DEFEATISM

27

Maverick rarely, if ever, takes Moonie at exactly her word. She's prone to fantasizing, to exaggerating, to metaphor, and to all sorts of things that express what she feels rather than how the world is. Besides, he's taken extensive first aid training. He'd never take ten melatonin like she suggested.

Five would do. Maverick's huge anyway.

He wakes up, not aware that he is even awake, but definitely aware he should be. The world is a snow globe and he's trapped in it, which isn't abnormal all things considered. Residence assistants are told in training they are in a fishbowl, which isn't all that different from a snow globe either. His eyes are wide open but burning from the sparkles in the snow globe air. It's the cold, no doubt, and not sparkles. It's freezing. His head is rushing. Maverick can feel the blood moving around inside his skull. He's never had a migraine before, but surely this is it. His heart is pounding, everything is freezing, and Maverick is only tangentially sure he is alive. At least, he feels like life is behind a cloth, and that cloth is wet and sticking to him.

It's his blankets. They are wet.

He peels up. It's pitch black in his room. He feels for his light switch on the desk lamp he leaves next to his bed at night, but the light doesn't flick on. His fingers fumble with it, not actually feeling the buttons. His joints are so stiff from the cold he can't press it, and it keeps slipping out of his fingers.

Power outage. It's coming back. The blanket is still wet. It's so cold.

Maverick realizes the rushing blood he hears isn't in his head. It's probably not blood either. He's getting cold, he realizes. He hadn't noticed he was cold, just that everything around him is.

Maverick slaps his face and pulls himself into a standing position. His hair is soaked, not from sweat, he thinks. His face is wet too. The sheets are wet. Maverick learned in a high school science class that it is sometimes hard to tell wet from cold. The teacher had him put his gloved hand in a frigid glass of water. It felt wet, but it couldn't possibly be. Only after he shoves the blanket aside, squeezing water out of it, is he sure that it's wet. Water is coming down from the ceiling. It's dripping on the top of his head too, so it isn't sweat. He cannot see anything.

He reaches for his curtains and opens them. Soft moonlight comes in his room and it takes him a minute to adjust to the light with a pulsing head. There is water on the ground. The ceiling of his washroom has caved in and with the bathroom door open, water is flooding into the rest of his room. One of his shoes is floating underwater. So much of his stuff is down there. The posters for Moonie on his desk are ruined.

He squeezes his sides. Damn him for sleeping shirtless. There is even less of a barrier between his heart and the air, and his ghostly breath haunts the room with every exhale. Maverick's never been a thinker, but damn does he need to think now.

~~~

When the ground settles above them, Tempest's heart is pounding. The fifth floor was flooding but the water was highest on the floor below, where Maverick was. She didn't go for Maverick. She should have made sure Benedict knew. The water was rushing, and she knew Maverick didn't have a flashlight, and everything felt so fast. Something should have been done. It might be his floor that caved in and he's down in the rubble. He might even be crushed. Time is moving slower now and she still can't move.

Moonie doesn't wait for instructions, she tears off down to the fourth floor with her flashlight. Elodie is just behind her, and they race down the stairs. Pumping her arms, Moonie doesn't steady the flashlight. It's better than plunging into the sea at night, so better than whatever Maverick is experiencing, but not by much.