Chapter 11

"Shit!" Edward whispered to himself as the door closed. He sprang from his hiding place and over to the door, light on his feet as a gazelle and was there within three graceful bounds, passing the pile of gasoline-soaked rags that were already catching fire, allowing the vengeful force to spread quickly along the trail of puddles of accelerant spilled on the floor. There was no way to unlock the door from inside the room. 'What the hell kinda door doesn't have a tumbler on the inside!' he thought in disgust. He pulled his gloved right hand back, ready to bring it forward like a battering ram.

"Don't!" Meryl cried, catching his arm. "That door used to be a bulkhead from a downed Ship! It's over a foot thick- it took a laser-cutter to get through it, and you think punching it will get us out of here?"

Edward didn't have time to argue. He looked around frantically for an alternative exit and saw one in a small window about seven feet from the ground at the back of the room. Grabbing Meryl's arm, he hurriedly dragged her over to it, coughing as he went through the smoke. The fire was spreading quickly. If they didn't get out now, they weren't going to. He snatched a nearby empty oil drum and used it to boost himself till he was eyelevel with the window. Quickly he smashed the filthy pane from the frame, letting in a hot acrid breeze and fresh air. Reaching down, he grabbed Meryl again by the arm and hauled her bodily up onto the drum and then boosted her through the window. "Go, go!" he urged her as she wiggled through the opening and he was rewarded with a thud as she hit the ground outside the window.

Edward looked at the small fit uneasily. If it was a tight fit for her, it was going to be nearly impossible for him. He let all the air out of his lungs to make himself as small as possible and grabbed the edge of the window, slicing open his left palm in the process. Paying the wound no heed, he managed to get himself through the window.

Once outside, he and Meryl made a dash for it, away from the Café. They turned as they heard an explosion, and then another an instant later. Meryl raised a hand to her face in horror. "Oh my God," She whispered weakly. "The extra fuel tanks- we stored them in that room… the fire must've reached them…" The Café was now burning on the outside, as well as the inside, and she fell to her knees, her gaze fixed on the sight in front of them, eyes brimming over with tears. "Five years of work… gone…"

Gently, Edward put his hand on her shoulder. "Meryl, I'm sorry for your loss. But we need to get out of here. Come on, we have to g-"

Suddenly a thought struck her, and her tears no longer fell. "Millie!" She cried, "Oh my God, Al- the apartment we share is right above the café, and that's where the kids are! We have to save Millie and the kids!" She yelled, preparing to dash back to her burning home when a hand, bloody and bruised, latched onto her shoulder, stopping her. She looked incredulously at 'Al's' stony face. "Al- what…"

"We can't." He said, his hard gaze boring into her. "I now this sounds cold and heartless, but right now Damian thinks we're dead, and until we can use that to our advantage, he has to keep thinking that. Now, I have a friend's place where we can go and hide, but-"

He was stopped with a hard slap to his cheek. "Y-you monster! How can you put yourself over the welfare of someone else like that! Do what you want, but I have to save Millie!" With that, she turned and almost dashed away before Edward, using his left hand, gently pinched a nerve in the middle of her neck. She slumped like a sack of grain, and he hoisted her over his shoulder. He had picked up that little maneuver from a guy in a bar once, a few years after he arrived in Rosette's world. Ever since, Edward considered the payment, a round of beers, to be the best damn investment he made since he arrived in that alien place.

He faced the building, which by this time was almost totally consumed by flames. "Rosette, take care of yourself." He said quietly. From what he had already seen of the girl, he knew that she would turn the situation around for the better. But for right now, he needed to disappear in order to plan his next strategy. He had a stake in this now- someone was going around impersonating him and committing murders, and before he left this forsaken desert planet he was going to find out who, why, and how. To do that, he needed information, which was not something he was going to be able to find out at Eden.

But for right now, he needed to take the unconscious girl and himself into hiding. With that in mind, he set off towards the dunes.


"Hey," Rosette said suddenly, breaking the uneasy silence that had prevailed for nearly twenty minutes. She sniffed the air. "Do you smell that? Smells like smo-"

She was interrupted by to loud BOOMs, one right on the heels of the other. A massive wave of heat rolled over them, so strong it swept them off their chairs; so hot Rosette could feel her eyebrows sizzle.

She looked up and saw the Typhoon Café in flames, the roar of the fire mixing with the terrified screams of the people still inside. Rising from the ground where the shockwave had left her, she was preparing to launch a flying kick at the door when she saw a blur out of the corner of her eye. EVE ran through the door as if it were made of paper. Rosette hurried inside after her, not about to be undone by the likes of her.

Everything was louder now that she was inside, and the dense, acrid smoke made her lungs burn with every breath she took into her lungs. She collected enough oxygen to shout, "Okay everyone, through this door!" before a violent coughing fit brought her to her knees. Between chest-wracking coughs she could hear EVE giving orders.

"Okay, you heard her! I want one line, single-file, calmly walking through the front door here! If you panic, no one's going to get out of here alive. DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?" she bellowed. The huddled mass of about twenty people followed EVE's directions to the letter and made it safely out of the doomed Café.

Her coughing fit subsided, Rosette looked around for any stragglers and saw none. As she was preparing to leave, she heard a faint coughing sound from the stairwell leading to the second floor. She hurried over to the stairs and saw the waitress that had served them, Millie, lying on the stairs and hacking up a storm from the smoke that was now thick as London fog. Putting Millie's arm around her neck, Rosette helped her to her feet. "M-my (hack, hack, cough) babies are upstairs," Millie whispered. "I have to (cough) get them."

Rosette's blood ran cold when she heard that. Motioning EVE over, she told the Personality to take Millie outside. Honouring their unspoken (and temporary) truce, EVE did as Rosette asked without a word, easily supporting most of the big girl's weight. Rosette ran up the stairs.

The smoke was much thicker up here, and most everything was on fire. Putting a hand to her face in a futile effort to filter out the airborne carbon, Rosette called out, "Kids! Kids, it's time to go!"

She could hear a faint voice answer in the room directly to her right. "Help! Help, we're in here!" She tried the door, and to her great relief it was unlocked. She opened the door and the backdraft nearly launched her back down the stairs backwards and head first. She managed to get into the room and close the door again.

She immediately saw them. They were lying in beds beside each other, and looked to be twins, a boy and a girl about seven years old. There was a plague above each of their beds: The boy's read Daniel, while the girl's said Diana.

"Come on! We have to go!" She urged, heading back out the doorway. She stopped and turned back inside. The kids hadn't moved and were staring at her with almost impossibly huge eyes. "What?" she said, exasperated. "We have to go!"

"Mom told us never to go anywhere with anyone we don't know," the little girl, Diana, said, clutching her blanket to her chest.

"Yeah," piped in Daniel, holding his teddy bear.

Rosette sighed. She kneeled down in the space between the two beds, more or less eye level with them. 'This is insane. The damn house is burning down, and they're worried about whether to go with me or not!' In any other situation, it might have been considered 'cute'. "Okay, Daniel, Diana," Rosette said, "I'm Sister Rosette. Your mother sent me to get you guys outside to safety." She eyed them cautiously. "Now can we get out of here?"

The twins looked at each other and then back at her, and in perfect unison nodded their heads. She scooped up them up under her good arm and turned towards the doorway when she heard a sickening crash. A beam had fallen down the stairs, effectively blocking their only exit.

They were trapped.