Free Web NovelChapter 34: Second Quest
The wall to the penthouse main hall gave my brain enough room to think clearly for the first time in hours, and it got straight to work.
The lobby was now flooded with infected, so was the emergency stairwell.
Even the elevators opened directly into the lobby, and power could cut at any moment, which would make the elevators a sealed box with no way out.
[I need a route in and out.... A real one.]
I found Kara standing at the bar with an X-ray film held up against one of the lights, brows pulled together hard, while Tikki sat beside her on the counter, letting his disapproval of modern medicine be known at full volume.
I stopped directly behind Kara and tried to look over her shoulder at the film, but her head was in the way, so I leaned a fraction closer and squinted.
"It looks..."
"AAH!" She spun around and her elbow found my nose with a speed and precision that was borderline special forces.
-Tuck-!
And my world exploded in fresh pain while I fell on my ass, both hands covering my nose, eyes damn near watering.
"Oh my God!" Kara crouched immediately. "I’m so sorry! I didn’t notice you!"
I looked up at her from the tiles.
Then at Tikki on the counter, who gazed down at me with deeply considered judgment.
[Guess I need an X-ray now too...]
"Nothing’s broken," I said, after several seconds of sitting there. "So, let’s pretend that didn’t happen."
"The X-ray looks fine." I continued as I stood back up, rubbing my nose, and pointed at the film.
"No, it doesn’t." Kara held it back up toward the light and pointed.
"Hairline fracture through the ulna," she continued, slipping fully into veterinarian mode. "... I need injectable buprenorphine, 0.3 mg/mL, for analgesia, injectable meloxicam, 5 mg/mL, for inflammation, a feline splint kit, orthopedic padding, fiberglass casting tape, cohesive Vet Wrap, and an Elizabethan collar."
"The fracture isn’t displaced, which is good... " She tapped the X-ray with a finger. "Six weeks minimum for healing, probably eight before I’d trust the leg under normal activity. Strict rest the entire time."
"How strict?" I asked, while Kara gave Tikki a long look.
"As strict as physically possible..."
"Got it... need help with anything else?"
"No," her reply came with surprising firmness. "I’ll handle it."
[Maybe that’s her way of making up for it.] But I didn’t think too much into it, I had my own shit to worry about.
Pulling the misc. chest from Inventory to make space, I purchased everything on the list and laid it beside her without discussion.
I didn’t bother putting the chest back in because I was going to need the empty space in the Inventory far more than stored supplies for what I had in mind.
As I walked out onto the balcony and peered over the edge, the street below confirmed everything I already knew.
Infected packed the entrance in numbers that made the road underneath them invisible. Walking out the front was basically suicide.
Standing there, I studied the surrounding structures for several minutes: roads, rooftops, distances, anchor points on adjacent buildings, and fire escape structures.
Then I looked upward toward the roof.
[Let’s see what I’ve got up there.]
-Ding!
{
Item: Telescoping Aluminum Ladder
Extended Length: 3.8 meters
Collapsed Length: 0.9 meters
Weight: 12 kg
Cost: 70 Credits
Confirm Purchase?
}
[Yep...]
Climbing the ladder with bruised ribs and a bandaged waist was its own experience, but I reached the rooftop without falling off, which was the part that actually mattered.
And the moment I got up, my eyes instantly fell on the emergency stairwell door that violently shook against its frame, and my heart leapt at my throat.
-BANG-!-BANG-!-BANG-!...
Several infected faces pressed against the reinforced glass of the small window, hands banging and clawing at the frame.
The door still held. For now.
But it could fail at any moment, and when it does, the infected would spill onto the roof, then the balcony, then the penthouse, and well...
So, I instantly sprinted to that door and pulled the Ascender from Inventory.
And after several careful maneuvers later, that 11-ton apartment’s side sat against the stairwell door frame, touching it.
The banging still continued, but the door wasn’t going anywhere, no matter how many infected banged on it.
After all, the stairwell on the other side didn’t have space for enough infected to gather by the door to make any difference.
"This should work for now," I said, stepping back, admiring my handiwork, "... Will need something permanent later though."
And with that, I turned around and properly examined the rest of the roof.
The solar array covered almost a quarter of the available space, dedicated exclusively to the penthouse.
The elevated water tank sat at the far right edge on a solid steel support structure.
If the city’s power grid died, the solar array would keep our lights running.
If the city’s water supply were cut off, the tank would give us weeks of reserve.
"Uh-Huh... This’ll work." I muttered as I went to the next stage of the plan I had been cooking up.
-Ding!
{
Item: Sterling HTP Static Rescue Rope
Length: 70 meters
Diameter: 11 mm
Breaking Strength: 40 kN
Weight: 5.8 kg
Cost: 420 Credits
}
I secured one end to the water tank’s steel support frame with a figure-eight follow-through before adding two independent backup anchors, and then added some more safety knots behind those.
Hanging my full body weight from the rope, I bounced twice, and the knots held without any argument.
And just like that, the first phase of the plan was done.
Walking to the balcony-facing edge of the roof, I studied the road below, eyes going back to the 8-story apartment building that had caught my eye when I was on the balcony.
The apartment building across the street had its own elevated water tank on the roof, support frame intact, with an exterior metal fire escape running down the outside of the building.
[Roughly 15 meters across the road... Yeah. That’s it.]
I carried the loose rope’s other end down the ladder, stepped onto the balcony, and dropped it over the railing, and the rope reached the ground with length to spare.
"How’s the patient?" I asked, walking back through the main hall.
"Currently threatening legal action," Kara said, Tikki confirming this with a loud, offended sound from the counter.
"We’ll survive it," I said, and kept moving.
-Ding!
{
Item: DJI FlyCart 30 Maximum
Payload: 30 kg Maximum
Flight Time: 18 minutes at full payload
Cost: 13,500 Credits
----
Item: Portable Bluetooth Speaker, USB Playback Compatible
Cost: 30 Credits
----
Item: 8 GB USB Drive
Cost: 5 Credits
}
I borrowed the Lenovo from Kara’s workstation, connected to the penthouse Wi-Fi, and committed piracy with complete moral comfort.
And two minutes later, Highway to Hell sat on the USB drive.
Kara looked up from Tikki’s medication preparation.
"What are you doing?"
"Urban planning."
She stared at the drone on the bar top with the speaker zip-tied underneath it.
"I regret asking."
Taking the drone to the balcony, I hit play on the speaker at full volume, and the party started.
The rotors lifted it into the night air, and I drove it down, just in time for the guitar riff to roll across the intersection, and every infected below turned at the same instant.
The infected in the lobby piled over each other, screeching and clawing, rushing at the drone I kept way above their heads.
The infected on the street and in the surrounding apartments joined the concert next.
By the time we reached the chorus, more bodies emerged from the side alleys, and even the building entrances further out.
And within ten minutes, the road in front of our 10th-floor penthouse stopped being visible.
Kara walked out with Tikki held carefully against her shoulder, his leg packaged up.
"That is a significant number of infected." She said, peeking into the controller’s screen.
"Yep."
"Nikki..."
"Horde’s gonna follow the music... once we have enough numbers, I’ll draw them to the back of the building... should give a pretty clear front. Then I’ll use that rope to get down."
She looked at me, then at the controller, then back at me. "That is profoundly stupid."
"So long as it works."
Keeping the drone a few meters above and completely out of reach, I flew it slowly toward the rear of the building.
And the horde followed, and within minutes, the street emptied as the entire population around the few blocks followed the drone to the back of the building.
There’d be a few stragglers, of course, or maybe not, but I’ve made it a habit to assume. Its saved my life more than once.
Whatever the actual case, what I had in front of me was more than good enough.
Leaving the drone hovering at the rear of the building, I opened the System’s Shop once again.
-Ding! frёewebnoѵel.ƈo๓
{
Item: Atlas APA-5 Powered Rope Ascender Package
Contents: Atlas APA-5 Powered Rope Ascender x3, Full Body Rescue Harness x3, Locking Carabiners x12, Shock Absorbing Lanyards x3, Protective Helmets x3.
Maximum Working Load: 200 kg
Ascent Speed: 15 meters per minute
Battery Runtime: 500 meters total ascent
Compatible Rope Diameter: 10 mm to 13 mm
Description: Battery-powered motorized device that attaches to a static rope and pulls the user upward or lowers them downward via trigger control.
Designed for industrial rescue operations, tower maintenance, and high-angle access.
Eliminates physical climbing effort on the rope itself.
Cost: 4,800 Credits
}
I pulled out the chest containing my new toys, and went to work. Harness first, then leg loops, waist belt, chest attachment, all tightened and checked twice.
The shock lanyard came next, then the carabiners, and then the APA-5 clipped to the rope.
I had used powered ascenders before on the previous timeline, and the check sequence ran from memory without needing me to flip through a manual.
I checked every connection, then did it again the third time because dying from a loose harness error would have been an embarrassing ending.
"You’re seriously doing this..." Kara said from behind me.
"The rope is rated for forty kilonewtons..." I said without looking back, "Believe me, I weigh considerably less than that."
Attaching the Atlas APA-5 to the rope, I activated the descent function and stepped off the balcony edge, and the motor lowered me smoothly down the building face while the balcony got farther and farther.
The rope held steady, all the while my bruised chest kept sending continuous updates about the harness pressure that I mentally marked as spam.
And ten floors later, my boots touched the pavement outside the lobby entrance.
Shotgun out the very same instant, followed by a full three-sixty sweep.
Nothing moved in the immediate area except distant infected still chasing Highway to Hell around the building’s rear side.
Detaching the Atlas, I tied the end of the rope around my waist and crossed the road.
At the base of the eight-floor building, I pulled the grappling launcher, aimed at the roof edge, and-
-THUNK-!
The hook was embedded right where I aimed at with enough force that I raised an eyebrow.
[Didn’t think it had that much range...]
The wall climb was unpleasant to say the least, my body submitting one formal complaint per floor, and that was with the painkillers in effect.
But the launcher handled most of the effort, pulling me up while I wall walked, military style, needing only to stop twice to breathe before hauling myself over the edge onto the eight-floor roof.
And the water tank sat exactly where I needed it.
Untying the rope from my waist, I walked up to it and anchored the rope to the support frame with the same sequence: figure-eight, backup anchor, safety knot, load test by hanging my weight from it, and bouncing twice.
"There..." I panted, "Now let’s see if this holds on the way up."
The rope stretched diagonally upward from the eight-floor roof toward the 10th-floor penthouse roof, fifteen meters horizontally across the road.
Without the APA-5, that angle was completely unclimbable. And that was a feature, not a flaw.
I clipped in, activated the ascender, engaged the motor, and pulled myself upward along the diagonal, making the mistake of looking down once.
Eight floors of open air beneath my boots, the street below looking considerably further away than eight floors normally felt.
And the worst part, neither of the two anchors on either side had been tested to bear the kind of load they were bearing now.
And as if the universe just remembered that, I heard a creak.
[Motherfucker!] I damn near had a heart attack.
But the rope held, the anchor held, and the APA-5 pulled me steadily upward toward the penthouse roof for sixty more seconds before I reached the edge and grabbed it with both hands for dear life.
[People who do this as a hobby need professional help....]
I hauled myself onto solid concrete, detached the Atlas, and stayed on my knees for more than just a few seconds.
[It worked...] the thought floated up.
And sure enough, the lobby was irrelevant now, so was the stairwell and the hordes below.
I had a private rope highway now, connecting this roof to the building across the road, accessible only to four people in the entire city who had the equipment to go up the slope.
And the best part, the infected surrounding the building had accidentally become perimeter security against every other survivor in the city.
We’d finally be safe now.
But again, as though the universe could hear my thoughts-
-Ding!
{
Quest Received!
Objective: Rescue Nora Woodbrew and Leo Hart
Reward: Custom Firearm Token
}
[Huh...?]
My phone vibrated before I even finished reading it.
Caller ID: Nora.
And the satisfaction from the last few seconds evaporated right then and there.
"Nora?"
"Nikki!" Her voice was already fractured, panic running through every syllable. "H-How long?! I sneezed, a-and they heard it! They’re trying to get in!"
