The world swam back into focus through a haze of agony. Dust motes danced in the unnatural moonlight flooding the room – moonlight that shouldn’t be there, that should be blocked by a roof. Alex blinked, grit scraping under his eyelids. Above him, ragged edges of wood and insulation framed a perfect, impossible square of the night sky. Stars glittered coldly, indifferent.

  Pain, sharp and sickening, radiated from his left arm. He tried to move it, a choked cry escaping his lips as fire lanced from shoulder to fingertips. Broken. Definitely broken.

  “Clara?” His voice was a rough rasp, thick with dust. He twisted, ignoring the screaming protest from his arm, craning his neck. She lay partially buried under a collapsed section of drywall near the far wall, terrifyingly still. “Clara!”

  A low moan answered him. Relief, potent and dizzying, washed over him, immediately followed by a fresh wave of panic. He had to get to her. He had to get help.

  He shoved aside debris with his good arm, his body screaming with a constellation of lesser pains – bruises blooming, muscles torn. The metal frame of the bed beneath him was grotesquely buckled, bent as if by colossally powerful hands. Elena’s hands. The memory – her hovering silhouette against the ruined ceiling, the chillingly calm pronouncement of his impending torment – surged back, threatening to paralyze him.

  Not now. Focus. Clara.

  He finally scrambled off the wreckage, his legs shaky. He reached Clara, brushing plaster dust from her face. Her eyes fluttered open, unfocused. A dark bruise was already purpling on her temple.

  “Alex?” she whispered, her voice thin.

  “I’m here. Stay still.” He fumbled in the pocket of his torn jeans for his phone. The screen was cracked, but it lit up. Reception flickered weakly. His fingers felt clumsy, thick, shaking not just from shock but from the bone-deep terror Elena had instilled.

  He dialed the emergency number, the rhythmic tones seeming obscenely normal in the chaos.

  “Emergency services, what is your situation?” The operator’s voice was calm, distant.

  Alex struggled to form words. What could he say? My ex-girlfriend flew through the roof and broke my arm because she has superpowers and wants to destroy my life?

  “There’s… there’s been a collapse,” he stammered, the lie feeling like ashes in his mouth. “Building collapse. My apartment… the roof…” He gave the address of the apartment. “My girlfriend… she’s hurt. Unconscious, maybe. I’m injured too. My arm…” He fought to keep his voice steady. “Please, hurry.”

  He answered the operator’s obligatory questions with clipped, vague responses. No, didn’t hear an explosion, just… a roar, a crash. No, didn’t see anything unusual beforehand. Each lie felt like another brick in the wall separating him from reality, from help, from sanity. He was alone with the impossible truth. He hung up, the silence amplifying the creak of stressed timbers and the distant city hum filtering down from the violated sky.

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  Sirens wailed in the distance, growing closer. Alex stayed beside Clara, murmuring reassurances he didn’t feel, his good hand trembling as he held hers. He scanned the jagged opening above, half-expecting Elena to reappear, to finish the job. The emptiness of the sky was almost as terrifying as her presence.

  The pounding on the apartment door seemed faint compared to the earlier destruction. Then came the splintering crash as emergency services forced their way in. Uniformed figures – paramedics, police officers – spilled into the room, their flashlights cutting beams through the dust.

  Their professional urgency faltered as they took in the scene. Jaws tightened, eyes widened almost imperceptibly. They saw the impossible hole in the roof, clean-edged as if sliced by a giant blade. They saw the mangled, high-tensile steel bed frame. They saw Alex, battered and bleeding, beside a semi-conscious Clara amidst the debris.

  “Sir, what happened here?” a police officer asked, his voice carefully neutral, but his eyes sweeping the room with sharp suspicion.

  “I told the operator… a collapse,” Alex repeated, his throat dry.

  The officer exchanged a look with a paramedic who was already assessing Clara. “This doesn’t look like any structural collapse I’ve ever seen, sir. No explosion signs.”

  Alex just shook his head, unable to meet the officer’s gaze. “I don’t know. It just… happened.”

  The paramedics worked quickly, stabilizing Clara’s neck, checking her vitals, gently examining Alex’s arm. As they maneuvered him onto a stretcher, he caught snippets of the officers’ conversation – “…engineers needed… no blast pattern… look at that roofline…” They didn’t believe him. How could they? He was living in a nightmare they couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

  —

  The ambulance ride was a blur of pain and flickering streetlights. At the hospital, the fluorescent glare felt brutal. They wheeled Clara away for scans, leaving Alex in a curtained cubicle, the antiseptic smell sharp in his nostrils. A doctor examined his arm, confirming a complex fracture. The process of setting it, the injections, the application of a heavy cast – it all felt distant, happening to someone else.

  His mind raced. Where could they go? Who could they tell? Elena was invulnerable, unstoppable. She could be anywhere. She could be watching him right now. He scanned the top edge of the curtain, the ceiling tiles, the window showing only darkness. Every flicker of the lights, every distant hospital noise, sent a jolt of adrenaline through him. It wasn't paranoia if the threat was real.

  Later, lying propped up on the narrow bed, the cast heavy on his arm, exhaustion pulling at him, his eyes drifted to the small metal bedside table. He froze.

  Resting beside the plastic water carafe was a small, twisted piece of metal. Jagged, scratched, instantly recognizable. It was the bent finial from the antique reading lamp that had stood beside his bed – their bed – back in the apartment. The lamp that was now undoubtedly buried under tons of debris, or perhaps simply ceased to exist.

  It hadn’t been there before. He hadn't brought anything with him except the clothes he wore and his cracked phone. No nurse, no doctor, no visitor had placed it there.

  A cold sweat broke out on his skin. Elena. She had been here. Inside his room, past the nurses, past any security, silent and unseen. She had left it there, bent in the shape of a broken heart.

  He wasn’t safe. Clara wasn’t safe. There was no safe harbor. This was only the beginning. The unseen cage was closing around him.