the bronze crushed between their bodies in its laundry bag disguise. The car below rolled to a stop directly beneath them, engine idling, and a door opened.

"They found us," Adaeze breathed.

Kamsi's hand came up, flat and warning against her mouth, his eyes fixed on the alley, his whole body gone rigid with a stillness she recognized now as the thing he did instead of fear.

Below them, a voice she almost recognized called out into the dark, unhurried, patient, certain they were somewhere close.

"Adaeze. Come down. We only want to talk."