Chapter 3
Ryan:
I caught myself again staring. I looked out across the collapsed metropolis that was almost real enough. Why it was still so surreal to me? I had formed a faint idea about the greater purpose behind why the Japanese capital had fallen. I had seen the hope and shared humanity shining in the eyes of the survivors. I heard ambitious stories of building bigger, better, and cleaner. But why was it me there, really? Anyone else could have smiled when faced with the barrage of foreign syllables, and most people would have taken the sight and stench of dead bodies better. Looking at the broken buildings, I wondered why I had been accepted to the volunteer program. Was she part of the answer?
Turning shyly as we walked through a street that now snaked back and forth at broken angles, I watched her again. Erin’s long, dark hair had a little brown in it. When the sun hit it right, it looked red on the fringes. Her shining eyes had flecks of green in them. She was taller than me, thin but strong, and... just.. beyond words. My opinion of her had only grown from the moment I had seen her first wipe away the black asphalt dust from her face, giving nothing but positive signs after living through one of the worst natural disasters in human history. She amazed me, but at the time, I didn’t have words eloquent enough to tell her so.
Instead, I asked her, “So, how much further are we going?”
“Just two more blocks. You aren’t tired already, are you?” She chided me with only the smallest trace of her native accent. I had been convinced that she was from the States when she first answered me in English. She could have easily passed as one of my classmates in high school back home.
“You’re asking me if I’m tired? I just finished serving your dinner,” I said. “You and everyone else. Working the chow line for a thousand people isn’t exactly a vacation. I have a right to be a bit tired.”
She gave me a mischievous smile in return.
We moved quickly, practically sliding down the side of one of the steeper hills of debris, and looked toward to the obstacles ahead. It was all downhill from there, not as steeply, but just enough to make walking easier. Though not particularly high, the hill might have afforded a good view of Japan’s capital city before the earthquake. I might have been able to see the emperor’s palace, or the Skytree. Where was that, anyway? But now, in the dust and darkness, it was all the same flattened mess.
“How was the food, by the way?” I asked.
She chuckled. “I’ve had better, but, you know, under these circumstances, it was pretty good.” She tightened her ponytail, adding. “You might be tired, but I hope you’re glad to be doing something more with your night than watching the city collect its own dust.”
My smile stretched a little wider. Though I had encouraged her to go on to the evacuation centers with the others who were being rescued, she had begged to join the relief effort herself and serve as a useful English-Japanese interpreter. Fortunately for me, she hadn’t been assigned elsewhere; the site coordinators made arrangements for her to stay near her parents and her Minato Ward neighborhood. And, as a further bonus, she was quick to introduce me to her friends.
“Remind me about this girl,” I said. “She’s a geologist’s daughter? Where’s she from?”
“Yeah, don’t worry; we’ll be able to, you know, communicate easily,” she said. “Kris’s parents are originally from Peru, I think, but she was born in the States. She’s anxious to show me, show us, some of the cool things that her mother found. Her mom is, yes, a geologist, one who’s been in the rift a number of times.”
“Great. And which building is hers?” I asked, realizing that we were close.
“This one on the corner.” Erin pointed. “Wait here.”
I obediently stopped, leaning on one of the larger chunks of cement as my friend made her way over the next rubble heap. Against my hand, the concrete was cold and grainy, not fit for a casual lean. I put my weight back on my feet and looked at a cardboard box pinned to the ground nearby, trying to make sense of the Japanese characters. For a moment, I wondered what it felt like for Erin, climbing over the ruins of so many places that must have been so recently full of life, and so familiar for her. I had to stop myself, though. The thought was just too sad. Anyway, this was only one part of a big city. Better not to think on it; I’m sure she’d agree.
A loose knot of people passed by with a few courteous nods. I returned one of my own before returning my attention to the slightly downhill view. From where I stood, it was all scrap and darkness, except for where a few stoplights blinked. I scratched my head. Despite the vastness of the destruction, for some reason, some lights still had enough power to flicker. Overhead, the stars were mostly invisible in the dust cloud that never seemed to settle. I grabbed my nose to stifle a sneeze, and listened for the murmur of voices in the nearest building.
Erin returned after a few minutes with the geologist’s daughter in tow. The petite girl brushed off her jeans and greeted me with an energetic “Hi!”. Her face was defined by a warm smile that started with her light hazel eyes. I had to make an active effort not to, rudely, check her out from head to toe. Fortunately for me, the cute girls seemed to gravitate toward each other.
“Ryan, this is Kris. Kris, meet Ryan.” She gestured quickly between us.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Kris said in a soft, sweet voice that put me instantly at ease.
“You too,” I nodded, shaking her hand. “So, which way are we headed?”
“This way,” Kris answered, taking us in the direction of the rift, the canyon that had opened without warning in the middle of the city as a result of the horrendous earthquake. The buildings that looked to have fallen almost sideways pointed out the way.
“Have you gone down into the rift yet?” Erin asked as we made our way over the decreasingly bumpy ground. Though going down was easier, paying attention to both girls while keeping my footing was tricky.
“No. My mom wouldn’t let me, anyway,” Kris answered. “None of the geologists trust this quake. And it’s not just that the aftershocks haven’t stopped. The fact that some things randomly stayed standing, the weird way that most of the buildings fell… and that so much of the city still has electricity, even with a busted power grid... It’s not exactly natural. The strange melty silver rocks that are coming out of the rift are even better proof that traditional geology has no good way to describe this disaster. So many apparently impossible things...”
“Times like these make me really think that anything’s possible, bad or good.” I said, with a glance at Erin as she tucked one of her bangs behind her ear. Her face showed no reaction to my lame attempt at positivity. So I gave changing the topic a try. “Kris, you’re going to show us some of these melted rocks?”
“Well, there’s one in particular I like. It’s just a really beautiful gemstone. There are others you might like, too—”
The wail of a siren interrupted her.
“What the…?” I imagined a crushed bank alarm springing to life.
“No way.” Kris’s voice rose in the direction of the screech. “That sounds like it’s coming from the protected storage area.”
“The what?” Erin asked, looking with annoyance in the direction of the sound.
“The place we were planning to go,” Kris clarified.
“‘Were’?” I hit upon Kris’s use of the past tense reflexively, and both girls gave me looks. They had picked up my implication just before I recognized it myself.
The frown on our geological guide told me that going forward was not at the top of her list of options, but I sensed a little excitement in Erin’s expression.
As foreign volunteers trying to help Tokyo’s desperate victims, my team leader had emphasized that a good first impression could be very powerful. I decided to make use of that rule now.
“Maybe… someone needs help,” I suggested.
The girls, together, gave me another weird look. Too vague? With a shrug, I cut to the point. Go big or go home. “Maybe we
could go see what’s happened,” I said more decisively.
Taking a short step in the alarm’s direction, I turned to see how they would react. The decision of our geological guide pushed me forward: “Well, I suppose I could go. Sometimes the alarm can be a little too sensitive,” Kris said.
In the lead, I broke into a trot. So did the girls.
The question finally flashed across my mind: Do you know what you’re doing? It could be dangerous! But, with two capable and pretty girls quick on my heels, there was little room in my head for thoughts of slowing down. I was already committed, so I set my jaw and stepped a little faster, to give them more room behind me, as we moved across the treacherous ground. Traversing around and through the tiny piles of broken cement, the siren grew louder a bit faster than I expected: we were close.
“This is the place.” Kris grabbed my shoulder and pointed to a large, newly constructed building nearby. Slowing a bit more, I let our geological guide take the lead,.
The storage facility was a small, sturdy metal structure, one of many that had been put up for hospital rooms, communications offices, and to serve other essential purposes. I began to wonder how the geologic researchers could justify needing an alarm for a tiny building in a city without reliably running water.
So there’s definitely more than rocks inside, I told myself, a confident smile spreading as I counted off the bonuses: taking the chance to possibly impress Erin, meeting Kris, and seeing what this juicy excitement was about.
And then, just over the shrill alarm, the faint sound of something heavy grunting inside the storage shed caught my attention.
“Ron? Is that you?” Kris raised her voice. She was looking, not toward the sound of the grunt, but off down the street.
I gave her a confused look.
Erin said, “I might have seen someone go around a corner, that way.” She pointed down the street toward where Kris had called.
Before I had the chance to say anything to either of them, the grunting grew more insistent. It was quickly followed by a banging sound.
“Hey, whoever you are, help me! I’m stuck, and—" the speaker’s voice was muffled. With the alarm blaring from roughly the same location, I wasn’t able to understand anything else he was trying to say.
Erin and I looked to Kris. Rushing to the nearby door, the girl punched in a code. The lock clicked, the alarm died, and the way was open to us. Inside were shelves filled with boxes, many marked in English—with long geological-sounding words—but most were coded in Japanese. Half of the shelves along one wall had collapsed. A black guy, about our age, was half-covered by an overturned desk, one that had somehow trapped him between a shelf and the wall behind him. He gave Kris a look of desperation as he shoved against the heavy metal desk.
“Oh, thank God!”
Kris stepped closer to this new guy—another geologist?
“Who are you? What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I got suckered into being here, by the same guy who killed my father’s partner,” said the guy, American from the accent. “Let me go; let me catch him!”
Kris, Erin and I all traded uncertain looks. What should we do?
“Listen, I guess you haven’t heard, but my name is Jason Trudeau,” he explained, his words rapid-fire. “My father’s a police officer; his partner was the one killed by the flying cop car. Your armbands… You’re all aid volunteers, aren’t you? You must’ve heard the story...”
I nodded slowly, and Jason continued. “That same guy is the one who just stole the crystal cube, who pinned me here! Please, you’ve got to help me get out of here now so I—so someone can catch him!”
Erin’s eyes went wide. “Yeah, it’s you! I saw your picture and your father’s… Andy Trudeau! Ryan, help me here.”
We both grabbed the desk and started hauling at it. I took a second look at him; his face did match, and his eyes were honest: afraid but determined. Kris joined in. With us three pulling, and Jason pushing, we got the mangled piece of furniture to budge just enough. The desk was crooked, as if some gigantic hand had squeezed it, bent it out of shape.
“I can move; I think I can climb over it,” Jason said. The next moment, he was up and over the desk. His feet touched ground, and he winced. His pants were ripped. There looked to be deep cuts on his legs. His arm was bleeding, too.
“You’re really hurt,” Kris said, taking a handkerchief from her pocket.
“Forget it,” Jason said. “Call the cops. …I don’t know why, but he stole some cube, too.”
“Cube?” Kris turned her attention toward the far wall. She pointed toward one of the high shelves. “You’re talking about the clear cube that was on the top shelf there?”
“Yeah… How did you know that?” the guy asked Kris, slowing momentarily as he headed for the door.
“This police stuff is just on the other side of the geological stuff,” Kris gestured. “It’s hard not to notice the cube after looking at so many other crystals and rocks. And they asked—”
“That’s the one, though I think he broke it.” Our new injured friend cut her short as he reached the doorway.
Erin was outside first, jogging just ahead of him “I did see someone go off down the street, that way,” she said, pointing out into the darkened city.
Kris pressed me forward and I followed Erin and Jason.
The geologist’s daughter seemed to be talking mostly to herself. “Where’s Ron? This is too big of a coincidence. They asked my mom about the crystal cube just last week. It was giving off some weird radiation, they said. If they think my mom or I was involved… Where is that guard?”
“A guard!” I repeated, my eyes darting between Kris and Jason. “If he can—“
Outside, Jason was done listening. He was off like a shot, headed in the direction Erin had pointed, toward the mystery figure.
Kris interrupted, “Ron has a radio, and he can... wait.” She turned to Erin, “The person you saw going off that way...”
“He was in uniform, white and blue,” Erin answered.
“Then he was chasing the thief!” Kris said, her hand squeezing into a fist. “I have to help Ron, help Jason.”
With that, Kris took off, her footsteps echoed between the buildings. The city seemed even emptier than before, beneath the specks of starlight.
“Kris, wait!” Erin called, and then she was off, after her friend, the geologist’s daughter.
For just a moment, I had been left behind. But abandoning the girls was, of course, out of the question. Within seconds, I overtook Erin, and now we all were running after Ron, after Jason and the mystery criminal. No more hesitation, I told myself. I was responsible for bringing them here. Kris, our guide, had even been reluctant to come. And Jason was hurt already. We were in this together.
Looking ahead, I saw Kris vanish around the corner of a building. I suddenly realized how easy it would be to get lost. I looked back, though, and sure enough, there was Erin, not two steps behind me. Her eyes were focused ahead, and something about that was clearer than any road sign, pointing after Kris and Jason, and Ron.
The next block opened up onto a main street. There was movement in the distance: Jason had taken another turn. A blinking blue stoplight illuminated Kris kneeling over something. Erin and I quickly caught up to her. There was a burning stench in the air.
“It’s Ron’s radio!” Kris said, showing us the object of her attention. There was a big scratch down one side.
“You don’t think he…” Erin’s voice trailed off.
“De-vi-dis!” a strange cry broke through the night air. I recognized Jason’s voice in the distance, ripe with rage. What did it mean? Well, whatever it was, he needed help. I looked at the two girls, then snatched the radio from Kris’s hands, moving as fast as my legs would carry me toward the sound of Jason’s call.
“Hello… hello?” I squeezed the talk button between heaving breaths as I ran. There was no sound, no response from the device. Broken? I gave up tr
ying to talk and run at the same time. Something banged along an intersecting street. I took the turn, noticing the girls behind me. There were even fewer buildings ahead: we were getting close to the waterfront.
When we took that next turn, I suddenly was unsure whether we had last taken a right or a left. Was I lost? I looked behind, and there were Erin and Kris. My legs ached, but I decided to keep moving.
“Did you see them?” I gasped.
“We were following you,” Erin replied.
“That way.” Kris pointed.
We reached the end of the street, and there was Jason, running into a long, flat building, one that looked to have only half-collapsed during the earthquake.
A warehouse? It seemed particularly ominous. Erin and Kris dashed ahead of me, and, before I could suggest anything about keeping them, or any of us, safe, Kris had begun to make her way inside the imposing concrete shell. Erin was close behind her. I squeezed the radio’s talk button, let it go, put the receiver to my ear… nothing. It was dead.
I looked up. The area around the warehouse was lifeless, too, abandoned after the earthquake. I glanced around again, but, sure enough, there was no one else to help us, to help Ron and Jason. There I was, out of my depth... but there was nothing to do now but go with it. The radio went into my back pocket. Erin’s feet crunched in the distance across the gravel-strewn ground. She was inside now, too.
I ran after them, wanting to shout a word of warning, but suddenly afraid we would find the dangerous thief waiting for us, and that any loud noise would give us away. I had to actively stop myself from second-guessing going forward once again. I would never have forgiven myself if I had let them go in by themselves. If something happened, and I wasn’t there... I shut off my fears of the worst and rushed after Jason Trudeau and the girls, into the dark warehouse.
A dozen footsteps inside the cavernous space, there came a pop-pop-pop. The girls were nearby, and they ducked immediately. Erin bit her lip, and Kris was breathing particularly hard as I hit the ground beside them. Wooden crates were blocking the view for me, and I knew it was time for the girls, at least, to leave.
“It’s not safe. Get going,” I told them. “You know the area better than I do, and you can find—”
“And you’ll stay? We’re not going to just leave you here,” Erin whispered her reply.
“Jason is... Well, at least one of you should run back and call or wait for help, point them this—“
Suddenly lights snapped on, full and constant, no flickering here. A shiver ran through my shoulder blades, left to right. The three of us ducked lower behind the crates. The lights cut faint shadows in a circle around Jason as he took cautious steps toward the middle of a concrete area exposed to the night sky. Overhead, only a few thick structural girders stretched across the space where the warehouse ceiling should have been. The shape of a bird’s wings beat through the starlight above.
How were the lights on? Why now?
Kris let out a horrified gasp, and I looked ahead toward where Jason had picked up a bloody pistol. A meaty arm in a shredded blue uniform slumped to the ground, where a red, wet helmet wobbled in the dust. No doubting it was Ron, had been Ron.
I took the radio from my pocket and squeezed the buttons, panicking.
“Help, help, help,” I whispered desperately. In Japanese, I added, “Tasukete!”
While the radio remained lifeless in my hands, Jason, who had been scanning the room, froze in his tracks. He raised the gun in his hand. My breaths came short and fast. Before I had another chance to say, “We really should leave,” there was a shadow, and a deep, predatory voice:
“Who do we have here?”
I looked up into horrifyingly black eyes. The old man didn’t seem to have any irises, just wide, deep pupils. Jason’s gun swung toward the speaker, the barrel pointed just over our heads. Erin grabbed Kris and I by the shoulder and pulled us down closer to the ground, still behind the crates that separated us from Jason. Looking back up toward the old man with black eyes, I wasn’t sure that going beneath him had been the safest direction. The crates were packed tight, though, to our left and right. We were trapped!
Erin shouted, “Jason, put down the gun!”
There was a pause before the police officer’s son called out, “Step away from them, Devidis.”
“Slow down, Jason,” the old man said. “It was you who brought your friends, on a long, tiring chase. Don’t just send them back; it’s impolite.”
The old man’s voice was soft and sinister, like a snake across swamp water. His tan overcoat swished as he crouched down to meet us.
Keeping low to the ground, I peeked around the side of a crate toward where Jason stood, gun now lowered slightly, aimed away from us.
“Let us go. You don’t need us between you two,” Kris said. Her voice was calm. My hands were shaking.
She nodded to Erin and I, and started crawling away, around the old man Devidis’ legs. I followed.
“It’s equally rude to leave without so much as an introduction,” the old man growled.
On instinct, I started to get to my feet, to run, but the crates, the same ones we had been hiding behind, had now slid in front of us, blocking the path back out toward the street.
I turned, and saw Jason raise his gun toward the old man with the black eyes, who now had no cover of his own. The girls were already scattering, squeezing through the narrow side-aisles between the crates.
“You three, get out of here!” Jason called, and opened fire at the old man.
THUD THUD THUD
Again, I dropped to the floor. As I rolled onto my back, I saw that a fat pile of gravel had somehow risen between Jason and the old man, blocking Jason’s bullets. Stumbling to my feet, I pulled Kris by the arm toward where Erin was already running for cover. More crates moved to block our path. Looking for another way out, I glanced behind me to see the gravel pile collapse in a rumbling wave, a spill that knocked Jason to the ground.
“Run!” Jason shouted to us, as he scrambled across the tiny rocks for his weapon.
I searched desperately for a clear exit, but the crates kept sliding in front of me. I had no idea how he was manipulating the big wooden boxes, but the old man seemed to be shifting his attention easily between Jason and the three of us. He had no fear of Jason’s weapon, and he had no intention of letting the rest of us leave. The girls were close behind me, silent. The wave of gravel continued turning against Jason.
“Don’t go for the gun again,” the old man commanded him. “As a threat, it’s not even interesting.”
The policeman’s son was half-buried in the tiny rocks. He seemed to have given up struggling against the living pile. The crates all around us shifted faster, as if endowed with new purpose. The mobile walls pressed all four of us toward one another, closer and closer to the old man with the black eyes.
“But you may have a redeeming quality or two, Jason. You were kind enough not to make me wait for more volunteers. There are four talents, and now four of you… Perhaps you are here responding to some kind of call, the ‘summon of the Elementals’?” An evil grin crossed his face.
“Where does it come from? Does no one else hear?” he mused, talking to himself. “Will the gems come to you, or will you find them for me?”
The old man held my gaze with his black eyes, as an equally dark gem appeared in his hand. “Perhaps we’ll find out.”
I leveraged all my weight against the crates, and I heard myself sob as the evil old man grabbed my hand. He planted my fingers against the side of the obsidian gem. My arm went numb—paralyzed—my fingertips stuck to the mysterious talisman of power. There was a quick struggle, but the man with the black eyes snatched the hands of Jason and the two girls, securing one hand from each against the remaining three sides of the dark pyramid.
“You’ll never—“
“Never what?” Jason was cut off by the villain.
In the stillness that followed, I heard Jason’s heavy
breathing, and nothing from the mouths of Erin, Kris, or myself. Our tormentor had all the time in the world.
“Never eat solid food again… not after I’m done with you,” Jason said. A crazy, vindictive smirk crossed his face.
“I appreciate sarcasm, but less when it’s too late.” Devidis gave a slight shrug. “Now, be silent.”
The vicious old man held me with the blackness in his eyes. “Show some respect for the victims,” he said. “A new world is beginning.”
I thought to kick out at the villain beside me, but now my legs were as stiff as whatever force was binding my fingers to the black pyramid gem. The crates around us fell away, and I felt a strange sort of electricity flowing through the air. I tried to say something, but my mouth wouldn’t bend. My head, my neck, my whole body was frozen.
I watched the old man place his hand on the skyward-facing point of the dark pyramid. Closing his black eyes, he seemed to be guiding the arcane power. Drawing himself up to his full height, he tilted his chin toward the gaping hole in the warehouse ceiling. The night sky felt as if it were pouring into the tight space around us.
He shouted:
“Lost prisons of talent, open for all!
“To the four Elementals, these forces recall!
Slowly he intoned, “Wind, fire, water, stone...”
A shock went through my system, and there was only the sound of his voice.
“Only to the chosen these powers are shown.”
Wishing I wasn’t so helpless, wishing that there was some way to save Erin and Kris and Jason, I watched as the world seemed to... unravel. For a moment, everything had gone to ribbons, ribbons that seemed to wrap and warp around the old man with the black eyes, but then they sprang at me, at all four of us. The ribbons flipped over, and showed me visions of myself flying, fighting, running. And then, these words sprang from my lips:
“Swiftness of wind, with wisdom to hear.”
“Mystic talent of fire, to burn away fear,” Erin followed.
“Agility of water, life’s joy to renew,” Kris said.
“Most resilient stone, to stand strong and true,” Jason said.
As my visions faded to black, our four voices blended together.
“For now the darkness has risen to fight,
“Spring now forth as the power of light!”
...Then all was silence and sleep.