Shattered Glass Below

"We have twelve minutes before they spark those cutting torches," I said.

I hauled the strap of the oxygen condenser tight across my chest. The metal casing bit into my bruised shoulder. The sharp throb kept me awake.

Sisaqa didn't ask how I knew the timing. She was already kneeling by the blown fire door, checking the corridor sightlines.

"The central riser is crawling with perimeter security," she said. She didn't look back at me. "If we take the service stairs, we run straight into their rear guard."

"We aren't taking the stairs."

I pointed my penlight through the blown blast wall toward the west opening.

Beyond the gap lay the Level 6 skybridge. It was a thirty-yard tube of structural steel and wire-reinforced glass, slung sixty feet above the ground-floor atrium. In daylight, hospital donors used it to walk between the surgical suites and the executive annex without seeing sick people. Right now, it looked like a broken spine. The blast from the sub-levels had buckled the mid-span support truss. Two of the outer panes had already popped their gaskets, leaving dark voids where cool air hissed into the hallway.

Sisaqa peered over the threshold. Her knuckles turned white against the door frame.

"Tell me that thing holds five hundred pounds," she said.

"The municipal blueprints rated it for four tons," I replied.

"The city bought those trusses from a cut-rate foundry in the south valley." She adjusted her grip on Mallki's tactical radio. "I audited the procurement fraud three years ago."

"Delightful." I stepped past her to inspect the mounting bracket. "Then don't bounce."

I shifted the condenser's heavy nylon harness to my left shoulder, keeping the hard plastic casing clear of her bruised ribs. She gave no sign she noticed the adjustment. She was too busy calculating survival odds on her fingers.

A smear of gray drywall dust streaked her jawline, accentuating the stubborn set of her chin. A sudden pressure gripped my stomach. She looked entirely exhausted, running on pure venom and sheer will. It was dangerous how easily I fell back into following her lead. Three years in Ward B should have cured me of that weakness.

"I go first," I said. "Walk only on the steel crossbeams. Do not step in the center of the glass panels."

"Pomaq." Her voice dropped an octave.

"What?"

"If the bridge gives, throw the condenser to the other side first."

I glared down at her. "I'm not tossing fifty thousand credits of medical hardware into the dark, Sisaqa."

"You know what I mean," she muttered.

"Step on the beams," I repeated.

I planted my right boot on the primary structural rib. The cold metal groaned beneath my soles. The whole bridge shivered, swaying two inches to the left. Down below, the dark atrium was an empty canyon littered with shattered plastic chairs and flooded drainage trenches.

One step. Two steps.

The steel held. My pry bar clanked against my knee with every pace. Behind me, Sisaqa's breath came fast and shallow, her canvas shoes treading directly in my footsteps.

"Halfway," she whispered.

A sharp, metallic crack echoed through the tube.

The sound wasn't loud. It sounded like an iron rivet shearing under clean shear stress.

Then the northern anchor cable snapped.

The skybridge dropped five feet in a single second.

The sudden drop threw me against the right wall. The wire-glass shuddered, spiderwebbing into thousands of milky fractures beneath my elbow. Sisaqa let out a sharp gasp, sliding three feet down the tilting walkway before her fingers caught the lip of an overhead conduit.

"Don't move!" I barked.

The entire span had pitched twenty degrees to the starboard side. The glass floor was no longer horizontal. It was a greased slide aimed directly at the drop.

Another rivet gave way near the south abutment.

The walkway groaned, tilting further. The spiderwebbed glass panels along the floor began popping out of their rubber gaskets, sliding down the incline and vanishing into the atrium void with faint, distant tinkles.

"Pomaq," Sisaqa said. Her voice was remarkably steady, but her boots were slipping. "The south anchor is peeling."

I looked ahead. We were ten yards from the concrete threshold of the south radiology annex. But the bridge floor between us and the door was buckling into a jagged V-shape.

"Climb the center rib," I commanded. "Now."

She lunged forward, scrambling on hands and knees along the central steel beam. I moved behind her, matching her pace, my hands clamped around the icy box girder.

Five yards out, the main floor support sheared completely.

The skybridge didn't fall. It folded.

The center section collapsed downward, turning the last ten yards into a steep, forty-five-degree chute. Gravity ripped Sisaqa's footing away. She slid backward down the buckled metal, her fingers raking across slick steel without purchase.

I dropped my center of gravity and threw myself forward onto the slope. I tracked the diagonal shear lines spiderwebbing across the flexing deck plates, calculating the load distribution across the surviving perimeter bolts. The central seam was tearing, but the wall sill carried the primary compression load.

I slammed the forged steel wedge of my pry bar directly into the expansion joint between the steel deck and the wall sill. The metal bit deep. Sparks sprayed across my face. The bar jammed into the gap, arresting my descent with a violent jolt that nearly dislocated my left shoulder.

With my free right arm, I caught Sisaqa by the wrist.

Her full weight hit me instantly.

The jolt pulled my chest against the vibrating steel. My boots hung over empty air. Beneath us, thirty feet of wire-glass fell away, exposing the sixty-foot drop to the concrete atrium.

"I have you," I grunted through clenched teeth.

Her face was dead white. Her other hand locked onto my forearm, her nails biting through my scrub shirt.

"The radio," she gasped. "The condenser."

"Forget the gear!"

"No!"

She was dangling off the edge of the fractured frame. The strain on my right arm was tearing at the muscle fibers. To make matters worse, my heavy canvas trauma kit, slung across my right shoulder, had slipped loose. The three-pound brass zippers and glass medication ampoules dragged down on my arm, levering my shoulder out of its socket.

I couldn't pull her up with that dead weight fighting me.

One clean triage decision.

I didn't hesitate. I flicked my right thumb against the trauma kit's quick-release buckle.

The heavy canvas bag slid off my shoulder. Three years of hoarded surgical instruments, sterile scalpels, and emergency sutures plunged into the dark.

Freed from the leverage, I engaged my lat muscles.

"Hold on!" I roared.

I hauled upward with everything I had left. Sisaqa scrambled frantically, her knees catching the lip of the intact south concrete sill. She threw herself over the ledge, tumbling onto the dry tile of the radiology hallway.

The remaining anchor cable snapped with the roar of a gunshot.

The entire skybridge tore loose from the wall.

I kicked off the dying steel frame with both heels, launching my body forward through the opening just as the structure gave way beneath my boots.

I hit the concrete floor hard on my side, rolling twice. I unslung the condenser's harness from my bruised shoulder and shoved the heavy housing into Sisaqa's arms as she dragged herself upright.

Behind us, three tons of steel girders and reinforced glass plummeted into the void.

The crash was absolute hell.

The impact slammed through the concrete foundation, rattling my teeth in my skull. It sounded like a freight train hitting a quarry. Shards of safety glass blasted through the threshold, pelting the walls around us like shrapnel.

Then, absolute, ringing silence.

I lay on my back, gasping for air. Sisaqa was sitting against the corridor wall three feet away, clutching the intact oxygen condenser to her chest with one arm and the radio with the other.

Her chest rose and fell in ragged gasps.

"You dropped your kit," she whispered.

"I can steal another one," I said, my voice hoarse.

"You loved those scalpel handles."

"They were cheap steel."

She let out a shaky, breathless laugh that sounded suspiciously like a sob.

Before either of us could stand, two blinding white shafts of light cut through the ruined doorway.

Halogen searchlights.

From the dark atrium floor sixty feet below, the high-power beams locked onto the dust cloud billowing around our threshold.

A harsh voice barked over an amplified bullhorn:

"Movement on Level 6 South! Perimeter squad, suppress the exit!"