Canary in the coal mine

Chapter 1

All fairy tales start the same way. There is a beautiful kingdom, and then the darkness comes. And the most intelligent, beautiful and fearless ones rush into the cage with a lion, cross the ocean, try to conquer the lightning on empyrean ships.
Sophie's history began with a man not even worth a mention. He and, according experience, it was always he, just returned from Geneva. And now he was doing, what he always has done, pulled down her already complicated life. Her friends must have become his friends, her objects have become interesting to him, everything  that was important for her seemed to became vital for him.

But the reason was not in love. It was the fact that he liked to remind Sophie of his existence. He received internal pleasure, because he knew that once he fooled her, that once she was indifferent about him.

Today was one of those days. His friends, who were hers a week ago, now were sitting next to him in the end of the bus. Together they went to an art exhibition, dedicated to a contemporary art. The bus was filled with the sounds of children's coughs, subtle music from the headphones, laughing of the senior students. But Sophie was ready to swear that she heard His breathing. 

Her best friend Vlad was beside her. He was exactly the one who will help you to get rid of a dead body at the worst or will support other crazy ideas. But she didn't tell even Vlad about him, about Victor Rosenthal. Traitor of the first category and scoundrel  number one in the whole world.

Outside the window trees and mountains flashed. Sophie thought that now they existed only for her. Colors and tints were her destiny, everyone else's fate, apparently, was to get Victor's attention. Sophie turned slightly to look at him. And then she caught the sight of his blue eyes. Hated blue eyes, from which hatred in her boiled with unprecedented power.

Ignoring her nonverbal cries, Victor stood up and went straight to Sophie. At the same moment Vlad clutched her hand. He had time to say something unintelligible about masks, looking towards the driver. Before Sophie's mind filled ringing, deafening sound of breaking glass. After that there was a smoke. It was as thick as if it was hanging in the air and absorbed all the glass. It burned the lungs and eyes, leaving no room to move.

Sophie wanted to go forward, to break free. So she bent in half from the suffocating cough and tried to walk. But then someone's strong hand gripped her throat and started to choke her. She had to pull out, to scream, but the grip was so strong that Sophie almost could not move. Besides there was enough shouting so no one could even hear her. Sophie was already thinking to say goodbye to her parents and the creator, when she was pushed with force on cold ground. Fire burned her feet from the force of the blow, but she was not allowed to fall. Someone gripped her hand. And it was Victor.

'Go away,' he cried. Snatching his hand, he did not even look at her or explain her his wish to kill her. He just covered his face with his hands and walked forward.

Her outcry of resentment hovered somewhere in the country of untold words when she saw that Victor run toward the burning bus. He did not try to strangle her, she realized. On the contrary he had just saved her life, not giving her to choke.

Most of all she wanted to follow him, to say that she helped to pull children from an overturned bus, around which the flames danced. But she could not stand up or move, everything slowly went dark before her eyes until the light almost failed. The last, Sophie saw, was her classmate Diana, her blonde hair were scarlet, but she was still alive, in spite of the huge piece of metal sticked out of the her abdomen.

Next thing Sophie had remembered was the heat throughout the body and the cold in the lungs. She tried to get up, but felt the weight of the touch on the shoulder. Above her was Victor, around devices rattled, feeding oxygen into her lungs. They were in the ambulance.