They collapsed in a heap on the gravel-covered roof, the enraged shrieks of the wounded Harrier echoing from the building behind them.
For a moment, they just lay there, chests heaving, the rough grit of the roof digging into their backs. They were alive. They were across.
"I am... never... doing that again," Ben panted, his face the color of ash.
Kai scrambled to his feet, pulling Ben and Elara into a crouch behind a low parapet wall. He risked a look back. The Harrier was a mangled wreck, tangled in the steel guts of the HVAC unit, but it was already tearing itself free, its furious, blinded eyes swiveling in their direction. Its shrieks were no longer a challenge; they were a promise of bloody vengeance.
"It knows where we are," Kai said, his voice grim.
"We can't stay here. We're still exposed."
This new roof was smaller and offered less cover than the last. It was a barren, flat expanse connecting two wings of the squat administration building. Their elevated path stretched out before them, a series of interconnected rooftops that formed a concrete canyon leading towards the distant city center. But getting there meant surviving the next five minutes.
"Down," Elara said, pointing with one of her sabers. "There. A fire escape. We can get back to street level."
They looked. A rusted iron fire escape clung to the side of the building, zig-zagging its way down into a narrow, shadow-choked alleyway. It was a path to safety from the sky, but it was also a path back down to the world of the Collectors.
"Negative," Ben said immediately, his Insight-enhanced eyes scanning the alley below. "I can see the patrol route from here. That alley becomes a bottleneck. If a Collector patrol comes through while we're on that fire escape, we'll be trapped like rats. Our current threat is wounded and disoriented. The threat below is operating at one hundred percent efficiency. The rooftops are still the statistically superior option."
Kai agreed. "He's right. We stay high. We just need to break its line of sight."
He pointed ahead, along their rooftop path. About a hundred yards away, the flat roof of the administration building gave way to the sharply angled, slate-tiled roof of a much older building: the campus history department. Between the slate tiles were rows of small, triangular dormer windows, offering potential handholds and, more importantly, cover.
"There," Kai commanded. "That's our goal. We move fast and we don't look back."
He didn't wait for a response. He broke from cover, running in a low crouch, his feet crunching on the loose gravel. Elara was a step behind him, her twin blades a glint of steel in the gray light. Ben, motivated by the fresh wave of shrieks from the recovering Harrier, ran faster than he ever had in his life.
They sprinted across the flat rooftop, the wind whistling in their ears. It was a race against time, a desperate dash to reach cover before the alpha predator could recover its senses and take to the air again.
They reached the edge of the flat roof and scrambled onto the steep, treacherous slope of the history building. The slate tiles were slippery with ash, and they had to use their rock hammers to secure handholds, pulling themselves up the sharp incline. It was slow, grueling work, their muscles screaming in protest.
Finally, they hauled themselves over the peak of the roof and collapsed onto the sheltered slope on the other side, their backs pressed against the rough slate tiles, completely hidden from the view of their pursuer. The furious shrieks of the Harrier were muffled now, a distant, angry echo. They had broken its line of sight.
They lay there for what felt like an eternity, catching their breath, their hearts pounding a frantic rhythm. They had survived their first encounter with a true sky-predator. They had been outsmarted, outmaneuvered, and nearly killed, but they had adapted, and they had won.
Kai cautiously raised his head and peered over the peak of the roof. The Harrier was airborne again, one of its wings bent at an unnatural angle, its flight pattern clumsy and erratic. It circled the rooftop where they had fought, its shrieks full of frustration. It was looking for them.
"It's still hunting," he whispered, ducking back down.
"But it's wounded," Elara added, a grim satisfaction in her voice. "We hurt it. It knows we're not easy prey."
The balance of power on the ashen skyline had shifted. They were no longer just intruders in a predator's territory. They were a rival pack, a new and unpredictable variable in the deadly ecosystem of the rooftop world.