The Fire Shadow

PROLOGUE: THE END

It takes him almost fifteen minutes to find her.

The gashes of angry red covering all of her right arm are the less serious of her injuries when he finds her half-trapped under a mountain of rubble and dirt. Her eyelids are fluttering, a physical reaction of her brain fighting to stay conscious as he unearths her battered body as quickly as he can. Her mouth opens as if to cry out, but no noise comes from her throat —it makes his stomach constrict because out of every possible signal of bad things happening, Yuki not being able to raise her usually raucous voice is the most unnerving one. He tries not to look at the way the blood slowly soaks her white hair, tainting it a deep crimson.

"Yuki," he murmurs, when he catches her eyes shutting close. "Yuki, stay with me."

She doesn't react to his words, not even when he slaps her cheeks softly.

"Damnit."

His earpiece is still ringing with a static noise, so there's no way he can contact Kotori or Chinatsu to come to his aid. He pushes against the enormous block of stone crushing her left leg and swipes her in his arms with a wince—the explosion had reached him too, even though he was a good kilometer away when the building went up flying.

"Yuki," he repeats. "Yuki, come on."

He keeps on repeating her name as he advances through the ruins of what just a few minutes ago was the Ministry of Justice & Security. She's heavy on his arms, and he's sure there's something broken somewhere inside his chest cavity by the way it hurts every time he breathes in. It's eerily quiet, which doesn't make any sense taking into consideration that the base of operations of one of the most important government departments was just blown up. There are voices asking for help, and people running all around him, desperate, crying out. But Circle One of New Tokyo is always much louder, so loud one sometimes is not able to listen to their own voice. It's preoccupying that the loudest noise he can hear is the crackling coming from his earpiece.

It's nighttime, and when Yuki had entered the building forty-five minutes ago, the blinding neon lights of the city had been illuminating everything as usual. Now, as he carries Yuki out of the center of the explosion as far as he can, Taiga notices, perhaps a bit too late, that all the lights have gone out. At the beginning his brain discarded the information immediately as a result of the explosion, but now he's not so sure.

The shrill city alarms haven't gone off, either.

His eyes sting from the smoke and dust in the air, but he knows better than to try to rub them. This is something he has learned from Yuki: never rub your eyes when they sting, because they sting twofold. He blinks instead and tries to run faster, keeping his head low and ignoring the pleading cries of those trapped under the rubble. He needs to get out of the perimeter as soon as possible.

The static noise on his earpiece stops suddenly, and he stops with it.

"...ga," the voice comes through it, shrill and distorted, but clearly recognizable for him. "Tai... can... ear me..."

The voice fades, but comes back stronger in a couple of seconds. Taiga, despite himself, smirks. That's why he didn't throw his earpiece away, even though it seemed obvious it was broken during the explosion: if there is someone who can fix anything electronic when being kilometers away from the actual object, that is Kotori.

"Taiga," she repeats, and her voice comes through loud and clear. "Taiga, can you hear me?"

"Kotori," he says, the words rasping his throat as they come out. "I can hear you."

"Good," she says, and although she sounds as calm as always, he knows her enough to notice the underlying edge to her voice. "Inform me."

"The Ministry of Security went boom," he says, as he starts walking again. "I found Yuki. She's alive, but she's out. She's badly injured. I don't know how much more—"