Wildfire

Chapter 48 (Part I)

48. Defeat (Part I)

My ears were ringing. My vision blurred as I stared up at the ceiling, trying vainly to comprehend what had just happened.

I must have blacked out, I decided after a long moment. I was lying on the ground, my back arched at an uncomfortable angle across a mound of debris and my right shoulder was buried under a slab of concrete. I knew it should have hurt — my whole body should have hurt — but all I felt was...

Hunger.

It burned in in my veins, so strong it overrode everything else.

Slowly, sound began to trickle back through my consciousness. I could hear screaming. Loud, violent screams of people in pain, people in the throes of terror. A part of me knew I should have been freaked out or terrorized myself, but I found the noise soothing.

I'm alive, my heart pounded. A-live. A-live. A-live.

"The air," I heard someone moan from close by. "They've poisoned the air..."

I squinted into the atmosphere and sure enough, my vision began to focus on the fine mist descending from the ceiling. It was like a thin layer of fog lingering in the air, shimmering beneath the dull lighting in a way only silver could.

I understood, then. The bomb hadn't been designed to kill everyone inside — it was too risky, with so many vigilantes running around. Any number of them could have been killed in the blast. No, the bomb had been designed to release the argentiserum into the atmosphere, slowly poisoning everyone inside.

The panic seemed to escalate once people became aware of this fact. Dark figures darted in an out of my vision, people running everywhere, helping the injured, pulling themselves out from beneath the debris. Slowly, it began to occur to me that I should move too.

It took me several tries to free my shoulder and I forced myself not to look at the blood already staining my hoodie. When I got out of here, I could inspect my injuries. The pain was just a dull throb, a mild annoyance compared to the harsh sting of hunger that continued to attack my gut.

I would have done anything for an injection of Incoendium in that moment.

Somehow, I managed to climb to my feet and I found myself surveying the damage for the first time. I was somewhere on the second floor now, having fallen two floors with huge clump of the ceiling. The entire ground floor was demolished, like an earthquake had hit, and the surface was sprinkled with what looked like tiny, silvery flakes of snow.

Bodies were scattered around the sides, some of them moving... some of them not. Slabs of concrete and pillars had collapsed on different floors, making the whole place unstable, and even as I watched another large piece of debris fell from what was left of the top floor. I heard a shriek, following by a low moan.

I should have flinched. I should have at least felt scared — but I didn't.

I felt calm — starving, but calm.

Alert.

When the first gunshot rang out, a sudden silence seemed to descend upon the arena. And then, as suddenly as it fell, the whole place erupted in chaos. Snatches of information reached my ears as I climbed over rubble and injured bodies, words breaking through the screams and gunshots, and I started to piece together what was going on.

"... guns in the hallways..."

"... surrounded..."

"... barred the exits..."