The Child of Scraps

Chapter 2

Noah was getting worried really fast. Why was everyone panicking? All of the people started rushing towards the entrance, pushing each other aside. She was being forced around, and then she was pushed away from where she was standing. A person was on a collision course with Noah when Dominiko stepped in front of her and endured the assault. The man shrugged off the pain and continued running. Dominiko helped Noah up as the people near the stage were lessening, and there was actually space now to dodge the human obstacles.

Noah looked up at Dominiko with confused eyes. What happened? Why was everyone running towards the entrance of the mall?

Her father understood the child's unspoken questions, and he answered by pointing at spot on the ceiling. Noah looked at where her father was pointing at, and she saw a red circular object attached to the ceiling. What was it...?

She remembered: a fire alarm.

Wait, so there was a fire? Noah looked around and tried to find the source of it. Judging from the direction of the where the people were fleeing from, it was coming from the west. She noticed a silvery trail of smoke (smoke was silver? who knew?) come from the same direction. Good thing that the main entrance was in the east, but... How did a fire start? Wasn't there magical protection, wherever or however it started?

She pulled Dominiko, ready to run to the entrance like the rest, but her father stayed put. Noah looked up at him confused, while Dominiko looked down at her, almost sadly.

"Noah," he spoke slowly, "I need to go somewhere. Please go to the main entrance along with the rest of the people."

What!? Noah shook her head, and she pulled on her father's arm, trying to drag him to the entrance with her. Unfortunately, her weak childlike strength did not budge the man. She looked up into Dominiko's, pleading silently that he'd come with her.

But it did not work. Dominiko ran his hand through Noah's messy hair, hugged her with the other hand, and kissed her gently on the forehead. He grabbed her shoulders and made her look straight into his eyes.

"I will be okay," his lips said.

Noah felt her heart break as she hugged her father again, one last time, and turned around to start running. As she was heading towards the entrance, she turned her head to look at Dominiko, who was running to where the smoke was coming from.

Lord, please keep my father safe.

She made it to the entrance, where the policemen were trying to calm down the crowd. It felt strange though, that there was so much fuss over a fire that was kept in the western part of the mall. The policemen were trying to do their job as good as they could though- by asking the people to leave and go home. Noah wondered if the western entrance, the one actually near the fire, was having a similar situation. The policemen started pushing the people away, trying to get them as far from the mall as possible, since asking them politely wasn't helping, it seemed.

Suddenly, Noah felt a push on her back. She turned around to see an irritated police officer glaring at her. He was saying something that Noah couldn't understand that much - he talked way too fast for her to read his lips properly - but she assumed that he was trying to get her farther from the mall. Noah unwillingly obliged, glancing at the mall every now and then to search for her father. She was quickly immersed in the crowd again, but she kept trying to stay as near as possible to the mall as she could.

They finally stopped a good distance away from the mall,  where it was so hard to see if a person near the mall was any different from the person beside them. Noah was trying to calm down, but she couldn't; she was just worried about her father, hoping that Dominiko would come out already. In fact, how is it that the police hadn't caught him and brought him outside yet?