The wind on the roof was savage. It didn't blow; it bit. It tore at my wet clothes, freezing the water in the fabric until my jeans felt like stiff cardboard against my legs.
"Okay," I shouted over the gale, shielding the camera lens with my hand. "We are topside. Visibility is zero. Comfort level is negative ten."
I stood on the flat, gravel roof of the asylum. To my left, the lagoon was a black void, indistinguishable from the sky. To my right, the overgrown courtyard lay in shadow. But directly ahead, rising like a tombstone against the clouds, was the Bell Tower.
It was an octagon of red brick, crumbling and ancient. The top arches, where the bell used to hang, were empty. They looked like the eye sockets of a skull staring down at me.
I pulled out my phone. The screen was cracked, spiderwebbed from the fall in the Plague Pit, but the display glowed to life.
Searching for Service.
"Come on," I pleaded, holding it up high. "Just one bar. Give me 3G. I will settle for Edge. Just let me upload the footage."
The spinning wheel on the screen froze. Then, a single bar flickered into existence.
"Yes!"
I tapped the upload button on the app. Connecting...
BANG.
A chunk of brick the size of a football exploded next to my foot.
I dropped the phone. It skittered across the gravel, landing face down near the edge of the roof.
"Sniper!" I yelled, diving behind a rusted ventilation unit.
Another brick smashed into the metal casing of the vent, denting it inward with a deafening clang.
"Where is he?" I frantically scanned the darkness, peeking over the top of the unit.
There, standing in the highest arch of the Bell Tower, was a silhouette. It wasn't a shapeless shadow. It was distinct. It wore the tattered uniform of a World War II era guard—a remnant from when the island was used to hide munitions. But its head was wrong. One side of its face was caved in, missing entirely.
The spectral guard didn't hold a rifle. He didn't need one. He held his hand out, palm open.
Loose bricks, roof tiles, and pieces of jagged metal floated around him, suspended in a gravity field of his own making.
"Telekinesis," I groaned. "Great. A poltergeist with a vantage point."
The guard flicked his wrist.
A rusty iron pipe ripped itself free from the roof near me and launched like a javelin. It whistled through the air and slammed into the gravel inches from my head.
"Okay! Message received!"
I huddled behind the vent. This was bad. He had the high ground. He had unlimited ammo. And I had a shotgun, which was effective at close range but basically a confetti cannon at this distance.
"Think, Jax. Think."
I couldn't rush the tower. The approach was open ground. He would turn me into paste before I got halfway there. I needed to close the gap, or I needed a weapon with range.
I looked at the heavy black case, which I had dragged behind the vent with me.
"Uncle Silas," I whispered, clicking the latches open. "Please tell me you packed a sniper rifle."
I dug through the red velvet. No rifle. Just boxes of shells.
Spectral Buckshot. (Short range). Dragon's Breath. (Short range). Slug. (Medium range, but I only had two left).
Then, my fingers brushed a small, unmarked cardboard box tucked in the corner. It rattled.
I pulled it out. Inside were three shells that looked different. They weren't brass. They were translucent plastic, filled with what looked like coarse, grey salt and iron filings.
A label on the side read: Graveshot. For grounding flyers.
"Graveshot," I muttered. "Sounds heavy."
I cracked The Negotiator open and loaded two of the grey shells.
"Okay. Let's see if this works."
I took a deep breath. I had to expose myself to take the shot.
"One. Two. Three!"
I popped up from behind the vent.
The Guard saw me instantly. He raised both hands. A storm of bricks from the tower wall tore loose, forming a cloud of debris ready to fire.
I didn't aim at him. I aimed at the air directly in front of him.
BOOM.
The recoil was sluggish, heavy. The shot didn't produce a flash of light. Instead, it sprayed a dense, expanding cloud of grey dust toward the tower.
The Guard sneered—or the half of his face that could sneer did—and prepared to launch his bricks.
Then the cloud hit him.
It wasn't an attack. It was an anchor. The grey dust clung to his spectral form, coating him in salt and iron.
The effect was instantaneous. He stopped floating.
Gravity, which he had been ignoring for fifty years, suddenly remembered him.
The Guard looked down, his single eye widening in panic. The bricks he was holding dropped harmlessly to the roof.
Then he dropped.
He fell from the high arch of the tower, plummeting fifty feet down. He didn't drift like a ghost; he fell like a man.
CRUNCH.
He hit the roof of the asylum hard. The impact shattered the tiles, and he fell through the roof, crashing into the attic below.
"Target grounded!" I shouted, pumping the shotgun. "Gravity is a harsh mistress, buddy!"
I grabbed my phone from the edge of the roof. The screen was shattered, but the upload bar was still there.
Upload Failed. No Signal.
"No!" I shook the phone. "We had a bar! We had one bar!"
I looked up at the Bell Tower. The space was empty now, but something felt wrong. The air pressure hadn't returned to normal. The wind had died down, replaced by a heavy, static charge that made the hair on my arms stand up.
From the hole in the roof where the Guard had fallen, a light began to glow. It wasn't the yellow light of the asylum bulbs. It was violet.
"He isn't dead," I realized. "I just knocked him into the attic."
The roof tiles beneath my feet began to vibrate.
"And now he is angry."
I backed away toward the roof access hatch. The attic was directly below me. If he was down there, and he was powering up...
CRASH.
The roof twenty feet away exploded outward.
The Guard rose from the debris. He wasn't human-shaped anymore. The fall had broken his spectral form. He was a twisted mass of limbs and rage, glowing with that violet energy. He didn't pick up bricks this time. He picked up the entire ventilation unit I had been hiding behind.
He roared, a sound like grinding metal, and hurled the massive steel box at me.
I dove for the hatch.
The unit tumbled over my head, missing me by inches, and smashed into the chimney, demolishing it.
"Okay! Attic fight! We are doing an attic fight!"
I dropped down the ladder, sliding the last ten feet, and hit the hallway floor. I slammed the hatch shut above me and locked it.
A second later, a massive impact shook the ceiling. Dust rained down on me.
"He is coming down," I panted, backing down the hallway. "I need space. I need cover."
I looked at the doors lining the hall. This was the Staff Quarters level. Small rooms. Nowhere to hide.
Except for the double doors at the end of the hall.
The sign above them was faded, but legible.
LOBOTOMIA (Lobotomy).
"Of course," I groaned. "Out of the sniper nest, into the brain surgery room. Why is this island designed like a horror movie set?"
The ceiling creaked ominously. Footsteps—heavy, crushing footsteps—were moving above me, heading for the stairs.
I ran for the double doors. I didn't have a choice. The Guard was coming, and he was bringing the roof down with him.