14: Chloe – The World Has Figuratively Turned Upside-down

When the world finished melting, what was left was unrecognizable. The buildings were metal skeletons of their former selves, covered in scabs of stone. The superstructures had bent under their own weight during the event, then twisted higher than before when strength returned to the metal, sans the weight of their outer layers. Even the inside layers were almost gone. Furniture stood on craggy rebar, some half through it, glued in place by hardened plaster. It looked like every seagull in the city had coated every room in a year’s worth of crap, and without walls to keep them out, they probably soon would be.

Once again the klaxon wailed, louder in the empty lobby than in the busy hanger. I clamped the side of my head to drown it out, wondering what could top surviving a nuclear blast, a citywide inferno and flayed buildings. Kinsley counted down again, giddy as a schoolboy, and hit one with a twinkle in his eye.

At zero, my stomach lurched, the kind of lurch from a rollercoaster plummeting from the top. It was the sensation of freefall, the first half of a base-jump or the seconds before a bungee cord snapped back. It was driving downhill with Holden at the wheel, and once again I was stuck in the passenger seat.

Kinsley strapped the tablet’s drop cord around my wrist.

“If you wouldn’t mind earning your keep, Miss Heralds.” He said. “Please read this. Here’s your microphone.”

He slotted a headset behind my ear and pointed to a timer on the screen.

“Um. Launch sequence has been initiated?” I said. My own voice echoed back around us. “Clamps disengaging. Explosives charged? Detonation in ten? Nine!”

“You do have your seatbelt on, don’t you?” Kinsley pointed down at his waist.

Everything I’d learned hit me at once. The armchairs had seatbelts. All the furniture was bolted to the floor. The building was in a rocket silo.

And I was giving a countdown.

I smashed the two halves of the seatbelt together and pulled it tight.

“Five!”

“Haven’t you ever wondered why modern buildings are so aerodynamic?” Kinsley said.

“Four, three.”

“Let’s just say they’re shaped like rockets for a reason.”

“Two, one…”