by Peter Darley
Cheers of approval preceded the sound of champagne corks popping. The employees eagerly gathered around the bar area.
Heather was about to join them when Lucas tapped her lightly on the shoulder. “We got the new FBI contract. I thought you’d like to know.” He gave her a wink.
She couldn’t contain a little squeal of excitement. “They’re actually going for the ZX-Twelve?”
“In every FBI office in America. You pulled it off, Heather. DNA will now have instantaneous identification in every interview room in the land. No more lab work-ups. You sold it.”
Heather considered Blaine’s appearance with some concern. At fifty-three and heavy set, he bore a reddened face and a perspiring brow, indicating his health probably wasn’t at its best. She didn’t want to lose him, either as an employer or as a friend. He’d been kind to her and believed in her—that which she’d always craved the most. She recalled her first day at the corporation when he’d recruited her out of college after she’d graduated with a degree in computer studies. He’d said he could see hunger in her eyes, and that’s exactly what he’d been looking for.
But she’d never told him the story behind the hunger. Nobody in the Zenith Corporation was privy to her past: the poorest girl in school, surrounded by those who were more fortunate. The constant ridicule, the bullying, and never being included, had driven her so hard to show them all. Nobody had been in her corner. Nobody except for . . . Damn, why can’t I get him out of my mind?
“Go celebrate,” Lucas said, drawing her out of her reverie.
“Thank you, sir.” She gently rested her flowers on a nearby desk.
Enthusiastically joining her colleagues, she was surprised by the absence of any envious glances. She realized her negativity was, perhaps, a remnant of her past experiences with people. Mr. Lucas was extremely shrewd with his tactics for procuring a team-oriented mindset among his employees. There was an unusual sense of solidarity at the Zenith Corporation. On reflection, she realized there had to be. They were responsible for providing advanced software and hardware to some of the largest institutions on earth, including the corporate, law-enforcement, medical, and transport industries, the FBI, the CIA, and their sub-divisions.
Heather looked out the window with a glass of champagne in her hand. She beheld the spectacle of the city as she absorbed the sense of jubilation around her. Now, everyone was in her corner.
The city seemed to become more silver and glass with each passing day. Three Faraday hover cars flew past the window. She was a child of her time and still couldn’t fail to notice how futuristic the world was becoming. The progression was rapid.
The hover cars were new. The wheel was still the prime means of transportation, but for how much longer? Faraday—B.J’s uncle’s company. Everywhere she looked she saw something that reminded her of him. She wondered what he was doing right now? What cases was he working on? Who was he saving today?
“Hey, Heather.”
She looked up to see a handsome, young software developer smiling at her. “Oh, hi, Gil. I’m sorry. I was miles away.”
“I’m not surprised. You must be very proud.”
She smiled at him awkwardly. She knew he found her attractive. She’d known for some time that most of them did, but she’d switched her mind off to it. Her passion was for success and showing the world what she was made of before anything else. Nevertheless, she was twenty-five and knew she had to start thinking about relationships sooner or later.
But none of them were him.
The party was still in full swing after two hours. Heather could barely believe it was all for her.
Suddenly, the room shook. She lost her footing and glanced around at all of her perturbed colleagues. Alcohol spattered across the floor. People squealed, followed by mumbled repetitions of “What the hell was that?” and “I must’ve had too much to drink.”
Heather looked out the window again. The skyscrapers were shaking. On the ground, cars swerved. In the distance, around the Queens region, she noticed water filling the streets. What was it? An earthquake? A tsunami? Or both?
A few miles to her right in Hell’s Kitchen, buildings began to topple, and the destruction was coming closer.
She turned back to her colleagues, gripped with urgency. “The city’s falling apart. We have to get out of here.”
They rapidly gathered at the window. It took mere seconds for screams to begin. They backed away in unison, as though getting away from the window would make them any safer. The room shuddered again, causing many of them to lose their footing.
Lucas stepped into their midst and raised his hands passively. “All right, everyone. It seems to be an earthquake. I want everyone to remain calm and make your way to the fire escape stairwell. It’s extremely important you do so single file. At all costs, we have to avoid panic. And don’t use the elevators.”
As the employees followed Lucas’ lead, Heather approached him.
“It’s going to be fine, Heather,” he said. “Just stay calm.”
“How can I?”
“I don’t know, but this kind of thing has been occurring all over the world. There’s been a news report of some new natural disaster occurring somewhere for weeks.”
“I know. But what’s causing it?”
“I have no idea. I don’t think anybody does.”
The last of the employees disappeared through the door. Heather and Lucas followed.
Another shudder, more powerful than the first, struck the building. Screams rose through the stairwell. Lucas was knocked off his feet, sending him falling five steps onto the first landing.
“Mr. Lucas!” Heather grasped the railing in order to avoid falling on top of him. She quickly found her footing and briskly stepped down to help him. “Are you all right?”
“I’ll live,” he said, and got back on his feet. “We have to keep moving.”
Heather’s gaze shot down the center of the stairwell. The others were several flights below them. It had to be at least one-hundred-twenty feet to the bottom.
Through a window to her left she saw a glass elevator on the west side of the building overloaded with personnel. Another tremor struck, hurling her into the adjacent wall. She looked up and saw the elevator shooting toward the ground. Scrambling on her hands and knees, she made her way over to the window with Lucas. They arrived just in time to see the elevator smash onto the hard marble of the ground floor. There was no possibility of survivors.
Heather was gripped with shock and the true gravity of the situation struck her. There was now a clear likelihood they weren’t going to get out of this alive.
Lucas grasped her by the arms and shot her an assertive-but-comforting stare. “We’re going to be fine. That’s why I told everyone to use the fire escape. The risk of a power outage or mechanical damage was too high to chance using the elevators.”
She felt her tears coming, but pulled it back as quickly. She took Lucas’ hand and they headed toward the next flight of stairs.
The tremors were increasing. They found themselves batted from the wall to the railing, repeatedly. When they’d descended almost fifty feet, Heather looked down the center again. Some of her colleagues had reached the bottom and they seemed to be making it through the ground floor exit.
However, it was becoming a stampede. She watched in horror as people were trampled. In that moment, the human survival instinct overrode all reason. She shivered at the sight of some of the most brilliant people she had ever known become animals within the space of a heartbeat.
A cracking sound startled her. She looked up and saw the glass and concrete walls around her beginning to shatter and split.
“Heather, we have to keep going,” Lucas said. “We’re almost out of time.”
She nodded and followed him.
As his feet touched the next landing, it disappeared from beneath him. Heather gripped the railing with both hands, looking into the eyes of her employer as he fell. A cascade of glass and morta
r fell upon him before he hit the ground. By the time he reached the bottom, he’d vanished, obscured by the wreckage—his entire life snuffed out in seconds. “No!” she screamed.
With her feet hanging over the edge, she knew there was nowhere left to run. Desperately, she pulled herself up onto the steps. How am I going to get out?
Out of options, she ran back up, virtually knowing her life was over. She questioned why she was heading back up. She was only delaying the inevitable.
She thought of Mr. Lucas and how he’d turned her life around. He’d given her the opportunity of a lifetime, and she’d committed herself to proving he’d made the right choice. Only a couple of hours earlier, he’d made a celebration of announcing her agenda had been a magnanimous success. He’d been a good man, who deserved so much more than to die such a meaningless death. Finally, her tears came.
As she reached the next floor, the stairwell broke away. She trembled at how close she’d come to dying yet again, and ran up the next flight. She struggled to process the reality that the duration of her life would only be for as long as she could keep going up.
Her life flashed before her. She vaguely recalled her father who’d passed away from a cerebral haemorrhage when she was only three years old. With the loss of him, her mother had struggled to keep them both with menial cleaning jobs, leading Heather to much social ostracism. She had only him, and she wouldn’t live to see his beautiful face again. What was it all about? She was going to die without knowing why she really lived, and it crushed her.
The view all the way to the bottom had become clearer now the fire escape had collapsed. There were fewer people on the ground floor now, but they still seemed to be fighting across the rubble for the exit.
A strange, deep thud echoed from the ground. Heather looked down again. The exit had widened, as though the outside walls and windows had been ripped out. It was mystifying.
And then a flash of black and silver shot across the front of the building. What the hell was that?
Momentarily distracted, she knew she could ill-afford to waste time where she stood and ran back up with panic speed. The remains of the stairwell below her fell away like the others. Dust surrounded her, affecting her ability to breathe.
Almost choking, she reached the last flight of steps before the tenth floor. If she could reach it, she could sit down in the foyer and die at the site of her finest hour. There was, at least, a subtle irony in that thought, as macabre as it was.
She heard something behind her. Someone was there. But how? Slowly, she turned around.
What was it? It looked like a man standing at the end of the broken stairway. But he was wearing some kind of metallic black armor with silver separation inserts distributed throughout. The helmet was the most outrageous—silver and black with five blue lenses positioned in the center of the mask.
He reached out his hand. “I’m going to get you out of here. There’s only one way.”
“What would that be?”
He walked up the remaining steps and stood before her. “There were many fatalities, but I got the others out.”
She couldn’t make out his true voice. It reverberated as though he was speaking through some kind of electronic filter. “How?”
“I cut out the front of the building to give them a wider exit.”
“But who—” The edge of the platform collapsed with the stairwell. Heather fell into the abyss, but her descent was instantly halted. Her heart pounded as she felt a metallic grip upon her wrist. Suspended in mid-air, she looked up to see him crouched down on the remains of the ledge, holding her. It dawned on her that he’d just saved her life. It can’t be. It just can’t be . . . him.
He pulled her back up and ushered her onto the last few steps. “We have to hurry. This place is falling apart.”
“Where are we going?”
“I need you to show me how to get to the roof,” he said.
She ran up the steps, pushed open the door to the foyer, and ran across the reception area. She led him through a door at the far end to another stairwell on the left. “It’s up here, just one floor.”
“Thanks. You’re doing great.”
As they went up the stairwell, further tremors knocked her off her feet, but he caught her each time. She froze for a moment. There was no longer any doubt. It was him.
“All right. I’ve got you. We’re nearly there,” he said.
They reached the door to the roof within moments. Heather tried to open it, but to no avail. “Dammit. I should’ve known. It’s code-locked.”
“Leave that to me.” He stepped in front of her and stretched out his arm toward the lock. He tilted his fist downward and a crimson laser bolt shot out of some kind of gun on the back of his wrist. The lock blew out and the door swung open. “All right, come on.”
Stunned, she followed him out to a clear view of the devastation all around her. Skyscrapers were shaking. Windows were blowing out, showering glass across the landscape. Chunks of brick and mortar spewed out onto the streets into the flooding.
She moved over to the edge to see cars floating and people drowning. The hover cars were the safest, but even they were struggling to avoid the falling debris between the buildings. “What is happening?”
“I don’t know, but we have to get out of here.”
“I know, but how?”
He ran across to the edge of the roof and stood on the ledge, almost losing his footing as another tremor shook the building.
“Watch it!” she said. “Are you crazy? You’re gonna get yourself killed.”
“No, I’m not.”
“What are you going to do? Why are we up here? How is this any different from the fire escape?”
“There was too much debris falling. One falling rock in that chasm could’ve taken your head off.”
After a moment, she walked toward him.
“Hurry,” he said.
Thoughts filled her mind on the way across. He was standing on the edge of a skyscraper roof in the middle of an earthquake, and yet he seemed fearless. He knew he was safe. But how could that be? And how had he appeared on the stairwell from nowhere? There was nothing between the steps and the ground.
“Now take it steady and join me here,” he said.
Terrified, she placed one foot on the ledge and looked down. Vertigo caused her to become dizzy. “Oh, God. Don’t let me fall.”
“You’re not going to fall.”
He grasped her under her armpits and lifted her up, her self-preservation instinct compelling her to hold him tightly.
He reciprocated, but despite the armor, she could sense something. His embrace was beyond performing a mere action to make her feel secure.
“Make sure your feet are above mine,” he said.
“Whatever you say.” She held onto the back of his neck and wrapped her legs around his waist.
“Whoa.”
“You did say,” she said with a hint of seduction. “You’re not shy, are you?”
“No. . . Of course not. Are you ready?”
“Ready for what?”
He was silent for a moment before giving her the ultimate non-answer: “Hold on!”
Two
Air Race
Heather clasped her eyes shut, wracked with uncertainty. She sensed a momentary jerking movement—and then she felt herself sinking rapidly. She couldn’t come to terms with it. He came to save her and then led her to the roof . . . to kill them both? There had to be more to it. He would never do something like that. Not him.
A sudden screech, similar to the sound of a jet engine, startled her. Then, the sinking stopped.
She opened her eyes and glanced over his shoulder. The ground seemed so far below, with the vastness of the city surrounding her. They were suspended approximately one hundred feet in the air. She’d never felt so vulnerable. The vertigo was debilitating. Her grip tightened on him, although she couldn’t imagine what was keeping them from falling. “Oh, shit. We’re standing in
the air.”
“We’re not standing. We’re hovering,” he said. “Just let me figure this out.”
She noticed a heat shimmer just below his boots, and then she remembered him telling her to keep her feet above his. “Figure what out?”
“Which way we’re going.”
She tried to look around, but her field of vision was restricted by her desperate need to hold on to him.
“OK, here goes. Hold me as tight as you can,” he said.
“What do you think I’m doing?”
She felt herself being inverted until she was wrapped around the underside of him. A loud bang accompanied them being shot forward. The intense wind pressure pulled her face taut, and she felt as though her hair was being ripped out. Simultaneously, it had the same type of ‘terror’ feeling of a roller coaster. This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening.
Miniature jets in the soles of his boots rocketed them toward an opening between two buildings. Immediately, he saw a potential danger—the structures were crumbling. Huge chunks of concrete fell amidst a shower of broken glass. He knew the armor would absorb the shock of an impact unnoticeably, but Heather wouldn’t fare so well if she was struck or cut.
In an attempt to keep her shielded, he wrapped his arms around her and flew into the onslaught. There was no other way. Every direction was the same. Getting her to safety demanded running a gauntlet.
“Keep your eyes closed,” he said. “This is gonna be a hairy turn.”
He headed directly into the heart of the airborne cascade. The row of skyscrapers was less than a block, but he knew the jets would get them through it within seconds. However, a few seconds is all it would take for something to happen.
Heather squealed.
“What’s wrong?”
“I-I don’t know. I think I’m cut.”
“Where?”
“On my hand.”
His concerns were confirmed. Her hands were exposed at his back and the flying glass had caught her. “Just hang in there. We’re almost through.”
