2011: It's been ten years since the sky literally came crashing down around Yael Malkah and upended her world. Now she's returned to New York to visit her ailing grandmother. With no other family, it's up to her to take care of the family business...
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TW: 9/11 Flashback, death, destruction
September 11, 2001
"A goddamned plane hit the World Trade Center!"
Haustin shook his head and chuckled under his breath. Abel was a sick bastard. He had the know-how to pull off the best pranks, delivering an epic line of bullshit without blinking an eye. Even now, he stood in the vehicle bay with pale skin, a sheen of sweat popping out across his plump cheeks and a bewildered stare. Abel should know better. After the bombing of the Trade Center in '93, an attack wasn't something anyone should joke about. Haustin opened his mouth, fully intending to tell Abel to grow up, but an alarm burst through the firehouse, killing the words on his tongue.
Taking a closer look at Abel's dazed expression, Haustin dropped the oxygen mask he was servicing and rushed outside to peer down the street. Usually, they had a decent view of the Twin Towers between a couple of buildings. Today, though, all he saw was a disaster unfolding. Smoke billowed from the top of the north tower, marring the otherwise perfect blue sky, and already, the cry of sirens assaulted his ears from every corner of the city.
"Shit."
His blood turned to ice and dread wiggled its way into his typically steel resolve. It was going to be a hell of a fight to get up there. Each building was over a hundred stories tall with a maze of elevators, offices and storage. Running procedures in his head and compiling a mental list of the tools they'd need, determination replaced the ice, giving his body life. Fire ... he lived for it.
"Haus, get your ass in here!"
Paulie's shout broke his trance, and he ran inside to throw on his bunker gear, shoving his feet into his boots and ignoring the flutters in his chest. Piling into Engine 12 with the crew, tension hovered thick and hot in the air, a big change from the dirty locker room jokes and insults usually flying around.
"Was it really a plane?" the new guy, Alex, asked, horrified.
"That's what I heard," Paulie confirmed, his lean freckled face flushed with anxiety.
Haustin added his own question. "A private plane?"
"Passenger jet."
Those two words kicked him in the gut, and his head spun. How many people were on one of those? A hundred? Two? And fuel. Were they full? Jet fuel burned at an incredibly high temperature, and if the building's chemical fire suppression systems were down, the department was going to need something stronger than water, like a miracle.
"On purpose?"
"Alex, don't be an idiot. I bet it was banking for an emergency landing." Doubt filled Abel's tone.
They remained uncharacteristically quiet the rest of the trip to the World Trade Center as traffic crept to a standstill, doubling their average ten-minute ride from the firehouse in Midtown. The truck blazed down Church Street and, as it passed the complex, Haustin pressed his face against the window, squinting up into the blazing nightmare. At least ten stories were on fire, orange flames swirling from the gaping holes in the sides of the tower.
