Page 197 of The Mask Falling

aerial attack imminent

seek immediate shelter

menace militaire détectée

une attaque aérienne est imminente

trouvez de l’abri immédiatement

No. It wasn’t possible.

It had never happened . . .

It was as if night held its breath. Then an automated voice intoned the words, and the sirens increased in volume, and the streets shattered into a state of chaos. Scattered Vigiles were trying in vain to maintain order, but no one could hear them. No one stopped. I buffeted through panic-stricken people and kept running, scoured of air, my only thought to reach Arcturus. The cold was punishing, but I kept going, hands on fire, feet numb in my boots.

This had to be their vengeance. Spain or Portugal. Maybe both. One of them must have allies somewhere, and they were coming to destroy us, in retribution for the murder of a king.

The night was suddenly too still. I slewed to a stop on a bridge, one hand clutched to my chest, and looked toward the clear sky. Stars shone in their multitudes, bleak and cold, like so many scattered bullets. Every sinew and nerve and vein in my body felt drawn to them. I waited.

Then it came.

First, a sound like being underwater. My own breath. Then a bone-deep rumble that filled my ribs and resonated along my jaw, which sharpened into a whine that drowned out the sirens. My last clear thought was that it sounded like the whistle that came before a firework.

I should have run then. Instead, I watched, transfixed, as a shadow shot overhead, barely visible. And something fell.

It struck the bridge opposite mine. The obliteration that followed must have unfolded in an instant—but I saw and felt each stage as if the whole citadel were suspended in oil.

The deep pulsation of the impact. An eruption of rubble and water. The earthquake that resounded along the whole riverbed. Red-hot sparks, flung toward the stars. The terrible flare of fire, a searing yellow that ripped the dark apart and blinded me for an instant. Noise roared all around me, thunderous, in the air and across the citadel. My eardrums screamed. All my senses were lost to this fulmination of light and noise, which tore the night in two.

Somehow I was on the ground. I shielded my face against the heat. My ears rang and my eyes streamed. Gasping, I looked up to see a black thundercloud of smoke, heaping and twisting itself into a column hundreds of feet high. A tower. For a long moment, all I could hear was my own heartbeat—but no, it was too slow, and with each pulse, the ground shunted.

The streetlamps flickered back on. Across the water, the devastated bridge shed bodies and debris. There were people in the river. I tried to catch a glimpse of what had dropped the missile, but it was too late, and the night was too dark, my eyes smeared by the frigid air.

Coughs racked my chest. I hooked my fingers into the balustrade and used it to drag myself up. To my right, another explosion illuminated the surface of the river. Above, the sky was crisscrossed with tiny comets. Comets that were rapidly descending.

Instinct jolted me to life. I stumbled off the bridge and onto the south bank, joined by a mass of screaming Parisians. I was no longer a mollisher or a rebel or a terrorist or a queen. Just one person running for her life.

They would not see unnaturals or amaurotics. All of us looked the same from the air.

The bridge had been the herald. Now the bombardment commenced. Missiles rained down on Paris, hitting buildings and cars and crowds of terror-stricken people. As I broke into a sprint along the south bank, I looked up as often as I could, eyes and ears strained for any sort of warning, but it was so dark, and there was already too much smoke. In the turmoil, I shut out the æther. My mind rejected death. Every other sense engulfed the sixth. They sheared me down to nerve and blood, and desperate, primal, animal instinct.

Cold and disorientation slowed me. I collided with a man—he could have been amaurotic or voyant—and we both crashed headlong into the snow. People stampeded past me, stepping on my fingers and the toes of my boots. I curled into a ball. Somewhere close by, a child was crying.

Another missile clipped a rooftop and showered the pavement with broken tiles. Someone went down beneath them. The next explosion took out a line of vehicles. Alarms went off on both sides of the river. Everywhere, people were abandoning their cars to flee on foot.

In the distance, thunder. A far deeper explosion, felt in the very roots of Paris. A moment later, every light plunged out. Every building went dark. Every streetlamp was extinguished. Another surge of screams spiked the air as the citadel was plunged into near-total darkness.

The fires. The fires could light my way. I rolled onto my knees and got back up, choked by smoke and snow and dust. Ash between my fingers, in my mouth. I tasted blood. Not mine.

I was nineteen, trapped in a screaming crowd in Edinburgh. I was six and underneath a statue, watching as soldiers washed Dublin in blood.

Except Scion had never bombarded Dublin from the air. Not then. Nashira had paved the way to war.

And here it came.

Everywhere I turned was pandemonium. Screaming. Terror. Insanity of fear. I fought to orient myself, using the ruined bridge as the centre of my compass. The earth trembled as another bomber whined overhead. I had to stay calm. I had to find Arcturus.

To my right, a car burst into flame. The blast hurled me off my feet and into a gutter full of slush. It was in my hair, on my bare palms, soaking into my jacket. I was so cold. So heavy.

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