"Peter Parker, are you planning to spend your whole life down there taking pictures of the water tower?"
Felicia stood at the top of the rust-covered iron ladder, gripping the railing with one hand.
The sea breeze swept her blonde hair back, her black motorcycle jacket hugging her shoulders and back. Beneath her stood an abandoned water tower, a full fifteen meters tall. Its supports had long since rusted black, and several crossbeams jutted crookedly into the air.
She had no safety rope.
Nor any protective equipment.
"I'm not photographing the water tower." Peter looked up, squinting against the sunlight.
"I'm studying its structure. See, after industrial ruins like this weather for years, the surface rust develops a very distinctive color. Especially that patch on the left. It looks like-"
"Like scrap metal nobody maintained."
Felicia cut him off, pushed lightly off a rung with her toes, and shot half a meter upward.
She moved too fast for it to look like climbing a ladder.
Peter stopped talking.
Felicia glanced back and smiled at him.
"Keep up, little photographer."
"Of course I'll keep up."
Peter secured his Leica M3 and gripped the first rung with both hands.
"I just wanted to remind you that this water tower is at least seventy years old. Its load-bearing structure might already be-ah!"
His foot slipped.
His sole scraped across a patch of rust, and he suddenly dropped several inches.
Peter hurriedly clung to the ladder, his chest hitting a crossbar with a thud.
"Are you okay?" Felicia stopped above him.
"I'm fine! Minor problem!" Peter looked up through gritted teeth. "That iron bar attacked me first. A malicious assault by an industrial ruin."
Felicia narrowed her green eyes.
She had seen that very clearly.
Peter's right foot had missed its footing, and his