"Everyone under cover?" he heard Wilkes ask, interrupting his doubts. It had to be no more than six—
The others replied; his hearing, choked with his heartbeat and breathing, could not distinguish direction. They seemed all around him.
Lights—
A glare of whitish light. He scrambled across the girder, lying flat for a moment, then rising onto his haunches, hands white as they gripped the cold, wet steel. He was sitting like a waiting animal, yet the posture suggested resignation, immobility at the same moment. A pool of shadow lay below him, cast from his body by the…
No, not his body, Wilkes's body as the man moved out into the open. They couldn't see him, a gauze of light between him and the ground, thrown by the lamps suspended on long wires. He was above the light—
Rain seeped through the skylight onto his neck. His forearms and shoulders already ached with the pressure he was exerting through them simply to remain still and balanced on the narrow girder. Wilkes was almost directly below him. An animal would have dropped at that point, that moment — an animal would have ignored the odds of four or five to one.
"Patrick? Come on, Patrick…" Wilkes was regretting his bravado, regretting the open and the hard, dusty light.
Hyde looked up. Five, six, six and a half? Jagged glass, but bare wood in places — rotten wood? One jump, one stretch only. Or wait—?
Perhaps for no more than a minute they would be surprised, confused, puzzled, inactive. Then the ratlike noises would take shape and purpose and identity, and when they had scoured the floor area and the ground-level hiding places, they would look up.
Look up—
Six and a half; wet, dark, paint-peeled window frame; jagged glass, no footholds — he could imagine his shoulders heaving up and through, legs kicking, noise of effort, of cracking wood and glass, then the surprised, upturned faces and the guns aimed at the struggling, kicking legs…
A shudder ran through his aching arms and shoulders. He steadied himself, then looked down. Four of them, emerging from the shadows against the walls, collecting beneath him — Wilkes waving his gun, miming instructions now… one moving towards a stack of wet cardboard boxes, another back into the recesses of the warehouse, a third moving away towards an open door to some disused office.
Apart for a moment, then they'd be drawn back together again—
Now—
No movement—
Stand up.
Hands letting go, reluctantly. Thighs and calves feeling weak, rejecting the effort. Hands free, fingers numb, slow to flex. Arms aching. Legs quivering as they straighten, window not coming close enough. Arms protesting as they stretch above the head, fingers clenched to grasp. Touch — not enough. Touch; grip.
Yes, close enough. Girder wet, foot slipping a fraction. Wood — wood sound enough. Grip.
Now.
Hyde heaved at his seemingly laden body, drawing it up towards the skylight and the rain blowing in. His arms shrieked with cramp and the pain of his effort. Slowly, his head came through the skylight into a windy night, ragged clouds being scuttled and bullied across gaps of stars and the sliver of a new moon. His shoulders passed his elbows, and he kicked with his legs. The wood of the window frame groaned loudly, and he scrambled through, leaving the skylight empty, a hole through which Wilkes's cry of surprise pursued him.
The roof sloped away from him. Splinters of wet wood pained his fingers and palms. Other shouts below him now, and the concussion of two shots striking the corrugated iron of the roof, their impact shuddering through his hands and the soles of his feet.
Quickly, quickly, his mind bullied, echoing Wilkes's cries from inside the warehouse. He scuttled down the slope of the wet, ice-cold iron roof towards the guttering. He extended his legs, using his heels as brakes. The guttering coughed in protest, and shifted, but held. Hyde lay back for a moment, pressed against the roof listening. Running footsteps, shouted orders, pauses of intent silence — the hunt. He sat up, and leaned his body over the narrow alley that ran between the warehouse in which he had been trapped and its neighbour. Empty. Ten feet—?
He lowered himself over the gutter, clinging to it, wincing at every groan and squeak of protest it uttered. His legs dangled for a moment, and then he dropped.
"Here!" someone yelled, only yards away. "Come on—!"
Inexperienced, some cold and previously unused part of his brain informed him. The man was slow, undecided, afraid. Kill it—
Hyde was on his haunches, absorbing the impact with the ground, and he fought the momentary weakness after effort and the trauma of surprise and shock. The pistol was in his hand with only a fractional delay — kill it — danger — trap closing, insisted the cold, now-admitted, now-controlling part of him. Kill it.
Hyde fired twice, and the body to which the voice had belonged, the body that had prompted vocal chords to utter a cry for help, bucked away against the wall of the warehouse, then slid into a patch of deep shadow, losing shape, identity, volition. Then Hyde pushed himself to his feet and ran.
Broken wooden slats over a glassless window. He clambered up onto the sill, and kicked at the rotten wood. It gave inwards, instantly disintegrating into wet sawdust. He hesitated for a moment, hunched and staring into the interior of the dark, wet-smelling warehouse, and then he jumped, colliding almost immediately with cardboard that gave soggily, and rolled and tumbled through a stack of boxes and cartons.
No way back, another part of his brain informed him. The icy part had retreated momentarily. This part was nervy, feverish, close to panic. He had killed one of his own. Now, he was no longer one of their own, one of them.
They were going to kill me…
No way back. It's over. You're out. You're dead. He could smell the recently-fired gun in the damp warehouse air. He thrust it, warm-barrelled, into his pocket.
He scrambled out of the wreckage of old packing-cases and empty cartons, arms outstretched, and blundered across the warehouse. He could hear footsteps, then silence, then a curse. The elimination order on himself was now precisely defined and endorsed. There was now no possibility that they would not kill him if they had the opportunity.
Gate—
A minute, perhaps two, and then they would guard the gates against him. The only direction in which he could be certain there was not a blind alley lay towards the gates through which he had followed Wilkes. Perhaps he had less than a minute.
His claw-bent fingers collided with the opposite wall. Now he could almost see the faint gleam of its whitewash. Direction—? There were no noises from outside the window, from the kneeling group around the dead thing slumped in the shadow. Door, then—?
This warehouse was closer than the first to the gates, he would not have to cross their line of fire, they would be behind him from the start of his run.
He moved slowly, carefully towards the doors. To his adjusted night-vision, the warehouse now possessed a pallid gleam. The floor space was empty. He reached the double-doors, touching them with the urgent delicacy of a blind man. One huge, rusted bolt above his head and below it the doors rested slightly ajar from one another. One bolt—
He listened. His advantage was draining away. He touched the bolt, trying to ease it. It squeaked, then grumbled. He let it go, as if it contained a charge, held his breath, and then jerked at it. It slid noisily out and he heaved open the.drunkenly-leaning doors.