How’d you get up here so fast?” Joe asked. “It’s just… it’s not possible.” He drank again, and the vodka in the bottle swished loudly back and forth. “Are you like, a ghost or something? Are you dead?”

“I only wish it were that easy,” Roy muttered under his breath.

“What does that mean?” Joe asked.

Roy ignored him. “We need to leave,” he declared.

“I knew you were going to say that,” Joe replied glumly.

“I can’t believe you even came back here.”

“Where the hell was I supposed to go?”

“Anywhere but here. You should be on the run. I told you they would be coming after you. But you don’t listen.”

Joe put the bottle down on his nightstand. “Did you see him? The guy down there?”

“Yeah. Of course. He’s here for you. He’s here to take you down.”

“Who is it? It’s Landon, right? It’s Landon. It’s got to be him.”

Roy scoffed, like these were ridiculous questions. “Look, he’s your foe. Not mine. So I have no idea who it is.”

“Foe? Did you say foe?”

“Try to keep it together, okay? We need to get out of here. But we’re not going out through the front door.”

“Let me guess. We go out the fire escape.”

Roy nodded.

“It’s been getting a lot of use lately,” Joe remarked.

“Just go,” Roy said.

Joe hesitated. “Why don’t we just teleport? That’s how you got up here in the goddamn blink of an eye, right? Can you teach me how you did that?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re not unbound.”

“How dare you say?”

Roy scowled. “You don’t even know what I’m talking about.”

“I know.”

“Joe. The fire escape. Hurry up.”

“Let me get her letter first,” Joe said, stomping his feet noisily into the kitchen, and snatching it from the counter. “I’m not leaving this thing behind anymore.”

“That’s the smartest thing I’ve heard you say yet.”

He folded the letter and put it back in his pocket. It was getting plenty worn but he knew that surely wouldn’t affect whatever power it held. Its presence, in any state, was all that mattered.

Roy pointed at the window. “Hurry up,” he said.

Joe suspended everything, all his thoughts, disbelief, his fatigue, knowing it was finally time to give in. He’d fought it long enough. Now it was time to just listen. To obey. Maybe something might finally make sense if he did.

He began to climb out through the window, but he pulled back quickly.

“Shit,” he muttered. “Landon’s down there. He’s watching us.”

In the alley far below, they saw him, the tall, imposing figure, standing in the pale moonlight, seemingly monitoring their escape route. It was like he’d known all along what Joe was going to do.

“He’s got us trapped,” Roy said. “Like fish in a barrel. You shouldn’t have come up here,” he added, while shaking his head.

“What do we do, then?”

“We take things up a notch.”

“What does that mean?”

“Just start climbing. But don’t go down. Climb up.”

“To the roof?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“There’s no other choice.”

“We’ll still be trapped though.”

“That’s not strictly true.”

“How the hell do you figure?”

“Have you ever had dreams where you can fly, Joe?”

Joe felt a surge of nerves, knowing his proclamation to just listen and obey was already being tested, right off the bat.

“Ah, man,” he moaned.

“Just go,” Roy barked. “And stop asking so many damn questions. I gave you time for that yesterday. But you fucked that all up. So go.”

Joe lowered his head and climbed out through the window and onto the rickety metal fire escape. Then he took the ladder up, but as he climbed he couldn’t help looking back down to the street. It was clear Landon noticed him. Even though eight floors separated them, Joe knew they locked eyes. He wondered again what exactly he was up against, and what this guy was capable of. Almost in direct answer to his question, he watched the tall figure stride a little closer, and it felt like he viewed the scene in slow motion as he saw a large firearm emerging from the depths of the man’s long brown coat. It was an assault rifle, held with a scary ease and familiarity, and its metal barrel gleamed in the street lights as the man lifted it up and pointed it at Joe—clearly at him and nothing else.

Joe felt white-hot panic lance into him. The magnitude of what he was really into—it all hammered home. These weren’t fun and games, not anymore. This wasn’t he said, she said, or let’s just talk it out. No, this guy Landon—he was a goddamn assassin. Joe clutched at the ladder, frozen, almost considering if he should just take his chances and jump. But in that moment of indecision, while Landon stood statuesque, in killing form, with the weapon raised and aimed, another shape darted into him, moving stealthily, like lightning. Joe couldn’t confirm—they were too far away, and it was too dark—but he knew somehow it was Roy. His thin, wiry frame struck the assassin violently, and Landon toppled over, and the sight of it to Joe was reminiscent of an unsuspecting quarterback demolished by a blindside safety blitz. Joe heard whistling noises through the air and a line of smoking bullet holes appeared in the brick siding only a couple feet away from him. A deep sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach snapped him out of his paralysis, and he climbed intently, the entire metal structure again shaking in his urgency. Upon reaching the rooftop above the 12th floor, his body went up and over a short wall, and he rolled in a painful somersault across the hard gravelly surface.

After a few seconds of deep, heaving breaths while lying on the hard ground, he crawled back to the ledge, and then very carefully peered over.

Down on the ground, he saw nothing. No sign of either man, like they had both vanished into nothingness.

Scanning again… there was nothing.

Then he turned urgently and looked about the rooftop, perhaps expecting—hoping—to see Roy there. After all, it seemed the motherfucker could actually teleport, or, more accurately, he was unbound—whatever the hell that meant. But, alas, the roof too was empty.

Joe knew what he had to do next, though. And it didn’t do any good to wait. He could still hear Roy’s voice in his head, have you ever had dreams where you could fly, Joe?

He stood up to the sharp sound of gravel crunching beneath his feet. He walked slowly to the edge of the building and eyed the chasm between it and the next one over. Somewhere between eighty and a hundred feet, he guessed. Stepping closer he saw the drop, twelve floors down to the alley, and a wave of dizziness swept over him.

“This is crazy,” he whispered to himself, backing far away from the ledge. The sharp crunch of gravel accompanying each of his footfalls was the only sound he could hear outside of the soft moan of the wind.