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Part 25 - Margins

(Nathan)

A gust of wind whistled through the broken panels of the old window above Nathan's prison, stronger and colder now that the veil of night wrapped suffocatingly around the abandoned factory complex. At last check of his phone, just after he'd curled up in an effort to keep warm, the husky realised he'd been trapped here and left to fend for himself in the blackness for more than three hours.

'Message cannot be sent. Attempt 3/3'

"Damn it," Nathan groaned to himself, yet another round of message attempts thwarted by the impossibility of getting a signal. "How the hell am I gonna get out of here if Alex doesn't know where I am!?"

His captors' muffled voices could be heard from the next room, laughing and jovial, the sound of clinking bottles and the increasing volume of their unintelligible words suggesting they were very much enjoying themselves here.

Another blast of air prickled Nathan's fur, forcing him to pull his arms even tighter in the hopes of preserving his dwindling body heat. "I can't stay here all night... I'm gonna freeze to death."

'What you gonna do though? Even if you get free from this cage, how are you getting out of this damn factory?'

"I dunno... but I need to think of something." The hours of being trapped alone in this cold, lonely office made the idea of arguing out loud with his conscience seem that much less insane. "Besides, you really think I can trust them to just hand me over, even in return for money? What would stop them from convincing Alex to come here, take the cash and then do something to him, too?" His mind couldn't find argument with that line of thinking. "I must get out of here, by myself... If there was ever a time to prove us Polcians aren't weak and helpless, tonight's the night."

He peered up at the bars of his cage, those bent and twisted by Yuri's irate paw glinting in the modest moonlight. "How easy did it look for him to do that? Maybe... If I can annoy one of those bastards enough, they'll mess the cage up enough for me to get out!"

'And if you push them too far? What'll happen then?' Nathan's mouth twisted at that thought. 'Even if it works, you've got a plan to get off of this table and outta the room?'

"Hey, you've got a better idea!?--" He cut himself off quickly, realising his argument had pulled him only a couple of steps from full-blown crazy. "This'll work... it has to."

For the next half-hour, Nathan sat patiently in his cell. Even with the chilling wind and frightening darkness, he didn't lose sight of his plan. He used every minute of his wait formulating the best way to get under the skin of his captors. "I just hope they don't throw the cage off of the damn table."

'At least that'd break it.'

"Gallows humour; love it."

A resounding thump shocked Nathan from his internal in-fighting, yanking his gaze across the room. His eyes widened at the sight of Bogdan's ursine form filling the now open doorway, a faint light flickering from outside to cast him in silhouette.

'Now's your chance,' he thought to himself, watching the bear lumber over to a flimsy-looking metal cabinet in the opposite corner of the room.

"I am betting you would like some of these? It is cold, yes?" Bogdan grunted, retrieving what appeared to be a thick clump of candles from the old office cupboard. "Too bad. Perhaps, if you are lucky, we will light one to be burning overnight for you. Tonight, after we leave you here, it will get only colder." He rubbed his paws together with a mocking grin that shone through the darkness. "Do not worry, we will all be back to have more... fun with you before this. Marat as example has idea involving you and beer bottle. Hope you are thirsty."

Nathan's teeth chattered from yet another gust blowing past his cage, forcing him to rub at the fur of his exposed forearms as he whined quietly at Bogdan's words.

"-Bogdan-," Yuri's voice called from the source of the light outside, "-Vy nashli svechi?-"

"Da!" The bear replied, turning to leave. As he trotted back to the doorway, he smirked over to the metal prison one last time. "Do not catch cold."

'Do it, Nate! You've gotta do it!'

"Y'know, I think that's the most I've heard you say," Nathan scoffed, standing up to walk over to the bars of his cage. "There I was thinking you just followed Yuri's orders like a good little cub. Seems you've a mind of your own after all. Well done, you."

"Shut up, Polcian." Bogdan stopped at the doorway, the outside light casting him in silhouette once again.

'That's good! This just might work.'

"Fine... I'll be quiet." The husky grinned, clasping one of the frigid horizontal bars with his paws. "Go on, off you go. Don't keep him waiting."

"You think I do all he says?"

'Get him!'

"No, not at all." Nathan shrugged his shoulders, ignoring the size difference in his continued efforts to unsettle the bear. "You go back to your leader... be a two-bit, gutless bullyboy bitch."

'...I don't know if you shoulda said all that.'

"You should watch your mouth when speaking to me," Bogdan snarled, thundering towards the husky until his massive frame loomed over the cage. With a sprawling paw, he shoved the metal prison backwards. "I can hurt you very easily."

Nathan's grasp on the bar faltered upon impact, causing him to stumble back and fall firmly to the ground. "W-what, and risk losing out on the money?" He swallowed hard, trying to keep his voice strong in the face of his fear. "Don't think so."

"You wish to test me?" Bogdan grabbed the cage in both paws, sending Nathan's pulse racing when it appeared he may very well end up hurled to the ground. Before he could protest, the Velikan thrusted the frame back against the wall. A dreadful, metallic crash accompanied an impact hard enough to send Nathan tumbling a good fifteen feet across the room-sized construction. He only came to a stop once he'd slammed hard into the damaged, yet unforgiving bars that bore the brunt of the bear's rage.

Nathan winced, rolling onto his back just in time to see Bogdan's massive brown paw crash into the top of the cage, bowing the upper bars effortlessly. "I would think more before you speak next time, else I will do much worse to you than this!"

After another round of beckoning calls from both Yuri and Marat in the next room, Bogdan finally returned to them, leaving Nathan to the night's bitterness within his battered cell.

'I can't believe you just did that,' he scolded himself internally, all while making sure he'd not incurred anything worse in the fall than the light cuts to his arms and muzzle. Along with the bumps and scrapes he'd already sustained since being imprisoned here, Nathan had begun to gather quite the collection of injuries. 'He could have... done a lot more than shake you about.'

Satisfied he'd suffered no major harm, he wobbled back up to his feet to investigate the cage itself. "If he's broken this thing, it'll be worth it."

Nathan spent the next couple of minutes giving the metal frame a good study, hoping he'd spot just one single piece of damage that'd allow his escape. He focused his attention on the areas that the posse of Velikans had been grabbing and pressing down upon, assuming that it'd be here he'd most likely find a place to slip out between.

"Damn it!" To his despair, Nathan failed to find any bends or breaks big or substantial enough for him to climb through. "All that getting thrown about, risking my tail, for nothing!" He slumped down to the freezing floor, throwing a paw to cover his face. "Better try and get warm... gonna be a long night."

Just when all seemed lost, that his plan had failed, a sparkle of moonlight hit a section of the cage closest the wall. About two-thirds of the way up, a foot or so higher than he'd stand, Nathan noticed a severe dent to the frame's corner. He jumped up, practically running over to give the damage a closer inspection. The husky's face lit up when he realised that the impact against the wall had been focused here, contorting this particular section and pushing two of the horizontal bars inwards enough for him to possibly squeeze up between. "Gods bless that big, Velikan bastard!"

Without another thought, Nathan began his ascent, climbing the beams of his prison like a huge ladder. Even through the pain of his sprained wrists, he dug in and forced himself higher, constantly reminding himself, 'You've got to get out of here. You'll freeze if you're trapped here for the night!'

Once up to the area of damage, Nathan heaved his upper body upwards, through the tight space afforded between the lowest bar that had been bent and the highest that had remained largely unmoved. He struggled and twisted, grunting as his shoulders and chest slid past the metal beams. The grin on his muzzle told the relief he felt to have gotten this far, though getting his midsection through would take an even more concerted effort. 'Think thin thoughts!'

Nathan sucked in his soft stomach, pulling his arms harder and thrusting his hips in an ever-increasingly desperate struggle to get free. Inch by inch, his torso slipped between the restrictive metalwork, taking all that he had to offer in the process.

"Shit!" Nathan yelped, wrapping his arms around the bar in front of his waist. At the peak of his exertion, the husky's upper body shifted through the gap in the cage with enough force that he started to tip out, almost falling to the tabletop below.

He remained hanging there for a good minute, panting while recovering his strength enough to struggle up and sit upon the bar supporting him.

Another few moments passed before he had the energy to continue ascending the twisted section of metal, climbing carefully to ensure safe footing upon the uneven bars.

Finally, after a battle that dragged on for several minutes, Nathan reached his goal. Carefully, he sprawled out across several of the bars forming the cage's roof, taking the chance to once more catch his breath and make sure he remained alone here in the grim office.

The loud, almost party-like voices continued unabashed in the next room, drawing a vengeful scowl from the husky. "I wish, for just five minutes, to be their size. Damn bullies."

Nathan didn't dwell on his desires to get even with Yuri and his gang for too long, casting out fantasy to focus very much on the reality of his predicament. He turned to look over to the sill of the window resting a little higher than and a good three feet away from the top of the cage. It wasn't a huge leap of logic to realise that any realistic chance of escape from the old, draughty office likely lied beyond this broken-panelled window.

He tried not to look down to the hard surface below as he balanced himself up onto his paws, the thin bars giving him little room for manoeuvre at a height comparable to the roof of a single-storey Polcian house. Such a short jump wouldn't usually be much of an issue, but without a run up, and with the windowsill up at knee-height, this was a whole different prospect.

Slow, steady breathing helped Nathan to calm his unsteady legs, right up until he sucked in one last lungful of air and made his standing jump. He sailed through the air, stretching his leg out towards narrow window ledge. The sole of the husky's running shoe found the corner of the sill, but slipped as he tried to push himself forwards. Starting to stumble, a heart-stopping moment followed as he suddenly began to plummet.

Nathan grunted and gasped, the forceful connection between ledge and stomach making him wretch. He slapped his handpaws down upon the cool tiles, a biting wind from the broken window forcing his eyes closed while he strained his aching body to keep from falling.

Behind him, the Velikan voices sounded not only louder, but closer too. Nathan couldn't be sure, but the corridor outside the office door appeared to be their source. 'They're coming!'

He kicked out his legs, the approach of the gang added motivation for one big push to get himself onto the ledge. The husky's momentum jolted his frame closer towards the smashed glass, allowing him to get a knee up onto the sill and secure the leverage he needed to pull himself up.

Wasting no time on ceremony, Nathan jogged over to the bottom left corner of the nine-sectioned panel window, its pane of glass completely missing. The ledge was slick underfoot, a light rain outside being blown in by the gusting wind.

At his height, he barely had to lower his head to slip out onto the window's outer sill. All around, a deserted jungle of old, squalid factories and warehouses greeted him, a small number of operational streetlamps offering the only light among the night's darkness. It was eerily frightening, like something from a post-apocalyptic movie. By now, the voices of Yuri and his gang were dangerously close, if not right outside the office he'd left behind.

'Gotta get down from here!' Nathan gripped his paw against the corner of the wall to his left, peering down to the puddle-strewn concrete of a fenced alleyway five Polcian-sized storeys below. "Oh my gods!" he gasped, reeling back from the edge of the cracked tile ledge he stood upon.

Spatters of rain and the howling wind dampened and scruffed up both Nathan's clothes and fur. He cautiously looked down past the windowsill again to reassess the drop. Nothing nearby stood between him and the moonlit path, save for an open section of guttering running diagonally to the ground from a pipe a third of the way down. The rainwater flowing along it ran towards a small drain, noisily collecting and likely sending it down to the sewers. 'Guess that's how you're getting down from here.'

Nathan straddled over to where the open gutter rose to its highest, taking care not to slip from or be blown off the ledge early. His heart thumped like a drum, anticipating both the drop to come and the approach of his, hopefully, soon-to-be-former captors.

Suddenly, the Velikan voices behind him became that much clearer.

'Jump, now!'

Nathan peeked over his shoulder to find the office door ajar, slowly opening inwards.

'What are you waiting for!?'

"Oh gods, oh... fuck!" He hesitated, closing his eyes and taking one last breath before stepping off of the sill at his second attempt. The husky dropped like a brick through the air, towards the suddenly thinner-looking guttering. Instinctively, he bunched up into a cannonball, making contact with the slick slope of plastic hip-first. Nathan cried and whimpered the whole way down the rapid slide, grime and rainwater soaking him from head to toe as he spun and rolled uncontrollably. The dirt and wetness were replaced quickly by the flowing of wind through his fur. He opened his eyes to find himself flying through the air once more, hurtling over the large metal drain below.

Nathan threw his paws out just in time to cushion his hard landing, tumbling around as if he'd been physically thrown from the piping. Thankfully, the numerous circular holes of the drain cover weren't big enough for him to be dragged down into by the relentless flow of water. They did however make his impact that much more uncomfortable. His left arm managed to slide down into one, shoulder following and smacking firmly against the metal. Nathan yipped, suppressing a scream of pain, trying desperately not to alert his former captors to his escape before they realised it themselves.

Ignoring his body's discomfort, he pulled himself up out of the drain, shaking off the excess water and blackened filth coating him.

"-Prokliaty Polciek!-" Yuri's cry echoed out from the window high above, splaying Nathan's ears and making him wince in fright. The bellowing roars continued, accompanied by crashes and thumps as the trio of Velikans no doubt sought the missing husky out.

'They'll come out looking for you soon. What are you waiting for?'

Nathan didn't hesitate this time, fleeing off into the night along the wettened, litter-strewn walkway.

After a good ten minutes of running, twisting and turning along the massive alleys and pathways of the abandoned industrial complex, Nathan's legs threatened to give out from beneath him. It'd been a long time since he'd run so fast and so far.

"Can't stop..." he gasped, breathing heavily from the exertion of his escape. "They'll make this distance up in no time!"

Even at top speed, his small size meant that the husky had only managed to leave a handful of crumbling buildings behind. Knowing he'd not be able to cover much ground compared to his potential pursuers, Nathan had made a conscious effort take as winding a route as possible. Still, what distance he'd travelled in ten minutes, a Velikan could probably cover in a fraction of that.

Another minute passed before Nathan had no choice but to stop his run. He lurched over, throwing his paws to his thighs with a heavy wheeze while a coppery taste started from his throat; he'd run as far as he could through these damp, wind-swept streets.

'Keep walking,' Nathan urged himself, padding slowly onwards through the pouring rain in the search for civilisation and a way back to Alexei's home. Even before arriving in Velika, he'd never longed to see his wolf as much as he did now.

"At last!" For the first time since his abduction more than four hours previous, Nathan cracked a smile. He'd turned the corner of a dilapidated warehouse to find the welcoming sight of huge, illuminated buildings and a busy road in the distance. On the horizon beyond that sat the bright, skyscraper-filled skyline of Kremensk's city centre. "Just need to get to one of those Polcian pathways and I'm set... maybe then I can call Alex and let him know where I--"

A dull thumping cut Nathan short, sounding out from around the corner he'd just turned and drawing closer with unsettling speed. His heart sank and his tail began to tuck, rumbling starting underfoot as he looked desperately for a place to take cover.

Through the dark, rainy evening, Nathan found a discarded heap of old cardboard boxes, metalwork and other industrial waste sitting a short distance along the alleyway. With no time to lose, he made a dash for it, moving as quick as his aching limbs would allow. Huge puddles dotted the way, forcing Nathan to run an agonisingly winding path as the trembling of the ground intensified. Not only that, but he could hear the loudening breathing, smell the strengthening scent and feel the weakening of his knees as the pursuing Velikan drew ever closer.

The ground tremored its heaviest just as the fleeing husky dove towards the tight space afforded by two water-drenched boxes. He looked over his shoulder, a massive figure rushing into view with another rocking stride. Nathan's heart rose up into his throat, beating so hard and fast that its throbbing pulsed in his ears. He scrambled and clawed his way into the small space, hiding himself away just in time to see Marat's vulpine form turn the corner and rush into the moon's glow.

Nathan tugged at his collar, struggling for a half second before removing it from around his neck. With the voice-booster now bunched up in his shaking fist, he allowed a squeak of terror to escape his muzzle. 'Please don't let him see me!'

The white fox came to a halt almost level with the husky's position, frame towering high into the night sky above. He scanned the area slowly, ears perked straight up as far as the canine could tell from the concrete sixty feet below.

Nathan clasped a paw to his mouth, slowly slipping into his dank shelter. Even with the stale odour surrounding him torturing his nostrils, marking his clothes and fur, he forced himself back as far as he could go.

The wait went on and on, Nathan's heart almost stopping from both the unbearable tension and the harsh vulpine growl that sent a shiver down his spine. Mercifully, Marat eventually left to continue his search, thumping footsteps dying in the distance as he raced away from Nathan's makeshift hideaway.

"Oh, thank you, gods!" He breathed a sigh of unbridled relief, the sweetness of freedom easily overpowering the unpleasant stench of his surroundings.

The busy road cutting between the edge of the rundown industrial complex and the start of the city centre proved to be a huge, three-lane divided highway running in opposite directions. Nathan took care on his approach, keeping close to the overgrown grass verge running between the pavement and the fencing of a nearby factory plot. Fortunately, while the roadway heaved with traffic, pedestrians and the potential problems they could cause remained absent.

To his delight, Nathan spotted what appeared to be the end of the Polcian walkway system. A raised platform with bright yellow railings ran along the wall of a building opposite, finishing at what appeared to be the entrance to the local underground train station.

"Things are going my way at last," he muttered to himself, jogging half-pace towards the busy highway. All the while, he kept his eyes and ears peeled for any sign of the Velikans out searching for him. "Just need to find the path that'll take me over there and I can figure out how to get home to Alex from here."

Nathan considered his choice of words during his run, the world around him brightening once he reached the well-lit pavement running parallel to the busy roadway. 'It's not home. It's Alex's home, but... it feels far more like a home than my apartment does. Much more.'

He kept on running, kept on searching for a way over the highway whose chugging traffic maintained a constant vibration of the floor below him. With every passing second, the husky's ears dipped and his heart sank even further. The glaringly apparent fact that the Polcian walkways didn't extend to this side of the busy road, neither under it, nor over it, slowly revealed itself to Nathan.

Truth be told, it made sense to him; why would they bother to allow Polcians access to a run-down industrial estate? Still, it didn't make his predicament any less difficult to swallow.

"How the hell am I gonna get over there!?" He slowed himself to a walk, breathing heavily from a mixture of exhaustion and concern. The only visible route across the highway came in the form of a raised footbridge a short walk ahead. Nathan didn't need to be any closer to see that each step leading up to the crossing stood a good measure taller than he did, far too big for him to scale effectively.

He looked across the highway, the store-lined pavement opposite filled with dozens of Velikans padding their way through the night. Even if Nathan could somehow traverse the six lanes of busy roadway, he'd then have to negotiate a walkway teeming with giants and their crashing footfalls. "There's no way I'd survive that in one piece."

His very last hope came in the form of his phone's shining blue screen, though a chronic lack of signal promptly scuppered any hope of contacting Alexei. 'Maybe all that falling and stumbling about back at that damned ironworks did more damage to it than I thought?'

With no options left, Nathan pushed his way into the undergrowth of the verge next to him. 'Guess I'll hide away and wait for things to quieten down... At least, I _hope_they'll quieten down.'

Cover came in the form of a tree-like growth of weeds, their large leaves mostly blocking him from view; they'd prove handy should Yuri and his gang still be seeking him out.

Nathan cast a forlorn figure as he curled up atop the chilling soil, stabbing winds still reaching him to cut through his damp shirt and jeans. He wrapped his arms around himself, the shiver-inducing cold sending the horrifying thought of never seeing his friends, his family or his wolf again racing back to his mind.