In a post-pandemic world where class and privilege are determined by immunity status, Seraphine, Isolde, Beck and Griffin are about to find out what they're made of. When a nightclub bombing and its aftermath challenge everything they thought they...
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The harsh solidity of concrete is a large part of its charm. Its brutality; its hardy brawn, set it apart from other building stuffs. Concrete doesn't burn. It's non-porous. It's high performing in most circumstances.
Until you subject it to extreme heat.
You see, while cement plus water plus sand equals the strength and reliability of concrete, concrete plus extreme heat equals cement dehydrating. Dehydrating cement means irate water vapour, trapped in a non-porous prison, desperately looking for an escape route.
Tick, tick, tickety, tick, boom.
Isolde Delacourt hears the explosion a split second before she experiences its impact. It is loud and aggrieved, rumbling through ears and chest cavity like thunder on the war path. For those unfortunate souls standing anywhere near the black-and-white-tiled unisex bathrooms on the lower ground floor, its effects are immediate and catastrophic.
As the over-pressurisation wave meets bodies, lungs are blasted; middle ears and eyes rupture; abdomens haemorrhage. Concussion occurs without any physical sign of head injury. Secondary afflictions, many of them fatal, arrive in the form of flying debris and bomb fragments. Bodies are flung like boneless frisbees across an open field. Except the field isn't open. It's full of concrete columns, and furniture with sharp edges, and people.
So many people.
Issy doesn't see any of this, but she hears the screams and the moans and the muffled panic which follow the roaring explosion on the floor above. And she feels it. First as a sound wave, then as a sharp, jagged pain near her hairline, and wet, sticky blood running down her face – the result of spalling on the underside of the slab above Isolde's head.
Where's my sister?
Saph?
Please be okay.
Something solid and warm holds Issy, and she pushes against it, wishing the room would stop spinning.
