Just as Morgan begins to rope us down, John shuffles again, drawing my gaze once more.
He takes the makeshift crutch, the rifle, and fidgets with the hammer. No, he doesn't fidget. John begins loading it. Why would he load the rifle when he needs to walk?
I see tears welling up in his eyes. Then John brings the barrel close and… oh, Saints.
"John!" My voice crackles, my throat exploding with pain as I scream. Morgan looks up, seeing what John was about to do, and grabs my eyes, covering them with his hands. "John! No!"
There was silence. John's shuffles stop for a moment, and then I hear John's voice: "I keep seeing that dream. I can't do it anymore."
Silence again.
The drumbeat my heart is making is deafening. It's as if time has come to a standstill.
I hear the gun cock back, then—BANG.
Sound erupts, creating a massive maelstrom of noise that shatters my ears.
"John…?" His name leaves my mouth hesitantly.
"Don't open your eyes, lad. John's alright. He's doing fine," Morgan says. But I know a lie when I hear one. I'm a liar myself.
Morgan keeps my eyes shut until a sudden wave of air pushes against us, and my stomach lurches, and I realize we're falling.
Morgan's hand leaves my face, blinding me with sudden light. Morgan harshly stops our descent, yanking forward. I feel myself almost fall from Morgan's grip, but he tightens me to his shoulders.
Looking around, I see us hanging mid-air, Morgan leaping from the grate. I feel the sea breeze blowing around my ear, the salt striking my nostrils with every breath, and the gravity tugs on me, wanting to pull me in uncontrollably.
But my thoughts aren't on the fact that we're hanging in the air, far away from the water. Instead, I keep thinking about that gunshot—about John.
Was he…
No!
I can't think that.
Maybe the rifle misfired. Perhaps he was checking whether the gun worked. The answer could be anything. It could be everything. Everything but—
"Lad!" Morgan yells. "Bring yourself together. I need you to focus, grab onto me."
His words crack through the fog in my mind. The wind howls around harshly, biting at us. We're suspended halfway between the cliffs and the ocean, dangling like bait on a hook.
My pulse is stuttering, still stuck on John, yet I force my fingers to twitch, then my hands move up.
They shake violently, refusing at first, then I latch them around Morgan's neck. My arms tremble as I press my forehead against his back, feeling the salt wind clawing at my skin.
"There you go, lad," Morgan mutters. "Good lad, hold fast. Don't you slip now."
His right arm tightens around my leg. His left hand grips the rope about us.
He lets go.
I gasp, every nerve firing out at once. For a heartbeat, we're weightless, suspended only by the rope coiled around Morgan's elbow and the strength of his shoulders.
I feel him reach the rocks and hear metal clinking. A whisper of steel sings through the wind.
Morgan slams his hook into the cliffside, making it tremble with the impact. The vibration jolts through his body into mine. The hook bites deep into the stone, anchoring us.
"Saints," Morgan grunts. "Almost lost us there."
Below, the ocean surges. Each wave crashes against the rocks like a monster gnashing its teeth. The spray makes everything slick and treacherous.
I lift my head slightly. My vision blurs from pain. The cliff is a rough spine of jagged rock, stained black by old tidewater. Above us, far above, are warm bands of city light shimmering through the gathering dusk.
We're so close.
"Alright, lad," Morgan says, breathing heavily, muscles flexing beneath me. "Wrap your arms tighter, way tighter. Pretend I'm the only thing keeping you from the sky swallowing you."
I nod weakly, tightening my grip until my fingers dig into his coat. "I'm not letting go."
"Good," he huffs. "I prefer my passengers conscious."
Morgan shifts his weight, the rope creaking as he transfers tension from it to the hook. The metal groans, but it holds. He plants one boot on a narrow crack in the cliff and pushes upward, dragging us higher by sheer brutality.
He then begins to climb.
The world rocks with each heave. My stomach lurches as the cliff face tilts around us. His hooks scrape against the stone, craving a trail of sparks and dust.
"You smell that, lad?" Morgan mutters between ragged breaths.
"What...?"
"It's salt. It's tar, rum, and rotting fish." He grins through his teeth. "The harbor's close. The Albatross is close. I can damn near taste it."
I can't smell anything but the fear coming from me.
Morgan keeps climbing, one brutal pull at a time. Each movement is a jerk upwards, rattling my bones. I cling to him. I'm probably bruising him, or perhaps he doesn't feel a thing. I can't tell. I lost the feeling in my hands.
My thoughts start to drift unwantingly. They drift to John.
To that gunshot.
To the silence after that.
But the wind steals them from me.
"Don't look down," Morgan warns.
"I'm... I'm not looking anywhere."
"Smart."
Another lurch forward. His hook is free from its place with a shrill scream, and he slams it forward again, embedding higher.
Stone cracks. Dust showers over us. My fingers nearly slip from his coat, but he jerks me higher, securing me with an elbow. "Saints above," he mutters, panting harshly. "I swear this cliff's gettin' taller by the second."
I look up and see the Bruis's lights growing brighter. The shadows stretched longer than they were. "We're almost there, just a little more, lad."
My body feels like sand about to slip through his fingers. My head droops forward, and every pulse of pain hits me like a hammer.
Morgan feels it somehow and tightens his grip.
"Oi," he snaps. "No of that fainting nonsense. We didn't survive hell to die on a bloody cliff!"
Morgan shifts his stance. I could see his muscles straining to hold on. Yet, he keeps persisting. He keeps climbing. And as the world tilts upward, as the cliffslide begins to level into something climbable, as the first piece of stable ground appears, we see a patrol of marines heading our way.