Chapter One-Hundred-Five: Under Siege
Breathless from sprinting all the way upstairs from the basement, Anna switched off her pistol's safety and burst into her bedroom, ignoring Past Anna's corpse lying on the vomit-splattered bed.
Through the bedroom window, Anna spotted Officers Ramirez and Wilks making their way across Marchwood Road, approaching the apartment building with weapons drawn.
Anna took aim through her bedroom window and fired three rounds towards Officer Ramirez, shattering the window's lower pane.
With a cry of surprise and pain, Officer Ramirez crumpled to the ground, bleeding profusely from a newly acquired wound in his thigh. "Wilks!" he yelled. "Second-floor!"
"Got her!" Aiming at Anna's half-broken window, Officer Wilks returned fire.
Anna ducked, covering her head as the answering hail of bullets shattered the window's upper pane, showering her with dust, shards of glass, and fragments of pulverized drywall.
When the gunfire stopped, Anna stood up and glanced out the ruined window, spotting Officer Wilks in the process of helping a bleeding, swearing Officer Ramirez to safety. Carefully, she took aim and fired several more rounds towards Officer Wilks, striking him once in the shoulder.
"I'm hit!" Officer Wilks stumbled, and his right arm went completely limp, sending Officer Ramirez tumbling painfully to the ground.
"Stay down!" shouted Officer Ramirez, clutching his bleeding leg. "Leave me here, just get to cover and stay down!"
Ignoring his wounded partner's order, Officer Wilks helped Officer Ramirez back onto his feet, and together the two police officers limped behind the cover provided by a large blue truck parked nearby.
Anna fired the final bullet in her magazine, partially shattering the blue truck's windshield, and neither of the two police officers shot back. Listening closely, she could hear one of the officers talking into his radio, presumably to request backup.
"We can't hold off an army of cops," Anna murmured to Past Anna's corpse. "Any advice?"
Past Anna responded with unhelpful silence.
"Nothing at all?"
Past Anna continued being dead.
Exhaling slowly, Anna checked her phone for any new messages from Theo Gibbons. Finding none, she slipped her phone into a pocket, reloaded her pistol, and exited the bedroom. After making a stop in the bathroom to grab a roll of paper towels, she approached the closed master bedroom door. Holding back her nausea, Anna clicked on the Smith & Wesson's safety and tucked it into her waistband, stepping into Great Uncle Andrés's bedroom.
Producing a knife from her sylladex, Anna walked over to the bed and cut away Great Uncle Andrés's soiled clothing, using the paper towels to wipe away the excess urine and fecal matter from his body. As she worked, acidy traces of bile seeped from her esophagus into her mouth. Determined not to allow her rebellious nausea to gain a foothold, she swallowed the bile and turned away from the bed, opening her great-uncle's closet, where she found fresh clothes. She selected a sweater, sweatpants, and a pair of black shoes, laying the clothing on the floor next to the bed.
Grabbing her great-uncle's left arm and left leg, Anna rolled the body over onto its stomach, tearing off another sizable clump of paper towels to clean Great Uncle Andrés's backside. She dropped the soiled paper towels on the floor, working quickly to dress the corpse in the fresh change of clothes. "You still smell like shit, but it'll do."
Anna gently picked up the newly clothed corpse, carrying it out of the master bedroom, down the hall, all the way to the top of the stairs. Placing her dead great-uncle on the padded stair lift seat, Anna activated the stair lift mechanism, sending Great Uncle Andrés slowly down the stairway. She hurried back into the master bedroom, retrieving the folded wheelchair. Even though she did not breathe through her nose, the idea of fecal death-stench passing through her mouth was still enough to make Anna gag.
Closing the master bedroom door, Anna frowned when she heard an odd, dull, rhythmic clunking sound underneath the whirring of the stair lift mechanism. She walked to the top of the stairs, where she was amused to see Great Uncle Andrés's head, having lolled lifelessly back, bumping noisily against each baluster of the railing as the stair lift approached the bottom of the staircase. "You're pure percussion, gran tío," she remarked, hurrying downstairs to deploy the wheelchair.
When the stair lift reached the bottom of the staircase, Anna transferred Great Uncle Andrés to the wheelchair, but within seconds, the corpse began to slouch, sliding slowly out of the wheelchair.
"Jesus whalefucking Christ." Anna tried to straighten her great-uncle's corpse, to no avail. "God fucking damn it."
Anna checked underneath the kitchen sink for duct tape, but could not find any. She rifled through all the kitchen drawers, and still no luck. "Do we seriously have no duct tape?" Thinking of alternatives, Anna returned upstairs to her bedroom and tore into her closet, snatching several pairs of shoes from the floor. Glancing through the window, she was surprised to see Officer Wilks making a beeline across the Marchwood Apartments parking lot, running towards his car, which remained parked by the Exton Diner.
"Can't have you driving that thing through my front door, now, can we?" Anna dropped the shoes, drew her pistol, disengaged the pistol's safety, and after taking aim at Officer Wilks, she fired two rounds.
"FUCK, I'm hit!" Officer Wilks fell forward, crumpling to the asphalt with cries of pain and surprise, bleeding from a new wound in his left buttock. "FUCKING BITCH JUST SHOT ME IN THE FUCKING ASS!"
"Wilks!" shouted Officer Ramirez.
"YOU FUCKING BITCH!" bellowed Officer Wilks, no doubt in agonizing pain after having fallen on his wounded right shoulder. "YOU'RE DEAD, HEAR ME?! YOU'RE FUCKING DEAD!"
"Wilks, get back here!" exclaimed Officer Ramirez, taking aim at Anna's bedroom window from behind the parked blue truck, returning fire. "Get back to cover!"
While the bullets of Officer Ramirez's covering fire tore apart the ceiling, Anna crawled across the bedroom floor into the hallway, scooping up all the shoes she'd taken from the closet. Once she was safely out of the bedroom, she stood up and hurried downstairs, unthreading shoelaces from the shoes, dropping each shoe after its lace had been extracted.
Great Uncle Andrés's corpse lay sprawled unceremoniously on the living room floor, having slipped out of the wheelchair.
"Sorry, gran tío." Anna grimaced, picking up her dead great-uncle and placing him back in his wheelchair. "I'm pretty sure you got a heart attack from seeing me with my idiot past self. Or a stroke. Maybe an aneurysm?" Using the loose shoelaces, she tied Great Uncle Andrés's arms, legs, and neck down to the corresponding parts of the wheelchair, ensuring the corpse would not slip out of the chair at an inopportune moment. "So, I'm sorry about that, but to be fair, you did not raise me well. At all. I mean, who the fuck takes an eight-year-old to the shooting range every month? You'd be prouder of my marksmanship today, but it wasn't worth getting spanked every time I missed the target."
Drool began to fall from the corner of Great Uncle Andrés's slack mouth.
"Oh god, don't do that." Anna grabbed a tissue from the nearby table and wiped away the saliva. "Ew." With her finger, Anna closed her great-uncle's mouth, but when she withdrew her finger, Great Uncle Andrés's mouth simply fell back open. "Why do you have to look so dead? Would it kill you again to keep your eyes and mouth closed?"
Great Uncle Andrés's cyan eyes stared emptily at Anna through half-closed eyelids, unsettling her.
"It's fine." Anna made another trip upstairs to her bedroom closet, retrieving a tube sock, a bandanna, and a pair of sunglasses. "I'm fine." Peeking again through her bullet-riddled window-space, Anna saw Officer Wilks still lying in the parking lot where he'd fallen, bleeding from his multiple wounds, talking with Officer Ramirez, who remained hunkered behind the blue truck. "Everything's fine."
In the near distance, Anna heard the vacillating wail of approaching sirens, and she knew she was almost out of time. "Okay. Slightly less fine."
Breathing deeply, Anna went back downstairs and opened the window next to the front door, returning her attention to Great Uncle Andrés as the sirens grew louder.
Anna stuffed the tube sock into Great Uncle Andrés's mouth. She then held the tube sock in place with the bandanna, tying the ends of the bandanna behind the back of the corpse's head, securing the gag. Last came the sunglasses, which Anna placed on her great-uncle to obscure his unseeing eyes.
"You look like a halfway decent hostage," Anna remarked, stepping back to appraise her work. "If I get out of this, it'll be thanks to you."
Cass Galavis flew silently through the void, enthralled by the lonely white star twinkling in the distance.
With each passing heartbeat, Cass's hopes of ever finding Our Home continued to shrink. She had no way of knowing how much time had passed since the explosive birth of the lonely star. It felt like a few minutes, at most, but Cass knew better. She feared it had been much longer, and still she could not see any sign of life.
The suffocating darkness pressed in from all directions, and while the light of the lonely star provided some comfort, Cass no longer had the luxury of assuming the void was empty. She'd already glimpsed the nightmarish behemoths populating the Furthest Ring, and even though she could no longer see them, it was extremely unsettling to think about how the only thing separating her from those behemoths was an expanse of empty space.
How had it come to this?
Cass pondered the innumerable junctures in life when she could have made different choices, wondering how she could have avoided these dismal circumstances. She'd had many opportunities. Playing Sburb, perhaps, was the biggest mistake of all. If she had refrained from playing Sburb, she would have perished in the meteorite apocalypse, and it would have been an infinitely better outcome than spending eternity lost in the void.
All alone.
Cass wanted to cry, but she could not see any point in doing so. No one would hear her, no one would hold her, and no one would care. As she considered how much longer she would wait before trying her luck again with shooting herself, a second light appeared in the darkness.
Bright, sunny, golden-white with tones of orange, the new light flared with a brief vigor before slowly fading.
"Come back." Cass adjusted her trajectory, aiming for where the sunny light had disappeared. "Please come back."
The lonely star glimmered tantalizingly in the far distance, alone in the darkness.
Had Cass imagined the second light? Maybe she was already going crazy. She certainly wanted the second light to have been real. Because if it wasn't real, if she'd made it up—
"It was real," Cass insisted to herself. "I saw it. I did not make it up, I saw it."
More time passed, and still nothing.
A surge of hot anger and resentment rushed through Cass's body, and she fumed silently, infuriated at herself for being fooled into thinking she had actually seen Our Home. Was the lonely star even real, or was she making that up too?
Cass stared intently at the lonely star. It seemed real enough. But could she ever be sure?
Perhaps, if shooting herself did not work, Cass could try flying into the star. That would surely kill her, and ideally it would be a thorough enough destruction of her corporeal form to prevent another resurrection. The only other option was resigning to a slow descent into horrifying madness.
It occurred to Cass that even if she decided on suicide-by-star, she would likely go insane anyway, because the lonely star seemed immensely distant. For all she knew, the journey could take millions of years to complete, and by the time sanity abandoned her, she would barely be any closer to her goal.
"Only if shooting myself doesn't work," Cass reminded herself, holding out her hand and allowing an M16 assault rifle to materialize from her strife specibus. "One failed plan at a time."
Suddenly, the sunny golden-white light reappeared, much brighter and closer than before.
Cass held her breath, unwilling to fully accept the validity of the second light's existence until she was certain it would not disappear again. Fearing the light might possibly be the hallucination of a desperate mind, blinking was initially out of the question, but after several tense seconds, Cass took a deep breath and allowed herself to blink.
When Cass opened her eyes, she was overjoyed to see that the sunny golden-white light had not disappeared, and this time it showed no sign of fading away. It shined with a powerful, persistent light, illuminating the geometric contours of distant structures underneath, which Cass eventually recognized as urban sprawl.
Our Home.
Cass accelerated forward with all her strength, aiming for the sunny golden-white light with the desperation of a lost astronaut grasping an unexpected lifeline.
Wheeling her great-uncle to the front door, Anna watched through a window as two new police cars arrived. One car screeched to a halt at the Route-100 traffic light, blocking all traffic from turning onto Marchwood Road, while the other parked in the Exton Diner's parking lot.
Of the four police officers who disembarked, one quickly entered the Exton Diner to check on the staff, reemerging seconds later to rejoin his colleagues. Together, the four officers crossed Marchwood Road and hurried towards the parking lot in front of Anna's building. Weapons drawn, three of the officers sized up Anna's apartment building while the fourth stopped to check on Wilks and Ramirez.
Already taking careful aim through the open window next to the front door, Anna fired four rounds in a tight spread, scattering the three police officers before they could get any closer.
One of the surprised officers went down, swearing and clutching at his chest. Anna watched him scramble to safety, and she did not see any blood. She had likely struck a bulletproof vest.
The other three officers immediately returned fire, shattering the window's glass and allowing subdued daylight to spill into the apartment through newly-created bullet holes in the wall.
Anna dropped to her stomach, hugging the linoleum floor, trying not to scream while the bullets whizzed overhead. She army crawled to the front door and waited for the hail of bullets to subside.
When one or two police officers paused to reload, Anna stood up and threw open the front door, shielding herself behind her great-uncle's body and wheelchair. "Back off!" she screamed, holding her Smith & Wesson to the back of Great Uncle Andrés's head. "I said back off! BACK THE FUCK OFF!"
Uneasily, the newly arrived police officers retreated to the parking lot, taking cover behind the nearest vehicles, including Officer Ramirez's chosen blue truck. Anna could even hear Officer Wilks exclaiming, "Shoot her! What are you waiting for?!"
"She has a hostage, now," said a gray-haired police officer with sergeant's stripes sewn into his sleeves. "You've done enough damage, Wilks. Lie down, shut up, and wait for the paramedics."
Sirens wailing, an ambulance arrived via Route-100, turning onto Marchwood Road.
"Drop your weapon!" ordered the police sergeant, aiming his pistol at the sliver of Anna's head visible behind Great Uncle Andrés. "Step onto the lawn with your hands behind your head! Do it now!"
"Yeah, that's not happening!" Anna shouted back. "And if you don't give me what I want, I will shoot this innocent piece of shit right in fucking front of you! Would you like that?!"
Changing tactics, the police sergeant holstered his pistol and stood up, holding out his open hands to show that he held no weapons. "Let's talk, okay?" He took a step forward towards the apartment, glancing at the ambulance, which had just pulled into the Marchwood Apartments front parking lot. "You and me," he said, taking another step. "Can we work something out?"
"Take another step!" Anna aimed her pistol at the advancing sergeant, shouting, "Try it, Sergeant Dipshit! See what happens!"
"Okay, but we need to talk this through." The police sergeant immediately stepped back. "We can't be shooting at each other in an apartment complex, okay? Innocent people live here. Some of them could die today if we don't work this out. What's it going to be? Can we talk about this?"
"Let's get one thing clear, first." Anna pressed her pistol once again to the back of Great Uncle Andrés's head. "Anyone who approaches this building will be shot. If anyone tries to get inside, good luck taking me alive, and this moldy cobweb vegetable in the wheelchair will be the first to die. Is that clear?"
"Why don't we talk about it?" invited the police sergeant, motioning for the ambulance paramedics to attend to Ramirez and Wilks. "What do you want?"
"One sec." Anna retreated inside, withdrawing Great Uncle Andrés before anyone started wondering why he did not appear to be struggling. The visual point had already been made. "Gracias, gran tío," she whispered to her great-uncle's corpse, closing the front door until only a crack remained open, through which she hollered, "Okay, are you listening?!"
"Yes," replied the police sergeant.
"I want a negotiator."
"Come again?"
"A real negotiator," clarified Anna. "You do have negotiators, don't you?"
"We do, but-"
"Good!" interrupted Anna. "Get a negotiator here, and we'll talk."
"That's going to take time."
"Well, you have an hour, so, better get started." Anna slammed the front door shut. After wheeling her great-uncle's body away from the windows, she took a moment to check her phone for any new messages from Theo, but there were none. "God damn it, Theo, wake up."
The sunny golden-white beacon shined powerfully in the near distance, showing Cass the way to Our Home.
Underneath the light of the beacon, the less powerful city lights emerged gradually into view as Cass neared Our Home, and she was surprised to find that only isolated patches of the city were lit. Frowning, she observed vast swathes of shadowy urban sprawl, countless streets and city blocks without working lights, illuminated only peripherally by the beacon's blazing light.
The beacon light shined more than two thousand feet above street level, mounted atop a crude support tower. Spanning nearly five hundred feet at its base, the support tower consisted of three core pillars of stone, reinforced by a wider crisscrossing framework of sturdy steel girders which gradually tapered towards a narrow apex, reminding Cass of the Eiffel Tower. Squinting, she looked at the top of the tower, trying to glimpse the beacon's light source, but the light was too bright, forcing her to look away.
Sweeping her gaze down the length of the support tower, Cass looked towards the concentration of bright lights illuminating the neighborhoods hugging the tower's base.
More details of the city came into view. All of the clearly visible fields appeared to be fallow, and many of the streets remained clogged with rubble left behind by the Red Miles. Although Cass knew fallow fields could only represent some kind of bad news, she nevertheless hoped the lack of progress meant that only a few years had passed while she was lost in the void. "Six years again?" she murmured to herself, decreasing speed as she approached the city. "Maybe ten, this time?"
Cass descended slowly through Our Home's sky, recognizing the powerful lights of Royal House Square shining near the base of the beacon's support tower. Although most of Our Home was dark, the square and all of its surrounding neighborhoods remained very well lit, brightly enough for Cass to see thousands of people gathering in front of the Royal House.
Eight Dersites wearing dark gray robes stood silently in a straight line across the Royal House's massive front entrance doors, each holding a candle, although only one of the candles was lit.
Cass decided to linger in the sky for a moment, curious about the nature of the unfolding spectacle below.
The front doors of the Royal House cracked open, swinging slowly inwards. A technician emerged, carrying a lectern, which he placed in front of the line of eight candle-bearers. After clipping a microphone to the top of the lectern, the technician used a datapad to connect the microphone wirelessly to Royal House Square's sound system.
With the lectern ready, the sound technician took his leave.
Another Dersite emerged from within the Royal House, wearing hooded robes of deep burgundy, prompting the thousands of gathered people to begin sinking to their knees. The burgundy-robed Dersite approached the lectern, slowly removing their hood to address the gathering crowd.
"Atrex?" Cass frowned, immediately recognizing the unhooded Dersite.
"Light of the Eight!" proclaimed Atrex, his voice amplified by a network of loudspeakers deployed throughout Royal House Square.
In unison, thousands of voices from the crowd responded, "EIGHTFOLD LIGHT."
"The Eight are with you," declared Atrex.
"AND ALSO WITH YOU," answered the crowd.
"Rise," commanded Atrex.
Cass watched thousands of kneeling attendees obey, and her frown deepened.
"Let us pray," said Atrex, prompting everyone in the crowd to bow their heads. Pointing up at the lonely star in the sky, he prayed, "Blessed is the Light, sent by the Eight to lead us out of the dark. To call the Sylph home from her exile, to secure deliverance from the unforgiving void, we gladly endarken ourselves. Only in the shadows may our Light shine to its fullest. In the name of the Witch and the Sylph, of the Prince and the Thane, of the Muse and the Seer, of the Knight and the Sage, we offer our thanks, and we vow to keep our Beacon shining. Light of the Eight."
"Eightfold Light," responded thousands of voices, and the members of the crowd lifted their heads.
"Today, as you all know, is a special day," announced Atrex. "Illumination Day is our opportunity to consecrate and celebrate the day the Light of the Eight first appeared to us. The day our destiny was confirmed. In commemoration of our 29th annual Illumination Day, I have invited the Witch of Light to join and speak with us."
Brushing past the eight hooded candle-bearers, Gwen Twymann emerged from the Royal House, and the crowd began to cheer.
Hidden high in the sky above, Cass prepared to interrupt the ceremony. For now, she held back, curious to see how Gwen was involved.
"Happy Illumination Day!" Gwen exclaimed, waving to the cheering crowd as she made her way up to the lectern, where Atrex stepped aside. "To all of you gathered here today, and to everyone watching us from home," she added, acknowledging the camera crews, "Happy Illumination Day!"
The thousands of attendees clapped and vigorously expressed their affection for nearly a full minute, during which time Gwen patiently waited for the noise to die down.
"Twenty-nine Illumination Days, now. Where does the time go?" Gwen asked once the crowd quieted. "How many years has it been since we lit the Great Beacon?"
"Twelve," replied Atrex.
"Can you believe that?" Gwen shook her head, squinting as she looked up at the blindingly bright beacon light. "Feels somehow like it was yesterday, but also in another lifetime. Twelve years since lighting the Beacon, and still no Cass, but you know what? Faith has no expiration date."
Applause broke out, spreading quickly throughout the crowd.
"Unfortunately, viable food sources do have expiration dates," continued Gwen. "While I am happy to report that the Beacon shows no signs of degradation, we may have to shut it down for a while."
The applause quickly died away, replaced with disquieted murmuring. Atrex fidgeted uncomfortably, glaring at Gwen for a moment before catching himself and regaining composure.
"The Beacon shines forever!" someone in the crowd exclaimed, piercing through the din. "It is sacred!"
"I know this isn't what you want to hear," said Gwen, "but the Beacon is pushing our power grid to the limit, and we are burning through our food supply. Perhaps we can switch the Beacon on and off at regular intervals, but we can't leave it on constantly anymore, because if the power grid goes down, the Cornucopia facilities will fail, and then we starve. Who here wants another famine?"
"If a famine is what it takes to bring back the Sylph," interjected someone nearby in the crowd, "then let us be hungry!"
"Um." Gwen stopped herself mid-facepalm. "Look, Cass definitely isn't coming back if we all starve to death, so… Famine isn't an option. Should I even have to say that? No one is talking about destroying the Beacon or shutting it off forever, alright? It just needs a break."
Cass could no longer contain herself. "Here goes nothing," she murmured, allowing herself to plummet the remaining few hundred feet to the ground, stopping herself before she hit the cobblestones. She made a silent landfall directly behind Gwen, who obliviously continued to address the crowd.
"I'm sure a lot of us wouldn't mind having power returned to our homes and neighborhoods," Gwen barely had an opportunity to say before the crowd erupted suddenly with ecstatic jubilation and shock. "Well, okay then! Didn't think I'd win you over so easily."
"The Sylph lives!" someone screamed, and the cry was quickly taken up by the entire crowd. Thousands of people fell once more to their knees. "THE SYLPH LIVES! THE SYLPH LIVES!"
Gwen turned around, coming face to face with Cass, and for a moment, she could not believe her eyes. "What…? How…?"
Cass smiled tearfully. "Hello Gwen."
"Are you…real?" Gwen reached forward to touch Cass, but she hesitated at the last moment. "Please tell me you're real."
"No one can prove they are real to anyone," replied Cass. "Not really. Think about it."
"Oh my god!" Tears cascading down her face, Gwen threw her arms around Cass, enveloping her in a crushing bear hug. "It is you!"
Cass returned the hug, closing her eyes to enjoy being held. "Did you really miss me that much?"
"You have no idea," sniffled Gwen, holding Cass even tighter. "I thought I'd never see another human again."
"I failed," admitted Cass. "Sorry to leave you alone for twenty-nine years."
"Twenty-nine years?"
"Yes, isn't that what you just said to the crowd?" asked Cass. "I was eavesdropping in the sky, and I heard everything you said."
"Oh, Cass." Gwen released Cass from the bear hug, wiping her eyes dry. "It's been twenty-nine years since that star appeared in the sky. You left well before that."
Cass tried to take a deep breath, but was not quite able to. "How long?"
"Trust me, let's talk about that later," recommended Gwen, eyeing the churning crowd. "We'll have nothing but time."
"Gwen. Please, I need to know." The intensity of Cass's gaze left no room for negotiation or delay. "How long?"
Quietly, reluctantly, Gwen replied, "Eighty-three years. You left eighty-three years ago."
The roaring jubilation of the crowd grew strangely distant and muted, as if Cass were hearing the noise through a cave or tunnel. "I think I need another hug…"
"Can do. I could use one myself." Gwen pulled Cass into another bear hug. "Unlike our food, hugs are in endless supply."
Having neither the willpower nor desire to hold herself in check any longer, Cass allowed herself to cry.
Anna opened the freezer, but could not find any more toaster strudels.
Closing the freezer, Anna opened the fridge, looking for viable snacks and finding none. "God damn it."
Anna no longer experienced hunger or thirst, but having something to munch on would have gone a long way towards calming her down. She closed the fridge and headed upstairs to her bedroom, looking through the ruined window to see if anything had changed outside in the last few minutes.
Several additional police cars had arrived over the course of the past hour, and were currently parked on Marchwood Road, blocking traffic from both directions. At least a dozen police officers had set up a perimeter around Anna's apartment building. Most of the officers remained in the parking lot of Anna's building, taking cover behind trees and parked vehicles, weapons drawn and ready to fire at a moment's notice.
Other officers stood watch near Route-100, where a traffic jam resulting from the chaotic scene blocked both lanes. A growing number of curious bystanders had abandoned their trapped cars, braving the inclement weather to witness the ongoing police siege. Many of the onlookers by the highway had their phones out and appeared to be recording. Whenever one of the bystanders got too close, the officers sent them back.
Lightning flashed in the stormy sky, and a low, rolling thunder followed. The rain had lessened to a misty drizzle, but the wind remained squirrelly and unpredictable. Anna looked away from the flashing police lights, gazing up at the sky and losing herself in the fluctuating gray terrain of the storm clouds.
The wind shifted, and a gust blew in through the destroyed window, filling the bedroom with fresh air. Anna felt flecks of rain on her face. She breathed in deeply through her nose, relieved to smell ozone and petrichor instead of the stench of vomit-saturated death emanating from Past Anna's nearby corpse.
Another police car arrived via Route-100, driving along the narrow open shoulder of the highway, pulling off to the side upon reaching the Marchwood Road traffic light. Two more officers disembarked and hurried over to join the siege.
Anna's phone vibrated. Reflexively, she slapped her hand to her pocket, pulling out her phone and tapping its screen. Upon seeing the notification for a new message from Theo Gibbons, she allowed herself a deep sigh of relief.
"Thank you, Theo, thank you." Anna pressed the voice call icon, holding the phone to her ear, and after several long seconds of synthetic dial-tone ringing, she heard Theo's voice. "Theo, can you hear me?"
"Hey, uh, Anna?" said Theo, his voice grainy and staticky, which was understandable considering the fact that he was in a different dimension. "What's going on back there?"
"It's the apocalypse, just like you said," Anna replied. "People are trying to play Sburb all over the world, and the meteorite impacts are growing more frequent. Look, I'm in a sticky situation, and I need to get off-planet, like, right the fuck now. Is your Sburb server application ready to go?"
"Already?" Theo sounded surprised. "Have you helped Cruz through his intro stage?"
"There's no time." Anna took another deep breath, forcing herself to remain calm. "By now, Cass is probably only just getting home. She needs to help Tami with Sburb's intro stage, then Adam needs to help Cass, and before I can help Cruz, he first needs to be Adam's server player. Get the picture? I can't wait that long! I need to get into the game now. Then I'll help Cruz."
"Don't panic, you're still safe," assured Theo. "There won't be any meteorites coming for you until you open the alchemiter—"
"Theo, there are people with guns outside," interrupted Anna, frowning at the arrival of a black police car without any siren or flashing lights. "They've already tried to break into my apartment. Do you understand what could happen to me if they get in? Things are going crazy out there. The Exton Diner just got robbed. People have been shot right outside my window. I'm not safe."
"Oh my god, are you okay?"
"No, haven't you been listening to anything I just said?! I'm really fucking far from okay!" snapped Anna, losing patience as the black police car came to a stop. "My apartment is under siege! Get me the fuck out of here!"
"Okay, okay, hold on."
Out of the black police car emerged a tall, silver-haired woman holding a megaphone. She wore glasses, a badge, and a dark jacket emblazoned with police insignia. After meeting briefly with the police sergeant, the silver-haired woman began to walk towards Anna's apartment building.
Anna grabbed her pistol. "Theo, I have to hang up."
"My server disk is still installing," said Theo. "I'll let you know when it's ready."
"The instant it's ready." Anna ended the call, drawing her pistol and taking careful aim through her bedroom window. "Alright, that's far enough!"
"You requested me," stated the woman, her voice amplified by the megaphone. "My name is Shannon Hodge, and I've worked as a crisis negotiator for more than a decade. I am unarmed. I'd like to talk, but first, what can I call you?"
Anna, seeing no harm in giving away personal information to someone who would soon be dead anyway, replied, "Call me Anna."
"Thank you for talking to me, Anna," said the negotiator. "We're going to work together to resolve this situation, and if you cooperate-"
"Is the Exton Diner still making food?"
"What?"
"You're overthinking it," said Anna. "Not a good start for you. Don't overthink it. Is the Exton Diner still making food right now?"
"I'm not sure."
"Well, find out and get back to me!"
After checking with the police sergeant, the negotiator answered, "The diner staff is still a bit shaken from when you robbed them, but otherwise they're okay."
"Cool, cool, have them scramble up some eggs for me, would you? If they could do an omelette with cheese, diced onions, and peppers—actually, I have a gun, so, rephrase: they will add cheese, onion, and peppers to the omelette," ordered Anna. "And toast. There needs to be toast. Rye toast. With some of those little Smuckers jelly packets. I don't care which flavor jelly, because they're all good. I want a sausage, too, with a small lake of syrup. Did you get all that, or do I need to repeat it?"
"Omelette, toast, sausages," replied the negotiator.
"Cheese, onion, and pepper omelette, rye toast, and sausages with a small lake of syrup," corrected Anna, emphasizing the omitted parts of her order. "Get it right, because if it comes out wrong, the old guy dies, and all those people over there by the highway, see them? They have their phones out, and they're gonna record everything for the Internet, all the blood and snuff, because I'll be sure to execute the hostage outside." After pausing to breathe, Anna quickly added, "Oh, and tell the Exton Diner to throw in some bacon, too, would you? If there isn't any bacon, flying spaghetti monster forgive me, I'll take Canadian bacon. If they're out of Canadian bacon, then hash browns. If they don't even have hash browns, I swear to god, I will start shooting again."
"Why don't you release the hostage as a gesture of goodwill?" suggested the negotiator. "We give you the breakfast, you give us the hostage? I think that's more than fair."
"Do you think I'm stupid?" accused Anna. "I'm getting my breakfast. I'm going to enjoy my breakfast. Then after I am done, you'll get an unharmed hostage for your trouble. Wouldn't that be nice? There might even be promotions in it for a couple of you, if you play your cards right. What do you say?"
The ground trembled subtly underfoot, and within moments the thundering explosion of a distant meteorite impact rumbled across the stormy sky, disrupting the swirling cloud patterns. Several of the police officers and many of the bystanders looked nervously in the direction of the sound.
"Or, you know, you could always go and investigate whatever that explosion was," suggested Anna. "Your call. But if you'd rather stay here and throw a siege party, I'll take that breakfast now."