Shade's Children Read Online Free Page A

the desk back, forcing the door into its frame, and cautiously looped the still-sparking cable around the door handle, which hung by a single screw from the ruined door.
    “Might work again,” he said as he headed for the roof stairs. But Ella didn’t answer, letting him get ahead while she circled back every few steps to watch for a sudden rush from the Ferrets below.
    A steel trapdoor opened onto the roof from the top of the stairs. As soon as Ella came through it, Drum slammed it shut with a deafening crash of metal on metal and slid the bolts home.
    The roof was flat save for an air-conditioning unit that perched like a hunchback in one corner. That provided a bit of a windbreak, but it was still cold. A wind had come up to clear the fog, and the sky was clear, lit with stars and the reflected glow from those parts of the city where the streetlights still worked. The Overlords maintained power and light in much of the city, shutting it on and off from time to time for no apparent reason.
    Part of their games, perhaps, in the same way that they controlled the weather. Bringing in fog from the sea; raising winds; shunting storms from one side of the city to the other, all for use as backdrops in the battles they played out with their creatures.
    When those creatures weren’t employed hunting escapees from the Dorms…
    “We’ve got a few minutes,” said Ella quietly. Only Drum noticed the telltale shiver of apprehension in her left hand.
    “First we need to get these cords tied together into a rope long enough to reach across the street.”
    “What!” exclaimed Ninde, looking out over the roof at the adjacent skyscraper, its dark bulk towering over their current building. “I am…not going to climb across a five-floor drop on an electric cord!”
    “That or the Ferrets,” said Ella firmly. “So start tying. Sheepshanks, I think. Gold-Eye, do you know any knots?”
    Gold-Eye shook his head. The automated schools in the Dorms had taught him reading, writing, and arithmetic, for the Overlords liked a reasonably agile brain as raw material for their creatures. But he’d forgotten a lot of that, in the struggle to survive—and knots had never been part of the curriculum.
    “Okay, see if you can find something like a brick or pipe to throw—we’ll have to smash a window for Drum to send the rope through.”
    Gold-Eye grinned to show he understood and started to look about for anything useful. A pile of half-seen stuff in the shadows under the air-conditioning unit looked interesting, so he headed over to make a closer inspection.
    As he passed the trapdoor, it shook, bolts rattling. Then it began to bow outward, and the steam-hiss of an angry Ferret came through. But the trapdoor and bolts were solid steel and they held—for the moment.
    “Hurry up!” said Drum as Gold-Eye passed. His eyes were on the trapdoor, sword held at the ready.
    Gold-Eye shuddered and sprinted the remaining few yards. In the starlight he could see several pieces of steel pipe that would make good window breakers.
    If anyone could throw them across the gap, he thought, as he dragged one back to where Ella and Ninde were almost finished tying the rope together. He hoped they knew their knots. It was a long way to the ground.
    “Good work!” said Ella, taking the pipe and hefting it easily in one hand. Then she walked right up to the edge of the building, the toes of her boots meeting the edge of emptiness that marked the five-story drop to the street.
    The building across from them was all glass and steel, stretching up at least twenty more floors.
    Lots and lots of glass. Floor-to-ceiling windows, the blinds still drawn back to catch sunlight that wasn’t there.
    Ella looked at the window immediately opposite for a moment, imagining how it might have been. With the lights on, and people bustling behind the glass, clutching papers, talking on the phone…
    Her parents had both worked in buildings like this. She had dim memories of