Fragments

“Yara, get out of here!” Jeremy screamed through the smoke though I wasn’t sure how he managed it.

Shaking my head, though he couldn’t see me, I yelled back. “I told you, we’re in this together!”

When no answer came, my heart felt like it stopped. Panic sizzled through my blood, adrenaline moving through my system in a coldness that ran down to my bones. I pushed myself to run through the rubble, dodging as much debris that I could flying through the air.

When another explosion erupted only meters away from me, a sharp, penetrating sound pierced my eardrums. White light blinded my vision and the force of the explosion ripped away the ground beneath my feet. It left me soaring across what used to be our living room.

Now, all it was, was ashes.

Coughing, I tried to ignore every painful impulse immobilizing my limbs from moving. The floors, though couldn’t be called proper paneling anymore because they were in pieces all over the place, vibrated fiercely. My head throbbed and a force stronger than anything I’d ever felt enabled me to get back on my feet. Strength that must have been coming from the adrenaline pumping through my body let me stand on my own two feet.

I half jogged, half sprinted through the still standing archway from the living room leading into a hallway. The stairs to the second floor were destroyed, and the roof above my head was going to come crashing down on me with the next bomb.

I needed to hurry.

Jeremy had to be somewhere back here. His scream had come from the bathroom. He’d probably tried to use the confines of the bathtub to shield himself from the splinters of wood and glass soaring through the air by the time the Taiits dropped the second wave of explosives. My breaths were rugged and my head was spinning, making my surroundings blur in and out of focus.

“Jeremy, where the hell are you?”

I could make out a muffled groan, though the ringing in my ears was too loud for me to pinpoint where he was, exactly. I made my way to the bathroom, my original assumption.

When I got there, all that was left of it, was more rubble. Shards of the ceramic tub were scattered around, along with the golden door handle laying just centimeters from my feet.

Looking down at it, I felt a strange and overwhelming sense of loss. The Taiits, a political party of Ior’Gea, had been announcing these attacks for months.

And still all of us had managed to be blindsided.

It hadn’t helped that my parents hadn’t thought it necessary to pack up our things and move. We’d moved to a politically unstable region years ago, and remaining here when matters were bound to escalate had caused a larger rift between my parents and I than there already was.

Thinking of our fights now, when the bathtub had still stood against the wall and our roof had remained stable above our heads…

I should’ve done more.

Squeezing my eyes shut and balling my hands into fists, I tried not to let resentment cloud my mind. I needed it sharp and ready, especially now that the ringing was finally quieting to an irritating tinnitus.

“Jeremy!” I yelled out again and this time, his voice managed to travel through all the noise other bombings and explosions were causing.

It was difficult standing upright when the ground continuously shook so fiercely that all I wanted to do was get out of this house and crumble up into a ball someplace safe.

“I’m here, where the study was!”

Irritated first and insanely afraid a split second later, I realized that meant he was in the second floor.

I can’t reach the second floor.

“The left wing has already collapsed and I’m stuck here. You need to walk around, on the outside, to get to me. Don’t you dare use those stairs!” A cough followed and I didn’t hesitate a moment to follow Jeremy’s instructions to walk around the house, regardless of the dangers in the streets.

There were Taiits marching through countless neighborhoods, finishing off what their explosives didn’t take care of.

Going out was even riskier than remaining within the few walls still standing. Caked in debris and surrounded by smoke gave me enough cover that I couldn’t be spotted right away. Walking along the streets…

Making my way through shredded wood, which were mostly doors, parts of the walls and furniture, I tried carefully to move efficiently. My body was working hard to keep my mind focused and everything functioning—adrenaline was responsible for most of it. I couldn’t afford to give myself more pain to subdue should I misstep and hurt myself more than I already was. I heard an alarming cracking sound, announcing that wood was being torn apart by gravity.

With my blood running cold, I increased my pace and managed to step across the threshold from where our front door used to be just in time for a part of the second floor to come screeching down. The walls of what used to be my room mixed with the remnants of our home.

Circling around the house, I stayed as close as I could to those structures that were still holding up part of the second floor and remained out of sight. I barely looked out across the streets, fear and a compelling sense of survival didn’t let me.

All that mattered was getting to Jeremy.

And when I did, my heart dropped and my body went rigid.