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  I sprinted after Cherry, who was already halfway down the stairs, struggling not to trip as I kept piloting the drone. The display showed our mystery man continuing eastward at a leisurely pace, completely unaware of us. If we hurried, we could intercept him before he got too far, but we'd have to cross the river first, and the nearest bridge was back at Syzygy Square.

  We raced through the streets of the Constellation District, dodging pedestrians and sliding across patches of ice. Cherry barreled through crowds, clearing the way for me. "Coming through! Official business! Move it or lose it, people!"

  We made it across the bridge and onto the boulevard. The area outside the capitol, however, was heavily patrolled by World Guard peacekeepers, especially after the Stonehearth incident. We couldn't risk being spotted by Guards who might think we were up to something weird, so we moved a few streets into the Nebula District and followed one running parallel to the boulevard.

  We managed to catch up with our mark as he was strolling up to the gate checkpoint.

  It was a substantial archway set into the massive stone wall surrounding the city. The actual gates - iron-banded wooden doors - were fixed open, but the Guard had built a set of turnstiles and security booths to block it off, and several peacekeepers were waiting to inspect anyone coming or going.

  Our target approached and showed them a pass and was let right through. He continued walking out of the city along the highway.

  That was even more suspicious - there was next to nothing in the areas right outside the Capital. The highway would eventually split off into routes heading into the swamps, into the King's Woods and Townsville, and up toward Falconworth, but there were better ways of reaching the major cities. He was definitely up to something.

  The issue was, who knows how long it would take us to get through that checkpoint? We didn't have a solid excuse to be leaving, and I wasn't confident I could fly the drone through unnoticed. We had to improvise something quick.

  I stared at the massive wall surrounding the city. Then a memory suddenly clicked into place. "The winch."

  "The what now?"

  "The entente's winch!"

  We sprinted along the inner perimeter of the wall until we found a narrow, rail-less stone staircase that switched back and forth as it climbed up to the wall walk. It was a ridiculously long climb. I recalled the drone as we ran, catching it out of the air and bringing it back into my inventory.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  At the top, we turned north and kept going until we found the ballista bay we'd used during the smuggling operation. Peeking out behind the merlons, it was still there - the winch was still there with its ropes hanging freely down the outside of the wall.

  I leaned out, careful not to look all the way down, and grabbed the rope. "Help me pull it up."

  Together, Cherry and I hauled on the rope, hand over hand, until the wooden platform appeared. It was smaller than I remembered - a plain wooden square with no railing suspended by loops of rope threaded through pulleys at the corners.

  "That doesn't look very safe." I said. It was enough to haul that welding machine up, so it must have been able to hold the two of us, but...

  "We're losing ground on the mark!" Cherry shouted. She grabbed my arm and, together, before the thoughts caught up with us, we hopped off the wall onto the platform.

  The moment our combined weight hit the wood, the platform dropped like a stone. The rope ripped through my hands, shearing the texture off my palms. But I clung tighter, wrapping my entire body around it to get control of the speed of the fall. And it worked, to some degree - I could feel the platform starting to slow down. I still didn't dare look out at how far we were off the ground.

  And then we stopped with a violent jerk. The sudden halt threw us both off the platform. We sailed through the air before crashing face-first into the long grass at the foot of the wall.

  I lay there for several seconds, stunned and disoriented, my face pressed into the cold earth. It wasn't even a hard enough landing to damage us. Slowly, I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees, then looked back at the wall towering hundreds of feet above us. My entire body trembled with leftover adrenaline.

  "What were we thinking?!" I gasped.

  Cherry was already on her feet, brushing grass from her clothes as if we'd just hopped over a fence. "No time!"

  We quickly ran south, scanning the roads for any sign of our mysterious traveler. The highway stretched out empty before us, no sign of our target. I stopped to do a sweep with a pair of binoculars.

  "Did we lose them?" Cherry asked.

  "Possibly... We would have seen them if they took the north highway..."

  "You think we got a swamp dweller on our hands?" Cherry asked.

  I turned my binoculars toward the eastern wetlands. The terrain was open for several miles before the swamp proper began. "The wetlands are pretty open for a while - I think we'd see them there, too."

  I pulled up my map. There was another path, smaller than the main highway, that branched south into the nearest portion of the Woodsea - a zone called the Forest of Souls - then stopped quickly. If he went off that way, we'd have a hard time finding him, but also he would have to come back quickly.

  So we climbed into a ditch that ran the side of the rode and lay flat, peeking up over the top to peer through the long grass with our binoculars.

  "How many of these guys do you think Poe sends out a day?" I asked, settling in for what might be a long wait.

  "I don't know. Hey, how are we going to get back into the city?"

  "We'll worry about that later."

  "It's almost curfew."

  "No curfew outside the city, Cher."

  Cherry groaned. "I don't want to camp out here again."

  I glanced at her with a smirk. "I thought I was dealing with a muckraker, not a yellow-belly."

  "You're right." she sighed. "Those fancy restaurants made me go soft."

  "If you want to heat up some beans, I can keep watch."

  Cherry nodded and backed deeper into the ditch, pulling our portable heater and provisions from her inventory. As she popped open a can, I kept my eyes fixed on the eastern gate, waiting for any sign of movement.