"Fire!" screamed the sphinx, all her fur on end, and her eyes like gilded saucers.  "Fire!  Foes!  Fire!"

"We have to get out of this building, right now!" said Vorlynkin; Mina yelped as his hand tightened on hers.  Vorlynkin lurched toward the towers.  "Which stairs are farther from the fire?"

"Not that way!" said Jin.  "There's an outside ladder drops down to the alley on the other side."

Vorlynkin nodded and ran, jerking Mina along with him; Jin grabbed up Nefertiti and ran after him.  The sphinx struggled and hissed in his arms.  Was there time to stuff her back into her carrier?  Maybe not.  Vorlynkin reached the opposite edge of the roof and found the steel staples.

"I have to go first, to let down the extension!" Jin yelled to Vorlynkin.

"Mina next," said Vorlynkin.

"I can't reach that far!" Mina sounded like she wanted to cry.

"I'll lower you over, and hold you till you get your grip," said Vorlynkin.  "Go, Jin!"

"Who'll carry Nefertiti?"

Vorlynkin choked back something short, and said, "I will."

Jin dropped Nefertiti, hoping she wouldn't bolt away, vaulted over the parapet, and slapped down the rungs faster than he'd ever gone in his life.  Unlatched the ladder, thumped at it, prayed it wouldn't stick or hang up.  It rattled, then reached its full extension with a clang.  "All right!" he called up.

Mina's kicking legs dangled over his head, then she found her footing and started down with no more than one scared meep.  The rungs really were too far apart for her to reach comfortably.  Above, Jin heard Vorlynkin swearing, and the scrunch of his footsteps, and the sphinx screaming, "Fire!  Foes!  Fire!", and, apparently confused in her vocabulary by the commotion, "Food!"

Vorlynkin yelped in pain, seemingly from some greater distance, and swore some more.  Jin reached the ground and stretched up to catch Mina, whose sport shoes wavered in the air when she ran out of rungs before she ran out of space.  "You're all right!  Just let go!"  She fell into him, knocking him to the ground; they both rolled, then scrambled to their feet and stared upward.  At that point, Jin found out how well sphinxes could fly when Nefertiti sailed over the parapet, wings flapping madly, and descended.  She neither plummeted nor soared, but she did land right-side-up on all four paws like a cat, hard enough to grunt when her belly hit the ground, but not hard enough to break anything.

Vorlynkin's big dark shape finally swung out over the edge; he dropped the last two meters, hit with knees bending like the sphinx's, staggered, but didn't fall.  Blood was running down his face from a deep triple scratch below his left eye.