Adventure Story Competition - Runner Up

Kira sensed there might be somebody else in the building soon as she entered it. But since she was abseiling into the private property from a rooftop window, it wasn’t as if she could beat a hasty retreat. Besides, this place was a jewel of a location to have cracked. After weeks stuck in lockdown, no way would she be leaving without snapping some photos to post to her urbex message board. So if it turned out she wasn’t the only one up to some recreational trespassing at five in the morning, then her fellow explorer best stay out of her way. Social distancing still applied to deserted mansions as much as anywhere else.
    Releasing her hold on the window ledge, she planted her feet on the wall and let the rope slip slowly through her fingers. Leaning back in her harness, she twisted her neck to take in the room. The first thing her eyes fixed on was a chandelier a few feet away from her head. Its crystal shards caught the light of the fading moon through the glass. And she couldn’t resist. Bracing her knees, Kira pushed off the wall, her arm outstretched. Her fingertips brushed the ornate candelabra and a rain of dust sprinkled over the room below. And some of that dust must have got under her facemask because she was suddenly coughing and spluttering. Her other hand lost its grip, and she plummeted the rest of the way down, her palm burning against the rope, her feet slamming hard upon the wooden floorboards.
Kira swore under her breath. Such a clumsy amateur landing. She was so badly out of practice. After almost face planting, she found her footing and yanked off her mask to catch her breath. Sucking yet more dust into her lungs, she launched into a second coughing fit, her eyes filling. Her coughs echoed off the high walls surrounding her. And that wasn’t the only noise to reach her ears. She thought she heard footsteps too.       
She whipped out her pen torch. “Who’s there?!”
Kira aimed its yellow beam like a gun at every corner, curtain, and doorway. But there was nobody to be seen lurking in the shadows. She lowered her arm and told herself not to get paranoid. This was just what too long cooped up indoors did to a person. For urban explorers getting into places that they were not supposed to be was all part of their vocation. There had always been an element of risk involved in this dangerous and legally questionable hobby of hers. The possibility of her scouting missions ending in injury or arrest. And now she was living through a time where everybody was just meant to stay at home. So the thrill of escaping into some hard-to-access elsewhere was all the more enticing.   
“Okay. Got the place all to myself then.”
The dust was a good thing. It meant the mansion was likely uncharted territory, as yet undisturbed by other adventurers. This was a bit of place hacking that could make her famous on the forums. Normally Kira stuck to off-limits areas such as disused storm drains, bomb shelters and underground railroads in the city centre. But rumours of this crumbling old estate out in the country had piqued her curiosity. Her fellow explorers had staked out the location, photographing its gothic exterior, but they had said it would take a daring rooftopper to breech it. She might be the first to have conquered the modern ruin.
Kira needed this. It had been a terrible year for the whole world so far, and she felt like the life she’d had only months ago had fragmented, then fallen away. Her boyfriend Freddie splitting up with her just before Valentine’s Day. Losing her bar job when the nightclubs had closed. Only seeing family and friends on her laptop screen. Through it all, she had been itching for a new site to invade and experience. And now she had one. She shone her torch around the forgotten ballroom she’d dropped into, its furnishings draped with white sheets like children playing ghosts. She walked around gently uncovering them, imagining herself as a pirate in a treasure trove. Her heart swelled when she found the piano.
It was a grand Steinway model, its keys brown with age and neglect, and its soundboard crawling with insects. Kira slipped on her gloves to play the F Major scale, and its notes sang out with an eerie untuned music. She sighed at the sound, then propped her foot on the pianist’s bench, striking a hero pose to take her first selfie. She fished her phone from her pocket, raising it up for the shot, when something else clicked behind her.
She whirled round, and this time the sudden white light flashed right in her eyes. The light of a camera held by some black-clad figure in the doorway on the far side of the room. Some interloper who was photographing Kira as if she was the rare find, not the building. With a gasp, she realized her mask was still hanging around her neck, leaving her face exposed. She tugged it back into place, hissing in irritation. Why was an urbex veteran like her making these rookie mistakes? She’d been out of practice far too long.   
Now she might never get the chance to explore again. She had no idea who this stranger was, but she could guess their game. This was the one they had nicknamed ‘the bounty hunter’ on the message boards, a mysterious threat that had sprung up on their local urbex scene not long after the country went into quarantine. A troll who got their kicks stalking explorers and snapping pictures of them at their illicit locations. For the purpose of blackmail or blabbing to the police, their motives still weren’t clear. But this bounty hunter was trouble, that much was certain. And now Kira had the chance to confront them.
“Hey you! Come here. Delete that photo now!”       
The bounty hunter just turned tail and sped off down the hall. Kira struggled out of her harness and took chase, determined to stop this joker before they tried to bring down her whole community. Explorers like her didn’t deserve to be treated like criminals. Photos were the only thing they took from their locations and all they left behind were footsteps in the dust. Even during this pandemic, there was little risk of her spreading the virus when she only ventured out alone to vacant derelict spaces. It wasn’t like this stranger was a whistle-blower, reporting neighbours for throwing loud drunken house parties. No, they were picking on lonely weirdos just trying to do something they loved to keep themselves sane.
“HEY! What is it you want? Get back here!!”
Halfway down the darkened corridor, the torch slipped out of Kira’s sweaty palm. But she kept on running, the shadowy outline of the bounty hunter still in her sights. She was almost on them when they turned onto the stairway. Seized by a reckless impulse, Kira gripped the old wooden balcony, leaping over it like a hurdle and dropping onto the second flight of stairs below. Her muscle memory had kicked in now, so she didn’t botch her landing, her palms and feet hitting the carpeted steps with a stuntwoman’s precision.
With Kira now blocking their path, the bounty hunter stopped dead on the landing. They glanced back over their shoulder, looking for an escape route, but finding only filthy cracked windows looming over them. In desperation, they flattened out against the peeling wallpaper attempting to scurry by unhindered. But Kira’s hand snaked out fast, seizing their trouser leg and sending them tumbling the rest of the way down the stairs.  
She heard the clatter of a phone against the floor. It had fallen from the bounty hunter’s hand and was lying out of their grasp. Kira reached into her belt, pulling out the crowbar she’d tucked there after using it to jimmy open the skylight window. She rushed down the remaining stairs, intent on smashing the phone to pieces. But suddenly she was buffeted aside by the wide beaded shade of an antique floor lamp. The bounty hunter was on their feet again, thrusting the old light fixture at her like it was a spear. For a moment, Kira thought they were about to stage a great swashbuckling duel with their improvised weapons.                   
Then suddenly the bounty hunter spoke.
“Kira, please! Don’t smash up my phone!”  
She blinked her eyes rapidly, recognizing the voice.
“Freddie? What the hell. Is that really you?”
The bounty hunter tugged back his balaclava, revealing the flushed freckled cheeks of her ex-boyfriend. He raised up a hand in a trembling wave.
“Fred…why are you here? We broke up.”
He smiled. “I…I missed you. I never wanted to call things off between us, but…with you sneaking out at night, I got it into my head that you must be cheating on me. I only found out later from your friend Wes what you were really doing.” He glanced around the lobby they had landed in. “This hobby of yours. Why did you never tell me?”     
Kira winced. “You don’t think it’s weird?”
Freddie laughed, shaking his head. “Are you kidding? Babe, I’d have come with you! I’ve cracked five locations already just trying to surprise you.”
He dropped the lamp to the floor, looking ready to rush into her arms. Kira almost got swept up in the moment, wanting to throw herself into this romantic reunion. But she stopped herself just in time, lifting her crowbar to keep Freddie at bay.   
“Woah, there! Two metre distance, remember?”
He sighed before turning his stare up to the ceiling.
“Well…there’s lots of space on that rooftop. If we get up there now, then we’ll be just in time to see the sunrise. That is, if you’ll teach me how to climb.”
Her heart softened at this suggestion. At the thought of no longer being a nocturnal girl alone in the dark, at last having a companion in her adventures.
Kira turned to the stairs, beckoning him to follow.