I looked up from the bag. “So, just to be clear. You're saying I am going to end the world...at least as we know it. And that this is a job that I should take seriously...and do really, really well.” Shaking my head a little, I smirked at him. “Did I get that right...Revik?”
I watched him think. “Yes,” he said. “That is right. Simplistic, but ultimately correct.” Before I could speak, or even laugh, I saw his eyes click back into focus. “You will meet Vash. Then you will understand.”
“Did you just read my mind?” I said.
“Yes.”
“Is that absolutely fucking necessary?” I said.
He thought about this also, glancing at me.
“Yes,” he said.
I stand on a high building above a smoky city.
An angular, steel and glass structure shaped like a square reaches up on two legs from the edges of the skyline in front of me, barely visible through a veil of smog and smoke drifting near the ground in the pre-dawn light. Beyond that oddly-shaped building, more skyscrapers reach up like jagged teeth, stretching in rows as far as I can see. A low building made of watery glass, bulging shades of blue-green and blue-white, like giant raindrops, crouches incongruously in all of that smoke, an artificial world that looks better suited to the bottom of the ocean.
Already, lights are coming on, even though the sun isn’t yet above the horizon.
People emerge from tall buildings and single-dwelling homes with briefcases and backpacks. Some of them jump on bicycles or mopeds, or patiently wait for buses and trains, drinking hot drinks and reading feed marquees. The whisper of car horns grows audible as others crawl along a jam-packed freeway, fighting to get downtown.
I recognize this skyline, but I’ve never been here.
I’ve seen it on the feeds.
Even as I search for landmarks, sound erupts over the horizon, followed by a silence so profound the city’s heart stops beating.
Trails of smoke follow bullet-like shapes over a curve of amber sky.
Then...the wailing sirens start up for real.
White streaks of light multiply to the increasing pitch of air raid horns.
I watch, my breath caught, as people stand like penguins staring at the sun. The first missile hits, creates a shock wave of smoke, then a rapidly blooming mushroom cloud that looms over every building. The sky goes from amber to pink to red even as, in the distance, another missile kicks up an even larger cloud of dust, forming a second, blood-red pillar of smoke.
Another hits, then another.
One crashes through a leg of the upright square, another flattens the watery glass structure and I hear the scream of metal as it rips through steel, just before—
I jerked awake.
My face hurt from being ground into a wrinkle in the cloth seat. Drool connected my lips to the cushion until I raised my cuffed hands, wiping my mouth clumsily with my fingers.
Gazing through a dirty window at the pre-dawn light, I felt my heart clench.
But this was no smoke-drenched city of auto-rickshaws, bicycles and millions of Chinese. All I saw was pale blue sky above a low horizon of two-story Craftsman homes. Our car was the only one I could see in an empty parking lot before it transitioned back to the main road. I glimpsed ocean through the trunks of trees on the other side of that same road, broken by more houses on a street that sloped downwards, probably leading eventually to the beach itself. A seagull sat on a dimming orange parking lot light, stabbing at something with its beak that it held between its toes.
Next to me, he shifted position, drawing my eyes.
His long body stretched across the driver’s seat, his head and neck cramped in the crack by the driver’s side door. Despite the awkward angle of his body, he was asleep.
His face, even his hands lay open as he breathed.
I watched him sleep, and that inexplicable nausea I’d felt around him in the park returned. It rose and crested...then started to recede when I felt a returning pull from him, like a slow tugging below the navel that brought heat, along with another wave of that discomfort. I clutched my belly in reflex, then pressed my hand to the middle of my chest, rubbing the spot there, even as he shifted his weight uncomfortably, lowering a hand to rest on his thigh.
When that feeling didn’t lessen, a soft sound left his throat.
I waited to see if he would wake. When he didn’t, I let out my held breath.
Quietly, I bent forward, testing the binders on my ankles.
The hard plastic had already cut into my skin. I tugged on the ring anyway, feeling the connecting points for how to unlock the plastic knot. I fumbled with the end, realized a key fit in there, a small one.
I opened the glove box, moving papers and the oil rag as quietly as I could, looking for something sharp, but all I found was a broken pen that leaked ink, a used up book of matches and a condom so old the wrapper had cracked in the heat of the engine. I felt around under the seat, looking for anything that might saw through the thick plastic.