MACHINE AND MAGIC

2 BAPTISED IN FIRE

Air sirens wailed outside the bay window, undercut by screams of panic and terror. Six-year-old Angela became distracted from her task of rolling her toy truck across the hardwood floor, and stopped to listen to the all-encompassing dirge outside her mother's apartment.

She heard flats clicking against the floor in rapid beats, and Angela was scooped up into the thick arms of her nanny, Miss Cordelia. Middle-aged Cordelia smelled of sweet perfume and lemons, and mildly of cloves.

"Are they coming, Miss Cordelia?" Angela asked.

"Yes, baby," Cordelia answered, her breathing heavy and panicked. "We have to go."

"Will we get to see Mommy?"

"Your mommy is waiting for you," Cordelia said, her voice laced with terror. "But we have to leave, okay?"

With inhuman swiftness, Cordelia carried Angela on her arm out through the front door and into the hallway, a salmon leather suitcase in her other hand. She didn't bother to lock, or even close the door.

Moving quickly through the hallway, Angela studied the hexagonal patterns on the carpet, orange and blue. They sped underneath Cordelia's feet as they turned a left to the stairs, avoiding the elevator.

A young blonde woman stood shaking on the landing to the second floor- she desperately fumbled with the telebeacon strapped to her wrist, frantic, shallow breaths. She, like many others that day, would probably be dead soon.

"Please," she whispered. "Please, pick up, father..."

It was a bright morning. The air was chill and crisp, the smell of logs burning in multiple fireplaces. Or they had been, only hours before.

The streets were hollow and empty. Front doors swung in the wind and the window panes banged fruitlessly. a deathly, staggered tempo to accompany the screams of the air sirens. A lone paper fluttered across the cobblestone. Empty hover cars lined the street, and sat in neutral on the side of the road... except for one, a black 374 Destrier, which was waiting for them.

"Where did all the people go, Miss Cordelia?" Angela asked.

Cordelia did not reply. A woman jumped out of the backseat of the Destrier waiting for them on the curb, and dashed toward them.

"Mommy!" Angela cried, and reached out to her mother.

Angela's mother took her from Cordelia, and squeezed her tight. "My love. My sweet love..." Angela couldn't remember how she had smelled, or how she even looked. She could only remember the warmth.

Her mother turned her eyes to Cordelia. "They're making arrangements for us to be evacuated, but we have to go now."

"What about the others?" Cordelia asked in a hushed tone. "What about everyone else?"

"I don't know," Angela's mother replied. "Gods, I don't know. I'm sure Public Needs has some contingency in place, but all I know is that the four of us have to leave now before the ship takes off without us."

"And what about the city of Lincera?" The driver asked from inside the car. "Any word from them?"

Angela's mother said nothing. Cordelia could only stare, and took silence as an answer in and of itself. Lincera was gone, and the city of Cradle, the capital of Belas, was soon to follow.

Everything became a blur as Angela was dropped into the hovercar, and the smell of a new leather interior, the whirring and clicking of seatbelts. The hovercar boomed to life as the driver took off down the street, and hung a left.