“I'm not going to hurt you,” the voice says. It's a woman's voice. Soft and peaceful.
“Thank you for helping me.” I hope that my gratitude will appeal to this person's compassion. Or at least buy me some time as my eyes adjust to the darkness. Right now, all I see is a silhouette.
“You helped me earlier. I'm repaying the favor.” Her voice calms me as her hand touches mine. The hint of confusion dissipates as her face reveals itself. It's the girl whose bucket fell in front of me.
My face warms up, and my heart races. My hand feels smaller in her hand, so I pull it away.
“What's your name?” She grabs my hand again. This time I don't pull back.
“80,” is the only word I'm able to push through my lips. I guess that's all she asked.
She pulls me and leads me through the building. “I'm KJ. We need to go. The Cabras won't take long to get into here.”
Before I can comprehend what's happening, KJ is pulling me through the building. We run up never-ending flights of stairs. Some of them are only a couple more days away from crumbling. As we wind our way farther up the building, physics appears to stop working. A few struggling pillars are all that are left holding up some floors. They bear the weight of the many floors above them.
We stop a few stories from the roof, and she leads me to the edge of a blown-out window. I look down and can't see the ground below me. We have risen into the middle of the smoky clouds that envelop the city. The slight breeze creeping through the window forces me to inhale the dry, ashy oxygen. I can feel it making me weak, but KJ seems used to it.
“Let's go!” she shouts as she steps through the window and disappears.
My heart stops when I see what I need to do. Right next to my left hand is a thick wire jutting out from the concrete window. It shakes as I follow it with my eyes into the dense clouds.
“Come on!” Her shout is taken by the wind. She’s put some distance between us.
I stand up in the window and almost hit my head on a second wire protruding from the top ledge. I grab that wire with both hands and begin to slide my feet along the bottom wire. Within a few seconds, I am far enough away from the building that I can no longer see it. The clouds have engulfed me, and I try not to think about the burning my lungs feel with every breath. Each new inhale makes my grip on the wire weaker.
“How far across is this?” I ask, trying to distract myself from the fact that my arms and legs are shaking. The wires are less taught here, so I must be near the middle of the neighboring buildings.
“It's not far. I've already made it.” She eases my nerves.
The wires have tightened again, and I begin to feel more confident—until the bottom wire shakes with a violent jolt and my feet slip off. I scream as my hands squeeze tighter on the upper wire, but the pain shooting down my arms tells me that I have torn more skin from the palm I injured removing the leg from the table. Blood starts coating my palms.
“80?!” KJ yells out.
“Someone shook the wire!” I shout back as my feet try to find the other wire. My hands work harder to hold me up. After clipping the wire a couple of times with my feet and not finding the footing, I decide to spend my energy getting across. I just hope I'm close. The lack of visibility makes it hard to see how much farther I have to go. With my grip getting slick with the blood, I'm not sure I can go more than a few yards before I fall.
Hand over hand, I work my way toward the building. I force a tighter grip each time, but it takes its toll on my shoulders. A haze creeps into my head; the heavier breathing has brought in more filth into my lungs. I stop for a moment, trying to regain my focus. A disturbing thought enters my mind. Will the fall kill me before the Cabras tear me apart?
“I can see you! Come on!” Her voice snaps me back.
My hands start to move again, and after a few seconds I can see her as well. Her body leans out of another window and reaches for me. I summon the rest of the strength I have and make it to her. She grabs me and pulls me through, both of us falling to the ground.
“Thank you.” I exhale, then turn my head over and see her looking right at me. Her eyes embrace me with warmth. She smiles at me, and when I return the favor, my cheeks flush with blood. I look down in embarrassment. Her arms are still wrapped around me. If my heart was beating fast before, it has doubled in speed now.
She must have noticed that she’s still holding me because she pulls back her arms and rolls onto her back. “Sorry.”
The silence lasts long enough to feel uncomfortable. Almost in unison, we laugh. For those brief moments, it's just the two of us. The rest of the world does not exist. There is no pain, anger, sadness, fear, or death. There is this small pocket of time, this cubicle of space. As the laughter dissipates, the darkness and destruction in the world return. It angers me. Why must the bad in the world be the standard and the good be reduced to moments?
“Why did you help me?” She snaps me back to the broken world we're in.
I search for the answer. The reason doesn't come. It's as if it was a natural reflex. “I just did.”
“I've seen others get killed for less. So, you very well
