Chapter 3

The ground shakes.

In what’s supposed to be the most seismically secure building ever built, the ground shakes. It begins as a faint tremor underfoot, the whisper of a purring cat tickling my toes. Then it grows.

The purr becomes a rumble, which grows to a deafening roar. One moment, I’m dumbstruck at the sensation beneath me, the next the room is alive with crashes and bangs. Paintings snap as they strike the floor. Desks slam into nearby walls. Picture frames shatter as they fly from their roosts. And through the cacophony of the crumbling of the place that I love, laces my scream.

A dull part of my brain reminds me that in case of an earthquake, I should hide under a desk. It’s just that advice seems a bit off when they’re pinballing around and I’m flopping like a ragdoll as I clutch onto a pillar for dear life, praying not to be struck by the whirlwind of debris that slices through the air around me. On and on it goes, stretching out into a harrowing forever.

Then, it stops.

In the space between one breath and the next, the world stills to a corpse-like calm.

It’s nearing painful as I peel my arms off from around the pillar. In a daze, my feet wander through the ruined rubble that once comprised my pride and joy. In the back of my mind, a dulled, frantic part of me flips through the catalogue of everything I know about earthquakes. My mind shouts ‘aftershocks’ at me, but with very little context.

How soon after the main earthquake do they hit? Aren’t they just a fraction of the force of the initial quake? Do they always occur?

I find I’m not particularly concerned with the aftershocks. After all, this building was erected to exceed all safety codes. For every bit of vehement protest that this monstrosity of a monument garnered about it being too big, the architects put back that energy into making it sturdier. It would endure as a looming ‘fuck you’ to every protestor long after they died.

No, there’s no place that I’m safer. If there are aftershocks, I’d rather be in here than anywhere else. True, I should scurry to the stairwell where I don’t have to worry about being bludgeoned by a rogue award of excellence, but I shouldn’t leave the building. It’s common sense.

Clearly, my common sense does not get the memo.

Instead of securing myself, I feel compelled to move towards where the floor-to-ceiling windows once were. My feet crunch over the shattered glass that was supposed to be shatter-proof as I step closer to catch my first glimpse at the devastation outside.

If the quake was big enough to shake this building, I can’t imagine the ravaged wreckage that I’ll see. Vancouver, being a mix of old and new could not have fared well. My mind flashes to all the historic buildings, the greenery, the sights that I haven’t yet explored, but really meant to. Soon. I know when I survey the scene, they’ll be gone.

In truth, everything might be gone.

I take a deep breath and hold it there as I toe close enough to the gaping window to look out onto the desolation.

The desolation that isn’t there.

Outside, the city runs in a picture-perfect scenic vision of nightlife. Lights twinkle in blurring lines of the downpour, cars zig and zag in lazy paths, and, largely, the city sleeps. There are no sirens or horn blares. No screams or alarms. There are only the general, disgruntled sounds of a dozing city.

“How is this—” I start.

I don’t finish the thought.

In the midst of my wondering, a thunderous crack echoes into the heavens that sounds out from the very bones of the building. There aren’t any shakes or rumblings, just a sonorous boom that breaks the night into two.

A second later, something crashes into me. A soft steel cages me in. Secure and terrified, I’m held fast against the warmest anchor that contains my unfettered fear. Indeed, the slow and study pulse of a heart that sounds like home is the only tether that keeps me from unrestrained screaming.

Some part of my brain realizes that it’s a person holding onto me. Strong arms hold me tight, pressing me against a warm chest. I can’t quite process that fact though.

Around me, the world whooshes past in a blur. The sight of my office and then the night air bleeding together as we move at lightning speed is enough to turn my stomach. Although every part of me, the part that can’t stop digging, no matter the cost, wants to keep looking, I find I can’t. I curl in on myself into the body that’s holding and close my eyes.

The tick of the heartbeat increases to a happy jaunt for a moment, before it returns to its steady pulse. It, along with the smell of sandalwood and sunshine, is the only thing that keeps me from losing it entirely.

Everything around me may be crumbling to dust, but this, this half-second of reprieve, is home.

It’s a nice thought, a comforting one, until a boom sounds out into the night so loudly that it whips the hair around my face. It’s followed by everything I thought I’d hear earlier: car alarms, screams, crashes, and, after a time, sirens.

I keep my head buried in the security of whoever is holding me as each sound springs up to life and cuts through whatever armor I’ve put up to insulate me from this nightmare.

Finally, after who knows how long, I lift my head to consider the scene.

Twisting towards the crash, I find the building, my office, my second home, collapsed in on itself in a heap of ruination. Oddly enough, it looks almost neat. The debris is limited to our lot and the surrounding side streets. The buildings around it are mostly unharmed—save for the damage caused by the objects that went flying by either the sound or the displaced air.

Still, it’s completely destroyed.

The place that that nurtured me during my best years, the place that I know better than my childhood home, the place where I had hoped to live out the rest of my working days, is rubble.

Gone.

It’s gone, just like I almost was.

I should have been inside the building. I should have either been cast out of the window when it all came down or been crushed inside its cascading frame. I should be dead.

Dead, not…

I tear my eyes away from my office and take stock of my surroundings. A glance around tells me that I’m floating in the air several hundred feet away from where I was and maybe a hundred off the ground. Overhead, the rain continues to beat down on me. Underneath me, ambulances and police cars zoom past as brightly coloured pricks of light against the dull haze of the city lights.

Around me are two very large, muscular arms clothed in a tight red spandex. My eyes trail (extremely slowly, like my brain worries about getting overwhelmed by taking in too much too quickly) up the arms to some broad shoulders that ripple with tension.

Then, I reach the face. Staring down at me are the warmest chocolate eyes with the brightest smile. A hard jawline is softened by the faintest blush on round, smiling cheeks. His hair’s swept back in a complicated swirl that gives new meaning to the term ‘windswept’. His face looks like the inspiration behind statues. He looks like the type of man that made people believe in the divine.

To put it succinctly, he’s beyond beautiful.

“Er, hi,” he says, his voice cracking slightly.

Finally, I start to scream.