What was difficult to get used to was falling a hundred meters with no way of stopping. No matter how many times you do it, your brain spends the entire time screaming "I'M GONNA DIE!!!"
When that's true for most of your life, it isn't something you can just put away.
So, as he fell, his hardest struggle was pushing that screaming, terrified voice as far away as he could. While the fall wouldn't kill him, something was clearly wrong and he needed every ounce of concentration to make sure he wasn't injured any more than he already was. By… whatever the hell had happened to him.
Contact with the wall was jarring. It was hard enough, he bounced away from the wall before coming down again. The impact threatened to send him into an uncontrolled tumble but he managed to maintain his posture.
A split-second later, he was sliding down toward the trash-filled ground below.
And it was coming fast. Not as fast as those cars had been, but fast.
He gritted his teeth and set his jaw. Even if it wouldn't kill him, and a proper landing would leave him without any further injuries, it was going to hurt.
30 meters to go.
Scanning the trash below, he couldn't find any good landing spot. All of it was uneven and cluttered.
20 meters.
He chose the best spot he could, a patch about 5 meters away from the base of the wall and just to his right.
10 meters.
With a shove, he propelled himself up and forward, away from the wall. The maneuver threatened to turn his controlled fall into a summersault, but that was fine. He hit the ground and began tumbling. The world turned into a barrage of deep blue sky, a sparkling cityscape, trash, and the wall behind him that all blended together in an unintelligible blur.
His right shoulder contacted something hard but the armor took the brunt of the impact. The cartwheeling continued for another second or two before he finally came to a stop. It wasn't gradual. His back slammed into something hard and heavy with a painful crash.
At least his hearing was back…
After all of that, he ended up looking back at the wall he'd just ridden down. His breath was coming in deep heaves, his head was pounding even harder than it had been before, and his chest still felt like it was being crushed by a press.
But he hadn't been run over.
The mass of off-white concrete in front of him seemed to stretch up into the sky, now that he was at its base. That was a maneuver he never had the misfortune of trying before. Hell, he'd only seen someone do it once and that had been an accident.
"Well, Damon", he muttered between gasps. "Guess I can't make fun of you for that anymore."
Something at the top of the bridge caught his attention.
Lights. There were lights coming back from the left side of the bridge, the direction those cars had gone.
Shit.
His body sent argument after argument for staying where he was, mostly pain, but that could wait. Again. He had no idea what was going on or who that had been. The last thing he was going to do was sit there and hope they didn't spot him.
With a groan, he pushed himself away from whatever he'd just crashed into and slipped behind it.
The thing turned out to be a shipping container. Why there was an entire shipping container in a landfill was a question that could wait until never.
He didn't bother peaking around his cover, whoever was up there was shouting loud enough for him to hear.
"-FUCKIN' ROAD!" one voice screamed.
HOW DID YOU NOT CRASH?!" a second voice.
"NO FUCKIN CLUE! DID YOU SEE HIM?! THAT THING WAS MASSIVE! LOOKED LIKE A DAMN BORG!"
"YOU RECORDED THAT SHIT, RIGHT?"
"WHAT KINDA IDIOT DO YOU THINK I AM? COURSE I'M RECORDING!"
… Great. They recorded me… And what the hell is a "borg"? That slang for "cyborg"?
These weren't Innies. The way they talked, what they were driving- none of it was right.
"LET'S GO FIGURE OUT WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED, THEN", the second voice shouted.