Anomalies: Control
Chapter 6

Three months. They had three months of peace before hell started to rain down.

It started with a rumble like thunder. No one, not even Rune or Tech realized what that rumble really was. There was a bit of cloud cover, and the light was bleeding white as though more coverage was moving in, and no one thought to question it.

But then the building started to shake and tremble as well, and the older ones were instantly on red alert. Cole was in a rare moment without Rune, lounging in the bullpen with Banshee when Tech came running out, followed in quick succession by a calmer but still agitated Rune, and Tracker and Kane bursting in the main door, having run back up from the makeshift gym. Cole leapt to his feet, offering a hand to Banshee to help her up without thinking as he looked to Tech.

“What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” he said, looking around as the trembles grew into shakes that started to rattle the walls. The Mechanical’s eyes landed on Lisa. “Lisa, what’s happening?”

The blonde in the corner looked alarmed for a moment but tried to pull it together, and took a breath as she closed her eyes, looking like she was listening for something. After a few seconds, her eyes flew open in a panic.

“There’s officials and construction crews. They’re trying to bring the building down!” she cried, trying not to freak out but failing fairly miserably. Suki was immediately at her side, murmuring to the other girl in a language Cole didn’t recognize in an effort to calm her down.

Tech immediately went into leader mode and began barking out orders. “Tracker, take a head count. Kane, escort everyone down the back stairs and out the back. Fates- where are the fates?”

The three girls appeared out of thin air behind Tech without warning. “We were needed?” they asked in unison, making Cole’s skin crawl even in the midst of the panic.

“Yes, can you stop time long enough to go downstairs and see how many are here?”

“Of course Tech.” They vanished in a blink and Tech turned back to the others, Tracker in particular. “Everyone accounted for?”

“Gaia’s out, and so are a couple of the nomads, and Hawk’s out on a flight.”

“But everyone else?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.” A particularly large shake started making flakes of ceiling fall down. “Everyone out! Follow Kane to the street, small groups! Stick with Kane, Tracker, me or Maggie! Go, go, go!”

Everyone in the room bolted, scrambling to get bags and their personal effects, but the rumbling wasn’t willing to wait for people to collect their belongings, and the walls started to crack and the floor started shifting beneath their feet. Lights was actually the first to realize what was happening. The kid had an addiction to action movies that actually came in useful every now and then.

“The floors under us are caving in! We’re gonna go down with the building!”

“Everyone to the door!” Tech bellowed. Cole pushed Banshee to Tech and looked around for Rune. He spotted her near the hall that led to her room, frozen as she watched everyone scramble and race for the doors as the floor started to give under them.

“Rue!” He started to run to her, but barely covered two strides before he lost his balance and the floor gave a roar and fell out from under his feet. He hit the ground hard and started sliding back. The floor where Rune was standing was still mostly intact, and a small part of his brain reasoned that they must have only taken out half the building, though it was a fleeting thought as he slid across the tilting, crumbling floor to the 23 story shortcut to the ground level. He scrambled for a purchase, something…anything to keep him from sliding over the last edge of breaking floor. The broken chunks of concrete were dislodged enough to cut open his hands as he grasped at them, but not enough to actually offer him a handhold.

Rune had finally snapped out of it and was running toward him, and while she wasn’t fast enough to get to him before he went pitching over the edge of the floor that was struggling to hold together, he wasn’t ready to just slide and wait for someone to pop up at the last second for the rescue. He stopped trying to replace something to hold onto and let himself fall to the last edge, and put all his strength into digging his fingers in and clutching the ledge, praying Rune could figure a way to get him back on solid ground that wouldn’t end in him splattered on said ground.

But in case that wasn’t going to happen, he needed a plan B. He looked down below him, trying to focus on things that might actually help him instead of the dramatic demolishing of every floor beneath him. Half of the building was struggling to remain upright and intact while the other half was caving in faster than seemed safe. There were floors still half intact; if he could fall toward one of those floors, he could try to catch a floor edge or one of those steel bars that had kept the concrete together. It’d at least buy him time to get onto a more solid floor and run for the stairs.

Rune came sliding down the tilting floor to land on what had probably been a pillar in its life before the building came down, but now was tilted almost horizontally, giving her a ledge to land on as she reached for him. Another violent shake of the building made the floor in his hands break off and he fell. He heard Rune screaming for him, but he had bigger things to worry about, like trying to fall just right so that he could grab the steel bar without landing on it and slicing himself in half. He managed to catch the bar, mangling his hand in the process, and looked up as Rune succeeded in stalling the falling concrete, giving them a slide-like pseudo staircase of suspended concrete. The concrete had only fallen so far, and she was still an arm’s length away from him, reaching and calling for him. He winced as he adjusted his grip on the bar. He couldn’t just let go without risking falling from the bar, so he slung a leg over it, trying to ignore the shaking going on around him, and reached up for Rune. He’d better hope she didn’t get mad about getting his blood all over her hand.

She didn’t get mad, but she spaced out again, like she’d been doing in the corner of the room. She was still holding his hand, but she wasn’t pulling him up, she was just staring at their hands, lost in thought. “Dammit, Rue!” he yelled up at her. Now was not the time for her to be drifting off. “Rue!” Still nothing. “Rue!” He squeezed her hand hard, wincing at the pain it caused his own little injuries.

That startled her enough to bring her back to the present, and she hauled him back up to safety- relative safety anyway- and they made a break for the far door. He tried to look around, see if anyone else had gotten into trouble, but most were gone and a few were running behind Garet, who paused to track Cole and Rune for a moment before vanishing out the door. They followed the panicked yelling down the stairwell, and out onto the street.

It was mayhem. People were running, yelling, there were screams from trucks and an army line of police officers and S.W.A.T. looking men. “Rue, we gotta run!”

The sounds of bullets were hard to discern in the tumbling of the building, but they were close enough to partially hear through the noise, and he and Rune ducked as they tried to figure out which way to run. They couldn’t make out anyone specific really, it was just a sea of running bodies that filled the air with screams and yells.

A hand on his wrist made him turn, prepare to punch whoever was grabbing him, but he caught himself just in time at the familiar sight of Tech’s face. Rune was slowly backing up, looking terrified, and Tech tugged on Cole. “C’mon we’ve got to get out of here-”

“There they are!” The call went up, and quickly spread across the uniformed men and woman, and the focus turned to Tech, Cole and Rune. Rune shoved Cole and Tech away, and her fear had faded into a grim determination that worried him.

“Go - both of you, I’ll hold them off and meet you at a safe house.”

“Rue, no. You’re coming with us,” Cole argued, making her turn on him with black eyes.

“We’ll never all get out together, you and Tech are useless in a fight.” She ignored Tech’s insulted scoff. “I can hold them off. You have to go.”

“I’m not leaving without you.”

She was apparently done talking, and bolted without warning toward the lines of uniforms. They lifted their guns and Cole ran after her, but she skidded to a stop halfway to them, and lifted her arms, sending the guns in their arms flying into the air in random directions, and sending the line of officers scrabbling to retrieve a gun, any gun.

Tech grabbed Cole’s arm and tried pulling him back in order to run, but he struggled against the Mechanical. Rune turned back to them as he broke away and yelled for her. She lifted an arm and with a pained look, sent a wave of power into the ground and created a wave under the concrete that sent him and Tech both sprawling backwards. Then she turned her back on him and lifted another hand to the construction equipment, sending the guys in bright orange vests diving from the machinery.

He didn’t get to watch the showdown. Tech finally got a decent grip on him and yanked him away and down an alley, leaving his first real ally fighting an unwinnable battle around the corner while everyone else escaped.