She turned her attention to the monster itself. Above her, the wound created by Eleni’s fireball oozed a sticky black substance. Then Six noticed something protruding from the hole in the scales. At first she thought it was bone, but moonlight glinted off it as it would off metal.

She planted the toe of her boot between some scales and pushed herself up a few inches. Her injured hand throbbed, but she ignored it, jamming it between more scales and using it to pin herself to the monster’s body as she climbed a little bit at a time. She hoped it wouldn’t start climbing again, and it didn’t. Still, the wind tried to tear her away from the thing’s back, and it was slow going.

When she got to the wound, she reached for the thing sticking out of the monster’s back. It was cold, metallic. She ran her hand down it, feeling the ends of wires. They were frayed, and when her fingertips touched them, she got a slight shock. The creature bellowed. Six dipped her fingers into what she’d thought was blood, then brought them to her nose. She did smell the iron scent of blood, but also something else. Something oily, with a chemical odor.

It’s part machine, she thought. Some kind of biomechanical creature.

Now she understood the role the orb played. It was some kind of transmitter. And since Eleni had injured the thing, it wasn’t working exactly the way it was supposed to.

This might or might not be a good thing. They were stuck on the side of the hotel, and the creature wasn’t moving. If it stayed where it was, Six didn’t know how they would get off. And she wasn’t sure how long she could hang on.

She heard a sound and looked down. Eleni was climbing up. She was grunting with each step she took, exclaiming in her own language in a way that Six understood clearly was the Mog equivalent of cursing. She had apparently realized what was going on with the beast, and had decided to act.

Six turned her attention back to the creature’s wound. Sticking her hand inside again, she found the wires she’d located before. There were several of them, all torn and exposed. She took the raw ends and tried touching them to one another. The monster shrieked and lifted one front leg. Its weight shifted to the other arm and it swung to the left. Six barely managed to hang on by gripping the protruding metal rod.

She let go of the wires and the monster steadied itself, although its right arm now flailed against the side of the building, as if it couldn’t help itself. The glass of the windows broke, raining down on Six and Eleni. Six didn’t want to risk making it let go completely, so she abandoned the mechanical innards. Eleni was only a few feet behind her, and moving more quickly. Six decided to climb.

She moved past the wounded area and onto the creature’s neck. The only way for her to go was up its head, and so that’s where she went. The scales of the neck gave way to the larger, smoother plates of its head. These were slipperier, with fewer places to hold on. Plus, the animal was moving its head back and forth, screaming.