Jack powered down the corridor, halogen lights flickering on and off sporadically. For his pursuers it was hard to make out anything in the disorientating half-light, but for Jack each flicker of the lamps seemed to last an eternity. Doors covered both walls, leading to rundown flats and storage rooms. From somewhere ahead the cold chills of an outside breeze rattled down the causeway. The sensation was like pins to Jack’s face but he carried on sprinting, less from choice and more because his mind told him that to stop was to die. Bits of paper and other debris flew past him, chickens and other livestock escaped from out of an intersecting hallways. 

Legs like barge poles, Jack leapt over the assortment of animals before confronting their owner. She emerged from behind a door with spear raised. Jumping forward, Jack grabbed the pointy stick just below the business end, broke it into pieces with an elbow before pirouetting around and stabbing the helpless local in the neck with it. Crimson blood spurted from her body, covering Jack’s face and clothes in a sanguine stain. Pushing the gape eyed woman to the floor, Jack carried on sprinting without breaking a stride. Jack came to a t-junction, he hesitated but a stentorian eruption of voices behind him made the decision; anywhere but here. Taking the left, Jack saw a cracked plexi-glass window at the end of the corridor. Suddenly his father was talking to him in his ear: 

“Jack listen to me. You are under a lot of stress and the implant you’re experiencing will make you want to jump from the Tower if you’re presented with the opportunity. Under no circumstances will you do that, do you understand me? We will not be able to catch you. Off the south side of the thirty-ninth floor you’ll find a landing gantry. Head to it and the team will meet you there." All of a sudden there was an enormous explosion from deep in the bowels of the Tower, a sonicboom rung through Jack’s soul. Immediately after the tower began violently shaking; pieces of plaster fell from the walls and the rubbish covering the floor gyrated wildly. “Oh, by the way. I’ve detonated a charge on the thirty first floor; the Project will be coming down in around twenty minutes. BESC have no choice but to evacuate now, good luck.” 

WHAT? The only logical sector of Jack’s brain still operating screamed. A Project Tower usually housed between fifty and sixty thousand people, and his father had just condemned them all. A deep pounding had begun in the back of his head, or was it within the bowels of the building? Jack redoubled his effort, mouth open in a silent scream.