Insurgence [h.s]

ten

Alouette lifts her head slowly. The force of the explosion had her thrown to the floor, and her back hurts. Red spots are swimming in her vision, and she blinks them away as she pushes herself up into a sitting position. The silence after the boom is so uncanny and heavy she can hear her quickened heartbeat mix with the ring in her ears.

What happened?

She grips the edge of the wall as she stands. Her upper back aches in protest, but nothing's broken. Her legs feel weak, about to collapse, but after a quick inspection she determines it must be the shock. It takes a moment for her vision to come back, and she spends it clinging to the wall to fight back the spinning in her head. When she finally looks out into the scene beyond, she lets out a shocked gasp.

One of the skyscrapers nearest to the Palace has all but collapsed into the one next to it, rubbles on the ground, cars thrown astray around it. Its screens have caught fire, and it's already circling the nearing building. Alouette's head swims. Warmth drips under her nose; she brushes it away, and her fingers come away red.

Some moments pass by, and people step out of the cars and stream into the street. It can't have been more than a couple of minutes since the initial blast, but it's felt like so long that she's shocked by the lack of firetrucks in the streets below. She watches the movement from up above, and she's so high up that it nearly doesn't feel real, the destroyed building, the people crowding the roads, the distant wails of sirens, the lights of Northfair that switch from blue to pink to green and yellow, like nothing has happened at all, like the city cannot feel the loss of part of itself.

People are moving quickly now down below, and Alouette knows they must be shouting, even though the night wind is strong enough to steal away their voices. The sirens are getting louder, and she can see a stream of trucks rush towards the collapse, and the cars around it are moving away the best they can to allow them to reach it.

Alouette can't get herself to move. She knows, distantly, she should get back down, see what's going on, try to make sense of what she's just witnessed, but she can't move. She can hardly breathe. In her mind, the explosion tangles with the ones of Dacran, with the ones within the Shade. She can feel all of them, again and again, back and forth, like her brain is replaying those moments again and again and again to try to understand them, like there's something she missed and if she just can catch what it is, maybe then it'll make sense, what's happening here.

But it doesn't.

And she's stuck, and her breath must be leaving her lungs because the night wind is in her throat, but she can't breathe. Blood is still dripping from her nose, she can taste its iron on her lips, but she can't move to wipe it away.

Down below, the trucks have reached the site. She can't tell what's going on—she's too high up and the lights of the city are too mockingly bright and ever-changing for her to be able to—but something must be, because the fire doesn't seem as large and all-consuming as before.

Hands touch her shoulders, and she jolts so badly that the person behind her has to hold on to her to keep her from falling.

"Careful," a voice says behind her, shaking her out of her trance, and she turns around and meets Brooks' sharp blue eyes.

She wrenches herself out of his grasp in a quick move. "Why are you here?"

"I was told you might still be here," he replies, without missing a beat. He doesn't need to specify who exactly told him that, because she already knows. From the look he gives her, he knows she knows too. A cold wind blows on the roof, and he shudders. "Can we go inside, now? If I get a cold it's your fault."

Sudden rage flows through Alouette, and she feels ready to bite his head off. Before she can say as much as a word, though, Brooks grabs her wrist and steers her towards the lift. She's so surprised by it that she forgets why she was mad at him at all.