ABBY COLLAPSED HER BOW and clipped it back onto the quiver, then withdrew two arrows.
Holding an arrow in each hand, she leaped at the alley wall. She slammed the right arrow deep into the brickwork, used it to haul herself up, then swung her left hand at the wall. With the second arrow in place, she pulled out the first.
She climbed quickly, hand over hand, leaving behind a staggered trail of holes and shattered bricks. As she passed the broken camera, she retrieved the arrow that had pierced it and slipped it back into the quiver. At the top Abby swung herself onto the building's roof, six stories up.
She didn't waste time sightseeing. Whoever was monitoring her through the cameras would by now have alerted the patrols—and the broken camera was a sure giveaway that this was where she had disappeared. She ran across the rooftop, vaulted a low wall between this building and the next, dropped down onto the lower roof of another building, and kept going.
The rooftops weren't quite as neatly kept as the streets below: They were peppered with ducts and vents, cables and pipes, and on one flat roof she passed a collection of weather-stained lawn furniture that clearly hadn't been used in years.
When she reached Main Street, there was nowhere left to run—Abby knew she could jump much farther than a normal human, but the street was just too wide. Below, dozens of people walked silently, heads down.
It's like all the joy has been ripped out of their lives.
About four hundred yards to her right, on the opposite side of the street, was the diner—or what used to be the diner. Its windows had been neatly boarded up, as were the windows of most of the stores on Main Street.
She walked along the edge of the roof, wondering how to get across the street without being spotted. The cameras were positioned on their posts a few feet lower than the roof, so for now she was safe.
Maybe I can jump right onto one of the posts, land above the cameras... And then what? There's no way I'd be able to jump to the next one.
Or I could take them all out with arrows—but then that would just give away my position.
Abby stepped over a bundle of cables as thick as her arm and stopped at the corner of the building. It looked easy enough to climb down. If I'm fast—really fast—maybe I can get across the street before whoever's watching spots me.
She sat down on the edge of the roof, swung around so that she could lower herself over the edge before she dropped—and again spotted the bundle of cables.
The bundle emerged from a narrow vent in the building's roof and snaked across the rooftop to the edge, where it split into individual strands, each one leading to the surveillance cameras monitoring the street below.
Abby grinned. Bingo!
She hauled herself back up and returned to the cables, grabbed hold of the bundle, and pulled, reeling in the slack until it was taut against the vent. Then she dug in her heels and wrenched as hard as she could.
The bundle snapped a lot more easily than she'd expected, and Abby almost stumbled backward. On the street behind her the cameras powered down.
She leaned over the edge and shouted down: "Hey! You people down there! The cameras are off-line—you're not being watched. You can do whatever you like now!"
Some of the people momentarily glanced up at her, then continued walking as though they'd heard nothing.
Oh man... What's wrong with them?
A movement to her left caught Abby's attention. A flying vehicle was approaching from the east, coming in low over the rooftops. At first she thought it was a helicopter, but the craft was the wrong shape—squat and wide—and moving in almost complete silence.
There was nowhere for Abby to hide, and it would take too long to climb down the side of the building.
She unclipped her bow, snapped its limbs into place, and nocked an arrow to the string.
The craft came to a stop and hovered thirty yards away, directly over Main Street and only a few yards above the web of cables. A hatch in the side slid open and an amplified voice called out: "Drop your weapon. Lie flat on the roof with your hands above your head. This is your only warning."