“And away we go!”

Vines bunched us all up in a ball like squeezing sardines in a can. I felt a rough texture brushing my skin. Who the fuck was beside me? If this was Ramon, I was gonna go apeshit! I didn’t like this invasion of my personal space one bit. “Are we really dropping from this height?” I loudly said, hoping Myra heard me.

“Yeah,” she cheerily replied, her voice echoing inside our pod. “My vines are pulling us over the ledge now.”

“You’re crazy!” said Johann.

“The pool is below us.”

“Water is just as hard as the ground from this height,” I said as I hugged Julie. How do I make sure she survived the impact? I wanted to save her to make up for being unable to save her brother. That loss for my Pino face bothered me enough that I dismissed thoughts of letting her die to have one less witness.

Am I going to survive this? My inhuman body probably would. But a stroke of misfortune, a broken neck or something, could end me. I curled up more, keeping my neck muscles flexed, hugging Julie tighter. Or should I relax? I heard drunk guys could survive a fall because of loose muscles. Or was that an urban myth?

“Don’t worry, I have a plan.”

I said, “Your plan better be—oh, waah!” I couldn’t see anything but I felt we were falling. Falling fast.

“AAAH!” Johann agreed. “We’re going to die!”

Myra laughed at him. “You’re being such a baby. We’re fine.”

“I’m just a normal guy! I’m going to die!”

Aren’t we falling for too long? I thought after a few seconds.

“AAAAHH!” continued Johann.

It felt like riding a plane as it was about to land, anticipating when it would make contact with the ground. I played this game plenty of times when I was a kid since we moved a lot. It always landed when I least expec—and we hit water.

My head bumped against the side of the vines while Julie’s head hit my jaw. “Ow!” I bit my tongue. “Are we down? Woah!” Our pod bounced up a bit as it rebounded out of water, reshuffling our positions inside.

“Huh? Was that it?” Johann said.

“See, that wasn’t so bad,” Myra said.

Johann heaved a deep sigh of relief. “I can’t believe we’re alive.”

“I thought it was going to be so much worse,” I said, pushing someone’s leg off my face.

Water leaked through the gaps of our pod. The vines unraveled and more water poured in. I made sure Julie’s face was above water. She was still unresponsive, mumbling nonsense shit. With the light coming in, I realized it was Dom’s corpse and the unconscious Lizzie beside me. I totally forgot about her because I legit didn’t know what to do with her. Oops. Fortunately, Ramon was taking care of her.

“I streamlined this pod into a teardrop shape,” Myra explained, “to smoothly dive into the water instead of crashing into it.”

“It was still nearly fucking suicide!” Johann angrily said.

“The outer shell of this pod is also made of weaker vines which collapsed upon impact.” She swam through the mass of floating dried vines and branches to get to the side of the pool. “I already thought of everything,” she said a-matter-of-factly.

“Sometimes I worry you forget normal humans are pretty squishy,” he mumbled.

“I’m not going to let you die. You know that.”

“Watch out!” Ramon said.

FWOOM. I closed my eyes as bright light painted the night white. An explosion followed. Waves pushed us to the edge of the pool.

“What’s happening?” I said. My ears were ringing.

“Stella shot at us!”

“From that far away?”

“Swim, guys. Swim faster.” Hands grabbed my arms and bodily pulled me out of the water. I blinked away the glaring haziness in my eyesight. It was Myra in her sports bra and cycling shorts; she must be pretty tired right now if she couldn’t make any armor. She plopped me on the tiles. “We already have Judy, er, Julie. Come on!”

All of us with the dead bodies—I don’t know why we’re still carrying Doms and Paolo—made our way to the bar restaurant at the side of the pool. I noticed the lights were turned off, as in all of them. The underwater lights of the pool, the lamp posts lining the walkways, the lights of the restaurant, everything was off.

Where is the light coming from? I wondered as I looked up.

The building itself was still mostly dark, the mysterious thick vines stifling any light from the windows. But huge tracts of the vine wall burned. Flames also billowed out of the balcony we fell from, framing Stella’s gigantic form gazing down at us with searchlight-like eyes. It looked like a castle of a dark lord straight out of a fantasy book.

I guess, that’s it for my room and belongings.

“Run! Stella’s shooting again!”

FWOOM! Her light beam thingy hit the pool.

Myra grabbed me, and threw both me and the catatonic Julie into the restaurant after the others. Scalding water splashed over her. “FUCK!” she screamed.

“Myra!” Johann called out, dropping all pretense of using their codenames.

“Shit, that hurts,” she said.

“Are you oka—”

“Just stay there!” She entered the restaurant and closed the door behind her to stop the steam coming from the boiled-up pool. “Hurts like hell, man. I feel like a lobster getting cooked.” She was red all over, patches of her skin were peeling. Then she noticed the windows were shattered by the shockwave of the blast. “In! Further inside. Don’t let the steam hit you.”

“Where to?” Ramon said. “She’s going to shoot again.”

“Come, we go to the back of the property.” I lugged Julie like a sack of potatoes and ran to the other end of the L-shaped restaurant. It led to the garden. Footsteps followed me.

“Sleep…so noisy…going to see Pao tomorrow,” Julie murmured.

I ran sideways and smashed through the glass doors with my head and shoulders. We exited to the outside dining area covered by a canopy of exotic leaves. It was still super dark, the light from the burning building barely making it through the leaves overhead. “Past the garden, over walls and out to the street,” I said.

“I can see the walls,” Ramon said.

“Is that red and blue lights on the other side?” Johann.

“Sirens too.” I dragged a table cloth we passed and draped it over Julie and me. “We need to hide our identities.”

“Way ahead of you,” Myra said as she caught up with me. Her head was covered by a helmet. “I can only manage this.”

There was another explosion. We all instinctively ducked. But there was no shower of debris or even a shockwave. “Where did that hit?” I asked.

“I think it’s on the other side of the pool,” Ramon said. “She missed so bad. Boady, I mean the fire giant. It’s trying to pull her back in the building.”

I briefly glanced upwards. Stella was shooting wildly, hitting the wings of the building. The balcony gave way, boulder-sized debris falling down. The two giants clung to the sides of the building. I faced forward just as I went inside a hedge.

“Gross,” I said, spitting out leaves. “We’re so near.” From the sound of the sirens, it didn’t sound like there were lots of cops. We reached the wall. “Okay, so we just jump over and run? I hope they don’t have ComExos on the other side.”

“When we went inside about twenty minutes ago,” Myra said, “there was no one out there. I don’t think they have gathered plenty of firepower to surround this place. Johann, what do you think?”

“The guys outside should’ve already reported a Titan Class Adumbrae. I’m not sure if this is the right classification, but Stella’s probably as strong as a D one. The SOP for the police if there’s a Titan is to focus on evacuating citizens. They’re not going to be out there trying to blockade this place.”

“Is that a helicopter?”

“News or police?”

“That’s an LAPD chopper,” Johann said.

BOOM!

“What the fuck?”

“Stella just shot it down!”

The helicopter crashed into the left wing of the building, removing a large patch of the vines. Stella then fired a couple of times at the charcoal giant. It slid down, ripping more vines and parts of the building.

“It’s going to fall soon,” Ramon said. “Boady…”

“We can go over the wall when it hits the ground,” I said. “Use it as a distraction to run past the police.”

“We should leave these dead bodies behind.” Myra said. She motioned for Ramon to put down Doms as she laid Paolo on the floor. “These are deadweight.”

“Myra,” Johann sternly said.

“I wasn’t making a pun.”

“No!” Suddenly, Julie went amok on my shoulder. “No! Don’t leave Paolo!” Her screams almost becoming screeches of a banshee.

“They’ll just slow us down,” Myra snapped. “I’m going to fight off the police. I’m leaving him behind.”

“No! No!” Julie struggled to escape from me. “Pao!”

“I’ll carry Paolo too,” Ramon said. “Both him and Lizzie.”

“Fine,” Myra said. “But we’ll leave this dead woman here.” She nodded down at Doms' corpse.

“Look!” I said. A large pillar grew from the destroyed balcony and hit the charcoal giant. At the same time, Stella blasted it from above. It started falling. “That’s our signal! Up the wall,” I said. It was surprisingly a breeze to climb up the ten-foot-wall even if I was carrying Julie. My fingers digging its own handholds into the concrete blocks. Johann followed me up, using the dents to climb.

“I’m going first,” Myra said, jumping over the top.

“Keep your head down, Julie,” I said. “And hold the cloth.”

The street on the other side was mostly empty except for three police cars parked on the other side. The cops were trying to shoo away idiots who wanted to take pictures of the spectacle. There was a resounding roar. All of them were looking up at the falling giant; no one noticed us dropping to the street.

The earth shook as the charcoal giant fell into the mostly empty pool. We dropped to the ground from the quakes. Only Myra was able to keep her footing. “Come on,” she said, helping Johann to his feet.

“Hol’ up!” a cop spotted us. “Are you okay?”

Myra rushed over to him and punched him before he realized we were a threat. Then she upended one of the patrol cruisers, and threw it at the other two.

We ran past them, diving into the crowds. Most of them were running away already. We shoved a few people aside and entered a narrow alley. There were more sirens, including the piercing blare of a firetruck. As we emerged on the other side, it came into view, barreling down the street.

The familiar blinding light cut across the firetruck.

BOOM!

“It’s fucking Stella. She saw us!”

“Left! Go left!”

We veered away from a diner just before a beam sliced it open, burning the people standing by its windows who were curiously watching the commotion outside not knowing it was the last thing they’d see. Stella was like a lighthouse; a tower with a searchlight was a better comparison, except that the light caused death and destruction on everything it shone upon.

“Here, follow me,” I said, taking advantage of my knowledge of this area. We turned into a street full of mid-size buildings and trees, and hugged the sidewalk.

Yet another beam destroyed a group of buildings ahead of us.

“Why the hell is she so strong?”

“She doesn’t know where we are. She’s just destroying everything around here.”

“Just keep running.”

We all felt another quake. That could only mean one thing. “Stella dropped down,” I said. “She can’t see or shoot us for sure. Let’s find a place to hide before she comes here.”

There were continuous shaking and explosions. Stella was probably running and shooting at the same time. We couldn’t see her because of the trees around us.

We eventually broke into an empty rundown pub.

“Let's go up,” Myra said, “so we can see where she is.” The second floor was a dusty storage room full of crates and broken furniture, but it did have windows. “Okay, we can all rest for a bit.”

“Now what?” Ramon asked.

Johann turned a bar stool around and sat on it. “Stella’s destroying buildings looking for us. I’m sure she’s well aware she has time before anything that could take her down gets here. If BID Central Command is alerted just now that a Titan Class Adumbrae is wrecking La Esperanza, we can expect their first responders to arrive in about fifteen minutes. The agents and ComExos that can fight a Titan Class will arrive probably five to ten minutes after that.”

“Can the BID kill her?” Ramon said.

“Certainly. BID Nodes have enough firepower to combat these kinds of threats. The nearest BID Node is at Palomar Mountain, and they have a huge base over there. After about, at most, ten minutes of trying to find us, Stella has to give up and escape.”

“That bitch’s going the wrong way,” Myra said, peeking through the blinds. “Two streets away, just blasting buildings. I bet she’s pissed we escaped and she’s just taking out her anger on everything she sees.”

“Ten minutes?” Ramon said. “Can’t anyone else stop her? How about the National Guard?”

Johann shook his head. “Neither the National Guard at San Domingo or the Air Force Base at the outskirts of the city is equipped for suppression of a Titan Class in an urban setting without incurring significant casualties. At any rate, the BID will arrive here before the National Guard. Stella will be long gone by then.”

“We can’t just sit here and wait.”

“That’s exactly what we’re going to do,” Myra said. “Ten minutes isn’t so long. Just sit on your ass. I’m keeping an eye on her. We’ll move if she goes this way.”

“Many more people are going to die in ten minutes.”

“What do you suggest we do?” she said. “Go out there and fight her?”

“I…uh…”

“We barely escaped with our lives.”

“But we can’t just let people die.”

“Don’t think of doing something stupid like using yourself as bait. I’m going to stop—"

“Myra,” Johann cut in. “Let me.” He approached Ramon and put his hand on his shoulder. “I know you want to try and help others. Believe me, we want that too. But not at the cost of our own lives. You, especially, shouldn’t carelessly expose yourself. Not just because Stella will kill you, but the police or BID might catch you…and kill you because you’re…er."

“Because I’m a monster?” Ramon said. “I look like an Adumbrae?”

“Um…I wouldn’t put it like that.”

“No need to sugarcoat it. There’s a small part of me who still hopes this is all a nightmare and I’m going to wake up…but I’ve accepted this is all real. This is me now. A monster. But it doesn’t mean I’m going to stay here and achieve nothing.”

“If you go out there,” I said, “you’ll also achieve nothing. Except dying.”

“Erind…” He faced me, but then immediately turned away. “Doms is dead. Paolo is also…” He didn’t continue, concerned Julie might get angry. “The others, Samantha, Vince, his son…they’re all probably dead too. Ah, you don’t know them. But yeah, the people I’m supposed to save died. In the end, I’ve really done nothing.”

“I understand,” I said. Well, not exactly. He felt guilt and remorse, while I was annoyed for losing the people I aimed to save. But hey, I was going to stop him from suiciding himself out there. This should count for something. “I know what you’re thinking right now. You want to find meaning in your…erm, misfortune. You want to save people before getting yourself killed so your death will mean something.”

His eyes widened. “No, I don’t—that’s not what I'm planning to do.”

“We’re friends, right?” Ew, no, I thought. “We’re not close, but we’ve talked, so I can guess what you’re thinking.”

“I…I’m not…”

I held his right hand; I obviously couldn’t hold his blade-arm. “Don’t do this. You might look like this now, but don’t give up on life.”

“But what is my future as this? As a monster?”

“To be honest…I don’t know. We can think about that later. What’s important now is you don’t get captured by the BID. You and Lizzie.” I was sure I could make use of the two of them. “Don’t get killed, even if not for yourself, but for Lizzie’s sake.”

“She lost her family," Ramon said. "And has become like me…a monster. I can be her family.”

I hope he’s not thinking some gross shit like we’ll be mother and father for Lizzie. “We should get to our base first, and then we can think about our plans in safety.”

“We do have plenty to talk about,” Myra said.

“I’ll explain what I know of this situation later,” I said, “the little that I know anyway.” I needed to buy time to think of bullshit stories to sell to Myra and Johann. I already have a working draft for a dramatic script in my head. “Where are the others?” I wanted to give a fake story to Myra and Johann and convince them to keep it a secret from the rest of the group. It was easier to manage my lies that way.

“I’m not sure where Blank is. Emcee went to get Deen. Oberon is heading there too.”

“Deen? Why? Was she attacked too?”

“Yes. But she already escaped them. Her powers are very handy. She can take care of herself.”

“Can’t we check up on them?” I said as Deen’s absolute best friend forever.

“The city might’ve shut down the signal again,” Myra said. "I can't call them anyway." She gestured to her body; her clothes obviously had no pocket for a phone.

“I also don’t have a phone with me,” I said.

“Johann?”

“The city won’t do that,” he said as he got his phone from his pocket. “They’ll be prioritizing evacuations and rescue.” He held up his phone and shook it. Droplets of water fell. “But I need to buy a new phone.”

“My phone!” Julie suddenly exclaimed, making us all jump. She searched her pockets, almost ripping her clothes. “My phone. Paolo said to take care of it.” She managed to find it. “It’s working, thank god.” She sobbed as she rubbed it against her cheeks.

“Is she okay?” Myra asked.

She was protective of that phone because it had a recording of the last message of their father. I remembered Paolo told her to protect it since they couldn’t upload it to the internet for safekeeping because of the vines jamming the signal.

Of course, I didn’t tell the others about this story. Something, however, was gnawing at the back of my head. Phone…internet…phone has a camera…

“Anyway,” Myra said, “as much as I’d love to kill Stella, that’s not happening. Let’s just wait a bit more and I’m sure she’ll stop—Hang on!”

“What is it?”

“She’s coming this way! She’s destroying all the buildings in her way.”

“We need to get out of here.”

Phone…internet…camera…

“Okay, Ramon, you got Paolo,” Myra said. “Erind will carry Julie. I carry this kid. Or do you want to carry her? We can swap. Then we bust down this wall to go to the next building. We avoid running out on the street—Erind?”

I held up my hand. “You guys want to kill Stella, right?”

“Yeah, but—”

“I got a plan. It’s got a low chance of working, but I’m sure we can kill Stella if it does work.” I wonder if Clive is awake at this time.