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Cody Goodfellow

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 442

Beschreibung

A group of urbex explorers breaking into the world's tallest skyscraper in Moscow grapple with dangers from all sides in this pulse-pounding cinematic thriller for readers of Greg Hurwitz and Patrick Hoffman. Michael Foster, Cam Buckley and Maddie Acosta – all former activists in the infamous urbex crew Les Furies. Together they scaled buildings, broke into the spaces no-one else could, and chased a rush that still haunts them. Now though, Michael is stuck recovering from an injury, coding in a dead-end start-up, But Les Furies cannot hide forever. A journalist has uncovered Michael's identity and he is being sent anonymous videos of his time in the crew. When he discovers that Cam and Maddie are planning on reuniting the crew one last time, to scale the Korova Tower in Moscow, he is sceptical. But the tower has never been scaled before. Breaking into the world's tallest building on Russia Day is too good an opportunity to pass him by. But Michael is about to discover that the vertical city has another purpose, one far more sinister than he could have imagined, and this one final ride for Les Furies might well be the last thing any of them ever do.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

Prelude

First Movement

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Second Movement

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Third Movement

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Eight

Thirty-Nine

Forty

Forty-One

Forty-Two

Forty-Three

Forty-Four

Forty-Five

Forty-Six

Forty-Seven

Forty-Eight

Forty-Nine

Fifty

Fifty-One

Final Movement

Fifty-Two

Fifty-Three

Fifty-Four

Fifty-Five

Fifty-Six

Acknowledgments

About the Author

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Print edition ISBN: 9781803363998

E-book edition ISBN: 9781803364001

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: September 2023

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© 2023 Alcon Publishing LLC. All Rights Reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

For Butch Carter––outdoorsman,horticulturalist, news junkie, my dad.

THEY SAY that when you’re about to die, yourlife flashes before your eyes.

Now, he knew this was only a myth. But as hefell from the top of Korova Tower, Igor Marinovfound he had plenty of time to reflect on howhe’d come to be thrown off the roof of theWORLD’S TALLEST BUILDING.

PRELUDE

Igor long suspected that “the Boss”—his Avtorityet—knew of his strong aversion to high places. Why else would he have gifted Igor the “honor” of being that night’s official greeter; stationed like a common valet at this temporary rooftop helipad 190 floors above Moscow? This was either a deadly serious message, or just the Avtorityet messing with him for sport, as sadistic fucks like him were wont to do.

It was almost 3:00 a.m., the witching hour. And tonight’s coven would be arriving not on brooms, but rather combat-ready helicopters direct from the Kubinka military base. When you really wanted to impress, having the army on speed dial was a potent flex.

Perched on opposite sides of the roof, ten-story construction cranes faced each other like twin sentinels, silently beckoning to the approaching aircraft. Great effort had been made to ensure that tonight’s guests wouldn’t encounter each other prior to their arrival—be they old rivals, outright enemies or, worst of all, potential conspirators. None of them had more information than any of the others, and perhaps because of that, or just plain FOMO, all had immediately RSVP’d.

The helipad swayed slightly underfoot, jolting Igor with a sharp bolt of panic. He gasped hard, stricken by the reminder that he was nearly a kilometer above solid ground. But this was nothing compared to the slow-burning fear which had gnawed at his consciousness for months now, making it seem like there was no such thing as solid ground anymore. At least, not for him.

The first chopper emerged from the darkness without running lights, its shrouded rotors eerily muted. Whisper tech that actually works? thought Igor. Taking a deep breath, he stepped back to watch the large craft touch down with a jouncing thud. So it begins.

Four men emerged, flanked by a quartet of armed security. Each wore an impeccable black or gray suit, all specially tailored to accommodate their snakeskin cowboy boots.

Keeping his eyes down, Igor offered each guest a special custom-made earpiece. The devices would translate in real time whatever the wearer heard into their native languages. The AI-assisted software was still in beta, but Igor wasn’t worried about that end of it; the presentation itself—a slick video package—already had all the necessary language options.

The chopper dusted off and Igor ushered his charges onto the semi-exposed service platform that passed for an elevator–– hastily installed at the top of this giant lightning rod, like the conference room itself, for tonight’s entertainment. The next helicopter was already approaching.

With his stomach twisting into tighter and tighter knots, Igor managed to greet seven more VIP parties, all pretty much the same—rich and dangerous. Hiding behind a respectful smile, he diligently checked their earpieces before escorting the guests over to the elevator.

With the last chopper drifting off like a specter into the moonless sky, Igor felt a wave of relief, however brief. Now the hard part, he thought, checking his watch during the elevator’s slow descent to the 183rd floor. Once it had settled, he raised the safety gate and headed towards the conference room and its gauntlet of aggressively nondescript men in bulky black suits, earpieces and wraparound sunglasses—which Igor knew featured starlight and infrared sensors.

Two of them administered a rough pat down, acting like they’d never seen Igor prior to this moment, despite his working there all day. God, these fucking guys. But he mutely played the humble shestyorka, a nobody with nothing to hide, and thus was nothing to worry about. He almost believed it.

With security behind him, Igor entered the hub of business suites and strode to the small tech room where he’d be running the presentation. Opening the door without knocking, he entered his control lair, a dimly lit room the size of a jail cell that adjoined the main conference space.

But instead of finding Feliks the audio tech bent over the mixing board and pretending to work, Igor was met by another obshchak, this one probably on loan from Wagner Security, who, being as large as he was menacing, easily took up most of the room. Feliks was practically cowering in the far corner by a metal cabinet, eyes wide. Igor felt his sense of authority pooling around his ankles like warm tar. Fuck me, now what…?

Igor flinched when the man leaned in close. “Igor Marinov,” the operative said, not really asking.

“Yes,” Igor managed, his senses returning. If the obshchak’s job was to keep everyone on their toes, mission one hundred percent accomplished.

The man handed Igor a black plastic snap case the size of a fat paperback. He knew what it was and snapped it open, revealing a trim silver Faraday bag. To Igor, it shone like an enchanted ring. Snug inside was a pair of military-grade USB drives—A & B, for the sake of redundancy.

Carefully removing drive A, Igor slotted it into the DLP video projector he’d field-tested earlier that day. The machine blinked to life, system diagnostics booting up. A few tense moments later, its LEDs blinked to steady green—the program file, the Digital Cinema Package, was fully loaded and ready to play.

“Good to go,” confirmed Igor in English, giving a quick thumbs up. He carefully removed the thumb drive and handed it back to the obshchak. After the man had returned both drives to their plastic coffin, he turned and left the room without a word, closing the door firmly behind him. Igor and Feliks exchanged looks, both deciding not to comment.

Situated near the projector was Igor’s air-gapped laptop, configured for controlling the lights and any other theatrical aspect of tonight’s presentation. After checking that it too was “good to go,” Igor stepped to the small observation window and scoped the conference room. The VIPs were warily enjoying themselves, their security teams deployed around the perimeter. Hopeful Miss Russia contestants circulated with silver trays, serving glasses of Bollinger and small-batch artisanal caviar. So far, so good, thought Igor. Everything appeared on schedule.

An Influencer DJ was stationed at stage right, mashing up classic club tracks, nothing too radical. When a runway-ready ingénue, surely another of the Boss’s girlfriends, took the low stage at the far end of the room, the DJ gave her a nod of recognition and seamlessly segued into a backing track as good as anything he’d been playing that evening. With sincere K-pop vibes, the woman broke into a sugary club song, riding the DJ’s beat. Not without talent, Igor noted.

Shooing Feliks from the mixing console, Igor again rechecked the projector and laptop. He needed time to think, and busy work freed up mental bandwidth. But he knew the really important decisions had already been made, most of which he hadn’t even been aware of at the time. It was the money that had led him here, but once he’d learned the project’s ultimate purpose, he’d been plotting a way to get out without being murdered. To not act would make him worse than the people he was working for. Now he had to find his nerve and see it through…

Her song concluded, the singer scampered off, getting a lurid hug along the way from the Avtorityet as he took over the stage. Flashing a wide toothy grin, he swiped a lock of hair out of his eyes and deployed a few well-honed smutty jokes, fortified with topical references. Igor had to admit, the Boss was really killing it.

With Feliks busy tracking down the source of a faint impedance hum, Igor surreptitiously copied the encrypted DCP, along with the digital key to unlock it, from the DLP unit onto his own military-grade USB drive, a much smaller one with better shielding. It hit the bottom of his pocket just as the Wagner operative appeared in the control room doorway and fixed Igor with a grim look. Feliks made a small sign of relief—the vague hum was now gone.

“Igor Marinov, be ready for my signal,” the obshchak said, stepping to the observation port. He peered out at the ballroom of VIPs, adding, “When I tell you, lower the lights and start the projection. But when I tell you. Understand?”

“I know the cues,” Igor muttered. “There’s no need to—”

The man turned to look Igor full in the face. “Do you really want the responsibility?” At that moment, Igor realized that this scary monster was actually cutting him a huge solid, shielding him from any blame if the show didn’t start on cue.

“Uh… no,” confirmed Igor sincerely. “You tell me when.”

From the stage, the Boss theatrically called for the house lights to go down. Igor stared at the security man, letting him know he was on full alert, ready to start.

“Go now,” the man announced.

Igor tapped the Enter key. Instantly, the presentation started, turning down the lights and starting up the video projector. Not to be left out, Feliks adjusted the sound level slightly; the hum was still gone.

Satisfied, the obshchak gave Igor a slight nod, like they were a team now, and silently left the room. After thirty seconds of awkward silence, Igor coughed. “OK, Feliks, looks like we’re good here,” Igor said. “I need a smoke after all this… excitement. And good job on that hum problem.”

“Thanks, but don’t take too long,” said Feliks. “If that fucking gorilla decides to come back, I don’t want to be here alone. Besides, he seems to like you.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be right back,” replied Igor, on the way out the door.

In the hall, the security gauntlet was now just two dark suits. They barely reacted when Igor said he’d left his phone at the helipad. As the elevator took him to the rooftop, he knew there would be more than just his acrophobia to deal with.

Igor been working for “the Boss” for less than a year. What was once a lucrative IT-light side hustle had taken over his life. The money was too good, best he’d ever made, legally. All he had to do was troubleshoot company systems and keep his head down while doing it. All in service of “the project.” Before long, Igor knew more about it than anyone outside of the Avtorityet’s black-suited inner circle.

If only I’d known…

He’d naively thought he knew what he was getting into. After all, he was an adult, sanguine about the ways of the world, where honest men went to jail and connected criminals prospered. But when Igor finally understood who he was actually working for, what he was helping to create, he had impulsively reached out to Razbit, a covert group that protected osvedomitels—whistleblowers.

Razbit, Russian for “smash,” employed classic analog spycraft—mail drops, book codes, flowerpots in windows, and enigmatic meetings with high-signs and counter-passwords. It was a bitter joke that Russian osvedomitel laws only applied to those calling out government corruption or malfeasance, as if the hen could trust the farmer. And if the farmer was also the fox? Razbit’s old-school dissidents promised to fully protect Igor if he could deliver hard proof, actual documentation for the world to see.

He knew he was being watched; his phone and other devices surely were monitored. And he knew what would happen if he even appeared to be acting like the very kind of citizen the true boss had made a career of pursuing when he was in the FSB.

You were a fool, Igor Arsenyevich Marinov. Why had he reached out to Razbit in the first place? Where did this new martyr complex come from? Clearly, he hadn’t been thinking straight for quite some time. Am I really a patriot—or simply delusional? He wondered if there was much of a difference.

By now, cold sweat had plastered his shirt to his back, and Igor stiffly exited the elevator and stepped out onto the roof. With tonight’s the guests and guards two stories below, the helipad seemed deserted, and he shivered in the whipping arctic wind. He checked his watch: two minutes until the presentation ended. Had something had gone wrong? Surely not!

Igor became aware of a high thin whine coming from out of the darkness. He took a deep breath. Is two minutes enough time? The approaching quadcopter was skillfully piloted, navigating the lashing updrafts off the tower’s façade with ease. The drone crested the edge of the helipad and came to settle beside a cluster of electrical conduits.

Desperately glancing at the elevator and the surveillance cameras, which were supposedly disabled tonight, Igor crossed the helipad and crouched over the drone, the last guest of the evening. Looking back one final time, he took the thumb drive out of his pocket and secured it within the small weatherproof capsule on the drone’s underbelly.

He rose and flashed a laser pointer towards the northwest and the Federation Tower, once the pride of Russia, but from this height little more than a footstool on the face of the city below. The drone came alive, launching back into the wind, heading south. If it wound up smashed on the ground, could it be traced back to him? Why had he ever believed in this plan?

With the quadcopter gone, Igor also made to leave; the presentation was just about over. Remembering to retrieve his phone from the concierge’s kiosk, he was surprised to find his spirits were lifting. I’ll grab a bottle of champagne, and see if one of those Miss Russias has a laptop with a malware problem…

There was a crack of thunder out of the cloudless sky. A gunshot? Igor knew it was. His heart sank.

The elevator was gone. No, it was returning—he hadn’t noticed it was gone. Backing away, he looked everywhere, but knew there was nowhere to go.

The Avtorityet, one Dimiter Zamyatin, the deputy finance minister of the Russian Federation, stepped from the elevator platform, shadowed by two grim security guards. Igor immediately recognized them, but not the special forces operator in full fatigues, cradling a tricked-out sniper rifle with a starlight scope. Undoubtedly the best long-range shot in Mother Russia.

Zamyatin smiled like a shark as he approached, speaking in a casual, chummy way that froze Igor’s blood. “Igor Arsenyevich, I thought you were afraid of heights.” He used Igor’s patronymic—his father’s name—something he’d never done before. And never would again, Igor was sure.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” Igor said, holding out his hands to show they were empty. “I only stepped out for a breath of fresh air. This night has been very stressful, making sure there were no mistakes, which there weren’t…” He knew he was babbling but couldn’t help it.

Zamyatin’s cold smile grew wider. He and his men approached, crowding Igor back up onto the helipad.

“Completely understandable. I, too, want no mistakes. And it is always good to face one’s fears. Do you know what I fear? It is but one thing.”

Igor had a pretty good idea, but he only shook his head.

“It should be obvious. A man in my position, who has dared all, fears only betrayal. To lose all I have struggled to accomplish, and because of a little man with small dreams and outsized fears.”

Igor could only shrug expansively, head down, absorbing this pearl of wisdom, ashamed that he could not begin to apply it to himself. “Forgive me for taking you away from the presentation…”

“Not at all,” Zamyatin said with a dismissive wave. “I have brought it with me. I believe I owe you this special time. You know, Igor… I have long admired you.” He donned a pair of black leather driving gloves as he strolled around the helipad. “A man of few questions, a man who simply makes things happen. In this, you are like our dear friend… our Pakhan.”

Igor swallowed hard. The Avtorityet only paid compliments as a preamble to punishment, and there was no higher compliment than invoking the Pakhan—the Krestniy Otets, boss of bosses.

“Russia looks at him and sees a man of destiny,” Zamyatin continued, “a man who writes history, a man restoring our strength. But the world, the West, sees only a thug with no real vision for the future. When he falls, they think Russia will fall, and good riddance.

“Those who know him realize he has worked hard to entertain the West’s error. He has always been a pawn of Russia, a tool stronger than the others, tempered by fire and ice, but a tool nonetheless, one that Russia wields to build herself anew.”

As he spoke, Zamyatin’s voice became ever louder, grander. The howling wind itself seemed to take notice, calming as the Avtorityet herded Igor towards the far edge of the helipad.

“They say that it’s more important how you correct mistakes than the mistakes themselves. What do you think?” Zamyatin’s dead eyes bored into him.

Now it comes…

“No opinion, friend Igor?” Zamyatin prodded. “No matter. We can test this theory, see if it’s true.” Now he spread his arms out, in full orator mode.

“Only God and his angels can unmake what is being built here.” He seemed to gesture towards the two cranes, the tower beneath their feet, like a patriarch bestowing a blessing.

“So, I ask you, Igor Arsenyevich, and I beg you not to lie to me… Are you an angel? A fallen one, perhaps?”

Igor simply stared into Zamyatin’s eyes in an ecstasy of terror and dread. He’d known from the moment the Avtorityet stepped off the elevator that he was beyond hope. It’s a strange taste, the breath of stolen air. Strange to feel one’s heart beating when one is already dead.

“Sir, please let me explain… This is all a mistake.”

Zamyatin shook his head sadly. “I only wish there was time, comrade. But I suppose I can give you one last chance.” The Avtorityet smiled, and for a moment, Igor believed in this chance. He would make the most of it. Convince his boss nothing untoward had ever occurred. Or confess everything. Give up Razbit. He would enjoy that bottle of champagne, the girl too…

But then he looked around and saw that the rooftop was crowded with people. The VIPs surrounded the helipad, intently watching this demonstration of the Avtorityet’s keen management style. Igor saw Feliks among them, staring at him as if to say, Who’s the kick-ass tech guy now, brodyaga?

The Boss’s favorite girlfriend, Miss Urals, sashayed towards Igor. She carried a magnum of champagne; the cheap stuff, this time. But she held it up with such a sparkling smile that Igor let himself imagine she was offering it to him. That all was forgiven.

“Prove you are not a fallen angel,” Zamyatin said.

Igor opened his mouth, though he had no words. The Avtorityet’s gloved fist clipped his chin and Igor bit his tongue. Then he was seized by the same security goons who had hassled him all day, even the one who was on his team, and before he could scream, they tossed him off the roof.

For a heartbeat, Igor seemed to dance on the gusting winds. Like an angel. But then he was simply falling. The dream was over.

The wind buffeted him with invisible fists, flattening his features into a mask, stealing a long, horrible howl from his skinned-back lips. It was worse than his worst night terrors. Endless. And he couldn’t even close his eyes, the wind prying them wide. Through streaming tears, he could see the lights of Moscow, its buildings reaching up like fingers. Below, the brilliant but cold halogen lamps of the construction site, the flashing lights of the security patrol cars speeding away through the open gates, the tiny dot directly beneath him that resolved into a matchbox, then a shoebox, and finally as an oversized refuse bin half-full of scrap metal and plastic.

It took Igor eleven seconds to fall the first three hundred meters. Time enough to reflect, to pray, to beg or curse God, to vow revenge, search for some consolation, or simply die of fright. Or maybe to believe he was an angel, after all. But he kept accelerating.

And then, a miracle—

The tumbling had stopped. Igor found himself splayed out, lying prone on the wind. He felt the terrifying descent slowing, if not arrested, by his body’s position. His clothes bulged with trapped air; his cupped hands were like rudders. He began to swim on the violent night sky.

Igor struggled against the terminal wind resistance, striving to bring himself in line with the horizon, to find that providence that would allow him to soar away. What would the Avtorityet make of that? Watching him borne aloft, landing safely on the ground, an angel after all. Perhaps then the Boss would realize all his schemes would be similarly undone. And who was the architect of his ruin…

But wait…

Igor was defiantly screaming Zamyatin’s name when, traveling at fifty-four meters per second, his body entered the dumpster with nearly a quarter million foot-pounds of force. An image of his mother flared in his mind just before his body burst, torn apart by the metal debris.

The assembled guests on the roof only faintly heard the bin ring like a gong with the impact. They clapped anyway. Even the Iranians and North Koreans were fully engaged now.

“I wanted you to witness this, my friends,” Zamyatin told his rapt audience. “I know it’s cold up here, but you must see that none will dare interfere with what we have created. None will know our name, until all the world speaks it as they would the name of God. We call this mighty edifice the Cow. A simple name, bucolic, but with it we shall milk the world, wringing every last drop from her shriveled tits!”

Knowing from experience how to shatter a real magnum, Miss Urals unleashed a two-hand major league swing to smash the large bottle on the lip of the helipad, christening the tower to hearty applause. The guests then retreated to the elevator—it was fucking cold up there.

Feliks became aware of the bad taste festering in his mouth like a poison frog. He spat his guilty feelings downwind and followed the crowd towards the elevator. Poor stupid Igor, thought Feliks. How could he think I didn’t know?

In the distance, the returning helicopters were like a string of stars floating in the night sky.

Miss Urals snuggled under the deputy finance minister’s arm. He was beaming.

Igor had indeed made sure that the presentation was perfect.

FIRST MOVEMENT

“MONEY, NOT MORALITY, IS THE PRINCIPLEOF COMMERCE OF CIVILIZED NATIONS.”

—THOMAS JEFFERSON

ONE

Click the link, look at the screen,

and you’re falling—

You’re sprinting across an industrial rooftop, springing from chimney to ventilator hood, leaping over jagged holes in rusty sheet metal, scrambling for the edge and dropping to a fire escape, then soaring out into space over an alley, tumbling onto a steeply pitched roof…

You’re free-climbing the concrete stanchion of a suspension bridge, attacking the vertical surface with naked fingers, scrabbling for seams and cracks until the pillar terminates under the cowl of the abutment. Pivoting and kicking away from the bridge like a spider, you hurl into the air and dangle from thrumming steel cables high above expressway traffic. A thundering commuter train passes overhead…

You’re riding the El over Canal Street, but on the roof—doing cartwheels and handstands, high-fiving your friends. Then you flatten against the graffiti-strewn deck, whooping with nervous laughter as it enters a tunnel…

Running from two cops on a busy downtown street. You juke right, vaulting over a trash can. One cop makes a diving tackle, but he goes down in a flurry of White Castle wrappers as you slice through the crowd waiting at the curb. Sliding over the hood of a cab, you reach the opposite curb a split second ahead of a crosstown bus…

Popping a manhole cover, dropping into a sewer, shining your flashlight on a wall mural more beautiful than anything you’ve ever seen in a museum…

Hacking the rooftop LED screen on a financial giant’s Wall Street tower so your video message blazes out, loud as any billboard overlooking the stampeding bull statue. Now disguised as a swaggering, entitled stockbroker, you slip out amid the delicious chaos…

You’re zip-lining off a skyscraper. Wind and acceleration fold you into a bullet. Racing over a blur of city blocks, speeding towards a high-rise parking structure, you follow your crew dropping off the line, popping parachutes, fatal velocity arrested. They swing weightlessly on the night wind.

But your chute becomes tangled, collapses into a nylon shroud. You plummet, spinning fast towards the unforgiving asphalt below…

*   *   *

Michael Hong squeezed his eyes shut. Underneath his feet the rocking floor fell away and a harness seemed to lift him up on a ripping wind. Only to crumple, sending him tumbling into empty space again…

Fighting the waking nightmare, Michael asked himself The Questions, said the words that would arrest a full-blown panic attack.

Where are you?

I’m on a train… inside a train…

Who are you with?

I’m alone, but I’m good. I’m good…

What do you see?

He opened his eyes. Soupy gray dawn broke through stacked June gloom clouds over Millennium Park and the Art Institute. No commuters were staring at him. Nobody could hear his heart hammering against his sternum.

The video finished playing on his phone. FURIES/GREATEST.HITS: Watch Again?

A drop of sweat ran down the bridge of his nose and spattered on the screen. He thumbed back out to the text directory. An unknown sender with an unlisted Vimeo account; surely an instant Delete. But he was hovering over the Reply button. Whoever sent it must have serious game to bypass his spam filters. A moment later he pushed the message into the holding folder for unwanted bits of reality that he didn’t want to deal with, yet couldn’t fully delete.

Closing his eyes again, drawing stability from the rocking of the train, he took stock of the situation. The jerky, head-mounted GoPro images, the dizzying speed, the total disregard for safety or gravity, would give anyone vertigo, but that wasn’t the problem. Only a lunatic with a death wish would do stuff like this.

That lunatic used to be you… Michael Hong.

Get a grip, he told himself. Look at it like a programming bug. Go over it like lines of code. Ask yourself the questions to get the answer. Don’t panic.

Who sent this?

Who made this?

Why did they send it to you?

Who knows?

Asking the questions didn’t put him at ease because he had no answers. Anyone could’ve done it, of course. The videos were easily found online, shared to death these last few years. No mystery there… except for the last one.

They never shared that one. For obvious reasons. Only one person could have uploaded it, but Michael couldn’t believe he’d do it.

Couldn’t you, though?

Looking around the train, he noticed several people staring at him now. He took refuge in his phone. But still, he was unwilling to look at it. It could open up and swallow him if he did.

TWO

The gym was gridlocked, every machine on the floor churning, anonymous bodies drifting from one station to the next like self-assembling robots. Michael was crushing the rowing machine, jacking up his heart rate and working his core before meeting his trainer. But his mind was a million miles from his workout.

Most likely, the video didn’t mean anything. That was the simplest explanation. He would ignore it… until he couldn’t. What if it meant he’d been sold out? The thought turned his earlier anxiety into righteous anger. He threw himself harder into the rowing, surging ahead of his neighbors’ lockstep dance-floor rhythm.

Trainer Curt clocked in for his insurance-mandated legwork torture session and Michael was soon too busy to dwell. But he hit a wall halfway through the workout, all the muscles in his right leg turning to liquid fire, refusing to work.

“Come on,” Curt barked. “Fight through it.”

Michael stopped mid-set. Clamped in the elliptical’s grip, his right leg quivered and twitched.

“That’s it?” Curt shook his head in disgust.

“My leg,” Michael said, wincing at the weakness in his voice.

“Gotta work through. Quit being such a pussy bitch.”

The crude psychology almost worked. “Yeah, yeah,” Michael muttered, but he started heading for the showers.

“Good effort,” called Curt, sensibly dropping the drill-sergeant act. “Same time next week…”

Limping out of the shower, Michael’s leg sang grand opera all the way to the locker room. Leaning on the wall, he planted his foot on a bench and kneaded the grievous bulge of scar tissue on the inside of his calf.

He’d been less than thirty meters off the ground when he fell, but it was like being hit by a car going fifty miles per hour. Compound fracture of right tibia and fibula; shattered patella, replaced with ceramic and steel inserts; spiral fracture of femur. Cracked tailbone and lacerated rectum. Three surgeries, two months in traction, four months in a body cast, and six months and counting of grueling PT.

He was lucky to walk without a cane, and doubly lucky not to have had a colostomy. His physical therapist had admitted that Michael would never have full function again. Of course, he was dedicated to proving her wrong, but it was becoming harder to keep the faith.

In the lobby, he glanced at the wall-mounted flatscreen playing a viral helmet-cam video of a wingsuit flyer swooping down the canyon of a metropolitan center, soaring like something never meant to touch the ground. He caught himself staring until the streamlined form shot a narrow gap between twin skyscrapers and finally pulled the rip cord, the tapered ramjet chute unfurling. After the flyer was safely on the ground, Michael let out his breath and hobbled out of the gym and into the bustling street.

With the foot traffic’s urgent tempo prodding him along, Michael jammed in his earbuds. Despite the raucous dystopian din of Negativland’s Escape From Noise album in his ears, the rumble and mutter of the street forced itself into his thoughts, leaving him isolated but never alone. Another mote of worry in a rushing torrent, Michael tried to let himself be absorbed, but something always pulled him out.

A deeper noise was overwhelming him. Tingling vibrations crept up his unsteady legs. Hot, dirty wind rose around him. The roar of an elevated train swelled in his ears, bearing him away as he fought to untangle his fouled parachute before the pavement came rushing in…

Michael stood frozen at the foot of the steps, struggling to control his breathing, his fear, his reality. Ill-tempered commuters colliding with him, he fell in step with the racing mob, letting it sweep him up to the platform and onto the train, its endless, mindless pressure carrying him away from himself. Still, he knew that one way or the other, he was going to have to face this before it swept him away for good.

But that meant talking to the last person on Earth who would understand. And that would suck major.

*   *   *

Making his way to his desk on the development floor of Macrosync, Michael was increasingly aware that this flimsy startup was nine-tenths hype and vaporware, the rest old-fashioned corporate stinginess. All the young coders and number crunchers toiling away around him were freelancers, free from the burdens of health-care enrollments, 401k plans or vacation time. In spite of Michael’s pivotal role in the project, he was no closer to clinching a long-term, ironclad employment contract. The company promised that everything was going to change once the app launched, but these assurances only stirred up the blood everyone was smelling in the water.

Logging on to the company server, Michael dutifully checked his email and reviewed the dozen open tabs on his screen. After plotting out the day’s goals on the in-house productivity app, really an employee monitoring program, he felt his phone vibrate. A new voicemail awaited.

“Good morning, Mr. Hong, this is Rich Weka from Belmont Student Loan Consolidators. Please return my call at your earliest convenience so we can discuss the repayment options regarding your student loan—”

He frowned, deleting the message, cuing up one that he’d somehow missed. Must’ve come in during my post-workout anxiety attack.

“Heeeey. It’s Maddie. Just checking in. Haven’t talked to you in a while. Scoped out this building yesterday. Nothing crazy, just an old-school place-hack. Too bad you’re not here. I think you’d like it. Anyway… hit me up.”

Long after the message ended, Michael sat lost in thought. No way this was a coincidence. No word from either her or Cam in almost six months, and Maddie’s breezy tone sounding as forced as his loan officer. He bit his thumbnail, eyeing the Call Back button, only to crank up his music and retreat to a window filled with lines of code.

Despite all the bullshit, the job offered a kind of solace, because the job was basically all numbers. And numbers were reliable, delivering the results you put into them. They never crumbled under stress or buckled under pressure. They weren’t a fucking parachute.

But today the numbers only held Michael’s eyes for a minute or so before he felt someone staring at him. What the hell? Looking across the jungle of cubicles, he saw a beautiful woman with glossy black hair in a loose ponytail and striking Arabic features, maybe ten years older than him. She was perched on one of the chairs where the prospective hires sat. With an open laptop on her knee, sporting an understated charcoal-gray blazer, pencil skirt and a cream-colored blouse, the woman presented a commanding air that was both focused and casual.

She’ll probably get whatever job she’s angling for, Michael imagined, and hoped that it wasn’t his. He saw her fritter away at her laptop or glance up as various workers or visitors passed by; all of her attention seemed to be on… him. WTF?

Then she caught Michael staring and tipped him a wink.

He turned back to his work, grateful to have a place to hide.

THREE

Cam Buckley planted his cleats with aggressive confidence. The other golfers laid down their drivers to watch him wind up and smash his dayglo orange ball off the roof of the forty-story London House tower. It sailed into the brilliant early summer sky, soaring high over East Wacker Drive and the wide green gutter of the Chicago River. Cam’s audience oohed and aahhed when his ball smacked a patio table on the twelfth-floor observation deck of the monolithic building some three hundred yards away.

“Trump Tower! You see that?” Cam’s entourage hoisted their glasses and cheered, then returned to their own driving, firing the balls into the river with varying levels of skill. So far, pelting the tour boat moored on the north bank was the closest anyone else had come to beating his record.

Everyone loves fun, but fun don’t love everyone, Cam reminded himself, misquoting his guru, the philosopher Theodore Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss.

There seemed to be no shortage of newly minted and fairly dull one-percenters who had no idea how to play with their new toys. To service their self-image as genius bad-boys, they reveled in whatever juvenile outlaw activity Cam came up with, like today’s golfing on the roof of a building housing the Turkish consulate, a boutique hotel and a sensor imagery corporate headquarters.

When they’d groused about the place being too safe, he’d told them about the photographer who fell to his death here while taking pictures only last year, which made them feel a little more like daredevils. That Cam was the only black guy any of them knew socially probably didn’t hurt, either.

LH Rooftop, the upscale penthouse cocktail spot at their backs, was shut down for the break between brunch and dinner, but he’d charmed the manager into opening the bar on the sly to keep his playboy daycare lubricated.

One of Cam’s less inspired side hustles, but it kept him solvent while he cultivated more promising ventures. His time with the Crew already seemed so long ago, but soon he could put aside all this dude-bro nonsense and get back to being what he was always meant to be. Speaking of which, his phone started to quiver in the pocket of his linen chinos.

“Mario. Qué pasa, guey?” Cam answered.

The voice on the line was like a hornet in a soda can.

“Calm down,” Cam cut in. “What do you mean, I’m ‘out of money’? Explain how that’s possible. And do it slowly.”

The voice slowed down, but the volume and pitch went up.

“Of course I’m not worried—that’s what I over-pay you for. Well, you’re obviously not skilled at your job.”

The guy next to him—Chuck or Chet or Chad, he honestly couldn’t remember—sent his hot pink ball soaring and hit the T on the façade of Trump Tower. Cam dutifully gave him a fist bump. “Dude, nice follow-through. Seriously, bro. Respect.”

He let the warmth drain completely out of his voice as he turned back to his call. “What? No, I’m here. Hang on, I’m going to put you on speaker.”

Shrugging the tension out of his shoulders, arms, and hands, he knelt and rested the phone against the tee hammered into the coping of the roof.

Mario continued his report. “…unless you can generate immediate and significant cashflow, we’re not going to survive long enough to launch.”

Chet and Chad were watching, slurping their Mai Tais. Now was not the time to go off-brand.

“OK, well… let me hit you with something.” Cam stood up, raising his voice so everyone looked up from their own tees. “And this is just, you know… spit-balling.”

“I’m listening,” Mario replied.

Cam swung the club, putting every ounce of his trim and toned one sixty-five pounds behind it. Epic follow-through. The phone turned into a spray of sparkling plastic and glass, a pinch of fairy dust settling over the honking traffic below.

“Bro!” Chad or Chet crowed.

“You’re a maniac!” Chet or Chad shouted.

Trying to remember which of these dumbasses gave him the “hot inside tip” that just gutted his portfolio, Cam graciously accepted their high fives. Before the round of drinks had come, he’d schemed five different ways to get revenge, or at least righteous justice.

FOUR

Maddie Acosta was late for work at 8:30 p.m.

Very late, she reminded herself, striding into the lobby of Aon Center. Sipping a latte with a weary but determined expression that complemented her smart H&M skirt-blazer combo and Saucony running shoes, Maddie had used this flavor of corporate camouflage before. I’m being dragged back to the office to put in unpaid overtime on a hellish HR audit, so if you try to stop me, I’m going to raise Hell and then start rage-crying and you’ll really be sorry…

The security guard picked up what she was putting down, smiling briefly as Maddie steamed past the front desk, then turning back to the sports page and the various monitors. Rubber soles squeaking on the Carrara marble floor, she eyed the grand glass elevators in the northwest corner of the lobby.

The new observation deck atop the eighty-three-story tower was not yet open to the public, making the gala that was in full swing there all the more exclusive. The two nearest elevators were shuttling the local glitterati, their access overseen by a corporate hostess with a tablet and two guards in serviceable sharkskin suits, taking names and checking IDs.

Across from the elevator banks, Maddie scoped it all out without appearing to notice any of it, clearly submerged in her own problems. Few of even the most renowned urbex boys were any good at this aspect of the game. Fearless and nimble they might be, but even if you took the hoodies and suspicious climbing gear away, they still presented as sketchy hood-rats up to no good. Sometimes it was fun to play hide-and-seek, but whenever she could, Maddie relished looking her adversary right in the eye and becoming invisible and simply showing them exactly what they expected. The power of profiling; few could resist it.

She hurried to fall in step with another, similarly attired woman who took a hologram-stamped glittery smartcard out of her handbag as she approached the bank of elevators. The doors whispered open and the woman stepped aside to let Maddie go first, then tapped the reader with her card and punched the button for the eightieth floor.

“Same floor. Right on.”

The woman threw her a skeptical look. Smiling with gratitude, Maddie made a show of fishing for her own keycard. “Amoco loves hiring temps for all the dirty jobs, right?”

The woman bit her lip and nodded. Maddie knew that Amoco was using accounting temps to carry out algorithm-based solutions to thinning the herd of mid-level executives; more humane, according to HR specialists. The woman was at least ten years older than Maddie and was probably burning the midnight oil to stay ahead of the axe. The ride passed in silence and the women exited on eighty without comment.

Maddie watched her go, silently wishing her luck. Ducking into the stairs, she jogged up two flights to the locked door at the top. The NO ROOF ACCESS warning proved wrong—the alarm easily disabled by tugging on a loose wire. There was always some dedicated smoker on one of the top floors with a firm preference for a rooftop view, rather than a long elevator ride down to the street.

Stepping out onto the roof, Maddie enjoyed a deep breath of the rushing wind off the river, and beyond it, Lake Michigan. She took out her camera and snapped a few pictures with her toes perched on the edge, savoring the rush of the vertigo-inducing perspective.

She hadn’t been up on Big Stan—as native Chicagoans still referred to the old Standard Oil Building—in a couple years. Not since the Furies. It felt weird, but good. Certainly, she’d never experienced it like this… Looking around the roof for cameras, she slipped out of her blazer and skirt, then tugged her blouse down until the hem touched her knees, revealing a smart, if slightly wrinkled, black D&G cocktail dress. Then she cursed, forced to grab cover behind a ventilator chimney.

A pair of security guards came around the massive bank of air-purifying and exchange units. They were definitely looking for somebody. Maybe for me.

Flattened against the exhaust ducts, Maddie was close enough to hear the pair commiserating about the Cubs’ dismal home stand last weekend. A flashlight beam swept her feet. Her toes were still curled when she heard their footsteps recede into the windswept murmur of the city far below.

Moving from cover to cover on stockinged feet, Maddie crossed to the northwest corner of the tower, where the observation deck loomed over the rest of the roof. Looking over her shoulder for the rent-a-cops, she threw herself at the marble wall and effortlessly scaled it, then stepped over the waist-high glass railing.

The well-heeled crowd was thin at this end of the observation deck, but she only had time to drop a pair of secondhand Jimmy Choo heels on the floor and dig her ruined stockings into them before a waiter appeared with flutes of champagne. Smiling, she took two.

“Can’t seem to find my date anywhere!” Maddie said, before hustling off to mingle with some of the richest stiffs in Chicago. Mixing with the small group that encircled a stunning blonde, a local TV newsreader, she checked her bag and tucked the Sauconys out of sight. Time to get to work.

FIVE

When everyone else had finally gone home, Michael saved his work to the server and looked up from his laptop.

Mystery Lady was still there. Nearly every time he’d checked, she was reading a book or pecking at her phone, and if she wasn’t, she reappeared within a few minutes with a fresh cup of coffee or plain water.

Eventually, the game had worn thin and Michael had to put her out of his mind, working doggedly, if not single-mindedly. But vague feelings of guilt began to penetrate his concentration. He couldn’t begin to pin down quite why he should be so bothered.

But with the other odd developments today, it was too much to ignore. A hoary chestnut of wisdom from a James Bond novel swam up in his thoughts when she finally stood up and began to cross the empty room towards his desk. Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, but three times is enemy action.

But who was the enemy? Even in his wildest imagination, he couldn’t feature a cop coming after him. After all, he was a law-abiding taxpayer, a contributor to society. Nobody could prove any different. And even if they could…?

Besides, she didn’t look like a cop or a federal agent, but maybe somebody who played one on TV. Her caramel complexion and subtly tinted hair looked well cared-for, but there was something in her eyes, in the way she moved, that betrayed a familiarity with danger. She had a readiness about her, a sort of glamor that Michael rarely saw in people who hadn’t stared eternity in the face. When she finally reached his desk, her bashful smile brightened and her open hands came up, making a big show of not carrying a weapon.

He offered her a noncommittal look and tried to appear busy. But he knew he was done, and it showed. Sweat rings under his arms, circles under his eyes, and he couldn’t imagine what his breath must smell like.

“What are you working on?” She hovered behind him, close enough for an unfamiliar herbal fragrance to push away the burnt coffee and stale ozone of the workspace.

Her accent was posh British, at once precise and lyrical. Totally intimidating. Perfect for bending service workers to one’s will.

“What?” he managed.

She raised her voice with a still-brighter smile. “I said, what-are-you-working-on? What is your job here?”

“Oh uh, just an app, you know. Cross-platform type… thing…” He shrugged and looked back at the screen, but he didn’t need to see her reflected over the opaque wall of code, now she was in his head. “Supposed to be this ‘game changer’ for dating.”

“Dating. Sounds interesting,” she said, clearly not caring if he knew she was lying to his face as easily as reading a menu.

“Oh, it’s not. You got me there.” He winced. She laughed a little, which Michael found helped a lot. I am so screwed.

“So, you’re a coder. That makes sense. Seems to me like all you freelancers are either writers or coders. Sort of the same thing, I guess.”

Was she flirting with him? He could almost never tell. “Sure, yeah. Coders are just as creative. Can be. Like regular writers. The good ones…”

Her shoulders went up and her hands fanned out expressively. “I can’t read code, but I assume that you are one of the good ones.”

“So, what do you do? When not waiting around.”

She cracked a smile. “I’m a writer, as well. But with words. Though words are a form of code, I suppose.” Michael winced. He knew this wasn’t just a random encounter with a nice stranger. He tried to make it clear he still had work to do. Time to wrap it up.

“Amara Massaid,” she said, holding out her hand. Reflexively, Michael took it.

“Michael Hong.” The moment dragged, and he wondered if he’d have to explain why he didn’t quite look like a Hong. Some people had to be told that he was mixed-race, that his father was second-generation Chinese American… Then he realized she was waiting for him to talk, trapping his hand in hers until he did. “So, you write what, like stories? Anything I might have read?”

“Perhaps.” She surrendered his hand, but blinked slowly, holding his eyes. “I’m a journalist. I actually just came back from Al-Raqqa.”

Enemy action.

Michael balked as his internal alarms went off, opting to deflect until she came clean. “Oh yeah, that’s in uh, Michigan, right?”

She laughed, giving it a bit more than the dumb joke deserved. “Syria, actually. The civil war there has fallen off the world’s radar, but it’s still very much a thing…”

He felt a little foolish, so he tried again. “Isn’t that like the most dangerous place in the world to be a journalist?”

She tried to shrug, but her shoulders stayed tense. Eyes darting away, searching the darkest corners of the office with a haunted expression. “Not my first rodeo. I spent six months of my rookie year in the DRC, and I covered the proxy war in Libya after that.”

“Doesn’t it scare you, traveling to places like that?” He felt a twinge of guilt at his insensitivity, but relief that they weren’t talking about him. This woman faced the kind of real peril that made his adventures with the Furies look like a frivolous, narcissistic hobby. In spite of himself, he was a bit fascinated.

“Once you’ve been there—seen the elephant, as they say—you’re never the same… but I had to get the story. I guess you could say my curiosity outweighs my sense of self-preservation. I mean, it’s all programming, isn’t it?”

Intrigued, he leaned closer, meeting her gaze. “What is?”

“Fear. It’s genetically hard-wired. Factory setting.”

“Fear keeps us alive.”

“Yeah, it can,” she allowed. “But it can also paralyze.”

“Deer in headlights,” he muttered, feeling a bit like one now.

“One hundred percent.” Her expression brightened as she dropped the other shoe. “I’m working on this piece right now. Young urban post-millennials. Like you.”

“Hate it already,” he said, with less of a humorous spin than he meant to.

“I know, right? But that’s the thing… Millennials aren’t afraid. They literally think they can do anything. Like these kids I’m writing about. Type T. Thrill-seeker-adrenaline-junkie-types, know what I mean? But they don’t scale mountains… they scale cities. Like it’s all their own private jungle gym.”

Michael’s tension came back big-time. The whole day—the mysterious video, the passive stalking—began to make sense. If she noticed his discomfort, she was too wrapped up in her spiel to let on.

“I mean, I get it, I guess,” she went on. “Why be the ten thousandth guy on top of Everest when you can be the first to summit the Burj Khalifa?”