Leila was one speck amongst many, all but indistinguishable from her identically dressed, early morning commuters. She was a dust mote caught in a draft; pulled along in the tightly packed stream that made up the city’s workforce. She moved on autopilot, her eyes glazed over; following the yellow arrow that lay before her on the pavement, weaving its way through the crowd and leading her through life.
For a fraction of a second the line stuttered and shifted, and she blindly followed, breaking free from the crowds and stepping down off the curb and into the endless traffic.
‘Leila?!’
The shout stopped her, one foot on the road, just centimetres from where the silent vehicles sped past, whipping her hair up over her face. The near-miss caused Leila’s heart to leap into her mouth as she flinched away from the blur of identical white cars.
Knowing that the automated vehicles would have stopped before hitting her, did little to calm Leila’s racing pulse, and it took the voice over her headset to wake her from her shock. ‘Jaywalking: -20pts,’ the woman said, ‘please move to a designated pedestrian zone.’
Surprise turned quickly to irritation, and Leila dismissed the message with an angry grunt. She spun back to the pavement, and scanned the crowds that marched ever on, oblivious to the tragedy that had nearly befallen one of their own.
Around two-thirds of the people had been greyed-out by the visor she wore - appearing to have stepped straight out of a black and white movie - and even those still in colour were hard to tell apart, what with them all wearing the same, identical white ponchos; hoods pulled up against the steady drizzle.
Amongst that shifting mass of interchangeable commuters, it was impossible for Leila to recognise even her oldest friend, but then her visor - predicting her thoughts - did the work for her, placing a pale blue glow around the one stationary figure.
A picture of Bastion’s face appeared next to the boy; his name, rank and employee details listed below. It was hard to read his expression beyond the mirrored screen of his visor, but when he asked, ‘are you alright?’ Bastion’s voice sounded worried.
‘The stupid EyeWare glitched,’ Leila muttered as she took his offered hand and let him pull her away from the road. ‘It nearly got me killed!’
Bastion gave a sigh of relief, his mouth finding its usual wry smile. ‘You sure you weren’t just daydreaming and wandered off course?’
Trust Bastion not to believe there could be such a thing as a fault in the company’s EyeWare. ‘Of course!’ Leila responded, hotly, but she wasn’t as certain as she pretended, and when she rewound the last minute of footage recorded by her visor, it showed her clearly deviating from the yellow GPS arrow.
Pushing her lank hair back from her face, Leila gave an irritated huff, and quickly turned to continue towards school - anything rather admit that she might have been wrong.
The traipse of feet against the wet pavements was the only sound as she rejoined the silent flow of thousands, all walking the same wide pavement but none of them speaking. Most were content to watch or listen to whatever was going on in their EyeWare; uninterested in anything that might be happening in the world around them.
‘You need to get more sleep,’ Bastion said, coming up on her side.
It took Leila a moment to realise he was trying to explain away her mistake as a loss of concentration. ‘I told you, the EyeWare glitched,’ she protested, irritably.
Bastion fell silent, and for a moment Leila thought he had given up, but he was only reading from his visor. After a few seconds he said, ‘according to your record, you only got 5.4 hours of sleep last night, that’s quite the sleep debt you’re building up.’
‘Don’t start,’ Leila grunted, but she was used to Bastion checking her data and knew it was pointless to try and stop him. ‘If you must know I got tired of waiting for you to pick a date and I decided to watch our show alone.’ The thought of her favourite TV programme was enough to pull her mind away from her near-accident.
Bastion shrugged and said, ‘well, try to get your full quota of sleep in future.’
Disappointment tinged Leila’s thoughts, for she had hoped her friend would be upset that she was watching their show without him. A thought came to her. ‘How about we Link up tonight? We can watch the show together and I can fill you in on what you missed?’
A moment’s silence and then, ‘actually...’ Bastion scratched his chin as if slightly nervous of her reaction. ‘I think I’m going to give it a rest; I’m just not feeling it anymore.’
‘Oh!’ Leila stopped dead, and the people walking behind had to swerve to avoid a collision. She wasn’t sure if it was his lack of interest in the TV programme which bothered her more, or that he had flatly refused her offer of a Link. ‘But it’s such a good show!’
‘Is it? Is it really?’ Bastion had walked on ahead, but he turned back to her, a grin quirking his lips. ‘The effects are shocking, and the plots are ridiculous.’
‘It’s all about the characters,’ she said, dejected by his response. She had discovered the archive of ancient TV shows some three years back and introducing Bastion had been like having their own secret club: a thing that was just theirs.
‘All those aliens and stuff: it’s unrealistic,’ the boy said, with a chuckle, clearly not sensing Leila’s disappointment. ‘When exactly is it supposed to be set?’
‘2365,’ Leila muttered, knowing him well enough to anticipate his response.
‘2365?! That’s like 50 years ago,’ Bastion laughed, as he scanned the white city and the grey sky above, ‘where are all the spaceships, phasers and stuff?’
‘That’s what makes the show so good!’ Leila sighed, wistfully, as she began walking again. Part of what Leila loved about the old shows was their vision of an ideal future, when humans were free to travel between the stars. ‘They had imagination back then; it’s not their fault if the world turned out so... boring,’ she finished, with a snort.
She glanced sadly across at her friend, taking in his familiar profile. Like her - and pretty much everyone else employed by R-Tech - Bastion had short brown hair and olive skin that was a few shades lighter than those from the other two mega-corporations. If he grew his hair out, and curled it slightly, the pair of them would be practically twins.
Bastion caught her sideways glance and at last seemed to notice her disappointment. ‘Maybe we could go fencing tonight: that would be fun, right?’ A mischievous grin spread across the boy’s face, and he added, ‘maybe you could even try beating me for once?’
Leila knew what her friend was doing by suggesting an R-Tech-approved activity. Unlike watching old TV shows, fencing was classed as both an exercise and a unity-building activity, and as such it would earn them credits.
On the one hand, Leila’s current, rebellious attitude made her want to resist any such corporation-compliant behaviour, but at the same time, she did enjoy fencing, and she did want to beat Bastion just once before graduation.
‘Fine,’ Leila grumbled, trying to suppress her enthusiasm for the suggestion. ‘So what were you doing last night that was more important than seeing me?’
Bastion gave her a long hard stare, his eyebrow lifted as if the answer should be obvious. ‘Unlike you, I actually need to revise for my final exams.’
‘We can’t all be naturally gifted, I suppose,’ Leila said, grinning across at her friend. When she realised Bastion wasn’t looking, she instead sent an emoticon of a winking face to the boy’s EyeWare, just like when they were kids.
Bastion gave a dry chuckle, but when he spoke his tone was serious, ‘don’t get cocky, Leila, there’s more to being a good employee than exams.’ He paused, as if thinking, and when he next spoke Leila realised he was reading from his visor again. ‘“Rated A+ for competence, Leila Skye lacks discipline and company loyalty - both of which are ranked at a C.”’
Leila scowled. ‘I can’t stop you reading my reports, but don’t tell me what’s in them.’
‘Don’t you think you should know?’ Bastion responded, instantly, ‘these things are out there for anyone in Human Resources to see, and it won’t matter how skilled you are, no department will have you if you lack conviction for R-Tech.’
Leila should have expected no other response from a born bureaucrat like Bastion - especially one with an A+ in company loyalty.
‘I guess you could always find employment in an independent company,’ Bastion said, after a moment, so convincingly serious that she looked hopefully his way. But the boy only laughed at her expression and behind his visor she suspected he was rolling his eyes.
Like her, Bastion had been born into a high-ranking family belonging to R-tech, one of the three mega-corporations that between them employed 91% of the world’s population. Like her, he could go straight from school into a supervisor-level position but, unlike her, Bastion would never question the path laid out for him.
There was no point trying to explain; he could never understand the indifference she felt towards her birth-company, any more than he could grasp the idea that Leila had grown to hate the EyeWare they all had to wear.
Acting as a digital filter between her senses and the real world, the visor replicated the sights and sounds of the world upon a wrap-around screen across her eyes and through speakers over her ears. Thanks to the nodes on Leila’s temples, she could, at a thought, call up data on anything or anyone; rewind and replay the constantly recorded footage of her day; even, with enough credits, change the way she saw the world.
There had been a time when her biggest dream for the future was to save up enough credits to buy a digital overlay that turned the city’s grey sky into that of a starry night. But that had been back when she still loved the device; before she began thinking of the visor as a barrier, turning her into a prisoner of the digital fantasy that R-Tech had created for her.
Glancing around, Leila took in the brightly coloured ads that were superimposed on the surrounding skyscrapers, showing smiling people enjoying R-Tech products. A newsfeed scrolled along the bottom of Leila’s view, giving R-Tech updates; while in the upper left a map showed nearby R-Tech facilities; and in the top right, a social feed listed ‘friends’ she didn’t know, all of whom spent their time extolling the virtues of R-Tech. And there, before Leila on the pavement, was that same ever-present arrow.
For twelve years Leila had thoughtlessly followed that yellow line to the same school, and come graduation she would do the same for some identical office building. Never would she deviate from its path as it directed her to the R-Tech gym after school, to an R-Tech cafe for dinner, and then back to her R-Tech owned home - even into traffic if it told her to do so.
At her depressed thoughts, Leila felt her breathing quicken, as if her chest were being constricted. Overcome with this suffocating sensation, Leila felt the sudden need to break free, and know that she still had some small amount of control over her life.
Grabbing Bastion’s hand she swerved away from the yellow arrow, leaving the flow of humans behind as she pulled into the protective lee of a roadside tree. Without another thought she wrenched up her visor, blinking owlishly in the gloomy morning light.
‘What are you doing?!’ Bastion exclaimed, as he stopped in front of her, his expression more fitting had she pulled up her top and flashed in the street.
‘I just needed to see for a moment,’ Leila snapped. ‘Is that okay with you?’
She had hoped it would feel liberating to tear the digital scales from her eyes, but what Leila actually felt was a little bit nauseous and a large part self-conscious as the other commuters glanced her way, and then scurried on by as if scared by her freakish behaviour.
And the street - so dynamic and colourful a moment ago - had become a singularly white place: windowless buildings, roads and pavements all coated in the same featureless plastic which absorbed the weak sunlight to power the city. Even the trees lining the street had vanished, another digital fiction created by the EyeWare.
‘You’ll get a headache,’ Bastion warned her irritably.
‘No I won’t,’ Leila snapped, but inwardly she grimaced at the thought of the pain that would come from not wearing her visor. She could already feel the first twinge at the back of her right eye that would soon become a full blown spasm.
‘What’s wrong, Lei? You’ve been acting strange,’ Bastion said, watching her closely.
‘Don’t you ever wish to do something different?’ she asked after a moment, trying to use her words to distract from the oncoming pain.
‘Like what?’ Bastion responded, shaking his head.
‘I don’t know, just leave it all behind: the city, the technology, the job.’
‘Yeah, sure,’ he said, drolly, ‘right before I go running naked beneath a solstice moon.’
Leila muttered something rude and stared off down the road, wanting to focus on anything that wasn’t her friend’s condescending smile. Without her visor, however, her poor eyesight turned anything beyond twenty metres into an indistinct blur.
‘I might have died back there in the road -’ Leila began, but Bastion cut her off.
‘The cars have collision-detection, they would have stopped,’ he said, touching her arm reassuringly. ‘You’re an engineer, Lei, you know that.’
‘That’s not the point,’ Leila snapped, hotly. ‘I could have died; I thought for an instant that I was going to; and you know what I felt in that moment?’
‘What?’ her friend asked, his brow creased in worry.
‘Nothing,’ she spat. ‘I felt completely detached from my life, like I simply didn’t care. What would change about the world if I died? What would I miss? Who would miss me?’
‘I would miss you,’ Bastion responded quietly, sighing and looking away.
Leila felt a moment’s sorrow for her friend. He wanted so desperately to help her, but he didn’t know how, and she didn’t know how to make him understand.
After a few seconds he said, ‘maybe you need to lay off those programmes; maybe the company has a good reason for limiting people’s access if it produces these kinds of thoughts.’
Leila’s grimace became a scowl, but she chose to try and explain her feelings rather than let their talk descend into an argument. ‘I feel like my life’s not my own,’ she muttered.
Bastion gave a harsh bark of laughter: clearly not enjoying this conversation any more than her. ‘Have you ever read your R-Tech contract? Technically it’s not your life.’
‘See! That’s my point exactly. They tell us when and what to eat; they tell us how much exercise to get and what type; they tell us when to wash; how to dress; what to study; what’s appropriate entertainment.’ She rubbed furiously at her neck as she tried to think up the words to explain how she felt. ‘With all that being the case, what would it matter if I died? They’d just raise another person to fill my role within the company.’
Subtly, Bastion glanced around as if to make sure they weren’t being overheard, which was kind of ridiculous since at any moment someone from Human Resources could be watching and listening through the EyeWare.
‘Look,’ Bastion said, hurriedly, hoping to get through this conversation as quickly as possible. ‘R-Tech doesn’t control you; they merely suggest the best actions and encourage you to comply: that’s a very different thing.’
‘It feels the same,’ Leila muttered. She should have expected that kind of response from a HR manager in training. ‘And if R-Tech is just making “suggestions”, then how come they reward us for doing as we’re told, and dock us credits if we go against their plan?’
‘What’s the alternative; let the people govern themselves?’ The boy nodded irritably towards the permanently cloud-filled sky, and said, ‘we all know where that led us.’
It was true that the old world democracy - led by governments and countries - had nearly ended mankind; but that didn’t make the current system better. ‘They treat us like nothing more than well-trained dogs,’ Leila stated, harshly.
‘That’s a bit extreme,’ Bastion growled, frowning and taking a step back; he didn’t like people talking badly about his birth-company, even Leila.
‘But true,’ she retorted, glaring at the familiar face.
For a second or two her friend stared back, defiantly, and then he snapped, an edge of exasperation slipping into his voice, ‘so? What do you want to do? If you could do anything with your life, what would be so all-fired amazing?’
Bastion’s question caught her momentarily off guard. He didn’t want an answer, and certainly didn’t expect one, but she thought about his question all the same. Involuntarily, she glanced up at the swirling grey and imagined herself above that dense cover of clouds, drifting in the void beyond, stars all around her, her body held by the inky night.
‘Well?’
Bastion’s voice cut across her thoughts, and Leila felt herself being forcibly dragged from her dream and back to reality. She saw, again, the face of her friend, the blank city surrounding them; and she muttered, morosely, ‘nothing...’ There was nothing she could do - nothing anyone could do aside from changing the very fabric of the world.
The pair stared at one another and it was clear they both had more to say, but that they also knew it was pointless; neither would ever understand the other.
Bastion was the first to break eye contact, his gaze flicking to where the time was displayed on his visor. ‘Come on,’ he growled, not wanting to be late, and with that he turned from Leila and joined the flow of commuters.
By now, the pressure mounting on Leila’s temples had grown painful, and so she slipped the EyeWare back into place, resenting the immediate relief she felt wash through her. She glared at the boy’s back for a moment, and then her head dropped as if she were beaten and she set off, following the path laid out by the yellow arrow.
Ahead, she could see the blue-highlighted figure that was her best friend - her only friend, Leila reminded herself, bitterly. And soon they would be separated, both heading off to their different departments, too busy earning credits and rising through the ranks to see one another. At that point, Leila would find herself truly alone in this world - she needed to remember that fact the next time she wanted to start an argument with Bastion.
After ten minutes the pair turned in at the school’s gatehouse and passed through a series of detectors which allowed only R-tech employees to enter. They had left the greyed-out commuters behind, and the people surrounding Leila now all had the olive skin and brown hair of her birth-company.
Through the gates was a walled recreation yard, a central path leading to the school’s main building, synthetic grass to either side. Students were gathered on the perfect green, making the most of a rare break in the rain, most engaged in a series of perfectly synchronised morning exercises; their movements robotic as they followed the prompts on their visors.
Leila ignored them all and made for an open space near the school’s entrance, while at her side Bastion was sending digital greetings to nearby friends. He didn’t even go to this engineering school, and yet somehow he knew far more people than her.
‘Are you working with Professor Karloff today?’ Bastion asked as they neared the school, his voice still strained, but clearly trying to put their argument behind him.
The Professor was using the school’s facilities to further one of his experiments into synthetic meat production and, as one of the top students, Leila had been instructed to help. But a week ago - when Leila’s company loyalty rating had dropped to a C grade - she had been unceremoniously kicked from the project.
Not wanting to tell Bastion this, however, Leila said, simply, ‘I stopped going.’ She still expected a lecture from Bastion on the importance of extra-curricular activities, but she was saved from such nagging by a sudden elbow in the small of her back.
Caught off guard, Leila would have been sent sprawling along the path if Bastion hadn’t turned at her gasp, and deftly caught her around the waist. ‘Watch it!’ Bastion yelled, pulling Leila upright as he stared after the person that had bumped them.
A short way along the path, a tall, thin youth turned to face them - while continuing to walk backwards - and even though they were only a few feet apart, he shouted back, loud enough that many in the yard turned to stare, ‘don’t believe the lies!’
Straightening her ruffled clothes, Leila’s head snapped up and she stared after the figure, tilting her head to get a better look at the boy’s face. His hood was back, his coppery hair clinging to his visor, and on the side of his EyeWare Leila saw a small blinking red light, showing that the device was set to privacy mode.
Few people used the visor’s privacy setting in public because others would see the flashing LED and assume the person must be up to no good. In addition, the minute-to-minute rate for running the function cost a fortune’s worth of credits, and so most people reserved its use for when in the bathroom - some not even for that.
‘The independents have it right!’ the boy yelled, his words slurred as if he were drunk. ‘Lambs, the lot of you! Lambs to the slaughter!’ He pumped the air with his fist and with that he turned and sprinted towards the school, weaving unsteadily as he went.
‘Preach on, brother,’ Leila laughed, saluting the boy’s back, before Bastion could grab her arm and yank it down.
‘Don’t even joke,’ he muttered, tapping the side of his visor in the universal gesture for, “we’re being watched.”
Leila’s smile faltered and she turned from him, her mood again spoilt by Bastion’s adherence to the company line.
Bastion didn’t notice, however; he was already reading something from his visor, his voice thoughtful. ‘It says here that due to his disloyal behaviour, that boy - Juran Merrick - was temporarily suspended; the idiot shouldn’t even be here.’
While the boy’s privacy mode had prevented Leila from seeing his details, Bastion must have used one of the facial recognition apps reserved for those in Human Resources.
‘Suspended?’ Leila, turned to Bastion in surprise. She had never met someone who had been suspended before - had thought it a punishment reserved for only the worst offenders - but that boy hadn’t seemed like a hardened breacher.
Glancing around, Leila was in time to see the lanky figure stagger into a bin by the school’s entrance, before bouncing off and disappearing through the door. ‘For once your ability to snoop into personnel files actually paid off,’ Leila said, with a laugh, adding, before she could change her mind, ‘come on, let’s see what he’s up to!’
‘Wait-’ Bastion began, but Leila was already sprinting after the trespasser, running along the path and mounting the short flight of steps leading to the glass doors.
Barging her way inside, Leila slid to a halt, giving Bastion a chance to catch up. He was at her side in a moment - as she had known he would be; unable to stay behind - and together they stared around at the school’s vast lobby.
The building was silent, most of the students enjoying the outside world as they waited for the morning bell. There was no sign of the trespassing boy - who could have gone down any number of corridors - but Leila pushed hopefully forward, feeling the need to tiptoe as she made for the main stairs opposite the door.
She grinned conspiratorially across at Bastion, and the boy’s serious expression broke into a rare answering smile. For a brief moment they were as they had been as children: friends, finding adventure in the little things in life.
But they were only halfway across the massive lobby, passing beneath the large cut out square of the first floor gallery, when the door behind them burst open.
Guiltily, the pair spun towards the sound, and to Leila’s dismay she saw four security officers - all wearing combat gear and EyeWare-integrated helmets - burst through the door; drawing their extending batons as they entered, the tips flaring into blue light.
Frozen in panic, Leila half expected to be tackled and stunned, but the officers ignored the two teenagers, darting around them and heading for the staircase. ‘Get outside, now!’ one man shouted over his shoulder, and then the four were clattering up the stairs.
For only a moment did Leila consider following the man’s orders, and then she raced after the group, her eyes glittering with delight, desperate to see whatever was happening.
But Bastion caught up to her as she reached the first step, grabbing her arm and twisting her sharply around. ‘Where are you going?’ he demanded the instant they were facing one another. ‘You heard the man, we’ve got to leave!’
Grimacing, Leila yanked her arm free from the boy’s grip, and glared at Bastion, her anger from the earlier argument returning in an instant. ‘Do you always have to do as you’re told?’ she exclaimed, and would have said more, but she noticed the way the boy’s mouth and nose were scrunched in an expression that only she would recognise as guilt.
It took Leila a full five seconds to realise what his look meant, and then her eyes went wide, and she hissed, ‘you called Security, didn’t you?’
‘The boy was trespassing,’ Bastion stated, as if this fact alone was justification for his actions. ‘If I hadn’t reported him, someone else would have.’
Angrily, Leila slapped her forehead. She had thought this a fun adventure the two of them could share, a momentary diversion from reality. Instead, Bastion had spoilt everything - and probably got that Juran boy in serious trouble - for no more reason than the handful of credits her friend would have received as a reward.
Grinding her teeth, Leila glared at Bastion. ‘You’re such a stooge!’ she shouted, or thought she did, for no sound left her lips.
Leila’s anger turned to confusion, and Bastion’s hand went automatically to his earpiece, adjusting its position as if his EyeWare might be muted. But a new sound was growing to fill the void, a muffled whoosh, like air being sucked through teeth; and with it, a wind was picking up around the pair, tugging at their clothes.
The sound became a roar, and Leila felt as if she were being buoyed along on that current of air. For a moment she thought it just her imagination, but no, Bastion was moving with her; their feet slipping across the plastic floor as they were pulled towards the stairs; pirouetting slowly as they went, like they were practiced ballerinas engaged in a routine.
And now they were rising onto the tips of their toes, as if they were weightless, and Leila’s anger evaporated as a strange sense of light-headed euphoria overcame her. She was finally ascending, she thought through the haze, I’m heading for the stars.
A giddy grin spread across her face, and in answer Bastion’s mouth became an ‘O’ of amusement, his eyes twinkling behind his visor in a way she had not seen in years.
For one long moment it was as if they danced together upon a cloud that rose towards the heavens. And then in the next instant there was a crash like the breaking of a storm, so loud that it pressed simultaneously on every one of Leila’s senses.
Leila didn’t have the time or sense to throw up a protective arm as she was flung back down to Earth; the back of her head striking the hard floor as she ploughed into it with a force that ripped her EyeWare painfully from its implants.
Leila curled into a protective ball, while around her the lights flickered, capturing momentary glimpses of people pouring from every doorway; tumbling over one another, joining together into formless mounds, and then separating as they ran for the entrance.
A layer of smoke and dust had settled upon Leila, seeming to deaden what little sound she could hear over the ringing in her ears. She tried to breathe in through her nose and gagged on a thick chemical-laced stench.
A running boy kicked her leg in the dark and was sent sprawling beside her. He barely stopped, but was up and running, and in Leila’s confusion she thought the person must be Bastion and that he was trying to leave her. In desperation she began crawling after the person, begging for his return in a voice she couldn’t hear.
The person was long gone, but in his place Leila’s groping hands found something plastic: her visor! Leila’s hatred for the contraption vanished instantly, and now she wanted nothing more than to have the familiar feel of the device across her eyes, telling her what to do and where to go in order to be saved from this madness.
Sat cross-legged like a child, Leila rocked back and forth, as she tried unsuccessfully to clip the visor back into place; feeling sure that the device would be able to shield her from this reality; that it would somehow make everything alright.
Hands grabbed at Leila, suddenly, hauling her to her feet, as a visor-less face pressed close to hers. She beat at the person, but the boy caught her hands and pinned them to her shoulders, shouting over the surrounding cries, ‘forget it, it’s not working!’
It took her a moment to realise that the boy was talking about her visor, a moment more to recognise Bastion beneath the dust. Relief flowed through Leila, and she opened her mouth to speak, to ask him what was wrong with the EyeWare, but he didn’t wait. Instead he grabbed her arm and forced her towards a patch of smoke that was lighter than the rest.
The entrance! Leila thought, and tried to bring her wildly flailing feet under control, forcibly thinking through each step as if it were a complex puzzle to be solved.
They were still a long way from the doors, Leila leaning heavily on Bastion, when there was another rumble and the flickering lights finally cut out. In the sudden darkness something struck Leila’s back and she went down again, but this time with enough sense to catch herself.
Resting on her elbows, barely able to breathe for the thick smoke, Leila sagged until her forehead pressed against the cool floor; too confused to save herself. Bastion would come for her once more, she thought, but the seconds ticked by and still her friend didn’t appear.
Tentatively she reached out in the direction she knew Bastion to be, and she found instead something hard and sharp: steel and plastic, fallen from above. She tried to call for her friend, but her voice was little more than a croak.
Tears were streaming down Leila’s face, though whether from smoke or desperation, she wasn’t sure. Every lungful of air was a struggle and her throat felt as if it were clogged with dust from top to bottom. She coughed and tried to call again, ‘Bastion?!’
There was no answer, except for the ominous groaning of the building, and a grinding of metal that was coming from directly above their position. More debris about to fall and bury her, Leila thought, just at it had surely crushed Bastion.
Fear and desperation took a hold of Leila’s mind. ‘I’m sorry,’ she sobbed into the darkness, and with that she ran for the door.