The roof access door was a simple, rusted metal hatch at the top of a maintenance ladder. It groaned in protest as Kai pushed it open, the sound deafening in the silence. A gust of cold, ash-filled wind swirled down, a greeting from the world above. One by one, they climbed the last few rungs and emerged onto the roof of the Atwater Science Center.
The world looked different from five stories up. The campus, which had felt like a claustrophobic, street-level maze, was now a sprawling, broken landscape laid out before them. They could see the black, skeletal ruin of the library, the silent quad, the student union, all coated in a uniform, mournful gray. In the distance, the spires of the downtown district scraped the hazy, featureless sky, the Wayfinder's goal seeming impossibly far away. The only movement was the slow, relentless march of the Collector patrol below, their purple eyes a sinister, pulsing rhythm in the stillness.
"Incredible," Ben breathed, his eyes scanning the horizon. "From up here, the patrol routes are as clear as lines on a map. Their methodology is… brutally efficient."
The roof itself was a treacherous environment. It was a flat expanse of tar and gravel, littered with massive air conditioning units, vents that hissed with a faint, ghostly steam, and a forest of communications antennae. Everything was slick with a fine layer of damp ash, making every step a potential slip.
They crouched behind a large HVAC unit, watching as the Collector patrol below completed its turn and disappeared behind the humanities building. Their ninety-second window was open.
"The next building is the humanities hall," Kai said, pointing across a twenty-foot gap. "It's too wide to jump. We use the rope."
"Anchor point," Ben said immediately, his silver-lit eyes scanning their surroundings. He pointed not at the sturdy-looking chimney stack Kai had been eyeing, but at the thick steel support structure for a massive satellite dish. "There. My Insight shows microfractures in the chimney's mortar. It wouldn't hold our weight. The dish support is structurally sound."
Kai felt a chill run down his spine. Ben had just saved them from a potentially fatal fall. Without a word, he uncoiled the thick rope, expertly tying one end to the steel support. He checked the knot, then tossed the heavy coil across the gap. It landed with a soft thud on the opposite roof.
"I'll go first, secure the other end," he said. "Elara, you're next. Ben, you're last. Untie the anchor when you're across."
He clipped a carabiner to the rope and to a makeshift harness he'd fashioned, then began his crossing. It was a terrifying, hand-over-hand traverse, his boots dangling over the fifty-foot drop to the ash-covered quad below. The wind tugged at him, and the rope swayed, but his enhanced Strength and Agility made the journey manageable. He landed silently on the other side, securing the rope to a thick ventilation pipe. He gave it three sharp tugs—the all-clear signal.
Elara followed. She was lighter and quicker than Kai, moving across the rope with a gymnast's grace, her twin sabers strapped securely to her back.
Ben was last. He was clumsy and slow, his fear palpable, but he was determined. He made his way across, his academic mind clearly at war with his body's terror of heights. As soon as he was safely across, he fumbled with the knot, untying their lifeline and pulling the rope across the gap. They had left their sanctuary behind. There was no going back.
As they regrouped behind the cover of the humanities hall's rooftop access building, Elara suddenly froze, her hand gripping Kai's arm.
"Look," she whispered, her voice tight with dread.
She was pointing at a sheltered corner of the roof, near a series of large skylights. There, half-hidden by a tangle of defunct cables, was a nest. It was a huge, messy construction of scrap metal, branches, and torn fabric. But it was the contents of the nest that made their blood run cold.
It was littered with bones—animal bones, mostly, but also the unmistakable, splintered remnants of what looked like a Gutter Scuttler's carapace. And lying just beside the nest, looking as though it had been discarded, was a single, tattered leather boot.
The Harriers. This was their domain. They were no longer just a distant threat circling in the sky. They were here, living and hunting on the very path they had chosen. The rooftop world had its own native predators.