The Remaking

by J. T. O'Connell

  She looked away from him, jittery. And now she saw that Steffen wasn't looking at her. He was squinting out the window as the train slowed toward a tighter turn. She twisted around to look through the window, gripping the armrest tightly.

  There, hung on the side of a building, about as high up as the elevated train, a drop cloth of white canvas hung, still unfurling, as though it had just been unrolled.

  Painted letters of deep red had been splotched across:

  WE CAN REMAKE TOO

  Sela stared at the words as they passed, wondering what they meant. Her uncle's face was a scowl of fury, his eyes glowing red-hot with rage. She had never seen this side of him, couldn't remember ever seeing him this angry.

  A new fear gripped her as the train started into the turn.

  And then the explosions began.

  Chapter 20

  A pressure wave thundered, frosting the windows with cracks, making ears ring, making the whole car ring. Sela blinked in pain, watching through the window as the wave rushed out and knocked people over in the street below.

  All she could hear was the ringing. But she felt the next shock wave in her chest, the thump of a powerful detonation. Red emergency lights flickered on inside the car, and she felt the thud underfoot of the emergency brakes dropping into place.

  Yet the train didn't stop. In fact it gained speed, lurching everyone toward the back. Sela braced herself into her seat. Leon grabbed a second hand rail and held on tight. Steffen had slipped out of his seat onto the floor, was struggling to get back up.

  Never made it.

  The cars in front lurched off the severed tracks and plunged thirty feet down, dragging the rest of the train along. Car after car tipped and fell. The ringing in Sela's ears was pierced with the screech and squeal of metal as the joints between the cars buckled and tore.

  Cars smashed into the pavement and tumbled, some separating from each other, some pulling others along, the tortured joints barely hanging on.

  As Sela's car fell, her stomach flipped, her hands welded to the arm rests, her teeth clenched, her breath held. They fell.

  The car in front of them crumpled into the pavement and ripped away at the joint, just a few feet from Leon. Sela squeezed her eyes shut, feeling the sudden jolt from the front.

  The angle was light enough the car slapped down in the back, and slid, screeching, grinding, howling, sparking, braying. And then it rolled onto the side, Sela's back, and the roll continued onto the roof.

  Sela lost her grip and tumbled, feeling the momentary weightlessness, and then…

  The world winked out.

  "Sela," her name came in a hoarse whisper, followed by a ragged cough. And then, "Sela," again, urgency in the voice.

  She fluttered her eyes open weakly, couldn't make sense of the images. It was dim in… here. The face seemed fuzzy, but that was just her foggy mind. It was Desmond.

  "Are you okay, Sela?" Panic now in his voice.

  "Urgh," she managed to grumble, and nothing else.

  Desmond held her hand, his other palm clutching her cheek, cradling around the side of her head.

  "I'm…" her voice croaked, odd and small in her ringing ears. "I'm okay." It wasn't true. Her left arm hurt, ached like she landed on it. She hoped it wasn't broken, would have to find out later.

  "Can you stand?" he asked, tugging on her hand.

  She wanted nothing more than to drift back to sleep. But this wasn't a bedroom someplace safe. This was a wreck out in some street in Megora.

  "Yeah, hel—" Sela coughed and choked, realizing there was something acrid in the air, not smoke but something. "Help me up."

  Desmond pulled her into a sitting position. Sela was glad she did not discover more injuries. Maybe a few bumps and bruises, but the only things that really hurt were her left arm and her head.

  Her head!

  It ached and throbbed, centered on a point a few inches above her left ear. The pain radiated out in waves with every beat of her heart.

  She must have gone over on that side and smacked into a handrail when the car rolled. Her skull sang with a harmony she loathed. It made her teeth feel like they were vibrating.

  She swallowed back her nausea, and looked around. Numerous people in the car were out cold and others were attempting to revive them or moaning or crying.

  It looked like a fire had started somewhere but a suppression system in the car and doused it. Maybe that's what the sharp scent was.

  The car had come to rest on the side across from Sela's seat, the windows on both sides had been cracked severely. They hadn't shattered, though. Above her, near the seat her uncle had sat in, the window hung from where its frame had twisted away, the frosty panel of shatterproof glass bent out of place.

  "We have to get out of here," Desmond said. She saw blood oozing from a bad cut on his cheekbone, and the beginnings of a black eye forming. "Can you walk?"

  Sela coughed again, "Dunno 'til I try," followed by another racking cough.

  With his help, she stood and surveyed the area again. Her purse was gone, was hanging above her head. The strap had caught in the armrest. Desmond grabbed it down for her and they started forward.

  Leon was awake now, dazed and awake, crawling to tend to his father who was still out cold. Sela couldn't tell how badly either of them had been hurt, or even whether her uncle was still alive. Desmond guided her around them, over to a shaft of sunlight that blazed through the opening.

  The car ahead had pulled apart at the hinges designed to flex as the train moved around turns. Steel half an inch thick had uncurled and let go like tin foil. Desmond climbed through the gap and then turned around to help Sela through.

  She was still groggy, felt like she wanted to throw up. She turned to look at her relatives one last time.

  Leon knelt over his father, his bare, pale chest exposed. He had taken off his shirt, and pressed it against a laceration on his father's neck. Leon stared at her, his face far calmer than it should have been, his eyes like those of a cobra.

  But he just watched as Sela scrambled up and out of the wreck. Desmond helped her down onto the street. They turned around in place to survey the damage and get their bearings.

  They were in a gap between three separate cars. On one of them, a fourth car was tilted upright, leaning against it. The stillness of the air was eerie.

  And then Sela heard the wails of injured people, heard the distant cry of a siren, and heard the clatter of metal falling from somewhere or being kicked out of the way. She heard someone pound a fist against the window of a car, but the wrecked cars surrounded them, and she had no idea which one it came from.

  "C'mon," Desmond said, sweeping one arm up behind Sela. She transferred her purse to her aching arm, tenderly checking to be sure it wasn't broken. Then she draped her right arm over Desmond's shoulder.

  Once they began to stumble around, looking for a way out of the wreckage, Sela realized that Desmond was limping. It wasn't a terrible limp, and he wasn't grimacing any more when he put pressure on it. But Sela slid her arm off his shoulders and then pulled his arm higher onto her own. She would help him along.

  Around the side of one car, they saw a way out. The sirens were getting closer, and Sela noticed a handful of Guides moving in to the wreckage.

  A moment of panic made her legs tremble until she realized they were coming to help the people in the cars. These were just beat Guides, not the special tactics teams that Leon was part of.

  One Guide yelled a question their way, "You okay?"

  Desmond nodded and Sela yelled back they were. The Guide kept moving deeper into the heap and howled, "Well, get somewhere safe! Help will be here soon."

  "We've gotta be out of here by then," Desmond coughed again, not as heavily this time.

  Sela could sense her lungs clearing of the fire-retardant. It didn't suffocate people the same way as it did fire. Just was irritating to breathe.

  Crowds of people stood on the sidewalks gaping at the carnage
scattered and piled in the street. None of them moved to help.

  Why would they? They had been trained for so long that it was the government's job to help people. Wait for the sirens, the professionals. Don't get involved, but take some pictures and video with your card phones…

  She didn't have time to pay attention to that. "Where?" she asked, huffing with the effort. Her head throbbed.

  Desmond pointed to an alley and they began to shuffle that way. "We'll go to..." she could tell he was thinking as he spoke. "We'll go to the Westwood mall. Get cleaned up there."

  Sela nodded, recalling nothing about this area of Megora. "What happened?"

  "Unmakers," Desmond growled through his teeth. "Some of them have been trying to do things like this for a while. Sometimes they succeed."

  "Like this?" Sela had never heard about anything like this before. How could the Agency of Vision suppress something so public?

  "No," he answered. "Never this bad before." He looked over his shoulder for a step. "This is bad, too."

  She could hear the frustration in his voice. He was frustrated that the mission was derailed, literally. He had been working so hard to get Vines into the Conference and now…

  There was no backup plan. Sela had been the only plan, which was why they had invested so much time and effort into it. If there was any other way to get agents into the Conference, they wouldn't have risked sending Desmond into the Tower of Hope to get her a message from her father.

  She grimaced, and felt a tickle against her left eyebrow. Her left arm raged in pain when she raised it to wipe the blood away. It wasn't broken though, and the pain wouldn't stop her.

  "We need to hurry up," Desmond said pulling his arm off her shoulders.

  "Can you walk any faster?" she asked.

  He answered by moving into an awkward jog. She was used to running, and even with a head that felt about three feet thick, she had no trouble at all matching his pace.

  As they were disappearing into the alley, voices cried out behind them, "Hey, stop them!"

  "Leon Wallis gave us up!" Desmond growled, his face contorted with the pain of jogging on a twisted ankle.

  "They wouldn't chase us with all those people needing help, right?" Sela asked, thankful that her legs were fine. Her arm felt heavy and growled with pain every time she clomped into the pavement.

  "What do you think?" Desmond asked bitterly.

  Sela thought for a few seconds, knowing the answer straight off. "We'd better move fast."

  Desmond quickened his pace and began to grunt with each left step. She knew that whatever damage was done to his ankle would be multiplied for every mile they ran.

  There was no choice though. More shouts rang out behind them, closer.

  They ran and ran, taking turns down alleys, trying their best to evade the Guides. One turn through a restaurant and out the back door seemed to have shaken the Guides. They bumped into several people, and now Desmond had a splattering of noodles and sauce down one side.

  It would have been funny…

  They ran, and Desmond's grunt got louder. Even if they evaded those men, every Guide in the area would be looking for them.

  As Desmond's limp grew worse, the chop of helicopter wash echoed off buildings. There were air units on the hunt now. Sela and Desmond took another alley and crossed through into a different district, still a high-class area, though farther from the center of Megora.

  The chopping grew louder, and Sela was worried the Guides would veer to their location. The helicopter emerged from around a building ahead, no more than forty feet up. And then it continued down that street, disappearing around another skyscraper.

  Sela would have breathed a sigh of relief, but she had been holding her breath. Running alongside Desmond's limp was easy. A sinking, gnawing feeling formed a pit in her stomach and sizzled there. She wanted to run flat out, but she couldn't leave Desmond. She had no idea where to go, and… and she could never forgive herself if she did abandon him.

  "We can't make it," he gasped, drawing up short.

  Her shoes squeaked on the smooth marble sidewalk. She turned around and saw Desmond leaning against a wall of polished black and gray stone. Under-lighting near the pavement cast a color shifting glow around him. His legs looked green, shifting to purple, just as the stone near the ground did.

  "We can't give up now," Sela protested taking his arm.

  "Not giving up," Desmond huffed. "I mean we can't… we can't make it to the mall. We have to go somewhere else."

  "Where?" she demanded.

  "I…" he glanced around, sweat shining on his forehead. Sela wiped her own forehead and saw a few streaks of blood on her arm as well.

  "There's not much time," she pleaded.

  "I know," he said angrily. "I…" he closed his eyes and took a deep, smooth breath. "I'm sorry, Sela." He opened his eyes and stared at her, "Don't really have a plan yet."

  Another chopping noise joined the first. More helicopters on the prowl.

  "There has to be a way," Sela stated emphatically. "We can't stay on the open streets much longer."

  "Yeah," Desmond agreed, breathing more regular now. He wasn't out of shape, but the pain was surely overwhelming. "Wait, that's it!" he said, standing upright.

  "What?"

  "Come on!" Desmond said, limping across the street.

  Sela followed, noticing for the first time, people on these streets, staring at them, like they were watching a movie in real life. Sela ignored them and followed Desmond down the block.

  "Up ahead, we should be able to go down to the transportation deck."

  "Get on another train?" Sela asked. That pit in her stomach began to somersault again.

  "The Unmakers wouldn't target the transit everyone uses. They went after the el because it’s for the privileged."

  His limp was bad now, and he couldn't run. Their walk was quick though, feet scraping over pavement now, no tile in this area. No trash either.

  Naturalights shone with fake sunlight. Mirrors reflected honest heat from above. Sela blinked as she accidentally caught a glimpse of the sun one mirror. It left a flickering purple blotch in her eyes.

  Sela huffed a sigh. She wanted to run still. Her legs ached and begged for it. Only her left arm was glad of the respite. Even the headache had become an afterthought. They had to get away, now!

  The chop of the helicopters was distant, and there were no more sirens sounding. Rescue crews were teeming over the collapsed train by now. Sela and Desmond neared the edge of the block. She could see a public square ahead, not a small one.

  As they rounded the corner, her eyes swept over everything. The park was next to the square, and there were vendors selling drinks and sandwiches. There were benches around concrete islands with trees spaced apart.

  In the center of the square, a statue was raised to some dignitary who had died before the beginning of the Remaking he had worked to create. And just a few hundred feet away, there was the entrance in the pavement down to the sub-levels.

  If they could make it… If they could make it…

  Something caught her attention above the square. Sela raised her eyes. There on a massive billboard screen, a video image was playing.

  A few wisps of smoke rose from the wrecked cars that were piled up. The image was jerky, like someone had filmed it on a card phone. And there in the image, Desmond and Sela hobbled away from the wreckage.

  Sela's breath caught in her throat.

  The video was replaced with a decent quality shot of the pair of them, bloody and grimy and bruised and scraped. Beside the video, their names, "Desmond Tine" and…. Sela's real name. Leon had told them…

  "Sela Wallis" read on the billboard, beside her image. Sela Wallis! They knew!

  The billboard admonished anyone who saw them to alert the Guides immediately, said they were armed and dangerous, that they just caused a train wreck, and were loose.

  Sela raged and screamed angrily at the billboard, no words, but jus
t venting her fury.

  It's not true!

  But that didn't matter, and screaming was probably the worst thing she could do. She saw there were at least another dozen screens within view. All of them displayed the same public service announcement.

  All of them read out Sela's name and accused her and Desmond of the Unmaker attack. And as her scream faded across the square, eyes began to turn on them.

  Desmond tugged her forward and they started toward the sub-level entrance. Sela saw more than one person raise a card to his face, calling the Guides, and several of them were already there. Moving to cut them off, handguns raised, voices yelling for them to stop.

  They would have to run.

  The two of them lurched forward. Sela instantly realized that even running would not cut it. She pulled Desmond over to one side where a short concrete wall formed a circle around an island of mulch and trees.

  They crouched down behind it, peeking, watching the Guides form a semi-circle. Two helicopters rounded a corner, roaring into place overhead, tilting to stop their momentum. Guide snipers clutched their rifles and leaned out of the cabins, relying on their harnesses to keep them from falling.

  Only a few seconds later, a van rushed up and a tactical team poured out. They were geared up for war, heavy vests and thick helmets with face masks. Some had massive riot shields. Others had rifles, already trained, even as they rushed to take over the circle.

  The Guides moved back to keep civilians away, to move them out of the line of fire. All the while, the tactical team moved closer, only a hundred feet away or so. There was still another two hundred feet to the sub-level entrance, on a diagonal past the Guides

  The gravel bit into Sela's leg as she sat back down. She looked at Desmond and saw a hint of despair in his eyes. Her stomach roiled frustration and her limbs trembled with adrenalin.

  "I'm…" Desmond choked on his words, tears coming to his eyes. "I'm sorry I got you into this, Sela."

  She felt her bottom lip quiver, and wanted to tell him that it was okay. That she forgave him. She didn't want to admit that this was the end, though. It can't be.