Aaliyah pressed the heels of her palms against her eyes as Lithos’ and Enzokuhle’s footsteps were vanished in the wailing of the emergency siren. She groaned, staring up at the inferno of the hospital.
One,
Two,
Four stabbing pangs of guilt hit in waves.
Her mind was drifting like the smoke back to that man in the hospital, where Chi had her much too close to flammable materials with vulcan intent. He appeared out of nowhere, as though he’d taken advantage of the CosmoCorps’ teleportation ability. One black, one white entirely; his eyes were reflecting the laser knife in her hand, working it into his own fire. There were lines of script etched into his face, in some language and alphabet Aaliyah didn’t recognize.
“Chi,” he shouted, “this is insane.”
“It’s the beginning of the end.”
“You’ve said that,” he said, his furious expression melting into desperate passion for his cause, “so many times.”
She sneered.
“It never is!”
“I know he’s working against me.”
He recoiled and swallowed. He was sweating, clenching and unclenching his fists, setting and unsetting his jaw.
“And that’s alright,” she feigned a pleasant tone, smiling at him. Then, that smile was gone, “But I know better now.”
“If you know,” the man insisted, “then you also know that it won’t work unless they cooperate!”
“I can handle that hurdle.”
“You don’t have to do this,” he pleaded. “These are innocent people. They don’t–”
She took one step backward, closer still to flammable material. That smile weaved across her face.
“--Wait! Wait!” he shouted throwing his hands out in front of his face, “Just hold on–!”
She sunk the laser knife in, deep. There was a low warble, and around Aaliyah, an electric blue field made itself apparent against the force of the explosion. Chi watched the air around the man shimmer as he was almost blown backward.
And as the explosion arched around her, all at once, the feeling came back to Aaliyah and she gasped.
As though she were walking away, Chi’s use of her own voice echoed in her head over the sirens, “I can handle the hurdles. Let me show you.”
And, that man’s too, still as desperate as before, “Wait just a minute, dammit! Listen to m–”
And they were both gone.
There was a nausea-inducing shudder, then another. She curled where she sat, rested her forehead against her knees, and gripped the sidewalk with all the strength she had left. Her forearms twinged and pulled. Her stomach dropped. Her head spun. Her palms collected glass and ash. She groaned and tapped her feet quickly, at an off beat of each other. She was breathing--
In for five…
Out for five….
In for five…
Out for five….
--in such a way, that it was in for four, out for eight; trying to fight her off for as long as she possibly could; thinking of all the times lately Lithos had talked her down, resorting to the higher-tiered method of their counted breath exercises. All in all, it was for about thirty seconds she sat like that--
Come on, Aaliyah (In for four…).
(...out for eight….) They’re counting on you.
Keep yourself together.
--until her feet stopped tapping.
She ran through her gauntlet of tools: rubbing her unresponsive limbs with shaking palms; wiggling her toes; breathing through lungs that fought her exponentially; watching coils and shapes form and dissolve in the smoke roaring above her. It wasn’t long until she was gasping for air, and the tell-tale sign of pins and needles upwardly serpentining through her from the arches of her feet settled in and left her frozen. With one last shuddering exhale of her own volition, she lost control all at once and fell onto her side most affected. Her eyes fogged a delirious blear over what was just moments ago a furious, fearful focus.
A low warble was taking the sirens as she encouraged herself, urgently.
Come on, Aalie.
Come on.
Move something; anything.
Come on.
Her fingers twitched. A shard of glass against side of her hand twitched with it. She clung to any feeling she had left.
‘Go on, Alpha.’
Come on.
‘Make my day.’
Come on.
Chi tsked, wiggled Aaliyah’s fingers, balled her hands into fists, and opened her eyes. They weren’t focused. They were staring through everything, seeing nothing. She hummed, smiled facetiously at nothing and no one without moving again, and muttered, “Mm, that’s what I thought.”
Nails on a chalkboard.
Chi focused her ears on the fire roaring above them. She angled her head back and stared up at the smoke as it billowed from broken windows in its blockade.
The air in the avenue shimmered in the smoke. It produced two figures.
She sighed, the dizzy disorientation not settling as quickly as she’d gotten used to. She kept her eyes open, half-lidded, trying to steer her expression to existential boredom. She wiped her hands on her uniform shirt to loosen the glass that had frosted them. She held Aaliyah’s hand into her line of sight, and raised an eyebrow at the burns and blood. “Do you have a lock?”
“No,” one of them (Alexander…) said, “not with the smoke.”
Chi sighed again, dropping her hand and lulling her head over to insinuate her brow was raised at them. She stared through them. She bounced her eyes between theirs, and even though theirs were focused in the tablet that projected in the billows of smoke, she knew enough. She smiled, “Well--”
The second figure (Stavros…) shifted between his feet.
“--then, we should be ready for them.”
“HomeBase?” Stavros asked.
“No,” she tsked, still smiling that smile with eyes simultaneously vacant and omniscient. “Southern landing field--”
‘--but you should both already know that.’
Her eyes remained narrowed as they shifted between the two of them.
“Triangulation to the redundancy is delayed due to debris in the atmosphere,” Alexander said. Their eyes remained focused on the content of the projection.
This left Stavros to take the brunt of Chi’s off-kilter smile. Still, he asked, “Are you alright?”
‘You won’t stop me.’
She ignored him.
“Estimated teleport time is five minutes.”
“That’s not good enough,” Chi hissed, the venom taken by the poor state Aaliyah’s vessel was in. Chi’s anger was met with a wave of dizzy disorientation that knocked the ground off its axis under her back. She closed her eyes and groaned, just softly enough to be confident it wasn’t heard.
“It’s beyond the capabilities and limitations of the equipment,” Alexander said, their focus still in the glow of the smoke. “It isn’t safe.”
“Don’t you have emergency programs?” she spat, her smile growing contemptuous around the edges.
“None that I trust, given what wrenches have already been thrown into their core functions.”
Stavros tried to keep his flash of panic for Alexander’s situation from manifesting with just barely enough success. Again, he asked, “Are you–”
She interrupted, “Excuse you?”
“To risk a rushed teleport, picking up smoke and ash and glass,” Alexander said, their quiet voice even, “it is not advised.”
She demanded an explanation nonverbally: with an eyebrow that hung high over impatient eyes that chewed Alexander as they contemplated them.
“What I’m hearing them say,” Stavros said, catching her attention for a fraction of a second, “is that they are providing you with data to make your decision.”
“That’s accurate,” Alexander said.
“Hm,” she hummed, shrugging her shoulders. The street was violently shifting to the left. Her stomach was dropping, her heart racing in her ears. She hummed again, but it was more a groan than anything else.
‘You’ll pay for this, you know.’
There were goosebumps crawling down her arms and legs--
‘I know it was your plan.’
--then a shiver and a shudder down her spine, and another groan from her lips.
‘I know you hurt yourself on purpose, but you won’t stop me.’
“Are you in pain?” Stavros asked.
“Hm?”
“You’re burned badly.”
“Oh,” her eyes were closed, burning against the smoke and ash. “No, I’m not.”
“Is Aaliyah?”
There was a fraction of that smile on half her face. She nodded.
“Estimated time: three minutes.”
Stavros coughed.
“Your vessel needs repairs,” was Alexander.
She was burning black holes through the foundation of everything with her eyes closed. She didn’t react as though she had heard them, but she had.
“Can you,” Stavros took a few steps closer to her, “uh, can you hear me?” He shot Alexander a look.
Alexander shifted their focus to him briefly. They offered a small, scared, reassuring smile at him before diving back into the wide array of applications they had open in the projection.
‘You won’t stop me.’
“I think she’s going into shock,” Stavros said.
“Mm,” she hummed, testing Aaliyah’s hand out. It was shaking, violently. Her nailbeds were turning blue. “I believe,” she said, slowly, “you’re correct.”
Stavros shrugged his pack off and removed his first aid kit. He rummaged through it, quickly, finding the regenerator and rushing to her side.
‘Just a temporary–’
It glowed in the smoke between it and Aaliyah’s burns.
‘–roadblock.’
She sighed through Aaliyah’s nose, “Much better.”
“Okay.”
“One minute,” Alexander called.
“Would you look up, please?”
She did, her eyes half-lidded and shifting between Stavros’. As he healed the burns on Aaliyah’s face, she said, “I’ve got experience, Xi.”
Stavros and Alexander stiffened.
“Enough to remember who I am with all this data,” she cupped his face and smiled that odiously serene smile. “Can you say the same?”
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” Stavros said, raising an eyebrow at her.
She kept her smile, her hand on his face, her eyes chewing on him as Alexander called out, “Teleport connected to the redundancy, initializing transport to the southern landing field.”
She kept them there as the air around them shimmered.
She kept them there as the fire tore through floor after floor above them.
She kept them there as the air around them shimmered, and the lot of them disappeared entirely.