I jumped off the building...
I could feel the wind rushing against my face, caressing my hair even though I was wearing a ballistic mask. By my calculations, it took only 6 secs to hit the bottom but as I'm falling, I felt the journey was long. I had balanced myself like a bird with it's wings & tail wide open, gliding through the ocean of wind, rising. Except, I was falling. The drag I created slowed my fall by about 2 second tops, hopefully. The coat I was wearing helped too.
Four seconds had passed and I was half way past the elevation of the building. I pressed both my middle finger against the bottom of my thumbs. Zap... The electromagnets went active the next instant. I'd already had my coat lined with metal at the free end and the magnets started attracting the metal. The tech wasn't that simple though. The magnets constantly changed their polarity and kept the coat stiff enough to hold my weight & glide along. I could've made it more efficient but this was more safer.
The sudden lift created by my coat helped me rise nearly to the same level as I was before. In just a couple of seconds, I had passed a third of the distance but lost half of the elevation. The glide path, however was stable after this. My communicator kept me updated through my earpiece. If this continues, I'd lose all the elevation in another 100 feet & then I'd be going for the walls. But I was glad that the plan was going rather well with no crosswinds which would otherwise stall me even further. I'm not sure if they weren't looking in my direction or if they mistook me for a bird, but the patrol didn't seem to have noticed me. I guess I was right about them being trained in horse stables. All of them were looking below to the streets, which were now beginning it's day.
I just covered another 100 feet and one of them spotted me from the other end. He alerted the others just as I turned off the magnets and went for the dive. I still had another 100 feet ahead of me, so I held my body at angle towards the building and the wind took care of the rest. Without any drag, I was gliding at an accelerated rate. Before they all gathered at the edge, I was already close to the building with just another 50 feet. I lifted my left arm towards the top of the building & closed my wrists tightly. The grapple hook shot off with rather a violent jolt which I felt in my wrist.
The walls were coming very fast at me. To avoid hitting the wall with my head, I twisted my body midair about a 180 degrees, with my legs facing the building now. Just as I was about to clash with the building, the hook had found a target and broke my fall. My legs hit the wall at about 60 mph which, if it wasn't for my rigorous training, rudimentary preparation & the heavy duty jumper boots I was wearing, I'd say would've mashed my legs like baked potato. Now though, I felt only a slight inconvenience.
I couldn't see what the rooftop patrol was doing since the extension slabs at the top limited my view. Without wasting any time, I activated the motor powered rappelling gear. With a great swoosh it started pulling me up. I was going in at an alarming rate, considering I was going headfirst to the top. It sorta felt like bungee jumping, only a bit fast forward in motion. It's pretty easy to run down the walls using this gear but a lot more dangerous when it's the other way. In only about 3 seconds, I was closing in on to the rooftop. With great effort, I pushed myself from the walls and tried to get a steady footing. Once I did, I jumped and the rappelling gear accelerated once more without me tugging down. I used that momentum, to shoot past the roof at a greater velocity.
I could see now that the grapple hook did find a strong target, armor of one of the rooftop patrol. The others were trying to cut it off with apparently no luck. Looking at me now, they decided to push my anchor down and wasted no time doing so. As I shot past them, my anchor was on his way down. I disengaged the rappelling gear and continued with my ascent. The momentum was enough for me to gain a good 30 feet above their heads. Thanks to inertia, I had a long second before losing the momentum. They were readying their guns to put me down but I had already reached into my coat pocket to get the Flinger grenade. They were clustered too close which was so not good for them right now. As I lost the momentum, I threw the grenade towards them just as two of them trained their guns at me. In just another second, I'd be close to the ground before which I'd have been peppered to death. In my left arm I had a disruptor shield ready which was powering up along as the guns that were being aimed at me. It's not a physical shield as you might imagine. As the name suggests, it disrupts the kinetic energy of anything that comes into it's vicinity. It's actually scary if you know the limits to which you can use it, what you can do with it.
Lot of things happened in the next 2 seconds. I was about 2 feet from the ground, when the two guns started firing and another two which would fire the next second. I pulled my left arm to the front and just when it wasn't too late, the disruptor shield came to life taking all the fire. I was now on the ground, covering my entire self with the shield, when the Flinger went off. The Flinger is an amazing piece of tech when you're the one that's using it. It looks like the perfect round shaped mollusk, polished, black in color and highly lethal. It consists of two shells arranged symmetrically like a UFO. Inside the shells is a tiny charge enough to take out a small group non lethally. What makes it lethal are the built-in bio-shards, engineered specifically to attack the central nervous system disabling all motor skills for a limited time. Once the charge goes, the shell explodes, scattering the shards in all the directions with high velocity. The impact shock puts a man down and before he could recover from it, the shards start working. Once the motor skills are locked, there's nothing you can do really, since that's what controls all your moving body parts. And that's exactly what was happening now as the rooftop patrol started falling to the ground one by one. I turned off the disruptor shield and put it back in my coat.
I looked to my communicator and I could see the building plan already. I could see my target, all the security entrances, the sneaky techs hidden and yes, the thermal imaging of the remaining patrol inside the building.
I looked to my left. The sun was bright in the East.
No comments:
Post a Comment