Emily nodded and did as she was told, not waiting for anybody to follow. Her legs were like jelly, her heart beating as violently as thunder. For a moment she was alone, and the isolation and fear was suffocating. Her throat was dry, the taste of dust and cement from the lift shaft stuck in her mouth. She stopped as the corridor opened out like a river delta into a wide glass atrium. She looked up, her hands balanced on her knees, her lungs panting. She was encased in glass all the way around, a protective dome without which she would have already choked from the thick ashes that she could see falling through the air outside. The glass above her was covered in grey soot that reminded her of Christmas morning, but a warped, unfamiliar version. In the distance she saw the orange glow, concentric rings of smoke billowing not only outwards, but upwards and pluming like a delicate fountain of death.
If she had been there only moments before, she would have seen the paint lift from the buildings and the cars as the heat wave tore through. She would have watched as the nebulous wave ripped across the land as if it had been cast out from the sky. She would have seen the trees buckle under the force of the highest winds, hundreds of years old oaks destroyed as if they were nothing but saplings. If she were higher up, she would be able to see the fireball galloping towards her, only minutes away from where she stood. She looked outside, her mouth wide open, hypnotised by the sight of destruction all around her. In that moment she heard nothing of the footsteps behind her as she watched the tempest growing in strength. Her father scooped her into his arms and carried her like a limp ragdoll, jiggling about over his shoulder.
“Don’t look at it, Emily,” he said, and she closed her eyes, dust falling from her eyelashes with each step he took.
She clung to his neck like a small child as he negotiated the stairs. Step after step they travelled down into the dark. She sensed the light disappearing through her closed eyelids. Even the kaleidoscopic light patterns that usually played out there, which were always most vibrant right before sleep, failed to appear.
When her father stopped running she dared to pull her head from inside the creases of his neck. They were in a large room, sparsely decorated and crammed full of people. He sat on the floor, Emily cradled in his arms like a baby, his fingers weaving in and out of her hair as he kissed her forehead. When he pulled his lips away they were covered in dust. She saw her mother at her side, her lips pressed into the cross which she wore around her neck, her head rocking backwards and forwards.
“Sir?” a voice said above them. The big man from the lift. The man who had first pulled her out. He had saved them all, perhaps?
“Yes, Vincent?”
“The site is secure.” She felt her father nod and his grip tighten.
“And the others?”
“Sir, we won’t know anything until they transmit the first of the reports. We expect that won’t be for several hours. Perhaps days.” The big man who had saved her life, and who Emily now knew as Vincent smiled at her before standing up straight and walking away.
“Daddy?” Emily said. Her breath fluctuated against his neck, and it sent a tingle racing across his scalp just like in the first days after her birth. Her breath was hot, and he thought how the life within her offered him more comfort than any of the preparations around him.
“Yes, baby?” he asked.
“When are we going to go home?”
He swallowed hard before saying, “We are home, baby,” and he stroked her damp cheeks with his thumb. Her mother was still praying, and there was somebody close by who was crying. The same women from the lift? She could hear their snivelling and somehow in spite of everything that was already happening, it was this sound that seemed unbearable. It was the sad whimper for a life lost. Some people were moving about by torchlight, men dressed as Vincent was. Some women too. One of them had jet black hair, like a raven, shiny like a white swan caught in an oil slick. She smiled at Emily, who mustered a half smile in return, before the woman continued to hand out blankets to people nearby, assisted by her torch. Vincent came back, draped a blanket over Emily, and stroked her hair before he stood up. She closed her eyes and thought about the log fire that they wouldn’t light in their real home at Christmas. She thought about the table that she wouldn’t set on Sunday and how the fancy bone-handled knives somehow didn’t seem so fancy anymore. She peeped underneath the blanket at her T-shirt and realised that she could try all she liked, and protest all she wanted. She could imagine the impossible to be possible, or disbelieve what she was told to be true. She could want and hope and dream of a different life, but in this moment she realised that there is only ever one version of reality. The one you are in. It didn’t matter how bleak or hopeless it was. But more than anything she realised that sometimes to do nothing was the only choice you had.
Chapter Five
Do you wake up in the morning feeling negative and tired? Do you crave sleep when you have just woken up? Does your skin look grey, even when you have just finished bathing? You could be suffering from a low blood count. Now, at the special price of only one hundred and twenty credits……
The same voice over and over all day long. It was the same advert. He had heard it three times already this morning. Zack was getting to the point where he was beginning to wonder if his skin really was that grey, or if he was just being programmed to believe it to be. He turned over on the flimsy metal bed that reminded him of a Victorian hospital, the mattress and springs creaking under the shift in weight. Leonard had already fallen asleep when Zack got back from the bar last night, so he had discarded the pillow at the side of the door. At least he thought he had been asleep. He couldn’t really remember. He pulled his own pillow over his face. It was too thin and old to be deemed comfortable, and it had an aroma that was something like morning breath mixed with dust. He sandwiched his fists against his ears, muffling the sounds of life in Delta Tower.
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Zack scrunched his eyes tighter than his fists at the sides of his head. He sucked in the smell of the dusty pillow. He started humming in an effort to stifle the sounds as they played out in the corridor, those that offered the chance of another reality that he wasn’t a part of.
“Fuck you, Omega,” he screamed into the pillow, before coughing up the dust that was settling at the back of his throat. Even the thought of the words scrolling along the bottom of the screen, Blood taken only from Omega Tower Citizens, was enough to piss him off. He pulled the pillow from his face, tossed it across the room, the corner of it landing in his water bucket. As if having the blood of somebody from Omega running through his veins would give him a glimpse of The Omega Life, or make him start feeling like his Omega-self, whatever that was. Human, maybe, he mused.
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