The barred window of the Eastern Guest Quarters looked out over a fifty-yard drop to the cobbled courtyard below. Across the yawning, wind-swept gap stood the Sun Tower, its stone walls offering no handholds.
Cassian stared at the isolated spire, his hands gripping the iron bars of their window so hard the metal groaned.
"It is a fortress," Cassian said, his voice a low whisper. "There are patrols every fifteen minutes in the courtyard below, and guards stationed at the only entrance bridge. We are locked in a room fifty yards away."
He turned to look at Elian, his ice-blue eyes burning with a mixture of desperate hope and profound skepticism. "How exactly do you intend to cross thin air, Elian?"
Elian didn't answer immediately. He reached into his pocket, his hand closing around the metallic cylinder the System had just deposited into his inventory.
He pulled it out.
It was a matte-black launcher attached to a tightly wound spool of wire so thin it looked like spider silk.
