The Edifice

48. How the Stars Fall

Lightning strikes. Not from the heavens but from the earth beneath our feet. A blinding flash of light erupts between Olivia and Otis, crackling out into a dozen branches. They sink into the scattered sheets of iron around us, dissipate with human-like screams into the air. Maybe the screams are Olivia's- I can't tell. She and Otis are consumed in the centre of the splintering light as though caught in the detonation of a phosphorous bomb.

I scramble away from the three young gods as the light and energy consumes them. The moisture on my tongue sizzles like seltzer, every nerve in my body twinges with proximity to the burst of magic.

All at once, the brilliant light blows out like a candle and darkness comes rushing in. Blinded by the glare and the sudden contrast of being left alone in a world of pitch-black, I stumble my way back to my friends, grazing the palm of my hand on several tumbles. When I can finally distinguish the icons on my phone-screen, I switch on the flash.

Zagan is still aglow, albeit so faintly I can still barely see it against the seared imprint of lightning that still occludes most of my vision. Otis and Olivia, however...

All I can see is sprawled limbs and a few strips of ruined clothing. Even that becomes blurred by the thick, hot tears that follow. If they breathe, if they speak, if they so much as move it's lost beneath my roar of anguish as everything I've bottled up finally breaks loose. The scream tears up my already agonised throat until the pain forces me to sob out my emotions instead.

My father, all the terror that had chased me through my adult life snuffed out in a single moment with a single death. At the time I'd been relieved, even if I wasn't done with the rage and indignity I still carried. Now the guilt finally settles in, a deep ache of shame and uncertainty that tunnels so deep inside of me that it would be fatal to excise it.

I wasn't enough for him. He didn't deserve anything I did to him. I wasn't enough for Olivia. I wasn't enough for Otis.

I always knew that everything I did was self serving but still it was noble. I was fighting for my life, escaping what hurt me. Now I see that it was rotting me. The bitterness, the snark and the deceit all fed my decaying mind and soul until it culminated in this. A failure with two dead friends and a nemesis.

-

Even the self-loathing gets boring eventually.

The internal pain eventually loses out to how much actual pain I'm in, not just from my throat and hands but the blistering cold of the night air on my body. I've ignored it for so long that the hypothermia has already set in, a stiffness that extends to everything but the shaking shivers that wrack my body.

There's only the thought of one person that brings me any comfort, only one pair of arms I want to bury myself in and escape. I fumble so many times typing the digits to my phone that I'm forced to go to my contacts list instead.

It rings once, twice and then picks up. Her voice is muffled, a sleepy drawl that slowly grows more and more angry as she wakes up. "Juniper? What the fuck is going on? It's three AM. What the fuck are you-"

Katy Perry gets an earful of sobbing in response as another bout I thought I could suppress erupts. The grief washes over me for another two minutes as I stumble over my words, each seeming more pathetic than the last. To my surprise she doesn't hang up.

"Lee. Enough. What's going on?"

I explain. The whole series of events from when I last saw her to now. In the background I can hear her rise from bed, the opening of drawers and finally the frenzied scribbling of a pen on paper. When she speaks it's not with pity or anger, but in a voice alert with excitement.

"Is Otysses Creed dead, Lee?"

I glance back at the darkness where I'd seen the unmoving figures, still fighting for breath that doesn't tremble. "I-I don't know. I couldn't go to them. Nobody has woken up and-"

"Is Otysses Creed dead, Lee?" Katy repeats with a furious slowness.

"I don't know-" I try to explain again but once more she cuts me off.

"Get your fucking ass over there and check you piece of shit or I fucking hang up!"

I immediately obey, fighting against the dread in the pit of my stomach. The not-knowing for certain has been a source of hope all on its own. If I reach out and can't find a pulse on them the grief will hit me all over again and my body isn't strong enough to take that.

The three of them are nestled together, almost peaceful under the stars above. Zagan still looks awful, skin charred black from his arms to his neck. While I watch a sudden spasm of pain wracks his body and another breath rattles deep in his lungs. Olivia and Otis are harder to check.

They're more intact than the youngest Creed at least. Faces pale and dusty, embracing each other despite the fact that I don't remember moving them. Olivia's hair shifts with the rise and fall of her chest.

Thank you, God.

Tentatively, as hesitant as though I were reaching for the flesh of Christ himself, I caress Otis's upturned cheek. Even to my fingers, the flesh is warm and when I reach lower, to the smooth skin beneath his jaw, there is a single beat of a steadily pumping heart.

"They're alive. All three of them." I turn as light flashes through the gloom. In the distance a pair of headlights appear on the gravel drive into the Creed testing compound, bobbing over the uneven road. I continue more hurriedly, "Someone just arrived. Probably for Zagan."

"Good, good," Katy replies, a purr to her voice which I've come to associate with nothing good. "Whatever you do, do not let them take Otis with them. I'll send a car for the both of you. Right now though, you need to take photos. Send me everything you have on what's happened. As much evidence on Zagan as you can, he's our angle here."

Once more I obey, taking a dozen scattered shots of the three bodies and the warehouse, including some rather choice burn marks left by the fighting. For a minute it's just like old times, when Katy was building her fanbase controversy by controversy and I was trying to shake the legal consequences of our fraud.

This has always been her element. Somehow she always knows exactly which means will get her the results she wants, exactly how much stirring will bring the pot to simmer.

"What's going to happen, Katy?" I ask as the ambulance finally pulls in in front of us. I put myself between the emerging paramedics and Otysses. Phone tucked into my shoulder, my hand in his, I kneel on the hard ground and pray.

Katy lets out a long, trilling laugh that crackles as static through my speakers. I can already see the smug victory in her expression as she speaks. "The same thing as always, Juni. Your Mommy's taking care of you and you're about to make me very, very rich."