Elias

The longer he thought about it, the angrier Elias became at having been left behind. In the past half an hour his imagination had worked double-time and he had come up with no less than forty-three ways Abigail could end up dead.

"Sit down, Elias," Harold said.

The old man had reclined on the bed, his walking stick lying across his lap. He seemed to be playing some game on his phone. Elias paused for the moment, considering the man's words, then shrugged. He had always been a pacer. He paced while he waited for the bus and when he brushed his teeth. And, if ever there was a moment for pacing, this was it.

Harold must have realised Elias was too agitated to listen to him, so he flicked his fingers to get Misha's attention. "Hey there, kid. Do you drink tea in this house?"

Misha, her gaze never shifting from the rope tied around her wrists, replied, "Why don't you just shove a teapot up your arse."

Harold laughed and Elias too couldn't stifle a chuckle.

"I'll look around the kitchen," Harold said, climbing to his feet. "Elias, would you like anything?"

"No, thanks. Not in the mood."

Misha glanced up. "I'm hungry."

"Noted," Harold replied.

Elias waited until Harold was out of sight, then turned on his heel and began another lap of the room. Four steps there, four steps back. Four steps there, four steps back. He checked the time. More than an hour had passed since Ramiel and Abigail had left with Kiara. Plenty of time to get into trouble twenty times over.

He, in the meantime, was guarding a twelve-year-old tied to a pipe. A near bald, dishevelled twelve-year-old who looked like she was trying to go full Firestarter on the rope keeping her in place. Were anyone to walk in, they would probably think she was a victim of child trafficking or something similarly distasteful.

"What happened to your mother?" Elias asked.

Misha ran her tongue across the scabs on her upper lip. "She died."

"I'm sorry."

"Why? That's what humans do, don't they?"

They? Doesn't she count herself a member of the human race?

"Doesn't mean we don't get upset about it," Elias replied. "How did she die?"

"Father killed her."

Elias sucked in a breath. Silence fell. He had no idea what he ought to say and Misha, evidently, didn't feel to need to elaborate.

"That's... not right. You know that, surely?" he managed to choke out after a long minute.

"She was getting in our way."

A crash in the next room swallowed Elias' bewildered reply.

This day just keeps getting better. Can't even trust the old man with a cup of tea. Elias found Harold on the cracked kitchen linoleum surrounded by broken plates of various designs and sizes. As he helped the man to his feet, Elias tried to puzzle out what had happened. There was a steaming kettle on the stove and one kitchen cabinet stood open, empty inside.

Harold must have sensed Elias' confusion. "I was trying to get a plate out from the bottom of the stack and took the entire lot down."

"Why did you want plates?"

"The girl could use some food. You could too. When was the last time you ate?"

"I told you I wasn't hungry," Elias scowled. "Besides, for all we know, they could've poisoned all the food in here."

"That seems —"

A thunderous crack sent the apartment walls reverberating.

"What now?"

Elias moved as quickly as he could, but by the time he reached the bedroom, Misha was gone. The pipe Ramiel had tied her to was in pieces and bloody shards of glass were scattered across the windowsill.

"Stay here," he said to Harold, who had limped over as far as the doorway. "In case Ramiel and Abby return."

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"The room is flooding."

Water was spurting out from the jagged pipe stump at an alarming rate.

Elias snarled. "Then do something about it!"

Without another glance at the older man, Elias climbed out the window, wincing at the damage Misha must have done to herself and careful to avoid the shards of glass still stuck in the window frame. The first floor wasn't far off the ground. As a child he liked to climb the old fig in the school playground and then jump off — that tree had been higher than this. But back then he had wood chips to soften the landing; now he landed on cobblestones. The impact jarred his knees and his left ankle.

Misha clearly knew how to move fast when she wanted to, but she had left a trail of blood behind. Elias followed the crimson drops for two blocks until he spotted her crouching down in a dusty doorway.

"How badly did you cut yourself?" he called out.

Misha jerked up and her eyes widened, then she was off again.

Elias swore and followed her. If she had a plan, Elias couldn't fathom it. She ran through the street-side market, ducking through one clump of shoppers and then another. Elias had to shove his way through to keep up. Then Misha turned to a side street that led to a narrow square. At one point, he was certain she had double-backed. Or maybe the streets were beginning to blur in his mind.

Elias considered himself fit — he was at the gym three times a week, every week, but he couldn't keep up. Despite the frighteningly rapid pace of his heart, he fought to take a proper breath. His lungs burned as if scorched with acid.

I hate angels.

As Misha vanished into the city crowds, his vision began to swim. Elias forced himself to take the five or so steps to the fountain in the centre of the square he now found himself in.

Elias sunk to the ground by the fountain, drew his knees up to his chest and let his head drop. He was pretty sure he was doing it all wrong. His PE teacher always insisted that they needed to stand up straight and open up their lungs if they wanted to catch their breath quicker. Elias didn't care. This was the most comfortable position he could imagine right now.

"Are you sick?" a woman asked in heavily accented English.

Elias lifted his head. She was young, perhaps the same age as Elias. The woman wore a traditional skirt and a hat, but in her hand, she held an iPhone. There was some point about the ironies of globalisation to be made here, but Elias was too exhausted to care.

"I'll be fine, just need a moment," he struggled out. "Thanks."

"Are you sure?"

He wasn't sure, but the chest pain did seem to be mellowing, which was a good sign.

The ground shook. Frowning, Elias rose to his feet. The water in the fountain churned as if in the middle of a storm, then one of the carved jets broke off. Just as it landed into the water, there was a particularly large tremor. Every window overlooking the square shattered, raining glass onto the people below.

Elias ducked down and his knees gave out. Someone screamed. Someone started praying. Or perhaps he was the one screaming. Elias could feel people moving around him, running in every direction. He couldn't quite connect what he was seeing to any coherent thought in his mind.

Three booms, each as loud as the grand finale to the New Year's fireworks, rolled through the city and swallowed the panicked voices of the populace.

The woman grabbed Elias' hand and gasped. "Dios."

Elias followed the line of her gaze to one of the hills that surrounded the city centre. Or what had been a hill. Smoke and dust rose into the air, but the buildings and the ground they had occupied were gone.

"Are you gonna..." he stammered. "Are you all right?"

The woman turned to him and blinked, as if she hadn't realised he was there. She dropped his hand, then nodded. Blood seeped out of cuts on her cheek and forehead. There were probably shards of glass lodged in there.

"You should, um," Elias stumbled. "You should have those cuts looked at by a doctor."

The woman slid her hand over her injured cheek. "I think doctors will be busy."

Slowly, he looked around. People were pouring out into the square. Many were crying, screaming, howling in pain. Others were mute.

"Hey, you!" A man in a blue, dust-covered windbreaker pointed at Elias. "Can you help here?"

Elias scrambled towards the man. "What do you want?"

"Hold onto the kid."

The man crouched next to an elderly woman, who was hunched over almost in two. Elias couldn't see her injuries, but the blood dripping onto the ground by her feet said enough. A boy, perhaps three years old, was clinging to her back and using his lungs to their full capacity. Elias gingerly pried the boy off the woman.

"Hey, hey, it's ok," he said. "You and your grandmother will be ok. Is she your grandmother?"

The boy's face was covered in scratches and a bloodstain on his shirt was growing by the second. Elias pushed the fabric aside. Half an inch of glass protruded from the boy's left shoulder. On instinct, Elias moved to pull it out, then caught himself — he had no idea how deep the wound was.

"Mate, what's with the woman?" he asked the stranger in the blue windbreaker.

"Head wound," the man replied. "There is a clinic a couple of blocks down. I'll take them there."

Elias was careful not to jerk the boy's shoulder as he picked him up. "I'll come with you. I'm Elias by the way."

"Johann."

The two blocks to the clinic turned out to be the most frustrating two-block walk in Elias' life. He had a squirming, crying toddler in his arms and nothing he could tell the boy would calm him down. Around them was pandemonium. Every person in the city had poured out on the streets. Hundreds of people seemed to be heading to the same clinic as Elias' little group. Some, like the old woman in Johann's care, were stumbling along, bloody and shell-shocked. Others people simply carried in their arms.

At the front door, a red-faced cleaner was shouting directions. I wish I'd taken Spanish back in high school. From his expression, Elias got the impression Johann knew no more Spanish than he did. They followed the flow of people into the building and down to a broad room lined with rows of plastic chairs, all of which were already full. Johann and Elias had to settle for helping the old woman curl up against the wall by a vending machine.

"It's ok, kiddo," Elias whispered. "They'll fix you up in a sec."

As he watched the nurses make their way through the crowded room, Elias realised this was a blatant lie. A kid with glass sticking out of his shoulder wouldn't be a priority for any medical staff today.

"I need to find my sister," Elias muttered.

Johann offered him a sympathetic wince. "I'm sure she's fine."

Elias shook his head and took out his phone. No reception. No big surprise there. He was in Bolivia in the middle of... He didn't even know what had happened. An earthquake? A massive gas leak? A meteor strike?

He had once heard that in situations like this, an SMS had a better chance of going through than a phone call. It was worth a try, wasn't it?