Chapter Seventeen - Out of the City

"So!" Crystal said as she flounced along a step behind Koschei. Alice was keeping up with them both, but was giving herself a little bit of distance between herself and Crystal's flounciness. "How are we getting out of the city, anyway?"

"The walls are supposed to be impenetrable," Koschei said. He snorted a moment later. "There are more holes in it than in a sieve. But we'll be taking a quick way out. It's fast, but a little dangerous." He tugged his sleeve up, and glanced at his watch. "We should hurry."

"Was this the exit we were planning on using all along?" Alice asked.

The man hummed and shook his head. "No. If you had come when you were meant to, we'd be leaving from a guard house. A couple of thousand roubles each and the guards look the other way. They won't let people in but just slipping out? That's easy."

"But that's not how we're leaving, is it?" Crystal asked.

"No," Koschei said. He glanced over his shoulder at the two of them. "Now, be a little more quiet, would you?"

"Oki-doki!" Crystal said, quite loudly.

Alice shot her a look, and received a smug smile in return. Well, at least Crystal was having fun with this, she supposed.

Koschei led them through the city and along the outer wall. For all that it seemed a little rough from up close, the wall was still an impressive piece of engineering. It was tall, thick, and reminded her of a massive castle wall made of modern materials. There had to be a million tons of poured cement along the entire wall. A dozen dams worth of material put up to keep a single city safe from intruders and to keep its people walled in.

Koschei brought them to a spot where the wall turned inwards a little, then back out. There was an entrance just around the corner. Alice could feel a dozen or so young men, bored out of their minds, and filled with rather mundane worries. "Quiet now," he muttered.

Instead of moving towards the entrance, he guided them towards a small doorway built right into the wall. It was sealed, but their guide pulled out a small metallic bar from within his coat and shoved it into the lock. A few quick motions back and forth while pressing the handle down, and the lock gave up.

"In, quick," he said. "And quiet, there's an echo."

Alice and Crystal slipped past him into the wall itself.
Alice paused as she took in the vast, empty space. The walls were a metre thick here, but beyond that was a large, cavernous space filled with I-beams leading from one side to the other. "Is the entire wall hollow all the way around?" she asked in a low murmur.

"Most of it," he said. "It was supposed to be filled. Come on."

There was a staircase in the centre of the space, metal railings and grated steps that turned at ninety degree angles. They started up the stairs, and Alice found herself wincing at the groaning of metal underfoot and the constant clangs as everything moved.

Worse, the sound echoed through the space.

"Will someone hear us?" Crystal asked.

Koschei, now behind them, shrugged. "Maybe. But the wind makes the wall groan too. Voices, though, are unusual to hear, so be quiet."

Alice kept mum until they reached the top of the stairs. At a glance, she judged the wall to be about three stories tall. A door waited for them above, with a warning not to open it. They ignored that, opening the door up and skulking out.

"Stay low," Koschei said as he moved past the two of them.

The top of the wall was flat, with small parapets on either side that came up to around hip-height. There were a few cans up here, plenty of trash from food, and discarded magazines and boxes. A few shiny brass casings caught Alice's eye too. "The top of the wall is patrolled?" she asked.

"Not often enough," Koschei said. He led them down towards a strange apparatus hanging off the side of the wall. It took Alice a moment to recognize it. The last time she'd seen one of these was in Rio, and it was in much better shape. It was the kind of elevator platform used by window washers to clean the sides of skyscrapers. "Get in," he said with a gesture to the cage.

Alice stepped on, then extended a hand that Crystal took before she hopped on.

They were outside of the city now, technically. Hanging high up the wall overlooking the suburbs and parts of the city that weren't lucky enough to be walled in. There was a wide open space of destroyed buildings and cleared land here, all illuminated by the rising sun.

Koschei hopped on with a clang, then pulled up the controls for the lift. A press of a button later and they were riding it down at a slow, agonising pace.

"Once we're on the ground, we'll be out in the open," he said. "Anyone seeing us from the wall will shoot. If a patrol comes around, and they do ride around, they'll shoot too. Or arrest us, which is no better."

"So, how do we get over there?" Crystal asked as she pointed across the kill zone. "Run real fast?"

"You can't outrun a bullet," Koschei said.

Crystal made a face, which scrunched up her nose rather cutely. "I'm pretty sure I can," she muttered.

Alice was sure that Crystal could, in fact, outrun a bullet. Crystal's entire aspect and domain was lasers and crystals. Light moved noticeably faster than any bullet. Alice, of course, was faster, because the only thing faster than light was light's own shadow.

She'd once had a three hour long debate with a physicist about it. He was wrong, of course, because what did he know? He couldn't turn into shadows, could he?

"There are some ditches to either side of the road the patrols take. A few of those have tunnels under them. Right over there." He pointed to a small culvert passing under a gravel road, one that trailed alongside the wall. The culvert was a dark patch, hidden from sight by a slight slope.

Alice nodded. She could see how that would work. Once they were on the other side of the road, they could make a run for the nearest building and disappear. The other side of the killzone was filled with old, dilapidated buildings. Roads forked out and traveled further off, but they were broken, ripped apart, filled with heaps of trash, and plantlife had started to push over the abandoned city.

"Come on. Stay low, stay quiet, and listen for trouble," Koschei said. He reached into a pocket at his breast and pulled out a small item that he flicked forwards. It sailed ahead, a line of bright green cloth following it.

"What was that?" Crystal asked.

"Safety," he said as he walked over and picked the thing up. He flicked it ahead again, then walked after it.

Alice and Crystal followed behind him, keeping low as he'd said to until they reached the ditch with the culvert and squeezed on through it.

Koschei flicked another thing in ahead of him, but didn't pick it up this time, so when she passed, Alice dipped down and scooped it out of the mud.

It was a nut. A small hex nut, with a length of thin ribbon tied through it. The cloth was made of the kind of reflective material she might expect to see on the back of a bicyclist's jacket or something.

"What's the point of these nuts?" Alice asked. "Or... wait, are you looking for those time bubbles?"

"Not just those," Koschei said. They reached the far end of the tunnel, and he flicked one up and over the edge then nodded. "Stay close."

Their guide darted out ahead, over the top of the ditch, then darted towards a nearby building. It had been a shop of some sort, with large windows, but they were missing now, smashed long ago. Koschei stepped on the window sill and jumped into the shadows within the shop.

Alice and Crystal followed with ease.

"Good," he said once they were in. "Come on, we're in the safe belt for now, but it's a thin area."

"Safe belt?" Crystal asked.

"Out of the kill zone, but not yet in the Zone itself," he explained. "It goes all the way around the city, a space where you're not in as much danger. There aren't as many anomalies here, and the guards don't patrol this area. At the same time, any monster from the Zone usually gets attracted to the wall and dies when patrols find them. It's as safe as you can be out here."

"That doesn't sound safe at all," Crystal muttered.

Koschei chuckled. "Welcome to the great outdoors, then."

***