Free Masked by Nicola Claire Page B

least, not physically.
    Unless you call the removal from all that you know a physical injury.
    Where the wiped were now was anyone's guess.
    But they were not dead. Not like the row of white sheet covered corpses that lay along Quay Street. Lined up as though soldiers marching on parade. The warm night breeze lifted the corner of one sheet, a dust covered, blood coated shoe poked out from beneath.
    I let a slow breath of air out; I was so exhausted.
    "Giving up already, Elite?" Alan's voice drifted over the subdued rumble of a city-state recovering.
    "The Civil Defence has found no others," I offered, but he would have been aware.
    I watched as Alan looked toward the edge of the crash zone, as they were calling it. The edge of the largest debris to have fallen. The Sky Tower had stood some three-hundred-and-twenty-eight metres high.
    Not any more.
    "They'll keep searching through the night," Alan commented. "They won't stop. Will you?"
    When had I ever stopped? It felt like I'd been running, fighting, searching for something for all of my life.
    I didn't reply. My tired, gritty eyes sought out the only form of comfort that mattered.
    "Where's Trent?"
    Alan spun in a slow circle, his combat boots coated in things better left not said. He'd been in the thick of it. I hadn't seen him for the past hour. But Trent had stayed within sight of me the entire time.
    The first kernel of something with no name unfurled inside my stomach, reaching cold fingers towards my heart.
    I stood up from where I'd been resting; my legs shaking from over-use, my muscles screaming for a hot bath.
    My heart beating too swiftly.
    "Where is he?" I said again, and maybe it was the roughness of my voice, or maybe Alan suddenly realised that Trent wouldn't leave me alone to face this horror, but Alan's head whipped 'round and dark, narrowed eyes landed on me.
    "When did you last see him?"
    I frowned, my eyes searching. "A quarter of an hour ago, maybe?"
    "Where was he then?" he demanded; no hint of the challenge so often apparent in his tone when he speaks to me.
    "Over there." I pointed to the side of Quay Street, under the overhang of a theatre that had missed the brunt of the damage, but not come off completely unscathed.
    Its roof had caved in on one side, adding to the rubble from a nearby building which had become the landing pad for the aerials and antennae atop the Sky Tower's spire. Wires and metal struts and the once smooth, now dented, spire itself lay tangled in amongst concrete blocks and rebar, glass and steel framing.
    There had been people in that building. And the theatre next to it. Trent had been helping organise their extrication from out the front of the cracked glass windows that made up the theatre's doors.
    I hadn't seen him go inside.
    I followed Alan in a daze towards where I had indicated last seeing Trent, and watched as he assessed the ground for some sign of him. Collapsed from exhaustion, maybe? It didn't seem a far stretch to assume Trent was as tired as myself.
    "He's not here," Alan offered unhelpfully. His eyes flicked up to the theatre entrance, torch light arcing in that moment across the darkness inside. A Cardinal walked out a few seconds later, followed behind by a Civil Defence Force Search and Rescue Squad member. They pulled the doors closed and proceeded to wrap bright yellow tape through the handles, sealing the building up, and marking it "CLEAR."
    My eyelids fluttered closed. They felt too heavy. My chest ached. I heard Alan question the Cardinal and SRS member; the words a hazy undertone, much like a low hum to my battered mind. I turned my back on them. The Civil Defence Force were extremely thorough. I knew the answer even before Alan's voice rose and his words cut through the hum.
    "Just let me check. He was standing right here!"
    "We know," the Cardinal replied levelly. "We've been working with him for the past two hours. But he didn’t come inside. That was not part of his instructions."
    "Well, where is