Break You

The wind pushing against her carried tiny ball-bearings of sleet.
Halfway up, she had to stop and make herself breathe.
Not breathless from exertion, but fear.
When she opened her eyes, she was staring down the length of the ladder between her feet, figuring it must be seventy or eighty feet to that concrete slab at the tower’s base. It moved back and forth, or seemed to at least, though she knew that was the tower itself swaying and a surge of bile lurched up her throat.
 Hold it together. You’ve been through worse. This is for Max. For Andy. 
“You aren’t freezing on me up there, are you?”
“No.”
Her words thick in her throat, palms sweating, sliding too easily across the metal rung. There was a tremor in her right leg as she started to climb again. Exhaustion and fear and the adrenaline running out, leaving her muscles shaky.
But she kept climbing.
A freezing drizzle needled the side of her face.
The steps becoming slippery.
Vi looked up. Three more rungs. Almost there.
She pushed on.
Two more.
Then reached up, her right hand clutching the water-beaded railing, and pulled herself onto the catwalk that encircled the water tank.
It spanned twenty-four inches, but at least it had a railing, a flimsy semblance of protection.
A small camera, just out of reach, had been mounted to the water tank.
It aimed down toward where the ladder joined the catwalk.
Violet flattened herself on the cold metal, her heart beating against it. She didn’t want to do it, but she couldn’t stop herself from looking out across the urban wasteland that sprawled beneath her—block after block of derelict neighborhoods. A six-story housing project—black windows, a crumbling playset in what remained of the courtyard. She craned her neck. Abandoned factories loomed in the distance around the other side of the tower. A series of buildings. Brick chimneys, smokeless and soaring into a ceiling of slate. Everywhere, nothing but industrial decay. A ghost town. Only in the far distance, a mile or more away, did she discern the hum of automobiles, and further on, the feeble skyline of the city.
The speaker crackled in her ear.
“Get up.”
Vi wiped the rainwater out of her eyes and got back onto her feet.
“I told you I had something for you, didn’t I?”
“Yes.”
“That was a lie. Not something. Someone.”
Violet felt a vibration under her feet. She grabbed hold of the loose railing, didn’t like standing upright, the swirl of vertigo threatening.
She staggered back over to the ladder and looked down.
They’d only just started, but someone climbed quickly, with purpose.
“You’re coming up here?” she asked.
“That’s not me. Her name is Jennifer. She woke up here just like you, about an hour ago. Also like you, she’s a new mother. Her daughter, Margot, is sharing a crib with Max as we speak.”
Vi could hear the woman’s footfalls clanging on the metal rungs.
“Why’s she coming up here?”
“Because she doesn’t want her daughter to die. I assume you feel the same way about Max?”
Vi felt a tightening in her chest.
“Whichever one of you isn’t thrown to their death in the next ten minutes can also rest assured their child will be safe a little while longer.”
“Luther, for God’s—”
“Should be fun.”
“I can’t do this.”
“No one’s asking you to do a thing.” Clang. Clang. Clang. “Just stand there for all I care, let her throw you off.”
Violet backed away from where the ladder joined the catwalk.
Still, she had that lilting wooziness in her stomach, the height unnerving.
She leaned against the side of the empty water tank, her hands beginning to shake, listening to the woman approach.
And then the clanging was right there, and she saw hands grasp the railing and a head of dirty-blond hair lifting into view.
The woman climbed onto the catwalk and stood facing Violet. Ten feet away. She was a few years older, early thirties at most, wore a pink tracksuit and had about six inches on Vi. Deep, black bags formed half-crescents under her eyes, her skin molting with old mascara. The drizzle had flattened her hair. She looked sturdy, scrapy, angry, and scared.
“Hey,” Vi said.
The woman just stared, but something was breaking inside of her.
“Oh, I should’ve mentioned,” Luther said, “what with you being a cop and all your training, I gave her a knife. It’s only fair.”
Violet said to the woman, “Let’s climb down. We don’t have to do this.”
“He has my angel.”
“I know. He has my son. But we can’t do this. What he’s trying to force us into.”
“We don’t have a choice.”
“Let’s go down,” Vi said again. “We’ll figure something out.”
The woman shook her head, tears already trailing down her face. She reached back and her hand reappeared grasping a large hunting bowie with a wicked point and a nasty, serrated blade that looked unnatural in her hand, her eyes constantly shifting down to look at it, as if she couldn’t quite believe what she held.
“I’m Violet. You’re Jennifer?”
The woman gave an uncomfortable nod.
“The only way he wins is if we do what he wants. If we don’t go after each other, he has no power.”
The voice in her head said, “Not exactly true, Vi.”
“Jennifer, I used to be a cop. Will you trust me?” Violet edged forward, extending her hand. “Just drop the knife, okay? We’re stronger together.”
Jennifer’s lower lip trembled. “He’s going to kill my daughter.”
“I won’t let that happen.”
“You can’t make that promise.”
Babies suddenly cried through the tiny speaker into Violet’s ear.
She and Jennifer shouted, “No!” in unison, both clutching their earpieces.
“Stop, Luther!”
“Please!” Jennifer screamed.
Vi took another step forward, her head spinning with the tiny, wailing cries.
“Look at me Jennifer!” she shouted.
The woman met her eyes.
“He wants this, okay? Do you understand that?”
“He’s hurting her!”
Jennifer swung the bowie at Violet, who leapt back.
Her impact sent a tremor through the catwalk, the metal vibrating, and Vi had to grab the railing to steady herself.
Her stomach burned. She touched her hand to the front of her tracksuit, and it came away red. The blade had passed through the nylon and cut a shallow streak across her abdomen.
She looked up at Jennifer who seemed stunned at what she’d done, fingering the blood on the knife.
Jennifer’s face broke. “I’m sorry,” she said.
The babies still screamed through their earpieces, and Luther was saying something that was lost amid the cries.
“I have to do this,” Jennifer said.
She stepped forward and Vi stepped back.
They both froze.
Jennifer rushed forward, and Vi rushed back.
Like some terrible dance.
When they stopped again, they were still six feet apart, both panting.
Jennifer faked a step and turned, sprinting in the other direction, disappearing around the other side of the water tank.
Vi stood motionless, listening. She could no longer hear the woman’s footsteps—nothing but the wobble of the railing, the pattering of the rain on the tank.
She could only see several feet in each direction before the catwalk disappeared around the curve of the water tank.
The sound of the crying babies had faded away.
Violet said, “Jennifer?”
She ventured three steps around the tank—nothing.
“Jennifer?”
She never heard the footsteps, only felt a new vibration in the catwalk, turned just in time to see Jennifer charging her in socks, the woman’s face overcome with a sudden ferocious flush, eyes gone cold and determined.
Predatory.
Vi watched the knife moving toward her, everything replaced by a diamond-hard streak of self-preservation.
Twenty-four inches of walkway left little room to parry the oncoming attack, and with Vi already pressed up against the water tank, she simply reacted without thinking, her right hand deflecting the knife thrust, clenching Jennifer’s wrist, and before she realized what she was doing, she’d simultaneously struck Jennifer’s arm above the elbow and jerked her wrist back against the blow.