"HURRY UP!!"
Down the stairwell the people went, floor by floor, the herd thinning but no less panicked.
Shoving, swearing, crying—the air filled with humanity's breaking point.
Reinhardt grabbed his backpack and slammed it on. "Come on."
He was loud and clumsy with urgency, the gullible thought in him that if he moved fast enough he could outrun whatever was ripping the city.
"Shit," Ostred hissed, looking at the jammed crowd bottlenecking the doorway. "We'll never get out like this. Might have to jump the window."
"Jump?!" Reinhardt gaped. "We're on the fifth floor—you're insane!"
The walls shuddered again, plaster raining down.
Victoria staggered down the hallway, her cut face pale. "What's happening?"
"We're trapped," Reinhardt said breathlessly.
Victoria drew in a slow, deep breath, steadying herself. "Alright… alright. We wait for the stairs to clear."
But Ostred had already pushed into the crowd. "Screw that. Move!" He barreled down the staircase, shoving people aside.
Reinhardt bit his lip, then chased him.
"Wait!" Victoria cried, but when they didn't stop, she had no choice but to follow.
They forced themselves past a cluster of fumbling tourists and a man with a baby who was weeping. The stairwell rattled, plaster trembling like a held breath. People trampled and cursed and prayed.
Smoke began to lace the stairwell—thin, then denser, smelling of hot metal.
At the first landing the crowd parted like a sea—murmurs that hardened into purposeful motion. Ostred shoved and shouldered through, finally gaining speed. Reinhardt stumbled, head spinning from the choking dust.
Over the clamor, somewhere—another explosion, another groan of collapsing concrete.
They reached the first floor and burst into a lobby that had become a theater of human panic: neighbors clung to one another in white-knuckled terror, hands pressed to eyes, shoes left abandoned in the stair crush.
Victoria sagged against the wall. "Thank you," she gasped at Ostred, despite her anger. "You got us through."
The windows rattled.
People were no longer walking. They were running—sprinting as though hell itself had opened behind them. A man shoved an old woman aside to leap onto a motorcycle. Before he could start it, another stranger ripped him off and sped away, the machine's scream vanishing into the choking air. Others followed suit, swarming cars, smashing windows, stealing anything with wheels.
"God…" Reinhardt whispered, his breath fogging the glass. His chest trembled.
"Keep these nailed!" an older man barked from the hallway. "If the facade goes, the whole thing comes with it. Nail them good!"
Reinhardt's breath came fast and thin. He saw a young woman standing by the double doors, screaming at someone on the other side.
From where she stood, a dozen different narratives braided together—someone simply wanted out, another wanted in. Human need glazed over with petrified fear.
"Don't let them open the door!" barked the lobby manager, a flustered man with an orange vest. "We will not be responsible for people dying out there!"
"No! No, you can't lock us in here!" people screamed.
Reinhardt's knees buckled. He pressed his palms to his face to still the dizzying images.
Sound crawled away like a rope being cut; at the edges there was a thin ringing that made the blood in his ears feel like its own drumbeat.
The air grew hotter, thicker with dust. Reinhardt's breathing hitched.
He clawed at his collar, eyes filling with tears.
He sank to his knees, clutching his chest. "I can't—I can't—"
"Reinhardt!" Victoria dropped beside him, holding him close. "It's okay, baby. Just breathe with me, okay? Breathe."
But he couldn't.
Everything inside him rattled. Behind the boarded windows the city kept dying slowly in screams.
On the first floor someone pounded the double doors with a fist like a battering ram of panic. "Let us out! We'll die if we stay here!" a woman shrieked. "We can't breathe! There's fire out—there's–"
"Ma'am—no!" the lobby manager shouted back. His voice was thin with fear but fortified with the awful calculus of responsibility. "If the facade snaps they'll crush you all. We hold until things calm. We hold."
"Hold?" someone else screamed. "Are you mad? We can't just sit here and wait to be burie–"
BOOOM
The entire building shook. Light fixtures rattled. Glasses fell from counters upstairs, shattering into shards
Click.
The lights flickered once. Then—darkness.
Dust rained from above as the ceiling cracked wide open.
"DOWN! GET DOWN!" someone shouted.
Everyone hit the floor. Mothers wrapped children in their arms. Grown men curled against walls, faces in their hands. Prayers filled the dark, whispered and screamed in every tongue.
Reinhardt dropped beside his mother and older brother Ostred, pressing himself against the shaking floorboards. His chest heaved, breaths ragged.
"That—it's getting worse," the lobby manager, said, voice thin. "Take cover. Get under something."
Reinhardt sobbed on the floor, holding his arms over his neck following the others.. Where's Dad? Where is he? Is this it? Am I going to die….please. Please…
"..Please," he whispered over and over. "Please, someone help us…"
CRASH!
The double doors burst open with a deafening slam.
"Victoria!"
Hanzo Aratake staggered inside, clothes torn, his face streaked with blood and ash.
"HANZO!"
Victoria screamed, rushing to him. She threw her arms around him, kissing him fiercely before clinging to him. Hanzo grabbed Ostred next, pulling him into a desperate hug, then Reinhardt.
"...You're safe," Hanzo breathed, clutching them all.
The apartment owner surged forward. "Are you alright? How bad is it out there?"
Hanzo swallowed, masking his own fear. "I'm fine. Just—cars are totaled, buildings—" He stopped himself, glancing at his sons. "We'll manage."
Victoria touched the cut on his head, worry shining through her tears. "You're hurt."
Hanzo smiled faintly. "Nothing I can't handle."
His gaze snagged on Reinhardt's face—white with a sheen of dust and tears—and he took in the shape of the fear. "Are you hurt?"
Reinhardt looked up at his father. "No.."
Her gaze softened, then shifted toward her sons. They sat against the wall, their young eyes wide with terror. Reinhardt's face was pale, Ostred's lips quivered.
Victoria leaned closer, voice breaking but gentle. "Listen to me, both of you. We've fought before. We've yelled. We've slammed doors, said things we didn't mean. But tonight—"
She swallowed hard, her hand clutching Hanzo's tightly. "Tonight I'm glad…that none of us gave up. That even with all that, we're still together. This city—it's been hard on us. But it's made us stronger. As a family."
Ostred nodded weakly.
But Reinhardt's face was still pale, his fists clenched. His fear sharpened into something else—anger.
His mother's words—about family, about closeness—were met with a scoff.
"We were never close," Reinhardt muttered, his voice trembling. "All the fights, all of it—because you couldn't do your job." His gaze darted to Ostred. "And his smart mouth didn't help either."
"Reinhardt!" Hanzo hissed, his eyes flashing. "Watch it."
Reinhardt looked away, his voice breaking. "If you'd been a better mother… maybe this family wouldn't be in this place."
Victoria froze. Her mouth opened, then shut. Slowly, she lowered her gaze. "…Maybe you're right."
Hanzo's hand curled into a fist. His voice was low, deadly quiet. "If not for this absurd earthquake, boy, I'd beat your ass right here."
Reinhardt looked down, jaw tight, his chest heaving. "..I'm just telling the truth.."
Victoria shook her head quickly. "..It's okay. He has every right to be mad. I've faile—"
RUMBLE.
A rumbling answer rolled through the building then—a sound like iron sinew groaning. The ceiling above flexed with a wet, dangerous creak.
For a terrible second the entire room inhaled, held its breath, and then everything went wrong.
"The building—" someone started.
It wasn't subtle this time—a cacophony of grinding that came like a wave hitting a cliff. A beam above them cracked with a long, horrid sound that made teeth ache. The floor trembled with the sense that the house had inhaled all its aires of patience.
"It's going!" a woman screamed. "We have to get out—NOW!"
Doors slammed open. People shoved, reckless as wind. A mother tripped and swallowed air and kept running. Ostred darted for the door like a panic-fueled animal, slipping between legs.
"OSTRED!" Reinhardt lunged but Hanzo's hand was already on the boy's shoulder, hauling him through the clutter.
Dust whipsawed them as they ran, the corridor a tight animal throat. A chandelier went askew like a broken spine and then a pocket of ceiling peeled and fell across a stairwell with a thunderous, wet crash.
People tripped, rolled, scrambled.
Reinhardt's eyes found his mother for the briefest, sharpest second.
Mom..
She looked at him with a fear that made him understand—understand that the truth and the attack and the sting of her absence had been small next to the choice to keep each other alive now.
"I—" He choked, tears blurring his sight.
Now was not time for repair, but he let the realization light something like shame up in his chest.
They ran. Everyone ran.
Objects abandoned by fleeing hands floated upward unnaturally—shoes, purses, broken glass, all lifting as if gravity itself had loosened.
Reinhardt's foot was half out the door when the world tilted.
A violent concussion rolled the stairwell under them. Concrete deadened into a rumble and then a terrifying crack like the world being slit. A slab groaned and began to peel loose—the neighbor apartment's balcony—then it came down in a slow, slaughterous roof of concrete aimed at the exit.
Reinhardt saw it—a slow-motion, cinematic horror—the slab turning, tilting above them.
Ostred was beside him—determined, eyes wide as the moon.
Reinhardt braced for impact.
Sound vanished.
For an absurd half-second his vision tunneled to the sky and the smell changed—he was under something warm and thick then, then thrown with a brutality that felt like being scraped off the underside of a truck.
Only the ringing in his ears. The hammer of his heartbeat. His gasping breath.
He was catapulted into fresh air, weightless for one holy instant before the soft smack of green grass met his side. The smell of smoke and hot metal died away like a dream.
Instead—blossoms.
Petals rained slowly down around him, soft as confetti, the air perfumed with a clean, unreal sweetness.
Reinhardt blinked, dumbstruck.
His cheek felt damp, but not from blood—cool dew. He sat up, coughing until his lungs reassumed their usual terror-driven pace. The sky above was dark, full of stars.
No sirens. No shrieking. The world smelled like spring.
Beside him Ostred lay on his back, eyes wide and blinking as if he had fallen through a trickhole. He sat up quickly and pushed himself upright, looking around as if he had walked into the wrong memory.
"W-what—" Ostred breathed, voice a raw reed. "Where—?"
In the distance, the silhouette of a village cut into the horizon, roofs tiled in neat black, smoke curling from chimneys in lazy spirals.
Reinhardt gasped, fingers clawing into soil. Petals drifted through the air, settling on his bloodied sleeves.
He whipped his head.
"Ostred—"
They stared at each other, surrounded by grass and flowers, the ruin of Toronto gone.
Reinhardt's breath hitched. His chest heaved as he realized—
This was somewhere else.