Lin Tao swung through the empty gray air like an iron line weight cutting through cold water.
The void rushed past his face with a hollow, whistling roar, whipping the collar of his linen coat against his jaw. Below his dangling boots, thirty thousand arm-lengths of unrendered space opened into the infinite deep pit. With no sky rough churning or heat updrafts in the unrendered void, his swinging weight flight path followed pure curved mechanics. He kept his eyes locked on the receiving girder fifteen paces ahead, his augmented left eye calculating his flight path with heartbeat care.
Midway through the arc, the total absence of visual reference points triggered a sudden, nauseating surge of spatial disorientation. The void sickness that caused mortal quarrymen to plunge into chasms. Lin Tao took his left hand from the rope for a split second. He drove the sharp silver tip of his metal pen micro-needle into the meat of his collarbone.
A sharp, grounding bolt of body pain flashed through his neural pathways.
[Branch checked: physical main]
The phantom dizziness vanished instantly. His eye tracking data snapped back into razor focus.
At the apex of the swinging weight arc, Lin Tao kicked his legs forward. He extended his reach to the total limit.
