"One of the most private things in the world is an egg before it is broken."
Shattered
by Avery
It was the vibration that woke Napoleon Solo, a barely perceptible pulsing that hummed along the floorboards of their seedy hotel room, and rattled the fillings in his teeth. He lay in the darkness, trying to identify the source of the disturbance. A truck passing by? Unlikely, in this poor Chilean village where hardly anybody owned a car, and the main thoroughfare was little more than a dirt road used by the occasional hiker on holiday, and locals herding their llamas to market in nearby Patahueque.
He glanced over at his partner of just over a month. Illya Kuryakin was snoring softly, his legs entangled in the blankets, a contented smile turning up the corners of his lips.
Looks like he hasn't got a care in the world, Napoleon thought with a touch of envy. Amazing how he can sleep like that in the middle of a mission. The guy would probably snooze through The Second Coming, celestial trumpets notwithstanding. Now Roger, he was –
Was.
Napoleon felt a fresh stab of pain. His old partner had been a restless sleeper. On the nights before a big mission, he often woke to find the avuncular Brit pacing the floor, smoking one of those god-awful cigars of his, a wolf anticipating the upcoming hunt. "Gotta get the adrenaline cranked up, old boy! I can sleep all I want when I'm dead."
Sleep well, old friend.
The sound faded into silence. Napoleon rolled over, tugging the coarse woolen blanket up to his chin and trying not to inhale the aroma of llama excrement and old sweat. He closed his eyes.
And opened them again.
The vibration was back, stronger now, rattling the grease-smeared windowpane and setting off the alarm clock on the nightstand. A rumble began somewhere beneath the floorboards, a deep, ominous growl, rising in pitch, like a freight train approaching the station at high speed. The curtain on the window swayed wildly, although there was no wind.
What the hell –?
A chunk of plaster calved away from the ceiling, crashing to the floor. The walls wavered and cracked; the bed heaved up beneath him. In the room next door, someone screamed.
Earthquake! He flung himself out of bed. "Illya, wake up!"
But the Russian was already on his feet, all traces of sleep gone from his eyes. "Outside!" They grabbed shoes and communicators, and stumbled into the hallway.
They had gone only a few steps when the electricity winked out, plunging the building into darkness. People began screaming all around them, crying out to one another in panic and confusion. As the guests stumbled about blindly, the trunk of a chinchona tree crashed through the roof of the hotel, exposing a jagged slash of sky. It continued its flight, sailing over the balcony and coming to rest in a tangle of roots atop the service desk.
A young mother stood paralyzed in a patch of moonlight, clutching a howling infant to her breast. The whites of her terrified eyes stood out like beacons in the darkness. Illya seized her by the arm and propelled her down the staircase as the floor tilted beneath them. "Napoleon!"
"Right behind you!" The senior agent shoved his way down the hall, herding the panicked guests toward the staircase. "Go! Go!" He was halfway down the stairs when he heard the cry.
"¡Ay Dios, ayúdame!"
An old woman had taken refuge inside the bathroom at the end of the hall. Now a portion of the floor had caved in, leaving her dangling between floors. Her bony arms trembled with the effort to hold on, but her strength was ebbing fast. Napoleon knew he had only seconds in which to act. He fought his way back up the stairs, slipping and sliding against the erupting floorboards. "Give me your hands!"
Her fingers began to slip; her eyes widened in terror.
"¡Manos! ¡Sus manos!"
A piece of the ceiling came crashing down, shattering the commode. Filthy water spewed from the destroyed toilet. The old woman screamed, and threw out her arms.
Napoleon pulled her to safety as the rest of the bathroom ceiling fell in. He tossed the woman over his shoulder in a fireman's carry – no time to spare for dignity – and bolted down the swaying staircase. They made it to the street as the building's structural supports gave way, collapsing in a billowing cloud of dust.
That was too close!
He carried the woman to what he hoped was a safe distance from falling debris, and set her down upon the tumbled remains of a stone wall. She clutched at his hands, kissing his fingers one by one, sobbing her gratitude in a rapidfire patois of Spanish and the local Quechuan dialect.
"Sí, sí, de nada." Napoleon extricated his fingers as gently as possible, and straightened, looking around for his partner. He gasped as the enormity of the devastation hit home.
The village had been leveled, not a single structure left standing. People stood in the street, most still in their nightclothes, staring in stunned disbelief at the mounds of rubble that had once been their homes. A cloud of dust hung over the town, obliterating the stars.
Jesus.
It was like stepping into a war zone, or the seventh circle of Dante's Hell. He assembled his communicator with fingers that trembled from the excess of adrenaline coursing through his system. "Open Channel D, overseas, Code Nine scramble."
"Emergency Services. Nature of the emergency?"
"Solo here. There's been a massive earthquake in the Araucania region of eastern Chile. The town of San Refugio has been completely destroyed. Help is urgently needed."
"UNCLE's geological branch notified us of the spike in their readings ten minutes ago –" The sound of papers being shuffled. "– 8.6 on the Richter. The epicenter was approximately one-hundred-twenty miles northwest of you – the coastal city of Valdivia. Casualties?"
Napoleon took a deep breath."Too early to say, but the death toll is likely to be high. God only knows how many people are trapped under the rubble –"
"Understood. Your UNCLE will notify the appropriate authorities." A pause. "Mr. Solo?"
"Yes?"
"Take care of yourself."
He stowed his communicator, and took a moment to slip on his shoes, grateful that he'd thought to grab them on the way out of the hotel. He turned around in a circle, looking for his partner, but Illya was nowhere to be seen.
The ground rumbled again; it felt like a convention of jackhammers under Napoleon's feet. He braced himself against the stone wall until it had passed. Small fires began to break out where candles and cook fires had been left unattended, the smoke and flickering flames adding to the sense of unreality.
A knot of men had gathered around the ruined shell of the local church, and were using makeshift levers to shift aside some of the larger chunks of debris. Napoleon scanned the faces in the group, but Illya's was not among them. A chill began to worry its way up his spine.
He watched them drag the parish priest out of the rubble, his black cassock covered in a layer of luminous white dust. It made him look vaguely angelic. The man embraced his rescuers, tears running down his filthy cheeks as he blessed them over and over.
Where the devil is Illya?
Napoleon spied the young mother Illya had rescued, sitting on a cinder block that had somehow ended up in the middle of the dirt road. She sobbed hysterically as a group of local women tried to comfort her.
"Perdóneme, señora. ¿Dónde está el hombre –?" He touched his hair. "¿– pelo rubio?"
She clutched the infant to her breast, rocking it back and forth, back and forth. The child howled, inconsolable.
Napoleon tried again."¿Un hombre con pelo rubio?"
She blinked, and pointed toward what was left of the hotel.
The place looked like a bomb had hit it. The walls of the structure had toppled in upon themselves, slicing through the wooden support beams in their descent. Boulders, thrown down the mountain by the force of the quake, had landed in the center of what had been the hotel lobby, flattening the roof into the floor. Posada de San Refugio read the sign dangling over the fractured remains of the doorjamb.
Rescuers dug through the debris, hauling aside boulders and crumbled sections of wall in a desperate search for survivors. Napoleon's eyes scoured the crowd, but there was no sign of his partner." ¿Por favor, han visto un hombre con pelo rubio?"
"¡Sí, sí!" they nodded in unison. "¡Se fue de allí!"
"He went – inside the hotel? In there?"
The men nodded again. One of them pointed to a narrow crevice between two beams. "Adentro."
"Damn." Napoleon borrowed a flashlight from one of the workers and, fighting down a surge of panic, crawled in after his partner.
It was dark, unrelentingly dark and bitterly cold. There was barely room for his shoulders inside the narrow space, although he supposed Illya's slender frame would have had less trouble. Just like spelunking the old Tory Cave back home, he told himself as he crawled forward on his belly.
He pulled himself over sections of wall and mounds of shattered stone, thrusting the flashlight from side to side in the darkness. He passed the carcass of a sofa, its cottony stuffing spread like dandelion spores across the eerie landscape. Beside it lay a metal table, its mangled legs twisted into a parody of a Calder mobile. Underneath the table, he encountered the first of several bodies – the desk clerk who had checked them into their room hours earlier. He closed the vacant, staring eyes and moved on.
Another tremor. Gravel and dust rained down on his head, and he froze, hardly daring to breathe. After several tense seconds, the flow of dirt and scree slowed to a trickle and he crawled on.
Sounds.Digging?
"Illya?"
"Here!"
Bare chested, his pajama bottoms plastered in mud above a pair of vintage cowboy boots, Illya's muscles bulged as he struggled to move a fallen section of water pipe. His body was covered in a thin sheen of sweat despite the frigid temperature.
Napoleon breathed a sigh of relief. "Illya, thank –!"
Then he saw the tiny body, half-buried beneath the debris.
Oh, sweet Jesus, not a child!
She was young, perhaps five or six. A little slip of a thing, his Aunt Amy would have said. She wore a pale pink dress, stained now with dirt and blood.
"Is she –?"
"Unconscious, but there is a pulse."
There was still a chance! Napoleon fell to his knees beside his partner, and began to dig.
"Her name is Inez."
He frowned. "How do you –?" The pieces fell into place. "The woman with the baby – her mother?"
Illya nodded. "They became separated when the lights went out."
Another series of aftershocks rolled through, and the ground beneath them shifted. Napoleon glanced up, mapping potential routes out of the wreckage.
They worked in frantic silence, pushing aside the mounds of dirt and rock covering the lower half of Inez's body. The sounds of their digging melded with the distant rumble of the earth, and the creaking of the debris as it shifted around them.
More rumbling. A cloud of sand and grit rained down upon them, fouling the air. "You do realize this place is about to come down on our heads?" Napoleon remarked a bit too casually. Another aftershock rolled through, emphasizing the point.
Illya spared their surroundings a brief, worried glance. "Hurry."
"Me duele...Mama...?"
The child stared up at them, her dark eyes wide. Napoleon's heart leapt with joy.
Illya smiled reassuringly. "Lie still, little one," he murmured in Spanish. "Do not move."
"Me duele...mi pierna." She began to cry.
"Your leg hurts?"
"Sí."
He brushed a lock of long black hair away from her face. "Let us see if we can help your leg to stop hurting, yes? My name is Illya, and this is my friend, Napoleon."
"Quiero ir a casa."
"Shh. Lie still now."
The men redoubled their efforts as the structure around them creaked and groaned. Illya was like a man possessed, shoving aside boulders and splintered beams, clawing his way through the mud and gravel until his fingers bled. They moved aside the last of the debris, and lifted the metal pipe trapping Inez's tiny form. It had absorbed the weight of the fallen rock, likely saving her life.
"Leg looks broken," Napoleon said. "We'll need to splint it before we can move her."
Illya nodded, and rummaged through the surrounding debris for a flat board on which to lay the limb. Napoleon stripped off his pajama top, and tore the fabric into strips to use as bandages. They worked quickly, urgently, securing the leg to the board.
When they had the leg immobilized, they lifted the child between them, and snaked their way back through the rubble. The debris had shifted, the weight above slowly crushing the remaining supports, which made portions of the passageway narrower than before. Napoleon fought down a wave of claustrophobic panic – the thought of being buried alive was not a pleasant one.
Voices! The flicker of torchlight.
Hands reached down to lift the little girl from the rubble. She was passed into the waiting arms of her mother. More hands pulled the men through the narrow opening.
The blast of fresh, cold air was intoxicating after their time in the dust-filled darkness. Napoleon's exhausted mind barely registered the applause, or the grateful cries of ¡Gracias a Dios! that sprang up as they were led to safety. Someone pressed a cup of wine into his hands, and he drank greedily.
He glanced over at his partner. Illya sat propped against a water trough, head resting on his arms. He was covered in silt and ash, and his blond hair stood up at all angles, plastered into wild, muddy peaks. His chest heaved and his shoulders shook, almost as though he was –
Crying?
A single tear traced a path down Illya's grimy cheek. He wiped it away with the back of his hand.
Napoleon tried to wrap his mind around the image, and failed. Emotional displays simply were not in Illya's nature, and yet - He slid closer to his partner; the Russian tensed, sensing his presence.
"Everything okay?"
Illya turned his face away, but not before Napoleon caught the rigid jut of his jaw. "I am fine, Napoleon. Do not concern yourself."
"I'm your partner. It's my job to worry."
"There is no need."
"Could have fooled me. If I didn't know any better, I'd swear you looked upset."
A shrug of disinterest.
Napoleon settled back against the water trough, legs stretched out before him. His body language said he was prepared to wait for as long as it took.
Illya sighed. "You are not going to let it alone, are you?"
"Not a chance."
"Stubborn American."
"So I'm told."
Illya drew his knees up to his chest, wrapped his arms around them. Napoleon watched his breathing slow, saw the moment when the blue eyes lost their wariness, opening like windows onto his soul. "Have you ever wished you could go back in time?"
"Go back in time? I'm not sure I –?"
"To save someone who died."
Napoleon thought instantly of his late wife, gone now for more years than they had been married. And Roger, whose death had arrived unexpectedly in a hail of THRUSH bullets. "Every day," he answered honestly.
Illya sat back, considering this.
While Napoleon waited, he watched a group of women heat water for yerba mate over an open fire. People wandered the street, searching for family members, neighbors, friends. A dog shivered in the nearby bushes.
Illya's voice, when he began to speak, was so soft that Napoleon had to strain to make out the words. "When my mother died, I was sent to the State-run orphanage at Olgino. Do you know of it?"
Napoleon shook his head.
"Comrade Stalin set the place aside for the disgraced children of dissidents. The children there were assigned to labor crews as part of their reeducation, and to help in the War effort. I was sent to the munitions factory in the city, to build bombs for the Soviet Army to use against the Germans."
"Children building bombs?" Napoleon was horrified. "How old were you?"
"Seven."
"Christ."
"Olgino was a cruel place. It turned human beings against one another. Children fought for food, for clothes, for a place to sleep. Mostly, the weak ones just died. But there was one girl – Roksana." He said it like a sigh. "She was eleven, older than the other children, and kinder. Sometimes she shared her bread with me. Once she stole a pair of mittens for me to wear."
Illya scrubbed at his dirt-crusted pajamas, as though he could somehow rub them clean again. "Building a bomb is not for the faint of heart. It is delicate work. It requires a steady hand. That is why they used the children of dissidents to build them. No one would notice if we died." His hands stilled. "Someone on her crew got careless. Perhaps they were tired – we were all so tired. There was an explosion – "
Napoleon heard the pain in the words, made more excruciating by Illya's precise pronunciation of them.
"I was working in another part of the factory that morning. We heard the explosion, saw the flames shoot up. We knew what had happened. The bomb took out the entire north wing of the factory. Roksana -" He sighed. "Nothing was left."
There were no words. Napoleon's heart ached for the child Illya had been.
"I used to wonder – did she know? Was she frightened? Did she feel pain? Unanswerable questions, of course. Still –" Illya shrugged and fell silent.
They sat side by side, watching the sky grow light. As the sun rose over the mountains to the east, Napoleon felt a strange peace settle over him, as though in the sharing, some of his own grief had eased. He hoped that Illya had found a bit of peace as well.
Sudden cheers erupted at the far end of the village. "¡Sobrevivientes!¡Sobrevivientes!" Survivors. Someone had heard rapping sounds coming from inside the rubble of a destroyed home. People came running from all directions.
Napoleon heaved his body up off the cold ground, and sprinted toward the excited knot of rescuers. He heard Illya's footfalls on the gravel a few paces behind him.
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