cHApTEr 17. DisAsTEr DAy of crisis (1 of 3)

Needless to say, the journey back to Reques City was no fun.

After contacting Natalie Lance, Mioray shared the news he had learned from Erinel with the others. It was only fair. He had no intention of keeping it from them. Each of them had someone back in the city they cared about. Erinel’s assurance that none of their loved ones were going to die was only a small comfort. Their loved ones might survive, but they could still be injured like anyone else. Luckily, Natalie promised to take care of their friends and families, to make sure they would be evacuated from the city.

The mood in the car was pensive. For so many people in one vehicle, it was far too quiet. No one dared to speak, nor did they want to. Everyone was lost in their own thoughts. Kevin sat at the wheel, with Erinel beside him. Mia and Farah sat in the middle row, while Mioray and Matt were at the very back. Matt was playing on his handheld console, but he was unfocused, his skills not as sharp as they usually were.

Erinel had no excuse for what she did, regardless of her intentions. When Farah found out about the disaster that was likely to strike the city, she pounced on Erinel just like she had after Terry’s death. If Kevin hadn’t intervened, it would have ended in a vicious clash between the two women. He separated them, but Farah’s furious stare made it clear that it wasn’t over.

They had left the Relefe Thermal Baths as soon as the first light of sunrise touched the sky. By the time they were halfway back to the city, the sun was already up, competing with the red planet Mars for dominion over the morning sky. Just then, Natalie called back, informing them that she had kept her promise and helped evacuate their loved ones.

Truly, Mioray was relieved to learn that his parents, Angelika, and even Juju were out of harm’s way – more or less. He spoke with his parents afterward, forced to lie that he was still at the hot springs so they wouldn’t worry about him. Mia and Farah had to use the same excuse for their relatives. It eased the tension in the air, but only a little.

They knew about Reyna Kayree’s involvement and the terms she set for assisting with the evacuation plan. It wasn’t something any of them liked, but they had no choice except to accept it. The woman from Lady Anetta’s Foundation was risking her career by raising the alarm and demanding an emergency evacuation.

The evacuation procedure had been approved, but it wasn’t going smoothly. The authorities resisted the idea at every step, and it was a miracle it had moved past the stage of mere suggestion at all. From the perspective of an ordinary person, there seemed to be no reason whatsoever to evacuate the city. There was no sign that anything disastrous was about to happen.

What could Reyna Kayree tell the authorities – that an otherworldly being had noticed more people seeing it than usual? That alone would destroy the head of DEAD’s credibility once and for all. The general public and the authorities knew nothing about greanrips or their nature. Reyna Kayree herself knew only as much as Natalie had told her. She could have assumed she was being tricked, but she didn’t. Maybe because she had indirectly crossed paths with Erinel in the past. Maybe for other reasons.

Still, she did everything in her power to carry out the evacuation.

By no means was it a success. Many people refused to leave their homes in the middle of the night. Only a small fraction of officials agreed to support Reyna’s request. Precious time was slipping away, and the dawn turned into a chaotic mess in Reques City. Chaotic, but necessary. As far as Mioray and the others were concerned, every person evacuated was one more person saved from certain death.

And then it happened, just before midday.

Their car was the only one heading toward the city. The oncoming lane, on the contrary, was overcrowded. The line of vehicles moved slowly, without any sense of urgency. Somewhere among them were Mioray’s parents. He hoped they had managed to get as far away from home as possible. He looked ahead, where the tall buildings rose, obscuring the horizon.

The sky was clear, with a blinding yellow sun blazing overhead, yet it somehow seemed darker than it should have been on such a bright day. The sun was not the only celestial body visible in the otherwise empty sky. Not far from it, a red, menacing sphere hung above the city, larger and brighter than usual.

It was a strange and ominous sight. The red planet Mars was not supposed to be visible in broad daylight. It only showed itself at night. However, on that day, June 29th, 2223, Mars rose above Reques City in all its glory, overshadowing the sun.

That had only happened on very rare occasions. When meteorites had broken away from the red planet and fallen onto Reath, always in places where people lived.

This time, the place was Reques City.

“Watch out!” Farah yelled as a meteorite tore through the sky, like a missile trailing a tail of burning fire. Leaving a streak of dazzling light behind it, it crashed straight into the city.

A deafening blast spread in all directions, quickly followed by a wave of dust rising from the point of impact. It moved fast, swallowing everything in its path. Kevin slammed on the brakes, stopping the car and lowering it down onto the road just in time before the wave reached them, wiping everything from view and threatening to flip the vehicle with its sheer force.

It was impossible to understand what was happening. The noise and the shaking were disorienting; everyone was shouting something, but the words were lost in the chaos. Mioray wasn’t afraid of being killed, but he dreaded what was happening in the city. The meteorite struck while people were still there. They hadn’t escaped. They had no chance of surviving the impact.

“Fuck! There’s no signal!” Farah spat once the shaking stopped. “What the hell?! Did that fucking meteorite really just hit the city?! How could nobody see this coming and issue a warning?!”

“The same way nobody foresaw the meteorites the previous times,” Kevin said, turning around. “And don’t open the door, Mia. Let’s wait for the dust to settle first. Then we can get outside and see what’s going on.”

Mia quickly let go of the door handle. She touched her forehead and brought her hand down into a Y-handshape.

“For crying out loud, how can you be so calm?!” Farah snapped at Kevin.

“And what’s the point of panicking?” he shot back. “It’s not like me worrying is going to change anything. We can only wait. When the dust clears, we start gathering information.”

He glanced at Erinel, but she sat quietly in her seat.

Mioray felt Matt clinging to his sleeve. The boy was trembling. Mioray wrapped one arm around him while holding the phone in the other.

“Didn’t you hear what I said?” Farah turned to him. “There’s no signal!”

“I know, but maybe I can still get through to Natalie somehow. She was still in the city…”

Erinel had said before that Natalie was not supposed to die yet, but he was still worried about the detective.

“Lokiel was supposed to be near her,” Erinel said. “He agreed to keep her safe.”

“Sorry, Erinel, but I have a hard time trusting that guy,” Mioray said in a rough tone. He noticed the others exchanging glances, but he didn’t care.

“There is supposed to be a beech grove nearby,” Erinel replied calmly. “If we get there, I will be able to contact Lokiel and find out what’s happening.”

“If he survived the impact himself,” Farah added grimly.

There was nothing else to do except wait for the cloud of dust to clear. Just sitting still and waiting was excruciating. Mioray stared through the window, but all he could see was greyish-brown smog. Then he would check the screen of his phone, only to see that the reception still hadn’t come back.

Powerless. Again, he was powerless. Mioray knew something bad was going to happen, and he couldn’t stop it. His face felt strangely exposed. He wanted to hide it behind his mask, but he had left it at the storage facility. If the facility was still there at all. If he had been John Doe, could he have done anything differently?

That a meteorite from Mars would crash into the city… He had never even considered such a thing. Every time he heard about it happening somewhere else, it felt distant, like it belonged to another world.

What did he really know about Mars? The red planet had appeared about three years ago, and it had struck Reath nine times already, this being the tenth. Why Reques City, of all places? Mioray cringed. He shouldn’t try to make sense of it. It was a natural event. An accident. But that didn’t make it any less upsetting, especially considering that Reques City was next in line to become a Sphere City, designed to protect its citizens under an unbreakable dome from external dangers. The dark mirror shield was supposed to begin construction next year. If only it had started sooner… or the meteorite had fallen later…

The visibility slowly improved while Mioray wondered how much of the city had been destroyed. He recalled the Dismantler’s attack at the university. At the time, he had been trapped under the debris, and at first he thought the destruction had been caused by Mars. He felt foolish now for thinking that. Herman Clopton had been terrifying as Impact Corpse, but compared to him, the destruction caused by the meteorite was far worse. The scale was completely different.

“Okay, I can see now,” Kevin broke the silence and started the engine. The car lifted above the dusty road. “I’ll drive to the grove ahead.”

The area around them hadn’t been hit by the strike. As the dust settled, the only sign that a meteorite had fallen was the line of stationary cars covered in dirt, and people stepping out of their vehicles, staring toward the city, pointing, clutching their heads in disbelief.

Mioray looked ahead. Smoke was rising from where Reques City stood, as if trying to hide the cause of the disaster glowing in the sky above it. The buildings were still visible in the distance. That was reassuring. If the buildings were still standing, there was a chance that people inside the city had survived.

But not all of them. There were fewer buildings visible than before. Wherever the meteorite had struck – wherever the epicenter of the impact lay – people had died there.

Regretting they hadn’t evacuated. Maybe even regretting that John Doe hadn’t come to save them.

Mioray was just glad his parents had listened to Natalie and left the city. He needed to contact them again as soon as the signal came back.

When Kevin stopped the car on the side of the road not far from the beech grove, Erinel stepped outside and confidently headed toward the trees. Everyone else followed. Mioray was curious about the greanrips’ way of communicating with each other, through plants and trees. He had never seen her contact other greanrips like that before, and neither had the others. Kevin looked unimpressed as always, but there was a strange, unsettling gleam in his glasses.

What thoughts were running through his mind right now? Did he worry the trees might betray him and tell Erinel he wasn’t entirely loyal to her, that he had been sniffing around, trying to figure out what lay beyond the realm between realms, what the Cursed Blade of Avalon truly was, and what Erinel’s goals were, if she had any?

Erinel entered the thick grove of tall grey beeches and stopped beside one of the trees. She touched the fine-grained bark as if she were trying to feel its heartbeat. She stood still and focused, her arm slowly beginning to turn into wood itself. It looked as though it were merging with the bark of the beech.

“What is Miss Erinel doing?” Matt whispered.

I guess she’s trying to tune in with Lokiel, Mia signed, finishing with a small shrug.

Erinel stood motionless with her eyes closed, her arm seamlessly blending into the trunk of the beech. The wind rustled through the leaves, but it was impossible to tell whether they carried the words of other greanrips or were simply moving with the breeze. Only Erinel knew what it meant, and at that moment she seemed more distant than ever. Mioray could hardly believe that not so long ago they were alone in the hot spring, their bodies bare, wrapped only in drifting steam.

Whatever Erinel was doing, she was taking her time. Farah grew tired of waiting and began pacing back and forth across the grass between the road and the grove.

“I’m more likely to pick up a signal than Erinel is to contact Lokiel,” she muttered, but judging by the growing irritation in her face, her attempts to get reception were getting nowhere. The bridge of her nose wrinkled more and more with each failed try.

Just when it seemed all hope was lost, Erinel suddenly opened her eyes and turned toward the others without pulling her arm free from the beech.

“They’re in the city,” she said. Her eyes met Mioray’s, but only for a moment. “The detective is fine. She’s with Lokiel. And so is that woman, Reyna Kayree.”

That was expected. Reyna Kayree had agreed to help only on the condition that she would meet Mioray and Erinel and the other Restored connected to them. The time for hiding was over.

“They’re waiting for us,” Erinel said as she withdrew her arm from the tree. It looked as though she simply slid it out from beneath the swelling in the bark where it had merged moments before. “Lokiel told me where to find them.”

“Let’s go then,” Kevin nodded. Everyone returned to the car, and soon they were on their way toward the city, its outline bleak against the backdrop of the peaceful sun and the sullen smoke hanging over the rooftops.

As they approached the city limits, they saw several rescue teams moving in to search for survivors. Helicopters and drones hovered above the buildings, while ambulances and fire trucks sped through the unrecognizable streets with sirens blaring. People who hadn’t evacuated in time but had been lucky enough to stay in parts of the city farther from the impact were rushing toward their cars. They wanted to get as far away as possible, afraid that another meteorite might follow the first.

That was unlikely. Never before had meteorites from Mars struck in sequence; each time it had been a single impact. Then again, that didn’t mean a second one couldn’t fall from the sky. Once, Mioray had been certain that life after death was impossible, yet he had been proven wrong. Since then, he had been careful about deciding what could and couldn’t realistically happen.

“Miss Erinel, Mia’s asking what else Lokiel told you,” Matt said, voicing Mia’s signs.

“Is she now?” Erinel replied. “Does that mean she talks to me again?”

There was a short silence while Mia signed something more, her movements sharper this time.

“Umm… not really,” Matt continued awkwardly. “But if Lokiel and the others were in the city when the meteorite fell, they must know what it looks like there.”

“There is a large crater where the collision happened,” Erinel said after a brief pause. “That’s where most of the casualties occurred.”

She didn’t need to say the obvious, and hearing it out loud only made everything worse. Matt hunched his shoulders, and Farah clicked her tongue loudly, muttering curses under her breath. Of course there were casualties. If people in the city had started seeing Erinel, nothing could save them. Wasn’t that exactly what she had said again and again?

And she had made sure it stayed that way. If she had told them earlier, Mioray would have had more time to prepare, to warn Natalie, to bring Reyna Kayree in sooner. Even one extra day could have made a difference. The earlier the evacuation began, the more people could have been saved.

Or would they still have died anyway, just in some other way? Mioray was nowhere close to proving that death could be avoided. If anything, everything seemed to work against that stubborn hope.

After all, Claire had died. Just as she was meant to.

The deeper they drove into the city, the harder it became to move forward. The road was badly damaged, littered with broken walls and debris from collapsed buildings. Fires spread behind shattered windows. Police officers, firefighters, and rescue workers – including members of Lady Anetta’s Foundation – were pulling people from the ruins of destroyed houses. For some, however, it was already too late. Their lifeless bodies lay on the ground, their empty gazes fixed on the sky. Mioray tried not to think about how many didn’t even have that. Those who had been hit directly by the meteorite must have been vaporized instantly.

They reached a point where the road was completely blocked by rubble, and even though the car was a hovering vehicle, it couldn’t pass through. As they stepped outside, Mioray lifted his head and looked at the blood-red eye staring down at them from above. The orb of Mars was disturbingly similar to the fiery red irises Herman Clopton and Terry Strands had when they lost their humanity.

Mioray, are you alright? Mia signed after touching him, snapping him out of his daze.

“Yeah,” he said quietly, shaking his head. “Yeah, I’m good.”

They continued on foot. Erinel led them through a maze of streets Mioray could barely recognize. Not because he had never walked them before, but because they had changed beyond recognition. Several times rescue workers stopped them, urging them to turn back and evacuate from the city, but they simply turned into another street and took a different path, slowly making their way toward their destination. Sometimes they had to pass through damaged buildings, entering through holes in the walls and exiting on the other side. If there was no easy way through, Mia used her voice to break a path, making sure no one was watching beforehand.

They arrived at Ivory Street, where the Artery office building stood. According to Erinel, this was where Lokiel and the others were waiting for them. One side of the staircase was made entirely of glass, though now it was shattered and scattered across the steps, letting the warm wind blow inside. As he climbed the stairs, Mioray looked out through the empty glass frames.

There was nothing.

What had once been part of the city – entire districts of housing, office buildings, shopping centers, schools, and parks – had turned into ash and dust. The view became clearer the higher he climbed. It looked as if someone had scooped the earth out with an invisible spoon, leaving behind a vast round crater, its edges rising like mountain ridges. The meteorite itself was nowhere to be seen. It must have burned as it entered the atmosphere, then shattered on impact. Here and there, shapes that resembled crossroads or children’s playgrounds had somehow kept their outlines, now buried under layers of grey dust.

Mioray stopped for a moment, realizing that his house, the one he had lived in all his life, should have been somewhere there.

But it wasn’t. Not anymore.

“Oh…” he let the air out of his lungs, quietly enough that no one heard. Then he kept climbing.

Just a couple of weeks ago, he had been thinking about people who had lost their homes in the fire, wondering where they would go, how they would start over. He couldn’t have imagined that he would end up in the same situation so soon.

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