The street filled up the way they always do when something goes wrong.
Fire trucks first. Then two cop cars. Then an ambulance that rolled in like they expected bodies and found mostly smoke. People from the other floors stood across the street in pajamas and coats, faces orange from the fire. Somebody was crying on the phone. Somebody else was recording.
I sat on the curb half a block down with the duffel between my feet and opened the window because I needed something that wasn't people.
Status
Level: 7
Class: Refusal Pulse
EXP: 41 / 280
Strength: 12
Agility: 10
Vitality: 11
Will: 15
No EXP for not dying in a bomb. Figures. The System never paid me for staying alive. Residence: lost. Loop point: the window. Mark: 10.4 km. Same as before. Laundry didn't do this. Or if he did, he didn't even stick around to see it.
A firefighter waved everyone back. Glass kept popping. What used to be 3B was just a black hole coughing sparks.
"You live here?"
Cop. Young. Notebook out. Looking at the soot on my hands, the bag, the fact that I had clothes on and everyone else didn't.
"Yeah. 3B. I was outside."
"Outside at one in the morning."
"Couldn't sleep. I was on the fire escape. Then it just… went."
He wrote it down. Another cop was talking to a woman from 2A who kept saying she smelled gas and then saying she wasn't sure. An old guy from the first floor sat on the ambulance bumper with a blanket, shaking his head whenever they asked if anyone else was home.
"Anyone inside your unit?"
"No. Just me. I got out."
"Lucky."
He didn't say it like he meant it. He said it like he had to write something.
They took my name. Helio King. Age. I gave them the lawyer's number because that was the only grown-up thing I had left after Dad. I didn't say Tess. I didn't say loop. I didn't say I'd already died in that kitchen once tonight. What was I supposed to say? My dad's dead, my apartment blew up, and a woman with fangs offered me immortality through a locked window?
A paramedic crouched in front of me anyway.
"You breathe any smoke? Burns? Ears ringing?"
"I'm okay. Really."
She checked my eyes, glanced at my leg like she could see something under the jeans, then let me skip the hospital after I signed a paper. Held Breath kept my hands from shaking enough to look crazy. They just looked like I was eighteen and my building was on fire.
Across the street, a woman from 3A—I never got her name—told a firefighter her cat was still in the hallway. He said they'd look. I stared at the wreck and tried to do the math like Dad would've wanted me to.
Money in the bank. Cards. ID in the bag because I'd grabbed it without thinking. Clothes for a night. Notebook. The diploma, which was stupid. No bed. No kitchen. No address I could give anyone if the next place was going to get wired too.
Hotel first. Then maybe the lawyer could put a lease under something that wasn't just my name. Then tomorrow the cops would want a statement and insurance would want a story that didn't have a vampire in it.
"King."
The cop again. "You see anybody on the fire escape before it went? Fight? Anything."
Tess's coat. Her saying it wasn't her. The lock still turned.
"No. Just me."
He nodded like that's what everybody said.
They sent the other people toward a church basement two blocks over. I didn't go. I waited until they were busy with tape and hoses, then I got up, grabbed the duffel, and walked toward that all-night motel I'd passed when I used to have a long way home.
Behind me, 3B finished falling in.
I checked the Mark on the corner.
10.4 km.
Not the guy who killed me. Just another thing I couldn't fix tonight.
The clerk didn't ask why I smelled like smoke. He took the cash, gave me a key on a plastic tag, and pointed at a room facing the parking lot.
I locked the door, dumped the bag on the bed, and wrote it down before I talked myself out of it.
Level 7. Bomb doesn't count.
3B's gone. People made it out. Cops have my name.
Tess knows I remember. Somebody wanted that place gone.
I've got money and a bag and no apartment. Loop starts at a window that isn't there anymore.
Dad's not coming back to help with this one either.
Shadow Attendance: 3. Archive could have the whole night.
I sat on the motel bedspread and listened to a truck idle in the lot until it left.
Tomorrow I'd call the lawyer. Tonight I was just a kid with soot on his hands, trying to treat luck like it meant anything.