What was going on?
“Karena! Answer me!” Christi urged. It is always frustrating when one is telling you to tell you something when you, for some reason, can’t tell them. Karena’s parents rushed over just as Karena let go of the desk, involuntarily, of course, and found herself falling with her eyes closed.
Her last thoughts before she waked up were of realization. It had been the Sandman. He was trying to stop her from warning her parents.
29
Karena woke up in her bed, not remembering anything for a second, as usually happens when one falls asleep in a dire circumstance and has to remember where he or she is and what they need to do immediately. Fortunately for her, Karena regained her memory within a few seconds, and instantly turned to look at her alarm clock.
It was 10:00. The building would be burning in 30 minutes, and it was at least 20 minutes away by public transportation.
Surely, surely her parents hadn’t left her here alone after the way she’d been acting, suddenly having gone mute and becoming dizzy and tired? Surely they wouldn’t just leave for a date right after their daughter passed out?
Karena ran downstairs, finding her exhaustion, luckily, to be gone. She went into the kitchen, the living room, the bathroom, and then ran back upstairs to their bedroom. They weren’t anywhere.
Her parents had gone out on the date. They were going to die, just like the previous two times.
Karena sunk down on the bed, furious with herself for not warning them months, years in advance to avoid this. The Sandman wouldn’t have blocked her all the way back then like he had just now, would he? She could have saved them. She wouldn’t have had to spend the next five years of her life in an orphanage.
Suddenly, Karena realized what a fool she was being. She could still save them. It would be dangerous, yes, foolhardy, yes, but she had to do something. She wouldn’t let the Sandman win. Not like he had last time.
Karena sprang up from the bed and tore through the doorway of her parents’ bedroom, before bolting down the stairs. She grabbed a couple dollars left on the counter by her mom, and ran out the door without anything but the money. The bus stop was nearby, only a few blocks away, and Karena sprinted the whole way. She hadn’t exercised much in this particular body, and so she found it rather difficult to do so. But she hardly even noticed her pain, so focused was she on getting to her parents.
When Karena was about a block away from the bus stop, she saw a bus pull in, and she could see that it was the bus she needed to take. She picked up her pace, lungs bursting for air, legs kicking faster than she’d ever remembered them having done before. It felt like a physical object was pushing her back from going faster, and she realized that it was the air resistance against her body.
Despite her exertion, the bus was gone by the time she got there. Without stopping, Karena turned left and began running after the bus as quickly as she possibly could, knowing that it was absolutely crucial for her to be on this bus, and not to have to wait 20 minutes for the next one. If she waited that long, her parents would be dead by the time she got there.
Karena flew across the sidewalk, steering slightly to avoid pedestrians and any other obstacles that happened to be in her way. She could feel her body trying to resist the anaerobic respiration as her blood cells didn’t get enough air, but she ignored her body’s request and continued sprinting alongside the street. The bus was well ahead of her by now, and she could only hope and pray that it stopped at some red lights before getting to the stop, giving her a chance to catch up. She ignored streetlights when she came to intersections, merely running right into the middle of the street and trying to avoid cars. She remembered the incident of getting hit by a car just before she’d started this life, and she didn’t want a repeat of that, but she knew she didn’t have time to wait for the light to turn green for her. She had as much chance of failing in her mission due to a pause at the light as she did from getting hit by a car, and so the risk was well worth it.
After what seemed like far too long, she saw the bus stop up ahead. The bus was still far ahead of her, but it had stopped at several lights and so was closer than it would be if it had just kept going straight without halting. However, it was still far enough ahead for her to begin having doubts about whether or not she was going to make it on. She picked up her pace, though she wouldn’t have even thought that possible with the pace she’d been travelling at before. She felt like she was going so unbelievably fast that she’d have a hard time stopping without tripping over herself, but she couldn’t worry about that now. Now she had to worry about actually getting there.
The bus was almost to the stop, and Karena was still far behind it. When it reached the stop, Karena could see that she was just as far from it as she’d been at the last stop, if not farther. Karena could only hope that there were lots of people that needed to get on and off the bus, though that didn’t seem likely, given the time and the location.
The doors opened and a couple of people stepped out. Karena was closing in quickly. She was merely 20 meters away when the doors started to close and the bus began to raise up to start driving again.
“Waaaaaait!!!!!” Karena yelled at the top of her lungs, and though a few people gave her curious looks, the doors did not stop closing. Karena was nearly there when the doors shut completely.
She slammed against the glass with the full velocity she’d been running at. She was at the front of the bus, and the bus driver inside saw her, a perplexed look on his face. Karena’s vision was slightly black at the edges from her collision with the glass, but she could see well enough to see that the doors were opening and the bus driver was letting her inside.
Exhausted, bruised and practically limping, Karena made her way onto the bus. She walked up to the bus driver. “One child, please,” she said in between deep breaths of air, holding out money.
“What on earth happened to you?” the driver asked as he printed the ticket. “Why’d you come slamming into my bus just as I was getting ready to pull away?”
“It’s a long story,” Karena replied, and it was. She got the ticket and paid for it, and then sat down in a seat near the front. In 20 minutes she’d be there, and then the real challenge would begin. Catching the bus was only the beginning.
30
Karena thought through her plan as the bus drove along. She knew that her parents were on top of the building in some sort of restaurant or something. She’d have to get up there as fast as possible, and since taking the elevator wasn’t an option because of the fire, she’d have to run up 20 flights of stairs in order to reach the top. And then what? She would have to be fast, and hope that she could run down with them to the bottom before the building caught completely on fire, so that they could be saved. But that didn’t seem likely. She would have to find some other way of getting them out of the inferno.
The bus arrived at the proper stop, and Karena disembarked. There it was, right in front of her, the building that would be, in about 15 minutes, a blazing furnace of heat that would topple to the ground, hitting other adjacent buildings on the way down before it was merely a pile of rubble. She’d seen the pile of rubble herself, on the way being driven to the orphanage. This time, though, there’d be a major difference. There were two options. Either her parents wouldn’t be lying within that pile of rubble at all, or she’d be there with them. Whichever happened, it would be different, and it would be better.
Karena raced over to the building, having regained her energy from the bus ride. Although her body still hurt from the collision with the glass, it had greatly lessened and she found herself running almost at the speed she’d been at earlier.
Once inside the building, Karena looked around the lobby for a staircase. Of course, it would be quicker to take an elevator, but there was no way she was going to do that with a fire starting in a matter of minutes. There was a pair of elevators at the end of the room, and next to that on the wall there was a door with a staircase symbol on it. Bingo, tho
ught Karena as she ran towards the staircase and banged open the door. A man behind a desk looked at her strangely, but she paid him no heed, something she’d gotten very good at in the past 24 years of her new lives.
Karena began the climb. Her pace slowed as she reached about halfway up, finding her energy being sapped much faster going up the stairs than running straight along the ground. Nonetheless, she forced her now burning legs to push the last stretch up to the top as fast as they would carry her without her collapsing. Finally, she reached the final floor, which was the rooftop restaurant, and pushed her way out.
It was a wonderful view of the downtown area, and Karena could see why people wanted to come here to eat. Everything was lit up and peaceful as the waiters and waitresses served fancy food on even fancier platters, and it seemed like nothing could ever go wrong. But Karena knew better, and she wasted no time before beginning to call out her parents’ names.
“Harold!” she called at the top of her lungs. “Christi!” Instantly, there was an awkward silence, as everyone stopped eating, drinking, or whatsoever is was they were doing, and looked up at her. Bossa nova music played quietly in the background, but that was the only noise in the whole restaurant. Karena was not stalled by this moment of embarrassment, however, and continued her search.
“Harold!” she called again. “Chri-”
A hand was clasped over her mouth abruptly. “Excusez-moi,” said a waiter with, as you can probably determine by his language, a French accent. “You are disturbing this restaurant with your obnoxious yelling. Could you please-?”
“There’s going to be a fire!” Karena yelled, ripping the waiter’s hand off her mouth, much to his annoyance. “Everyone needs to evacuate this building now!”
“Karena!” Harold suddenly stood up from the back, looking at her. “What on earth are you doing here!?”
“Dad! What I was trying to tell you guys earlier is that this building is going to catch fire, and if you don’t get off right now you’re going to-”
Her words were cut short when she saw him, standing at the back of the restaurant, face as expressionless as ever.
The Sandman had returned.
31
Karena gasped from the sheer shock of it, like it was a punch to her gut. What was he doing here? He only ever came just before she would be taken, so what on earth was he doing here?
And then she realized. It was because of the way she was altering events. He had already been annoyed with her last episode, and now she was changing things too much. This time, he had come to stop her.
Karena gulped, and tried to look away, but found she couldn’t. It was as if she was being hypnotized, hypnotized by terror. There was nothing she could do now to save them. He was entirely in control, and her parents were as good as dead.
But then, all of a sudden, she felt a sudden burst of willpower. After a defiant glare at the Sandman, she tore her eyes away from him and looked at her parents, though she could still see him in her peripheral vision. “We have to get out of here!” she called, though weaker this time, with far less strength. Everyone in the café, weirdly, was quiet, and they were all listening to her. “You guys have to trust me on this. We don’t have much-”
“Fire!” a man suddenly screamed, running up the staircase. “Evacuate the building! There’s a fire. Get out, get out!”
Karena looked back at the Sandman desperately. It was too late. Not only were her parents, and everyone on this building, dead, but she was also dead. The fire had begun.
Karena felt the inexplicable burst of willpower again, and managed to tear her eyes away from the Sandman. She ran to the side of the building and looked down to see smoke coming out of the bottom two stories. In no time at all the fire would get to the point that there would be nothing to support the building from falling over, and it would collapse to the ground just like last time. Even if someone called the fire department right now, it would take too long for them to get here. She’d have to find a safe way off the building by herself.
Karena’s first idea was to get as low as possible to the ground and then jump out a window, but looking at the pavement she could see that by the time they got there, the fire would be on the 5th or 6th floor, and there was nowhere safe to land. She quickly abandoned that thought and ran back into the crowd of screaming people evacuating, looking for some other solution.
“Karena!” Harold cried as he grabbed her arm, but Karena didn’t have a chance to respond before the building lurched under them, causing everyone to scream even louder. The roof felt very unstable, and she knew they didn’t have much time before it collapsed, minutes at the most.
“We have to get off this building now!” Karena said.
“Then come on. Why on earth are you just standing around?”
“We can’t go down there, we’ll die,” said Karena. “That’s what you all tried to do last time. There has to be another way.”
“Wait a minute, what do you mean, last time?” Harold demanded. “Did we die last time?” But Karena ignored him, looking around, trying to find another way to escape. The building was near another building, about the same height, and Karena knew that this building would crash into that one. There had to be some way to get over to the adjacent building before this one fell to the ground.
Karena ran to that side of the building, her parents following behind, panicked and confused. She tried to ignore the Sandman who was still standing in the exact same position, with his hat pulled low over his face as if nothing was going on. This time, she wouldn’t let him win. Then again, that’s what she’d said last time…
Karena instantly changed her thoughts. She tried to judge the distance between this building and the adjacent one. It looked to be about 40 meters, though that was a very rough estimate, as she wasn’t very good at estimating these sorts of things. There was no way to jump it, so Karena looked for some way that they could get over there.
The building lurched again, causing Karena to look down at the street once more. There was hardly anything supporting the building now. There wasn’t even time to get everyone across safely. That meant that the only way would be to somehow jump to the other building while this building was in the process of falling, something that sounded not only improbable, but impossible, especially given the fact that she was in the body of a ten-year old, which was not at all optimal for base jumping. It was a desperate, final plan, something that would almost definitely fail, but she would still do her best, anything she could, to defy the Sandman. It didn’t matter if she died anyway, because she’d just wake up again as an 11—month old, and she’d try again.
“Okay, guys,” Karena said, turning around to her parents. She realized that in her past two lives her perspective on her parents had really changed. Before, they were more like actual parents, but now that she was an adult too, nearly the same age, it felt totally different talking to them, even if she was in the body of a ten-year old. “I have a plan, but it’s pretty dangerous, like any plan would be given the given circumstances.”
“What is it?” Christi asked, clearly afraid. She had a deep respect for her daughter, even though it was sometimes strange trusting her with these sort of things given her apparent age.
“We need to jump onto that building while this one is falling down,” Karena said. “Come back here. We’ll get a running start just as the building is falling over.”
“What if it doesn’t fall that way?” Harold asked.
“It will,” said Karena, but all of a sudden she didn’t feel so sure. Could things that came down to a matter of sheer probability such as this change in different lifetimes? What if it did fall the other way? There was no building that way, just pavement.
Karena shook the thought out of her mind when the building lurched again and she felt it leaning towards the other building. “Get ready!” she cried, running back about 15 meters to get a good speed up for the jump. Her parents followed suit.
The building started leaning forwards
, and for one moment it seemed like it was going to fall the right way. And then it shifted, and it began leaning backwards, away from the adjacent building, away from their only hope. The building was going to fall the wrong way, and they would all die, just like last time.
32
“Karena, it’s leaning the wrong way!” Harold cried, stating the obvious, as often happens in dire circumstances when you don’t really know what else to say.
“I know,” Karena said. All the tables and chairs on the rooftop began to slide backward and Karena fought to keep her grip as the angle of the floor grew steeper. She closed her eyes, waiting for the feeling of falling through thin air to overtake her senses.
And then, miraculously, the floor leveled out. Karena opened her eyes to see the building once again tilting forward, towards the other building. “It’s going back!” she cried in her ecstasy, as the chairs and tables began to slide across the roof towards them. Not a single other person was left on the rood except for her, her parents, and, of course, the Sandman, if he even counted as a person. Everyone else had already tried their luck on the stairs or had thrown themselves off in a desperate and fruitless attempt to save their lives.
“Watch out!” Harold cried, yanking on Karena’s shirt and pulling her away from a cluster of tables and other things sliding at an incredible rate towards the front of the roof as the building tilted closer.
“When should we start running?” Christi asked.
“Not yet,” Karena said. “It’s too soon. The angle is going to have to be pretty steep for us to reach the other building, so we’ll have to be careful.”
The building tilted further, and now all the tables and various objects were flying past them, so they had to focus partly on the building in front of them and partly on avoiding the items sailing through the air. Karena ducked suddenly when a sharpened knife flew out of nowhere, nearly stabbing her in the face, and she was barely able to roll to the side as a counter came sliding past. The whole time the building was leaning over at an ever steeper angle.
Translucent Page 8
