After what seemed like an eternity, the sprinklers struggled into life.
It was a useless gesture really, as the fires had already begun to peter out amidst the rubble, but at the least it served to rouse a senseless Lara from her dreams.
She put a hand to her head; Kurtis was stirring beside her.
"What happened?" she asked.
He groaned a little, and pushed himself up onto his knees; the bench under which they once sheltered had been reduced to a pile of broken slats. Somehow, he found the strength to push them away and haul himself to his feet.
"I don't know what it was," he said, "But I threw up a mental shield and deflected most of its attack." He put a hand to his head. "It was some pretty powerful shit, I tell ya."
As if to demonstrate this power, there was suddenly a piercing shriek from above. They both looked up in horror, and saw the familiar shapes of the Nephilim, their dark wings tinged red against the industrial twilight. One last fireball exploded through the ceiling, raining sparks down upon their heads, and then with a fell swoop of their wings they were gone.
In the silence that followed, Kurtis helped Lara to her feet.
The station was completely destroyed. What had once been the lobby was now reduced to a pile of rubble and standing walls, marked only by the dull smoking of small fires. They both stepped carefully through this wreckage, searching vainly for any survivors, but it was no use; everybody was long dead.
"Kurtis?"
She had heard something; a weak groan from amidst the rubble. Kurtis struggled over, and helped her to haul the mass of twisted metal from atop the man's chest.
It was Lacina. And, judging by the state of his lower half, he wasn't going to live for very much longer; his legs had been crushed by the bars of their cell.
Lara hurried over and dropped to her knees, attempting to apply some pressure to stop the bleeding, but it was a hopeless gesture; Kurtis could not help but frown.
"Can you hear me?" she said, touching a hand to the side of Lacina's face, "Are you okay?"
The man's eyes flickered open at her words; she repeated herself, and wondered whether the blast could have damaged his hearing.
"Yes," he rasped, after a few moments, "Yes, I can hear you." She smiled a little, in relief. Kurtis did not say anything. "W-what happened?"
Lara shook her head.
"I'm afraid your 'angels' attacked the station." She cast a look over her shoulder; Kurtis was hovering in the background. She could tell he was uncomfortable.
Lacina laid his head back, and closed his eyes for a moment, taking this in.
"Then why are you two still standing?"
She frowned.
"We were just lucky, I guess."
Kurtis put a hand to his mouth, and wiped away the blood.
"The word 'lucky' being open to debate here." He exchanged a look with Lara, who had a gash in her forehead, and blood and dirt smeared down the side of her face. "It wasn't us," he added, "If that's what you're thinking. Even you of all people should understand that by now - it wasn't us."
Lacina was quiet for a moment.
"Perhaps it was not you," he said, finally, "Perhaps I was wrong."
Kurtis grinned, if only a little.
"I hate to say it, but I told you so."
Lacina did not protest to this; perhaps he could not. After a moment he grew still, and once she had checked for a pulse, Lara slowly reached over and closed his eyes.
She stayed there for a while, balancing on her heels, as Kurtis wandered off to search amidst the rubble. It took her a moment to register the static of the radio.
Frowning, she reached down and detached it from Lacina's belt. It was still stuck on a busy channel, and she listened for a moment, hoping to decipher something, but the chatter was much too panicked for her to understand.
"Lara? Is everything okay?"
She nodded her head, absently.
"I found a radio. I think we can use it to trace the Nephilim."
She took it in her hands, and tapped her palm against the casing. Kurtis appeared beside her.
"We better get going," he said, "Someone is bound to find us here, and we don't need to take the blame for this as well, do we? The paperwork is destroyed, so no one will know we were here."
She smiled a little.
"I guess not." She stashed the radio in her pocket. "But we need to go and get our guns and my backpack from the evidence room." She frowned. "If they've survived, that is."
He shrugged, and handed her the keys he had stolen earlier.
"Go knock yourself out."
She scowled.
"And what are you going to be doing in the meantime?"
"I am going to be looking for my Chirugai."
And she watched him walk away, whilst the sprinklers continued to pour down and leave her standing there, freezing cold, with her hair matted to her forehead.
Somehow, she just knew that this was going to be another extremely bad day.
XXX
In every department across the city, on both sides of the Vltava, there was chaos as an urgent report came sliding out of the fax machine:
Prague Central Station
Chief Commissioner Charvat, Prague Police.
To all emergency departments.
We have received word of an unidentified explosion at Hradčany Police Station. Casualty figures are unknown at this time, but damage to the area is widespread and radio contact cannot be established. Eyewitnesses have reported seeing fireballs in the sky. Burn units and engines should be deployed immediately.
It is unconfirmed whether this incident is related to earlier attacks.
XXX
Most cells were empty, or else their occupants had long been dead; he could not stand the sight for long. It took him back to a place in his life he would much sooner forget.
When he reached the last cell in the row, he squatted down and leant a hand upon its bars. The sprinklers were still going above him; by this point he was getting completely drenched, but he didn't really care.
"Talk about your déjà vu…"
It had not taken him that long to find his Chirugai after all, and as he caught a glimpse of another side corridor, curiosity overcame his instincts, and he wandered off to investigate. Now the Chirugai was glowing in his hand, tugging even, urging him to go before the sirens were heard and they were caught out, but he couldn't turn to leave; he was too mesmerised by the sight before him.
It was not one of the guards, or even one of the inmates, as he had first suspected - it was the man in the orange straightjacket. And from the looks of it he was still alive, although at first glance that would not appear to be the case; he was so badly burnt that he resembled a corpse, if anything.
It had been almost a month since Kurtis had first encountered him, stumbling about the twisted skeleton of the facility's cafeteria. He was not a young man by any means, and there had been a haunted look in his eyes, a sense of helplessness and fear, which had prevented Kurtis from putting a bullet in his brain. He now sat huddled in the corner of his cell, still with his arms bound to his chest, still with that same vacant look, but he was unmoving, and his eyelids wavered, as though he were on the verge of a nightmarish sleep.
Kurtis dropped to his knees; his Chirugai hovering above him, spinning around and raining orange sparks before it suddenly died, and fell clattering at his feet.
He had never completely mastered the technique, and was prone to losing the thread of connection when he did. It allowed him to speak with the voice locked away in someone's mind, when that person was unable to speak for themselves. His father had once taken him into a mental hospital when he was six and used the people there as practice. Kurtis had heard some very disturbing things from many of the patients, and had refused to use that particular power again.
It was time, however, to break a habit of lifetime.
XXX
The evidence room was before her; the door still miraculously on its hinges was, however, twisted and melted by the heat of the blast, and the lock had been completely destroyed. Lara reached out a hand, and easily pushed it open.
She stopped in her tracks, with the keys hanging limply at her side.
Her face fell.
"So much for unlocking the evidence room…"
With a sigh, she placed the keys to one side, on the counter in the centre of the room, which had survived relatively unscathed in the blast; in fact, the entire room was reinforced in steel, and it struck her how easily such a precaution could have saved the rest of the station, not to mention a huge number of lives.
With a sigh, she gathered up their effects from where they were lying in a pile on the counter. A thought struck her as she strapped her holsters back onto her thighs; it was a vague wondering really, a flickering hope that perhaps could not yet be wholly extinguished.
The evidence lockers were coded by letter. Slowly, she approached a filing cabinet in the far corner. It was labeled in Czech, but fortunately she only needed to understand one word to guess at its contents:
Strahov.
Within the middle drawer she found a number of items in plastic sleeves that had obviously been pulled from the wreckage: spent gun cartridges, a set of keys and even a rather bloody wristwatch. But she paid them no heed, for there before her, slightly charred but otherwise intact, were the three Periapt Shards.
She smiled in relief.
XXX
•dances around a bonfire, cackling and urging on the flames• Plot twists! How I love thee!
Um, yes. •looks about shiftily• I'm sorry for the wait again •cougheightmonthscough• but writer's block just loves to torture me lately. But I am determined to get this fic finished if it kills me, and I already have most of the next chapter ready. And yes, if you're anything like me, then you will have to reread this entire story in order to remember its plot. And I recommend that you do so, since I have been through and changed a few details that were bugging me - not anything too earth shattering, but enough to take a second glance.