“Karla?” I whispered to the voice in my head. “Can humans really survive a fifteen-foot drop without hurting themselves?”
It depends, Karla retorted. In theory, you could fuck up your leg by falling from a foot or two. It’s all in how you land, honestly.
“Okay… ” I grumbled. “Let me rephrase the question. How can I fall from fifteen feet without hurting myself?”
Over at the other side of the rooftop, Natalie was hard at work tying off our rappelling ropes. I was sure that, being a Scavenger, she knew how to tie a strong knot.
I just worried about the state of the building, especially after my little near miss a minute ago.
That’s easy, the voice in my head explained, you just have to tuck and roll. A few seconds before you reach the ground, just curl up into a ball, use your momentum to roll forward, and then pop up onto your feet. Do that, and you’ll be fine.
“That easy, huh?” I asked sarcastically. “I’m not a parkour runner, you know.”
Trust me, I know, Karla chuckled. But that’s really the only thing I can suggest in this situation. I’m assuming that means you are on the rooftop, and you’re short on rope?
“Are you sure you’re not seeing everything through my eyes, like with a secret camera or something?” I teased. “Because you’re getting really good at guessing the exact situations I’m finding myself in.”
We’re both good guessers, she mused. My father is a hyper-advanced artificial intelligence, after all.
I couldn’t argue with that logic.
Soon, Natalie had everything strapped up to the support beams, and she came back over with the two rope ends in her hand.
“Now, we just need to tie ourselves in,” she announced. “This is gonna be the thing that makes or breaks this whole endeavor.”
“Then you’d better do it right.” I winked.
Natalie rolled her eyes. “I thought you were the one who knew all about survivalist stuff?”
“I dabble.” I shrugged. “I will admit, I think I skipped over the episode where they taught you how to tie your own climbing harness.”
“It’s actually not as hard as it looks,” she admitted. “At least, not when you’re making them for easy escape. You didn’t happen to grab any carabiners, did you?”
I just shook my head. “I didn’t think we’d need them.”
“No worries,” Natalie noted, “that just means my knot-tying skills are going to be all the more important.”
The blonde woman took the end of the rope and wrapped it around my waist as tightly as she could. Then she looped it under one of my thighs, looped it underneath the part around my waist, and repeated the action on my other side.
“You think that’s tight enough?” I joked. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to have children if you go any tighter.”
“Squat down,” Natalie demanded, and I obeyed.
Once I was in position, she tightened the ropes even more, brought it back up around my waist, and then tied it off with a knot I couldn’t even recognize.
Then the woman gave my ass a quick smack.
“All good,” she giggled, so I stood back up.
Natalie proceeded to repeat the makeshift harness on herself, and all I could do was watch in awe as she worked her magic. Finally, she finished up her knots, gave a hard yank on the rope behind her, and turned back to me.
“Is that it?” I gulped as my hands grew clammy. “Are we ready to go?”
“As good as we’ll ever be,” Natalie mused as she walked over to the hole. “Now, watch what I’m doing carefully… If you don’t have tension on your rope from the start, you’re pretty much dead.”
“Noted,” I muttered as I walked over beside her.
The Scavenger pulled the slack in the rope up to her chest in bunches, so I followed her lead. Then, once the rope was nice and taut, she shimmied backward, placed her feet squarely on the edge of the hole, and took a deep breath.
“From here, we just slowly lower ourselves down,” she explained. “Don’t let too much tension out of the rope at one time, or you’ll risk breaking the knots or even the rope itself.”
“I definitely will not do that,” I chuckled, but I was currently scared out of my mind.
Natalie gave me a little salute, and then she began to let her rope slip through her fingers a little bit at a time. In just a few seconds, she was hanging down below me.
Now, it was my turn.
I took a deep breath, sat back in my harness, and released a small bit of my rope. My body felt like it was falling for a moment, but then it was suddenly caught by the tension of the cord. Now, I was hanging completely down inside of the reactor, with nothing keeping me from the ground but a strip of rope and some hand-tied knots.
Down below, the room was lit by only a few flickering fluorescent lights. I could see what Natalie had been referring to, a donut-shaped strip of metal that surrounded the perimeter of the structure and had a ladder that led down to other donut-shaped floors.
At least we didn’t have to do this the whole way down.
I continued to release the rope, inch by inch, until finally it went taut. I couldn’t go any lower.
Even more concerning was the fact that we were dangling over the giant pit at the center of the room, rather than the safety of the metal floor.
“Okay,” I called out to Natalie, who was also in the same predicament. “Now what?”
“We swing.” She pointed to the nearest strip of floor. “We get our momentum going, and then we cut ourselves loose when we think we have enough force to carry us to safety.”
“Wait… ” I gasped. “Whoa, whoa, whoa… This wasn’t part of the original plan.”
“I didn’t know the full extent of the situation,” Natalie said nonchalantly. “It’s changed now. All I know is that, if we want our feet safely on the ground, we’re going to need to do this.”
My entire body felt like it was on pins and needles as I hung there helplessly, like a marionette doll without its puppeteer.
Okay, Hunter…. You can do this. It wasn’t that hard. All I had to do was pretend I was back on the elementary school playground, on the swings that Tommy Jackson and I used to play on.
I reached back into my open backpack, pulled out the E-Tool, and unfolded it in my hands. I really, really hoped this was gonna be sharp enough to cut through this nylon.
“I see fear in your eyes, Hunter,” Natalie chuckled. “That’s the kind of thing I always see when I’m helping Marcus train the newbies. Now you’re getting the full Scavenger experience!”
I was sooo flattered.
Natalie and I both began to rock back and forth in the air. Eventually, we were able to build up momentum, until we reached the speed we needed to be.
Suddenly, Natalie flipped open her large folding knife, held it at the ready, and waited patiently. She swung forward… then back… and then, on the second forward swing, she swung her blade as hard as she could. Natalie struck the chord at one of its tautest points, and it snapped like a dry twig.
The woman’s body was released from the nylon rope’s grip, and she flew forward as if she’d been thrown from a moving vehicle. Natalie tucked and rolled as she hit the ground, and I watched her tumble a few feet before she popped back up to her feet.
“Alright, now it’s your turn,” she called back up to me as she put her blade away.
Even though I was still swinging like crazy, I wasn’t quite ready to make the cut. My heart felt like it was down in my feet, and the dizziness was just beginning to set in.
However, I didn’t have much more time to hesitate.
I heard a crack from above, and then my body rapidly dropped about two feet.