One hundred and fourteen: Cockroach

Opening my eyes, I found myself lying in smoking ruins, buried under a pile of rubble. I didn't bother moving and nobody came. Above me, a patch of light had fallen in through the cracks and I watched the sunlight fade. When night fell and I could see the stars overhead, my stomach growled. That's when I got up.

Maybe I was still dreaming. Maybe seeing the Compound was a dream come true. Perhaps it had been attacked. Whatever. It didn't matter.

When I say I got up, it was more that I woke up to play pick up sticks and sliding tessellation type games until I was able to climb out from the rubble in which I had been buried. Perhaps I was lucky. The space in which I had been buried had been protected by a fallen wall and ceiling corner piece.

I combed through the Compound. Everything lay in shatters. Blood spatters could be seen, as were the new pock marks of recent fighting. I could still smell smoke. No dead bodies.

Was Kiran safe? Was he all right? Had the war begun again?

I found a room where the computers had been smashed. I found the least damaged one and fixed what I could. Then plugging it in, I turned it on. Surprisingly, the electricity and internet was still working. I forgot about my hunger and immersed myself in learning what had happened and what was going on. I only looked. Updated my knowledge. Left no traces that I was there.

Looked like Kiran had a few moles. There had been ten bombs. The bombs had all gone off at the same time and the former government had invaded at the same time, taking back the city. They had managed to completely take Kiran by surprise - and in the cyber battle, took a leaf out of my book by creating a mirror network that had blindsided the Boskies. Someone had been imitating me. Poorly, yet had been successful. That made me feel a bit miffed.

Tens of thousands of civilians had been injured or had gone missing and Kiran had been captured. The city was back under the former government's control and Boskyland itself was under attack. I wasn't quite sure what to think of that.

I had mixed feelings. Either way, my former government did not look on me kindly. I'd be a fugitive hiding from the law. As for rescuing Kiran, his own people would have to look after that. I wouldn't and couldn't save him. What could a small girl who couldn't even fight do? It wasn't like I owed Kiran anything anymore.

Somehow they had missed me when they had captured the Compound. The medical wing in which I had been living in had been the fourth building to be blown up. I guessed that I was presumed dead and had somehow been missed during the cleanup.

Fine with me. I was free for the moment.

Best if I just monitored things from here.

I scavenged food and clothes from all around the Compound. During the day, I listened to silence and monitored the new war through the internet that was strangely still working. I was glad I wasn't in the thick of the fighting anymore. I felt like a little cockroach, scuttling here and there.

It was like I was waiting. Waiting for what, exactly, I wasn't sure.

It was kind of relaxing, being on my own. I could plan my own days. Do whatever I wanted. There was still water in some taps - not all, but at least some. There was a seeming never ending supply of canned food and I managed to plant a new vegetable garden. The plants hadn't been completely destroyed.

Living like this without worries was quite nice. No need to think about food, clothes or shelter. No concerns about money. Just eat, sleep, work and play. No one to order me around or restrict me. No one to force me to do what

I didn't want to do.

I wished things could continue like this forever, but things change. They always change.

The first I knew of it was waking to the shouts of a work crew and the crunching and crashing of big things. Peering out, I realised that they were demolishing the whole place. There were big truck things that picked up rubble and dumped it into other trucks with deep trays on their backs. The landscape became progressively flatter, one building disappearing at a time.

Dust often billowed into the room below ground that I had barricaded myself into. It made me cough. Should I leave? I didn't want to leave. Where would I go? I had everything I needed in this room. There was a toilet, my food store, my bed. The computer was here too. If I left, I'd have to rejoin reality. My pleasant days would be over. The ceiling overhead began to shake and the deep thrum of motors growled. There was a great crunching and crashing. The sound of falling and breaking things. Dust shook and I crawled under a table in a corner of the room for safety when the roof tiles began collapsing in.

The entire roof collapsed on one side and metal claws picked up debris like a hungry, nonchalant monster. Those jaws picked their way closer and closer to me. When they almost closed around me, missing my head and then my foot by bare centimetres, I couldn't help it. I screamed.

There was a pause and the metal jaws opened up again.

Before long, men in fluorescent vests and hard hats were sifting through the debris, picking their way toward me.

"I'm sure I heard a scream."

"I hope there isn't really a person under all this. The paperwork will be a nightmare."

"Didn't someone search this place already and say it was all clear?"

"They obviously didn't search hard enough."

"Can you see anything?"

"No. Nothing here."

"Maybe we were just imagining things?"

"You guys are being too jumpy. Why would there be anyone here?"

"All right," a voice shouted and the footsteps crunched away. "You can keep going."

The metal claws rumbled back to life and I screamed again when it scraped my leg. There was nowhere else I could go anymore. If those metal jaws closed in on me, I was dead for sure.

Again the machine paused and feet came running.

"We all heard it this time, right? There's definitely someone in here."

Large bits of the building were carefully pushed aside and the workers began looking around again.

"There, under that table. Is that a woman?"

"Whoa. Yeah. Man, that was a close call. We nearly killed someone."

"What do we do? What do we do?"

"Hey, lady, are you ok? Give us a moment. We'll have you out of there in a moment."

"Hey, lady. Are you hurt? Please don't be hurt. Tell us you're not hurt."

"She's not replying. Look. Blood. There's blood. She must be injured."

"She's hurt. God, she's hurt. What do we do? What do we do?"

"All right, stop panicking. We're going to have to do this carefully. Thank God she was mostly protected by that table."

"Has someone called an ambulance yet?"

"Where's the foreman? What do we do next?"

I was extracted from the debris and carried onto a stretcher.

"Hey, hey," a hand patted my cheek. "What's your name? Don't go to sleep. Open your eyes."

A fist rubbed my breast bone, eliciting some pain so that I opened my eyes again.

"Hi, I'm Sean. What's your name?"

A tear leaked from my eyes while I looked up into a face that was very much like the Sean I had once known. The one I had buried.

"Hey, hey. Look at me. Your name. What's your name?"

Good question. I didn't have a name anymore. Something touched my leg, the one the metal claws had scraped and I gasped at the sharp pain that shot through me. Once the massive wave of pain had subsided into a sharp, throbbing ache, I suddenly felt very tired. So, of course, I did the smart thing. I went to sleep. It's good to sleep when you're tired.