“Thanks man,” Ramirez says, “but I’ve already got one more boss than I like to have, and she’s both tougher and better looking than you. You’re under arrest for the use of black magic; come peacefully so that you can stand trial.”

The other two Wardens are running down the stairs behind Melkor.

More freakin’ after-school clubs. Bubblegum hair wasn’t kidding.

Still, law and order types. Those I know how to handle.

“Coming peacefully is an option? Oh thank Christ our Lord, I surrender. I said I surrender! Oh god, don’t burn me alive you loose cannon, aughhh, AUUUGHH!”

For this last part Melkor just has his hands cupped around his mouth, shouting up the stairs.

Morgan and Yoshimo come barreling around the corner and Ramirez puts his hands up. “I’m not doing anything to him, he just randomly started screaming.”

“Hellfire, maybe I was wrong about him not being inexperienced,” Meciel laughs.

Melkor lunges for the grenades.

Ramirez pulls his hands back into a guard position but wrongly assumed Melkor was lunging for him, not his belt. 

Melkor now has one grenade in each hand.

“Fire in the hooooo!” Melkor pulls one grenade pin with his teeth, drops it, and uses his free hand to swim around Ramirez and into Lobby 103.

The lobby of 103 is empty except for a large pile of snake corpses with a sated-looking James passed out on top. There is snake blood everywhere and all the gift shop displays are knocked over.

Ramirez yells “Shit! Shields up guys!” He also takes a swing at Melkor as he goes past, nicking him on the arm. 

“Fuck me, cloaking’s down entirely. Can’t fix it till we have a quiet minute.”

Melkor shoots a finger gun at James Face Killa, hits the elevator call button, and runs toward the clothing section of the gift shop. “Guess we’ll just have to do this the old-fashioned —“

BOOM.

An explosion rocks in the stairwell and shrapnel flies through the doorway, piercing Melkor and throwing him to the ground. His body feels like it’s on fire for an instant, before Meciel numbs the pain, but his ears are still ringing and he can’t seem to draw breath. 

Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.

Amidst the stunning pain and disorientation, Melkor suddenly realizes he might not have time for his original plan of swapping clothes with a mannequin in the gift shop, throwing the mannequin out the window while shouting that they’ll never take him alive, and calmly taking the elevator down to ground level.

Eh, you win some you lose some.

Melkor scrambles forward and gains his feet in a headlong rush toward the nearest precarious-seeming glass viewing box.

He splats, hard, against the glass, which turns out to be quite thick and not even close to breaking under his weight.

The three Wardens pile through the doorway. An icy wind presses him back up against the glass wall, the floor is trying to reform around his feet, and Ramirez points a revolver at him.

His face is suitably smushed. Honestly he’s lucky that thing didn’t happen where your nose gets smashed up into your brain and you instantly die. That would have been humiliating.

“Hasta la vista, suckers,” Melkor attempts to quip, like the badass that he is. But with the beating his ribs have taken from the explosion and the apparently invincible super glass, he wheezes out something more like “Hhhhhhnng ehhhh fuck it.”

Instead of teleporting four miles like he did to get to Minas Sears, he teleports four feet, to the other side of the glass. The second grenade pin comes with him. The second grenade does not.

There is a moment of shock. Everyone is shocked. The Wardens’ shocked faces are visible through the glass; Meciel feels shocked inside his mind. His body feels shocked at the sudden sucking emptiness underneath him.

Then he starts to fall. The wind catches him and tumbles him sideways as the rows of windows flash by faster and faster.

Willis tower is 1450 feet tall - 1730 if you count the antenna on top. The Skydeck is 1353 feet above ground. On Earth, in free fall, it takes about 10 seconds to fall the first thousand feet, and five seconds for every thousand after that. So Melkor has about twelve seconds to do… something.

First thing Melkor does is flip the double birds to the so-called Wardens as he falls out of view.

Then he orients down/sideways on the ground hurtling toward him — wow that doesn’t look even a little bit survivable — and deploys his flying squirrel suit to catch the intense subjective updraft and glide him to victory*, several blocks thataway.

At the Outer Gates, the parley between Oromë (in the void) and the gatekeeper and the queen (in their fortifications) comes to a standstill. A flare of heat and light emanates from the silversteel link in the hunter’s palm.

”This is the bauble that draws you toward our world?” the queen asks archly.

”No bauble this,” Oromë replies seriously, “but a sure portent that the chaos of destruction has begun in earnest its errand of corruption.”

The link flares bright and hard and urgent once again.

”Very well. Know that my gatekeeper spoke true: we cannot and will not open this way for you. A mortal of our world must be recruited to do this deed.”

”Fortunately,” the queen continues with a predatory grin, “there is a suitably able-bodied soul available, and he owes me a small favor.”

On floor 102 of Willis Tower, an athletically built woman waits patiently, flicking a knife up into the air and catching it. Her earbud crackles to life. “Looks like all the players are cleared out up there, Gard. Boss says to proceed, with caution.”

“Copy that,” she replies, and starts climbing stairs.

She emerges onto the rooftop with caution, checking with her gun drawn to confirm that it is indeed, empty… except for CPD Detective Rudolph, still chained to an antenna, who is of course why she is here.

As soon as she comes into view he starts calling down to her, though his voice is muffled by the whipping wind. He sags with relief when she begins the climb up to his position, and has moved onto babbling prayers of thanks by the time she reaches him, clips in her harness, and begins to pick his cuffs. They are certainly not standard police issue; fortunately they fall within the range of possibilities she planned for.

The man clings to her desperately once he is freed, which poses no threat because of her harness, but is somewhat distasteful. Nevertheless she tries to behave comfortingly. As she assists him down, she starts to draw forth his story of the evening’s events, waiting for the right moment to offer him his shot at revenge.

As they leave the rooftop together, she flashes a thumbs up in the direction of the surveillance drone which still hovers at a discreet distance.

“Unnnnffff…”

Melkor slides lower in the hot tub, luxuriating in the heat of the steaming water and the shiatsu massage from the jets. Along the railings, thirteen sticks of incense mix their smoke and scent into the refreshing mist.

:You know Mess, I think I could get used to this mortal body thing.:

Meciel’s illusion sits opposite him, bare shoulders rising just above the bubbling water. :I’m just glad you’ve got the hang of speaking to me mentally: she thinks at him before switching back to an auditory hallucination. “It was getting awkward quickly.” 

“As awkward as a churchmouse showing up to prom with a… you know what, fuhgeddaboutit.”

He luxuriates a little more.

”How did you know about this place anyway? Pretty sweet digs for a hologram who lives in a coin.”

Her eyes go a little distant and sad. “My previous… host, knew the owner of this condo, and lets just say it’s a safe bet that she would not be in Chicago this time of year. A bit of luck that the key entry codes hasn’t been changed, but people do tend to be creatures of habit.” She shrugs. “If we clean up before we leave, no one will ever know we were here.”