He goes limp instantly.
Dead weight.
Too much dead weight.
The strap he sliced earlier starts to tear, fibers screaming under the strain. I reach for my multitool and realize I can’t get to it. My bag. My cut arm. The wind won’t let me.
“F-f-fuck.”
The strap gives another inch.
I start to slide out of the harness, heart slamming into my throat. I grab the remaining strap with both hands and cling to it as the world spins.
Below me, the building finally gives up.
The tower collapses in on itself, folding like a dying animal, floors pancaking in a roar of smoke and fire and screaming steel. I hang there, spinning slowly, watching it fall.
“Holy shit.” I pant, watching it in disbelief. Knowing the assassins that ran in there to cash in on the bounty ofSaint James died, knowing it was me that brought them all down in the end.
Then the chute catches a bad current.
I’m yanked sideways, dragged screaming through the Dubai skyline, glass flashing past far too close. Tex’s body slams face-first into a building, bounces, then hits it again with a meaty thud.
The wind shifts.
The Kurohana Palace rushes into view.
“Hold on,” I mutter to myself. Pulling up and finally fixing the single strap in the crook of my elbow. My second hand, gripping my wrist with everything I have. “Just hold on.”
Tex’s body bangs into another building, then another, leaving a smeared red trail across pristine glass as he slides along it like the world’s worst mural.
“That’s fucking disgusting.”
We’re dropping fast now.
The ground surges up.
My eyes dart, calculating, already bracing for impact. I don’t see an immediate way to die.
Which means it’s absolutely waiting.
Tex’s body slams into an SUV with a crunch of metal and bone, then drags along the asphalt, sparks flying as it slows me just enough to matter.
“Oh. Oh shit.”
I lift my legs just in time to clear a massive mound of camel poop.
Tex doesn’t.
His corpse slides face-first straight into it,disappearing in a wet, humiliating splatter.
I snort despite myself.
“Now, that is fucking beautiful.”
The chute finally collapses enough to dump me hard onto the pavement, rolling, bruising, but alive.
I lie there for a second, staring at the night sky, chest heaving, body screaming, city sirens beginning to rise in the distance.
