Running

The small motion sensor Pall had placed woke him before the sound of the lock being overridden did. He had seconds. He grabbed his things and stuffed them into his pack as he moved. Enforcers would have the front and back entrances covered maybe even the roof, so he took the stairs quietly, two at a time. He peeked out a window, careful not to be seen. Enforcers beneath him, waiting for the lock to be overridden. It would take a moment, with the protections he’d put on it.
Pall opened up the window and sat backwards on the sill, standing and grabbing the inside of the window to keep himself steady. The rain was coming down heavily today, which worked for and against him. He would be harder to spot, but he would also have a hard time seeing ahead. His planning was restricted to maybe fifteen feet in front of him.
Keeping one eye on the distracted Enforcers, Pall grabbed onto the roof’s gutter and swung his leg up, catching the ledge of the roof and hauling himself over it quickly. He landed in a crouch, eyeing the two Enforcers that stood at the doorway to the housing unit. He contemplated taking them both out. His fingers itched in that fraction of a second, to take the persuader he had tucked away, taken from a fallen Enforcer, and shoot them both.
Before the second had passed, he was moving, climbing up to the ledge to jump across to the next building. He was lucky the housing units were close together here; it made it easy to run, and all the decorations on the roofs made it easy to hide.
“There! He’s there, running!”
The yell was sharp and loud, and commands began to be shouted in long, complicated strings of numbers and keywords that most people couldn’t understand. Pall had spent a long time listening to them, though. He understood enough to know they would split up, half on the ground half on the roofs, and shoot him dead. They would cut him off at the end of the block, where the space between the houses were a good 30 feet.
Sorry, not today. Pall took a hard right, taking in a deep breath and whispering it out, moving his lips and tongue, using his breath as his absent voice. It was a short, easy chant, one of the first he’d learned. He sprung off the edge of the roof and glanced down at the dumbstruck Enforcers when he didn’t plummet to the ground. Instead he soared over their heads, aiming for the next block’s closest roof.
SSSTT.
Pall snarled as he felt a searing pain in his ankle, and his magic faltered. He hit the corner of the roof’s ledge, knocking the breath out of him as he scrambled up over the edge and onto the roof, where he curled to check his ankle. He’d been hit by a persuader, though his thick boot had stopped the shot from destroying his entire ankle. Instead he felt the material melting into his skin, saw the rain washing blood onto the roof, smelled burning skin despite the heavy rain. His entire leg pulsed with agony.
“We have you surrounded, Pall LaFael!” The Enforcer’s voice was amplified with a megaphone. “Surrender yourself now. We have permission to eliminate you if need be.”
Yeah I bet you fucking do. Pall sneered and breathed out a few soft words, his leg numbing. He had about ten minutes before that wore off. He faintly heard the Enforcers being commanded to enter the housing unit to retrieve him. Pall stood, staggering as he got used to his numb leg. He grabbed a chair and jammed it under the door handle.
Back at the ledge, he stared up at the city. He was near the edge of it, so close he could see the train station. It was a small city; he could find a place out in the wilderness to hole up in, for now. They knew he was here, so he needed to leave.
Behind him the door shook. He took a couple breaths and ran forward, leaping to the next roof. He was five houses away before they broke through the roof and shouted after him, starting to shoot.
He hissed as his shoulder was scraped, and managed to gather enough breath to whisper out another chant before he jumped off the ledge and floated down to the ground. The moment he hit it, he sprinted into an alley to reach the main street quicker. Behind him, the Enforcers were even further scattered, searching for him through the gaps in the housing units. He grinned as he saw the trolley rolling by, mostly empty, and he jumped onto it, panting. He took a seat, ducking low as the Enforcers came out of the alleys too late to see the trolley turn the corner.
Pall closed his eyes for a moment, letting his breath catch up to him. The only other person in the trolley was sitting at the very front, watching the roads. They seemed unbothered by his entrance. He settled in, deciding he would exit nearer to the edge of the city. He would attract more attention running through the middle of the night without the required lighting on his person. Besides that, he could feel his spell wearing off on his ankle; it was already starting to ache.
When the Trolley turned the corner to one of the last streets, Pall stood to leave the trolley. The person at the front stood suddenly, their raincoat hood mostly covering their face. Pall stiffened, hesitating. The person pulled something out of their pocket and left it on their seat before hopping out of the trolley and disappearing down an alley.
Pall cautiously approached the seat, taking the folded up wad of paper there.

Stay away from the train stations. Follow Pragar to the nearest river, and follow that. You’ll find safety there.

Pall narrowed his eyes and looked around for the figure. Irritated, he stuffed the paper into his own pocket and stepped out of the trolley, wincing as his ankle throbbed. He began walking, taking the alleys instead of the main streets, through the buildings. The fences were easy to climb over, and their censors easy to disengage with a simple spell. Walking was the hard part.
He followed the Pragar River Chasm for several miles, his limp becoming more and more painful with each step. He followed the river upstream, and hesitated at its bridge. If he were to follow the note, he needed to continue upstream. Or, he could do as he always did, trust no one, and continue over the bridge.
Exhausted but stubborn, Pall staggered over the bridge, and followed the river upstream. Whatever they were planning for him, perhaps he’d be able to see it from across the river.
Walking uphill was making the pain in his leg worse. He wasn’t sure how much blood he had lost, but he hoped that the shot of the persuader was hot enough to melt the material of his boot over the wound, sealing it. He breathed another spell to lessen the stabs of pain that travelled through his left side with each step.
The forest became thick after several more miles, and he finally found a hollow tree, looking to have been struck by lightning at some point. He tucked himself into it. It didn’t protect him entirely from the rain, but it lessened it, and it gave him some sense of having a place. He tugged his hood over his head to stop the rain from hitting his face, and dragged his ankle closer to him.
He gingerly undid the zipper on the boot, and attempted to peel it away from his leg. His mouth opened instinctively to scream, but all that came out was a sharp breath, and he jerked away from his leg, gasping.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Pall squeezed his eyes shut and whispered another numbing spell. He started to work his leg out of his boot, trembling and panting as a full, aching pain radiated up his left side anyway. He threw his boot away in anger, right into the river. He yanked open his pack and pulled out bandages, starting to wrap the burned, bloody skin. It hadn’t hit bone, at least.
Once he’d patched himself up as best he could, he slid his foot into a sealing bag. It shrank around his foot, molding to its shape, and then he sealed it off. This way the bandages wouldn’t get wet.
Pain and travel had exhausted him, and the last of his adrenaline was leaking away. He pulled his knees closer to him, shifting his coat over himself to protect him from the rain. The soft sounds of the rain falling lulled him slowly into a troubled sleep.