Chapter 25 · Tether Run

"Hold the damn line, Vance!" Lyra’s scream was nearly drowned out by the shriek of tearing metal.

I didn't answer. I couldn't. I was currently hanging three hundred feet above the smog-choked floor of the Sky-Anchor, clinging to a rusted steel cable that was vibrating like a guitar string about to snap. My mechanical arm was locked tight, metal teeth sunk deep into the alloy, but the friction was heating the arm to a blistering glow.

"I'm trying!" I yelled back, glancing up. "The cable's shredding!"

Above me, the orbital strike sirens wailed—a guttural, rhythmic thrum that shook my teeth. Every thirty seconds, a beam of concentrated heat sliced through the upper gantries, turning reinforced steel into liquid slag. One of those beams hit the primary hoist mechanism, and the world tilted.

I felt the jerk. Then the sudden, stomach-flipping drop.

"Shit!" I slammed my boots against the cable, trying to stabilize.

Lyra was twenty feet above me, perched on a swaying catwalk that looked like it was held together by prayer and rust. She had her rifle braced against a railing, popping off shots with surgical precision at the Syndicate drones swarming the lift shaft.

"Stop complaining and climb!"