Pras's breath hitched as he saw Theo's hands. Both palms were a shredded mess, glistening red and raw in the rain, the flesh torn from gripping the safety line during the fall. "Theo… you can't climb with those."
"Don't have a choice." Theo flexed his fingers. The motion sent fresh jolts up his arms. "We finish the climb. Then I deal with it." Using his power now would bring the fever, the weakness—a death sentence on the crane.
With a sharp curse, Pras tugged off his own work gloves. They were soaked on the outside but the inner lining was still marginally better than bare, bleeding skin. "Take them. Both."
The act of forcing his ruined hands into the stiff, wet leather was a new level of agony. Theo saw white, his jaw locked so tight his teeth ached. Once they were on, the constant pressure was a throbbing reminder of every nerve ending. He took a swig from his water flask, the liquid doing nothing to quench the deeper cellular debt screaming from his palms.
"You go first. I'll be right behind you."
The rest of the ascent was a purgatory of focus. Every pull was a calculation against the pain, every foot placement a prayer for stability. Pras, with the heavy sledgehammer strapped securely across his back, moved with deliberate care. Theo followed, a creature of pure will, his taped and gloved hands hooking and pulling, his mind constructing a wall between his consciousness and the screaming feedback from his nerves.
Then, there was no more 'up'.
They hauled themselves onto the operator's cab platform at the summit. The wind here was a physical entity, trying to pluck them from the steel. Before them, the crane's boom arm—a narrow, latticed pathway—stretched into the storm, pointing like a finger at the dark bulk of the Hotel Cendana.
Crawling on hands and knees against the gale, they made their way to the very tip. The hotel rooftop lay below. Not directly below. The boom's end hovered a gut-churning seven meters to the side of the building's edge, and a sheer twenty meters above its surface.
Seeing the reality from this height was a visceral blow.
"Kita memang gila," Pras breathed. We are truly insane. Pras's words were barely audible over the wind.
Theo couldn't argue. The plan, conceived on solid ground, now looked like pure madness scribbled by the wind and rain. The gap was a yawning mouth. The descent was a freefall with a hope.
But the hotel was there. And the BRIMOB perimeter was a ring of irrelevant yellow dots far below. Desperation had a colder, more convincing logic than fear.
"We rappel. Anchor here, lower down, swing onto the roof."
"The wind will use us as a hammer against the wall!"
"Then we don't let it!" Theo was already moving, looping their safety rope around the thickest joint at the boom's tip. He tied it off with brutal knots his bleeding fingers remembered from securing heavy ducts. He fed the other end down into the void. "You go first. Heavier. I'll brace here, control your swing."
Pras looked from the rope to the distant rooftop, his face pale. Then he nodded, a sharp, frantic motion. He clipped his harness to the rope. "If I die, you find my mother!"
"You won't die!" Theo lied, bracing his boots against the steel.
Pras clipped his harness to the rope.
He gave a sharp nod. Then he stepped off the edge.
The descent was a violent, bucking struggle. The wind caught Pras immediately, swinging him in a wild arc away from the hotel. Theo grunted, his burned hands gripping the rope, trying to be a human pulley. He fed the line out inch by screaming inch.
Pras fought, trying to orient his body. Halfway down, a gust slammed him sideways. Theo felt the rope rip through his grip. Pras dropped several meters in a sickening lurch before Theo, roaring, arrested the fall, his own body skidding on the wet platform.
Somehow, Pras found his footing—not on the roof, but on the hotel's glass facade, boots scrambling. He pushed off, swinging back inward. With a final, desperate heave, he collided with the rooftop parapet and hauled himself, shaking, over the edge.
Theo slumped, his arms trembling with fatigue. But there was no time. Pras was waving, signaling he was safe. Now, Theo had to get down. The plan was for Pras to find an anchor and secure the line from below.
On the rooftop, Pras scrambled to gather the loose end of the rope, searching the mechanical units for a vent or pipe to tie off.
Theo began untying the knot from the crane's boom to re-secure it for his own descent. His numb, gloved fingers fumbled with the soaked fibers.
Suddenly a monstrous gust of wind, a concentrated fist of the storm, screamed across the boom.
It hit Theo like a truck. His feet lost purchase. He slid, grabbing frantically at the steel lattice.
On the roof, the same gust tore into Pras. The loose end of the rope was ripped from his hands before he could secure it. He lunged, fingers closing on empty air.
Theo, from his perch, saw the entire length of their safety rope—their only connection—snake through the anchor point and vanish, falling away into the gap before slapping against the hotel's side and disappearing into the stormy darkness below.
Silence, filled only by the wind's scream. Pras, on the roof, stared at his empty hands, then up at Theo, his expression pure horror. Theo, stranded on the crane's tip, met his gaze across the twenty-meter void.
No rope. No bridge. Just rain, wind, and a choice.
Theo's mind, the engineer's mind, went quiet. All calculations were complete. Only one variable remained: commitment.
He backed up on the boom arm, finding a ten-meter run-up. He looked at the rooftop, at Pras's frantic form. He looked at his ruined hands.
He focused on the one system he could command.
The bones will not shatter. The muscles will not tear. I will not miss.
It was not hope. It was a command to his own breaking biology, fueled by every ounce of will he had left.
Theo ran. Three slick, slamming steps on the steel lattice.
And launched himself into the void.