First Hour - Thirteenth Floor
Luna opened her eyes before the pain arrived.
Her hand went to the center of her chest. Not fast. Not panicked. The way a person reaches for a glass on a bedside table without needing to look.
The pain struck anyway.
She took it without sitting up. One breath in. One breath held. One hand flat over the sternum until the pressure passed through her and left only a fine tremor in the fingers. Too quick. Too clean. Her mouth tightened at that.
On the coffee table, three books lay open under paperweights. Astronomical charts. A field guide with half the animal names crossed out in pencil. A cracked little volume whose alphabet kept refusing to look like Latin when the eye stayed on it too long. Red thread crossed the wall map in four directions, tied around pins pressed into places no tourist would have marked.
The suitcase beside the bed had not been closed.
Luna crossed the room barefoot, avoiding two floorboards that creaked. The apartment was dark except for the black moon in the window and the emergency light from the hall bleeding under the front door. Sirens rose from the street. Then screams. Then a sound from somewhere above, something large striking concrete and dragging claws across it until dust sifted from the ceiling.
She did not look up at that.
The glass showed her reflection, pale and composed, and beyond it the city folding into wrong shapes. The trees behind the building were taller than they had been an hour ago. Black specks drifted past the window and stuck to the outside of the pane like soot.
A winged shape swept between her and the moon.
Luna stopped.
For one heartbeat the mask slipped. Her breathing changed. Her fingers found the small mark cut into the wooden frame beside the window, a shallow curve and three short lines that could have been decoration if anyone had ever decorated a window there. Her nail settled into the groove. The skin around her eyes tightened.
The shape passed close enough for one red eye to catch the room.
It did not strike the glass.
It kept going.
Luna stayed still until the air stopped shivering. Then she shut the first book. Marked the page before closing it. Shut the second. Not the third. The third she turned facedown, as if the open page had become impolite.
From below came a scream.
Not from the street. Not through the window. Below.
Luna's head turned toward the floor.
Another sound followed it, smaller. A child trying to say a word through a throat that had forgotten how. Luna looked at the intercom mounted beside the front door. Then at the ceiling. Then down again, through concrete and tile and whatever waited between floors.
Her hand reached the handset.
The building groaned.
She lifted the receiver and held it beside her cheek without pressing a button. Her thumb hovered over one number. Stayed there. The black ash tapped softly against the glass behind her. Tap. Tap. Tap.
The child below made no third sound.
Luna closed her eyes.
When she opened them, the thumb had not moved.
Not yet.
She set the receiver back in its cradle carefully enough that it made no click.
The hall outside stayed quiet. Too quiet, with the rest of the building breaking itself open above and below her.
The suitcase remained open. The last book remained facedown. The mark on the window frame had left a thin crescent pressed into the pad of her finger.
Luna looked toward the floor one more time. Then she set the marked finger on the cover of the facedown book and held it there.
First Hour - Twelfth Floor
Alana knew all the kinds of fighting.
Thunder-fights were loud and fast and over when one door slammed. Ice-fights were worse because nobody shouted and the apartment got cold even when the windows were closed. Earthquake-fights were the worst. Earthquake-fights made the walls listen.
Tonight was an earthquake-fight.
She stayed under the princess comforter with Mr. Whiskers pressed against her mouth so he could hear the things she was not allowed to say. One of his ears was bald from too much love. The other still had fur. Alana rubbed the bald one because he liked that better, even if stuffed rabbits were not supposed to pick favorites.
In the living room, Daddy said her name in the voice that meant not now. Mommy said something back in the voice that meant you never. A chair scraped. Something small hit the floor.
"They're not fighting about us," Alana whispered into Mr. Whiskers. That was what Mommy said after. Always after. "They're fighting near us."
Mr. Whiskers did not look convinced.
The clock on her nightstand blinked 00:05.
The fight stopped.
That was wrong.
Silence came first. Then Daddy screamed.
Alana sat up so fast the comforter slid to the floor. Daddy had thunder in his voice when he was angry, but this was not thunder. This was the sound Tommy made at school when his arm bent the wrong way on the playground, only grown too big for a body.
Mommy screamed next.
Alana took Mr. Whiskers with her. Her feet forgot slippers. The hallway tiles were cold enough to bite. A black dust had gathered by the balcony door, and for one stupid second she thought Mommy would be angry about the mess.
The living room smelled like the bathroom-cleaner day.
She had mixed blue cleaner with the yellow one because blue and yellow made green in art class. Mommy had opened all the windows and cried afterward, which had scared Alana more than the yelling. Dangerous, Mommy had said. Some things look harmless until they touch.
Mommy was on the floor now. Daddy too.
Their skin had bubbles.
Not soap bubbles. Not bath bubbles. Gray little balloons swelling under the skin of Daddy's arms, Mommy's throat, Mommy's cheek. One opened with a soft wet pop. Smoke breathed out of it and touched the coffee table.
The table sagged.
Alana stared because tables did not sag. Wood did not melt. The corner where she did puzzles folded down like warm chocolate and dripped onto the rug.
"Mommy?"
Mommy turned her head. Her eyes found Alana, and everything in them became worse.
"Run," Mommy said.
Alana could not. Running was for after you knew where away was. The living room was home. The hallway was home. The door with the drawing of a crooked sun taped beside it was home. There was nowhere to run inside home.
Daddy tried to push himself up. A bubble opened along his wrist and gray breath spilled out. It touched the floorboards. They blackened, softened, came apart in strips.
"Where does it hurt?" Alana asked.
Because that was the rule. If she fell, Mommy asked where. If she bumped her head, Daddy asked where. There was always a where. A knee. An elbow. A finger. A place to kiss. A place to put ice.
Mommy made a sound that was not an answer.
The gray breath crawled across the rug toward Alana's bare feet.
Mr. Whiskers slipped from her hands.
"No."
He landed ear-first in the smoke. The bald ear went dark. The fur curled. One button eye softened and slid sideways until his face stopped being his face.
Alana reached for him and did not reach far enough.
The smoke touched her fingers.
It felt warm.
Not burning. Warm like bathwater before it got too cold. Something opened in her chest, round and frightened, and the air around her thickened. The smoke bent away. It pressed close, close enough to fog the space before her nose, then slid around her as if she were a cup turned upside down in water.
For one second it smelled like the kitchen upstairs when someone burned sweet spices in a pan.
Alana looked at her hand.
Whole.
Mr. Whiskers was not whole.
Alana stepped toward him.
The warm round thing in the air thinned. Smoke licked closer to her toes. She stopped being brave so fast it hurt, and the air snapped tight again.
"It'll pass," she whispered.
That was another rule. Shots passed. Thunder passed. Earthquake-fights passed, eventually, and then Mommy made tea and Daddy fixed whatever he had broken and everyone pretended the walls had not heard.
"It'll pass. It'll pass. It'll pass."
The gray bubbles kept opening. The photos on the wall began to run. Christmas bent first, the tree turning into green lines. The zoo picture followed, Mommy's ice cream stretching down the frame. Her birthday cake became a brown stain behind the glass.
Daddy reached toward her. His fingers stopped halfway.
Mommy reached too.
The smoke between them grew thicker.
Alana stood in the round place that would not let the smoke touch her. Her feet stayed on clean tile while the room around them softened and sagged and forgot its corners. She tried to scream and got nothing. Not even a little sound.
Mommy's mouth moved once.
My love, maybe.
Or run.
Or sorry.
The room made a wet settling noise.
After that there was only the smoke breathing against the invisible curve around Alana, and the black moon outside the balcony glass, and Mr. Whiskers on the floor with one button eye gone.
Alana sat down inside the round place.
The smoke pressed its face against nothing while she pulled what was left of Mr. Whiskers into her lap. The bald ear had survived better than the other one. She smoothed it with two fingers, careful and careful and careful, because that was the ear he liked best.