How do I get out of here? Her mind raced, looking over the sea of flames. The heat was overwhelming, but the smoke was almost worse, overcoming her. One way out, one way only, and it’s right through the middle of it. She ducked and ran, felt the flames licking at her as she sped across the floor, dodging around the crater, only opening her eyes the barest amount here and there as needed. Almost there ...
She got close to the front windows which had shattered; all that remained was the lip of the wall and she jumped over it like a champion hurdler, bursting free into the cool air outside, the suffocating smoke clearing as she kept going, further from the fire. She stopped after a hundred or so feet, standing out from the corner of the square, oblong building. It was technically in Golden Valley Minnesota, but right on the edge of Minneapolis, which was what the postal codes all said. Was, she thought. Now it’s nothing but wreckage. So long, Agency. I guess they’ll have to build a new—
She heard a noise from behind her and turned to see Jon lying there, eyes open, staring up at the sky above. She took in the scene with a steady onrush of horror, and it occurred to her after a moment that there was someone else there as well, a man, impeccably dressed. It didn’t immediately occur to her to think of him as anyone other than someone who had been passing by when the explosion happened. She ran, still coughing and hacking from the smoke she’d breathed in, a thousand thoughts clouding her mind. Her shoes slapped loudly against the asphalt of the parking lot, and she cleared an island of grass with a tree planted in the middle of it with a leap, landing next to Jon.
His eyes were open, staring up at her lifelessly, his face placid and slack. She fell to her knees and shook him. Sometimes he sleeps with his eyes open. Creepiest damned thing I’ve ever seen. She grasped his burnt, pinstriped dress shirt and lifted his chest, jerking his upper body into motion. His neck lolled back, following its path of least resistance and his eyes didn’t react at all to the motion.
“He’s already dead,” the man said in a quiet voice, solemn. His hands were clasped in front of him, and Sierra had a sudden vision of him as a funeral home director, giving only the coldest comfort to the bereaved he was forced to deal with. “I’m sorry.”
“What ...” She let him settle back and ran her hands over him, but there was no sign of blood, no sign of trauma, of burns past some minor blackening of his dress shirt. She looked up into the face of the stranger, oddly stricken. “How?” The man didn’t say anything at first, and she read his hesitation. “How?” she asked, again, the harsh edge to her tone.
“He made a mistake,” the man said at last, not looking at her. “A long time ago.”
“Did you do this?” She held the back of Jon’s neck in her hand, felt the odd weight of it, the heaviness as his head lolled. There was no burning in her fingers, no swelling of her power from the touch as there should have been. The man did not answer her. “Did you?” She clutched Jon tighter. “Did you do this?”
The man did not speak, but his feet left the ground and he hovered, lightly, a few feet away from her. “This isn’t how I wanted us to meet. It isn’t how I would have planned to run into you, Sierra, not for the first time.”
“You wouldn’t have planned this?” She laughed through the first tears, the words were so absurd. “How would you have planned it? Something to make a better first impression, I take it? Something other than killing my husband? The father of my unborn child?” She stood, letting the body slump to the side. Her fists balled and she readied herself. She could feel the weight of the pistol at her side, the duty weapon she carried, and she drew it fast, firing five rounds perfectly, snapping off each shot with precision, her eye focused on putting the front sight of the gun just above his heart.
The man didn’t even move, didn’t shrug, just stood there and took the bullets, absorbing them into his body like they were nothing. He watched her with mournful eyes, dark eyes. “You can’t kill me.”
“Oh, really?” Sierra adjusted the aim higher and fired again, this time aiming for the hovering man’s skull. Every shot was flawless, but he just stood there, staring back at her, dully, with each subsequent shot.
Her gun clicked empty, the last round spent, and Sierra stared at him, the action slid open and smoked slightly in the cool night. Still, the man stood, hovering on air, arms folded, apparently undisturbed by the fifteen shots that had just been fired straight into him. Sierra screamed at him in fury and flung the gun at his head, charging at him and leaping. He disappeared before she could make contact, and she fell to the hard pavement of the parking lot, grunting at the pain of her landing, asphalt scraping across her elbow.