Wild Tiger Chase | Book #2 (Complete)

39: a lit fuse (Part I)

— Léon —

The noise was terrifying.

Léon's gaze bounced around the room. Books fell from their shelves, plates shattered on the floor, the shutters on the windows splintered, and even his balance felt broken. Outside, people screamed and cried while NAVs lost control and crashed.

And then there was the wail. Something metallic, he thought, that seemed to grate its way up, pushing, piercing, drilling through rock and earth, and creating a deafening cacophony of despair.

What the fuck was happening?

By reflex, Léon reached for Pipo and stumbled towards Rob, keeping them close.

"On your hands and knees. Let's find cover!" Kali shouted. She scrambled forward to join Pipo and Léon and direct them under a sturdy table nearby. "Your place is wherever is safer for you, Léon. It's. Not. Here." Her voice was controlled enough to pass as speech, but the words rang so loud and hard in his mind, she could've been shouting against his ears.

Léon scoffed in disbelief. "Tiny! Over here!" He was quick enough to dodge a falling snow globe, but not the porcelain horse that fell right after. "Shit."

His fingers met Satina's while Kali hugged Pipo. Another rumble came from deep within the earth; the quake intensified.

"Under the table, all of you. Now," Kali said.

Rafa and Phillip reached them soon after. Léon held one of the feet of the table and shut his eyes. When he pictured himself at home, he expected it to feel cozy and familiar. Still, as he looked around the growing destruction and felt his mother's hand on his wrist, home sounded more like an alien concept—a distant place he had left in New Continent, four years ago.

A movement caught his eyes. He looked over his shoulder in time to see Rob's arms losing force. He leaned forward until his forehead met the floor and growled, shivering from head to toe.

Something was wrong.

A shiver crawled up Léon's back when his man looked up. Rob's eyes... the whites were starting to turn black. Why did that seem so familiar?

"Run, Leo. Run!" Rob shouted. He clasped at his temples and grunted. A bead of sweat rolled down the side of his face, his cheeks darkening as veins rose on his neck and forehead.

Way too close, something pierced the surface of the earth. A gnarled, metallic column shot up from the street outside, rising and branching like the stem of a growing plant. With a loud roar of falling bricks, it destroyed the front wall of Amma's house and stretched, taking with it part of the ceiling, an abandoned NAV, and a bathtub.

It took only a few minutes, but it felt like hours of tension and fear had passed. As the smoke sat and small debris rolled down the half-eaten building, Léon dared to move. Thin rays of light cut through the dense veil of dust. When Léon got up and looked around, his eyes watered. There were metallic structures sprouting all around the city, and the rumble of overturned earth and falling buildings overpowered any other sound in Cidade Santa.

"What the hell is happening?" Amma asked in a whisper. Her voice was small and pained as she stared at the missing half of her house. It was a half-eaten corpse now, the plumbing and the electrical cables sticking out of the remaining bricks like picked-clean ribs after a zombie barbecue. "My mother's home, it's... it's ruined."

Léon reached for her hand.

"Careful!" Phillip shouted, pushing the group together.

After a final screech of metal against enamel, the bathtub fell and hit the asphalt, spitting pieces of cement and moldy porcelain everywhere.