Chapter 10 - The Ascent
The lobby of the Sterling Dynamics building was a cathedral of glass, marble, and total shadow. Without power, the security turnstiles stood uselessly open, and the elevators were dead shafts of steel.
Sarah and Leo moved through the lobby like phantoms, their footsteps silent on the marble floor. Emergency stairwells were their only path to the 80th-floor penthouse.
"Eighty floors," Sarah said, checking her remaining ammunition. "My legs are going to love this."
"We won't take the stairs," Leo said, walking over to the central elevator shaft. He slammed his hand against the heavy steel doors, prying them apart with superhuman leverage. He looked up into the pitch-black vertical tunnel.
He grabbed the thick steel elevator cable hanging in the center of the shaft. "Hold onto me."
Sarah didn't argue. She wrapped her arms around Leo’s small frame. Leo gripped the steel cable, his hand glowing red-hot as he melted the outer brake housing above them. The counterweight dropped, pulling the cable—and both of them—upward through the shaft at terrifying speed.
The wind roared past their ears as floors flashed by in the dark—10... 20... 40... 60...
Above them, heavy metallic clanking echoed through the shaft. Vance’s remaining automated defense turrets had locked onto their motion. Laser targeting lines cut through the dark, painting Leo’s chest with red dots.
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"Hold on!" Leo shouted.
He released his thermal grip on the cable, kicking off the shaft wall to throw them into an open maintenance hatch on the 75th floor just as a hail of heavy caliber fire shredded the elevator cable above them, sending the steel rope whipping into the dark abyss below.
