Hai rolled out of bed as his heart beat out of his chest. His feet pressed hard into the uneven wood floor. Ashen-white things danced in the corners of his vision as his hands began to shake. Slightly at first, but quickly mounting to uncontrollable terror.
Silence hung around him like a noose. It strangled all normalcy away in gasps, leaving only whatever was happening as horrific reality.
The smell of nothing wafted through the room as light filtered through thin blue curtains. He sprung to his feet and quickly threw on some raggedy pajama pants, shoved open the door, and rushed out into the hallway.
Something was wrong. He could feel it in his bones. It seeped into his lungs and stole quick breaths away that only served to accelerate his panic.
“Chris! Mom! What’s happening?!”
No answer. Hai stumbled on a patch of wood that had become slick from a leak in the roof, crashed into the wall, and let out a groan of pain. It had been loud enough to wake the neighborhood, but he didn’t hear anything else. Just the sound of his feet against the wood and his breaths coming with escalating frequency.
…It couldn’t be happening. This didn’t happen randomly. There… there were supposed to be signs. Drills. Warnings blaring through the sanctuary for hours before anything even happened. So… it couldn’t be that. No.
It couldn’t be a rupture.
A few steps carried him to his little brother’s door. He tried it as loudly as humanly possible. Locked. The only way that was possible was if Chris was still inside. Hai grit his teeth and took a step back, then charged the door with all his might. The slab of wood groaned in protest, echoed by the bones in his shoulder, but it held fast.
Still no answer.
Hai pushed the pain away and slammed into the door a half-dozen times more before the lock ripped free from the wall in a spray of splinters. He staggered into the small room, hoping to find any trace of his little brother, and he found so much more.
Ash. As white as the pure stuff from a fireplace, piled high on the pillow and leaking out from under the covers. A small pile rests beneath. Not quite child-sized, but close enough. Hai stared at the pile as the newly created draft carried some of it away. Minutes passed in silence. He turned slowly and mechanically began to gather the toys Chris had left out the night before.
A well-loved red action figure with poseable limbs that had been a hand-me-down of a hand-me-down. Three little wooden cars with metal ball-bearings for wheels, all lovingly decorated with permanent markers and watercolor paints. Hai gently set them down in the toy chest in ascending order based on the numbers Chris had carefully written in his best six-year-old handwriting. Eventually he ran out of toys. There hadn’t been many in the first place, but he still felt like there should’ve been more.
Instead of standing up, Hai just knelt there. Ignoring the pile of ash that blew through the room. Once he acknowledged it, he’d have to start asking questions he didn’t want the answers to.
Please just be gone. Don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead.
Staggering to his feet, Hai leaned on the wall and forced himself to leave Chris’ room. He barely noticed the thin layer of dust on all the black-and-white photographs of happier times as he walked by them. The creaking of the old floor echoed through the house like gunfire.
Sounds he’d always taken for granted were so much more obvious when they were gone. From the radio mom always had on to the constant whine of too much electricity coursing into one of her projects. Chris wasn’t exactly the loudest kid, but he didn’t know how to be quiet. He was always laughing about something, or crying about something, or complaining about something, or rambling about whatever new fact he’d learned in school…
Okay, maybe Chris was a pretty loud kid. He even snored like a sleeping monster. The last time Hai ever remembered him being quiet was when he’d caught something horrible, and the doctors weren’t sure if the next time he went to sleep would be his last. Chris hadn’t even been able to cry in pain–he’d whimpered quietly every now and again when prodded, but otherwise… he’d just been quiet.
Hai busted down his mom’s door next. The wind blew ash between his legs that caught on the thick purple carpet, which was already saturated with a thin layer of white. Her window was open to combat the house that stored heat in the summer like an oven. The pile of ash in her bed had already diminished by a significant amount.
All of her knick-knacks were there–completely untouched and unfazed by whatever had happened. Hai took a step back, shook his head, and forced himself forward. The carpet squished against his toes like a mass of fuzzy caterpillars. He shuddered and bit back the discomfort.
If you’re just hiding, mom, I’ll never complain about the carpet again. I’ve learned whatever lesson you’re trying to teach me, so… just… please. He gulped around nothing as pressure mounted in his throat. Please.
Hai picked up and put down a myriad of doodads and whatchamacallits in search of anything tangible. The echo of metal knocking against thick wooden dressers and shelves made him wince the first time, but by the fifteenth, he was slamming them down as hard as possible just to hear something. That was when he realized it.
The wind wasn’t making any noise. Neither was the house, which always settled or creaked on its own every few minutes.
He shoved the closet open and stared at mom’s work clothes. Dresses, suits, and overalls in about equal quantities. He dove in and dug through them looking for some kind of secret entrance as his one last hope, but left empty handed.
I have to be dreaming. Things like this just don’t happen in real life. Someone’s definitely going to show up at the door in a minute and tell me to quiet down.
Thirty minutes passed. Not a single other sound met Hai’s ears. He explored every inch of his small house, looking for any signs that he was being screwed with, but found nothing. All the shoes were still thrown next to the door in a pile. No backpacks or purses were gone. And absolutely nothing was out of place–which just didn’t happen with a hyperactive seven year old in the house.
Eventually, Hai found the key to the garage and made his way outside. The sun beat down on him with the harshness of mid-summer. The kind of time where kids should’ve been playing in their yards, or biking down the big hill they lived on, or chasing a Cosu pilot who was on their way to an assignment. He should’ve heard an ambulance more than a few streets down picking up whichever hopeful overdrew on their Cosu working themselves to the bone for that day. Or even the distant sound of someone mowing their Spire-enhanced lawn for the third time that week.
Stolen story; please report.
It shouldn’t have been quiet. Anything but quiet.
Hai bent down and fiddled with a rusted old padlock that kept the garage door firmly on the ground. The illusion on the thing was beyond his understanding, and when he finally found the slot for the small bronze key, it expanded into a swirling mess of blue particles and metallic filigree. He slid the metal together until it formed an arbitrary pyramid-like shape mom had set, then watched numbly as the lock returned to normal and clicked open.
He lifted the door up with a grunt. The garage was in the same state of disrepair as always–reject inventions and spells scattered on so many tables that there was only a single path to mom’s workbench. She’d insisted everything was inert, but from all the stifled explosions and panicked yelps he’d heard over the years, Hai avoided the ‘inert’ things like the plague.
On the far wall, pinned to a corkboard that had nearly been overtaken by multicoloured sticky notes, was a set of blueprints for something Hai couldn’t make out. A spell was woven into the border of the paper to keep the contents anonymous, but now it was beginning to fray. Parts of it chipped away as more of the Cosu prototype revealed itself, but it was so slow that Hai didn’t bother waiting.
It wasn’t what he was there for anyway. Honestly, he wasn’t sure what he was looking for. Just that mom had spent most of the last three days out in the garage, which usually meant she was doing something important. Her personal projects got done on the living room table where she could watch Chris at the same time.
Something’s gotta be here. Hai ran his fingers over the board, looking for anything that seemed new-ish. Maybe she got teleported away for some reason, and they took Chris with her. It’d explain why I’m stuck here all alone, at least.
Plain white paper peeked out from under a pink-speckled turquoise sticky note. Nothing mom did was plain, so this wasn’t from her. He gently moved the notes above it until he could read the plain black text printed in blocky letters. As he did, Hai’s heart beat faster and faster until all he could hear was his own short breaths and the rush of blood in his ears.
Resident of Morganite Spire Sanctuary #6–There has been a surge of mana through the network that will strike your Sanctuary on the fifteenth of August at 12:03 P.M. Evacuation procedures will begin on the twelfth of August at 12:00 A.M. sharp, and will be a rolling evacuation beginning with those living furthest from the Spire and ending with those nearest to it. When you receive the notice to evacuate, please do not panic. There is more than enough time to safely relocate all of you, and you will be given temporary lodgings until the mana dissipates and it is safe to return to your homes.
–Ambassador Horace Tensgrove
Hai glanced over at the calendar pinned next to the board with wide eyes. A tiny mechanical bug wandered around the square for today’s date. June 5th.
No.
Hai crushed the paper in his hand. He swiveled on his heel and stared at the massive crystalline monument that stuck out of the ground so many miles away. Instead of its normal pink-ish prismatic glow, it was a dull red. The colour of old blood.
It’s not supposed to happen for over a month.
There was only one explanation. The only one he didn’t want to believe. A rupture. The kind of thing you only heard about on television. One where you prayed for any survivors to be found. There never were–only grieving families and friends who knew someone who lived in the once safe embrace of the ruptured Spire.
Hai’s knees went weak. He leaned against the workbench for support, but it couldn’t do anything for the despair that clouded his vision and tightened his throat.
If it really was a rupture, he was the only living thing that remained in Morganite sanctuary 6.
Shrill ringing startled Hai out of his downward spiral. He snapped to the source–a flat modified cell phone with two low-quality Spire crystals embedded where the battery should’ve been. It rang two more times with a sound so horrible that it would’ve been impossible to ignore, and Hai slowly reached for it before it could ring a fourth time.
He lifted it to his ear and swiped up to answer it.
“Mary! What’s happening there? All our readings are going crazy!” A woman said with obvious panic. “We can’t even get a reading! Mary? Marigold! Talk to me!”
Hai swallowed hard. “Mom… Mary can’t talk right now. I think she’s dead. Who’re you?”
The voice stopped. Hai heard shouting in the background, but not from nearly as many people as he’d expected for a Spire response crew. Two, maybe three distinct voices in total.
“Oh.” The woman eventually said in forced monotone. “Then you must be Hyacinth. Do you have any idea what happened? Is your brother okay? Is… is anyone okay?”
“I think everyone’s dead.” Hai said numbly and flicked one of mom’s devices. It blinked to life, then displayed a number so high he didn’t know what to make of it. “Mom’s sensor reads twenty-three thousand ambient mana. And we’re in the outer third. I think I’m going to die soon.”
“Damn it!” The woman hissed. Her voice grew quieter, as if she’d leaned away from the phone. “Ricky! Get on your damn Cosu and sprint over to Mary’s house! And bring enough medical spells to keep the kid alive! Alright, Hai, where are you? Are you still at your house, or did you take your mom’s phone and start wandering?”
“I’m still here.”
“Good. Stay put for as long as you can, and try to find anything that can help with mana poisoning. I’ll stay on the line with you the entire time, so don’t you dare die on me. Got it?”
Hai looked down at his fingers. The tips were already starting to turn ghostly white. “I don’t want to die.”
“You won’t, kid.” The woman assured him. “You don’t know me, but my name’s Cici. I’ve been your mom’s friend since before you were born, and I’m going to make sure you make it out of there alive.”
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It was quiet. The wrong kind of quiet.
Hai slowly flipped a spell canister between his fingers. He couldn’t feel anything through them. The white had spread in thin lines like an overwhelming amount of miniature lightning strikes from his fingertips all the way to his elbows. Wherever they went, nothing followed. Not numbness, but absolutely nothing.
He wiped the oily grime from the inert spell and read the note mom had taped to it. Electric Slash. An extremely common spell that can be extracted from almost any monster with a sharpened horn or claw and an affinity for lightning mana. This particular talon was taken from a Stormbill Stork, so it's not overly powerful or mana efficient. Oh, and it’s completely broken. Probably why they sent it here for repairs.
Priority 9.
“Priority nine.” Hai muttered to himself, then plonked the canister down on the workbench with all the other priority nines, and one priority eight. “I guess that makes sense, since mom probably already finished all the high priority ones.”
His voice sounded wrong. Like he was hearing himself through an old malfunctioning radio. A few years ago someone had come to his school and spoken on the dangers of mana, and the description he’d given of mana poisoning was frighteningly like what Hai was experiencing at that very moment. He’d laughed at the time along with the rest of the class, not quite knowing the horrors the man had spoken about, but now he really wished he hadn’t.
Strong men called out for their mothers during their final moments. When all their senses failed, their bodies rotted from the inside-out, and no containment could save them. He recalled somberly. They couldn’t hear their own voices, so their screams were so loud and piercing that we were all reduced to tears. Death was a mercy. One that I wasn’t strong enough to deliver.
Hai reached for another canister and accidentally knocked it away. He grit his teeth and stared at his fingers, forcing them to move with his will alone, and grabbed the spell with far more effort than the last. The poison was spreading faster. This spell may very well be the last thing he had the strength to pick up.
He moved to wipe away the grime and it shifted–sloughed off like deep snow from a warm roof. In less than a second, the spell canister looked as good as new. A silvery-black chunk of something floated in liquid so clear that it didn’t look like anything. Little bubbles gathered on it as if it were breathing.
If he squinted really hard, Hai could imagine that it was a tooth. Or a mutilated claw. The chunk burbled and swirled in the liquid mana, then shivered and shook like a puddle in an earthquake. An instant later, it formed into a perfect sphere and stopped bubbling. Hai stared at the one usable spell, unsure if he should put it down or throw it as far as possible to avoid accidentally activating it. Instead, his curiosity won over and he flipped it to mom’s hand-written label.
Unnamed chunk of unknown monster. Unreactive to anything I do, and the mana inside has grown so cloudy that I can’t even see the thing anymore. The guy that brought it here insists that it’s a volatile spell ingredient, but all of my tests have shown the opposite. After a few weeks prodding at it in my spare time, I decided to return it to the guy who sent it. It showed up back here a few days later, so apparently it’s mine now. Yay.
Priority 10.
Hai flipped the canister over and stared at the metallic sphere. It definitely didn’t look unreactive, and the liquid was anything but cloudy. For the briefest of moments, he forgot what was happening around him and just let himself be excited. Weird spells were his favorite, even if they ended up being useless, and this one was one of the weirdest he’d ever seen. The bubbles that had clung to the sphere fell away one by one, sinking to the bottom of the liquid where they congregated in a pile instead of forming into one bigger bubble.
Definitely a weird one. Too bad I’ll never get to see what you do.
A tinny voice crackled from mom’s phone. “Hai? You still there? Talk to me, kid.”
Right. Cici. “Sorry, I just got lost in my own thoughts.” Hai said weakly. “I can’t feel anything under my elbows. I don’t think I’m going to last long enough.”
“Don’t say that, kid. Please don’t say that. Ricky’s gonna be there in an hour. You’ve already survived a whole lot longer than anyone’s supposed to, so… hey. I just thought of something, kid. You’re in your mom’s garage, right?”
“Yeah?”
“Good. Gods, I should’ve thought of this sooner!” Cici laughed desperately. “She had a containment suit somewhere in there. If you can find it, you’ll be trading one hell for another, but it might be enough to keep you alive until Ricky gets there.”