Tadashi couldn't see anything through the noxious clouds of black, acrid smoke filling the convention hall, nothing except of the red glare of the fire eating through the walls and floor. He felt the structure groan beneath his feet. Soon the building would collapse.
"Professor Callaghan, cough, where are you?" he hacked as he breathed in the poisonous air. The tears from his watery eyes took away even more of his waning sight. He tore off his jacket and held it against his mouth in an effort to breathe better.
Where is he? he thought. Where am I? He had lost his way the moment he left Hiro on the steps of the building. Hiro. He was probably worried sick about him. Hiro, please, whatever you do, do not follow me in here.
Something clattered to his left and he stumbled towards it. He could see the remnants of the stage where just hours ago Hiro had revealed his microbots. He'd been so proud to see his little brother demonstrate his technical genius. And when Callaghan had given Hiro the acceptance letter, Tadashi felt as though he would burst. He couldn't imagine how Hiro must have felt.
He saw movement beside the stage. A person.
"Professor!" he called out. Callaghan turned to look at him, but his face was not one of relief. Gone was the smile that he always gave Tadashi in class or when they passed each other in halls. There was only a blank look of calmness, his mouth a straight line. On his head was Hiro's transmitter.
Tadashi froze and gaped. "Professor?"
"You shouldn't have come here Tadashi," Callaghan muttered. With a flourish if his hand, thousands upon thousands of microbots swarmed across the floor to surround him, encasing him in a circular shell.
"Professor, what are you doing?" Tadashi yelled. He bashed his hand against the wall of bots but they didn't lose their hold. Hiro built them too well.
A loud crack signaled the roof collapsing and Tadashi cried out in pain as a heavy beam pinned him to the ground, crushing his legs. The pain seared his brain and he choked on his screams. "Professor, please. Help me," he begged. But Callaghan's shell didn't crack.
Oh God, I'm gonna die. Tadashi began to sob as the realization sunk in. "Hiro, I'm sorry," he blubbered as more debris fell from the ceiling and the flames grew larger. His organs were cooking in his own skin.
Suddenly, he thought he felt a hand on him.
Then everything turned bright.
…
The explosion had rocked the entire San Fransokyo campus; everyone felt the shockwave as the convention center erupted in a red fireball that shot into the sky.
It was morning before the fire crews had the blaze under control. The scene was past hectic. It was a madhouse. Rescue workers dug through the rubble looking for survivors. Reporters arrived in their news vans searching for a story, pressing against the police line like rabid dogs. Shaken students stumbled about, all of them in separate degrees of functionality varying from sobbing to catatonic. Hiro Hamada was part of the latter group.
He had been the closest to the explosion and had been immediately tended to by the paramedics when they had arrived. They had pronounced him concussed and severely burned and had rushed him to the hospital alongside his Aunt Cass. He now lay in a hospital bed, his aunt asleep in the chair beside him, watching the events unfold on the television.
"…a truly terrible sight here at San Fransokyo Institute of Technology, where just hours ago, tragedy struck the annual Student Showcase." Vivienne Carter, lead reporter for SFN, gestured behind her to the destroyed convention center. "You can see behind me that rescue crews are still struggling to contain the fire." She stopped for a moment and listened to someone in her earpiece. "I am just getting a report at least two people were confirmed to have been in the convention center at the time it blew up; Professor of Robotics Robert Callaghan and his student Tadashi Hamada. It is unclear at this time if they are the only two who were in the building but I will say that it does not look good for either of them. I will continue to be here monitoring the situation and will bring you updates as they occur. Back to you Jim." The screen shattered when Hiro threw the remote at the TV with all the strength he had left.
"Ah!" his aunt awoke violently. "What's, what happened? Hiro?" Hiro didn't hear his aunt from behind his tears. She quickly enveloped him in a tight embrace and he cried into her shoulder, sobbing and cursing the world for taking his brother from him.
…
The fire was finally out and the crews were rooting about in wreckage, searching for the bodies of Professor Callaghan and Tadashi Hamada. Their tired eyes swept over the debris, their search becoming arduous, every passing minute growing less and less like hope and more like hopelessness. There was just too much destruction. They could dig for years and still not find the two men lost to catastrophe.
One young firemen lagged behind the others, tiredly swinging his axe through the stone and plaster. He had only just started at his station last week and already he was rooting around for dead bodies in a collapsed building. This was not what he had expected. He didn't feel like he was doing a good deed. All he could think of were the faces of the deceased's loved ones, tears staining their faces and veiled in black. His own father had died in a fire. It was the chief reason he had chosen the career he did.
Something rumbled under his feet. Suddenly he was very awake. The debris rolled and shifted, rising up and splitting apart. A jagged dome of black rock rose out from beneath the brick and mortar, shining in the early morning sun. He cautiously approached the mysterious stone, running his gloved hand along the glossy surface.
Suddenly the dome shattered and a hand shot out, grabbing his collar.
The fireman tried to cry out but the beast of a man who walked out of the obsidian dome quickly covered his mouth with his other hand. The remainder of the dome crumbled away, revealing two other men huddled beneath the crude shelter, one lying unconscious. The one who was awake idled up to big man.
"Put him down," he commanded. The big man did, dropping the fireman right on his ass. He tried to scoot away but the smaller man caught his face and gazed deep into his eyes.
"You didn't see anything," he crooned, his voice taking on a hypnotic tone. The fireman tried to look away but he couldn't. Something in his mind wouldn't let him. He had no control.
"I didn't see anything," he echoed.
"You will tell your friends that there is nothing here."
"I will tell my friends that there is nothing here."
"Good. Carry on." The man let go and fireman stumbled away after his team, his mind fuzzy. Like he was supposed to remember something.
…
"I wanted to punch him," the big man grumbled to his shrimp of a companion.
"You would have killed him," the smaller man chastised.
"No I wouldn't have."
"And how would he have explained that his face was all bruised? What, that he ran into a door? People would know something was up."
The big man looked disappointed. "Still though…"
"Stop complaining and pick up the kid. We have to get out of here." The big man nodded and tossed the limp body of the teenager over his shoulder. The smaller man dug around in his pocket and fished out an electronic earpiece, popping it into place.
"Eagle Eye, Eagle Eye come in, this is Whisper." Static crackled. "Eagle Eye, do you read me?"
"We read you Whisper," a voice on the other end crackled. "We were starting to get worried."
"Onyx and I have the package, but he's in bad shape. We're heading to the extraction point."
"Roger that Whisper, evac is on route to extraction point. Estimated time of arrival, ten minutes."
"Copy. Whisper out." The man pocketed the earpiece and checked his watch, awaiting his lumbering companion.
"So, what's so special about this kid anyway?" the big man—Onyx—asked as they picked their way across the debris.
Whisper shrugged. "Command didn't say. Just that he's a priority Alpha target and to extract him by any means necessary. Though I don't think this was part of anyone's plan," he said, gesturing to the destruction.
"Yeah," Onyx nodded. "I'm hungry."
Whisper sighed. "Me too buddy. Me too."
"Burritos?"
"Mission first. Then burritos."
