Book 10 Chapter 2
Part 1
I couldn’t get up.
I couldn’t breathe.
Instead of something squeezing me from the outside, it was like something was caught inside me. Like a clockwork doll’s gears jamming because someone was stepping on it.
What was this?
What had happened to me?
“…uth…”
I heard a voice, but I couldn’t even tell if it was close by or far away.
“This is going to hurt, but bear with it, Truth!!”
A dull sensation ran through my body and the forgotten pain rushed into my skull.
This seemed a little rough for a wakeup call.
“Ah, gah, ahhhhhh!!!???”
“Are you still alive? Looks like I got your dislocated shoulder back in place.”
I was too busy groaning on the ground to respond.
I was inside something like a lighthouse? No, it came back to me. This was the inside of a pillar supporting a highway interchange. We had fled inside because a meteor shower was falling on the city, but the supposedly locked door had been torn from its hinges and slammed into me.
I might as well have been hit by a car.
It wasn’t even an issue of breaking a bone. I was lucky to even be alive.
But I didn’t have time to celebrate my own good fortune.
What about outside?
What about Paris?
What had happened to France’s capital?
“…”
I was afraid to check.
But I couldn’t just stay here either. My stepmom had to be in the city somewhere.
I sucked in some air.
I leaned against young Anastasia and somehow managed to get up on my feet.
My right shoulder was still throbbing, but I took a step. I wobbled, staggered, and then noticed my phone was on the floor. I crouched down, picked it up, and only then realized I was in control of my body.
I took another step.
And another.
This was a narrow space similar to the inside of a lighthouse, so it only took four or five long strides to reach the now-doorless frame.
The unnatural brightness from before was gone. In fact, it seemed unusually dark. A highway interchange like this should have had some streetlights shining down from above, right?
I held a hand against the door frame and stuck my head out to check.
Where were we?
Had we wandered into some strange, post-apocalyptic world?
“…”
For a while, I forgot to even breathe while staring at the gray scenery. I could see slanted buildings through a dusty film that covered everything. But that wasn’t all. What were those shorter piles of rubble? Had entire buildings collapsed?
“Maxwell.”
I wanted data.
But did I really?
Didn’t I just want to access the usual services to prove to myself this wasn’t some crazy parallel world?
“Maxwell! Answer me!!”
I didn’t have a connection.
No signal.
Switching from cell phone signal to Wi-Fi didn’t help. I couldn’t access Maxwell, track Amatsu Yurina’s actions, use the default map and weather apps, or even use the basic phone or email functions.
My stomach went ice cold.
Another basic assumption had gone up in smoke in this lonely new world.
I recalled how paranormal phenomena tended to take out people’s phones first of all. The people who told ghost stories knew exactly what people didn’t want to happen when they were on a dark deserted street or in an abandoned building.
What had happened to Paris?
Was the city well and truly dea-
“Truth!!”
A voice shouted right in my ear.
I heard a creaking sound at about the same time. And that one came from directly above. I also felt something like fine sand falling on my head.
Wait.
You’re kidding right?
“Run!! The highway is collapsing!!”
I didn’t dare look up. Because I knew my legs would lock up if I did. So I faced forward, grabbed Anastasia’s wrist, and ran as fast as I could. I didn’t even make it 10 steps. I was lucky if it was even 5.
Something exploded behind us.
No, that was tons upon tons of concrete falling, crashing into the ground, and sending lots of gravel and dirt into the air. Just like the small gust of wind made when you slapped a desk pad against the top of your desk. The wind-blasted pebbles slammed into our backs, sending us tumbling forward. We couldn’t even think about moving anymore, so I held young Anastasia in my arms, curled up in the fetal position, and hoped for the best.
The deafening sounds continued for a while after that.
We were probably lucky that the initial blast knocked us to the ground. We were scraped up, but it had also sent us a few meters away. We had just barely arrived outside of the danger zone where blocks of the highway came crashing down.
“Are you okay, Anastasia?”
“Y-yes. Ugh, cough!!”
The toxic gray dust that blew past us while we confirmed each other’s safety might as well have been tear gas.
“I-it could have been a lot worse.”
I couldn’t believe what Anastasia said while she breathed in the filthy air and stared up at the sky from the jagged ground without bothering to fix her skirt or shoulder straps.
I did a double take, but she shook her head and continued.
“The temperature didn’t plummet after that dust filled the air and it doesn’t look like all of Paris was reduced to a massive crater. A bunch of small meteors hit the city instead of one big one. And based on what Maxwell said ahead of time, it sounds like this was a meteor shower instead of a single meteor that broke apart in the atmosphere.”
“…”
“That allowed Paris to avoid total destruction. The city is still mostly intact and I doubt the earth is going to enter a new ice age.”
I didn’t think this made her coldhearted. She was probably only increasing the scale like that to avoid thinking too much about the immediate reality before our eyes. She wanted some kind of “good news” she could focus on or her young heart couldn’t bear it.
I wasn’t much different. I was afraid my spirit would break as son as I accepted this tragedy.
I was afraid to look behind me.
What had happened to the highway and the metal support we had been in?
Once all the sounds ceased, we slowly got up and hesitantly turned around. There was no sign of the interchange’s distinctive circular bridges. There was only a bunch of concrete chunks piled up like building blocks a child hadn’t cleaned up. The metal pillars? The jagged pieces of metal that had bent and torn inwards were probably them.
What if we had spent another minute in a shocked daze inside the pillar?
What if we had been even 5 seconds slower in running out?
What would have happened to us?
“We need to think about our next steps, Truth. Even a travel novice like you was carrying his passport around with him, I hope? I think we should go to our countries’ embassies and ask for help.”
“Wait, Anastasia. That was a highway, so there must have been cars driving on it. There might be people buried alive in-”
I was cut off by a loud explosion and a piercing blast of hot wind.
I hadn’t even gotten fully to my feet yet, but I was sent tumbling along the ground again. Over and over. I couldn’t believe it. What was that? A car’s gasoline? I wanted an answer, but my phone wasn’t going to tell me anything. When had I deteriorated to the point that I couldn’t think for myself!?
Anastasia stared in silent shock with her small hands still gripping my clothes.
Paris was still mostly intact. There wouldn’t be a global ice age.
Forcing her mind in a positive direction wasn’t enough this time. Her ordinary feelings were returning to her in the face of people who couldn’t even cry out for help.
But she still shook her head.
“If amateurs like us tried to rescue them, we would only get ourselves killed too. There could be flammable materials anywhere in there and the rubble could collapse at any time.”
“But!”
“I’m not saying we won’t help them! Truth, can you get rid of a pillar of fire several times your height? Can you lift a piece of rubble that weighs a few dozen tons? Some things are beyond your ability. If you really want to save as many people as possible, you need to contact the experts with the proper equipment instead of attempting a doomed rescue attempt of your own. No one’s phones are working, so no one will come to help if someone doesn’t go tell them first!”
She was right.
She couldn’t have been more right.
Without Maxwell’s support, I only had the muscular strength of an unathletic high schooler. And it wasn’t like I had neglected sports in favor of studying all day long either. What would happen if I tried to help without a fireproof suit, an oxygen tank, or even a pair of gloves? I would get myself killed too. I knew that. In fact, I knew exactly what Maxwell would likely say if our connection was still up: get away from there because it’s too dangerous. I knew that all too well.
But.
Even so.
It didn’t matter!!
“I’m going to put out that fire.”
“Truth!!”
“Maybe I can’t drag everyone out of the rubble! But if I don’t put out that fire, they’ll die before help can arrive!! I need to make sure they can still be rescued when the time comes!!”
It was already too late to save them all.
If the fire had started with the gas leaking from a car, whoever was in that car would have been burned to death first of all. Not to mention there were bound to be people who had lost their lives in their cars when the highway initially collapsed.
But there might be people I could still save. Would each car have 1 to 4 people? A large bus could have a few dozen, right? I couldn’t say how many people were buried down there, but I wasn’t strong enough to give up on them all like this!!
I had to search.
I had to think.
Gasoline fires weren’t like normal ones. Blindly pouring water on them would only spread the oil around and possibly intensify the blaze. So what could I use? Literal tons of chemical fire extinguisher? I wasn’t going to find that here. But I was on the right track. Yes, what was it they used to us to stop the burn of napalm?
“Sand.”
I found myself speaking the word out loud.
I had to bet on that.
“We dump sand or dirt on it!! Cut off its oxygen supply and the fire dies!!”
“But how? We don’t even have a shovel!”
“We’ll just have to use something else!”
I was hesitant to call it “good”, but there was only one fire at the moment. That could spread if the flow of gasoline ignited another car, but we could stop that if we extinguished it now.
There must have been a wide variety of vehicles on the highway because a large dump truck was half buried near the fire. The back of the truck was piled high with dark soil.
I was pretty sure there was a lever to operate it in the driver’s compartment.
I didn’t know how it worked without Maxwell, so I just had to try climbing in and grabbing the lever. If I moved it around and the back lifted to dump out the dirt, surely that could put out a fire the size of a car!
I could do this.
I would be helpless if the fire had a chance to spread. In fact, the dump truck would be the next victim. I didn’t know if it used gasoline or diesel, but its size implied a large amount of fuel.
I finally had a clear goal for myself.
So I took the first step.
“Kh.”
Approaching was enough to feel a prickling pain across all of my skin. The smoke felt like it was attacking my eyes more than my mouth and nose. I had to keep an eye on the ground because there was glass and rebar sticking out. Plus, the gaps between the pieces of rubble looked a lot like giant mouths. If I carelessly stuck a hand or foot in there, the limb would be bitten off. So no matter how much it hurt and how much the tears stung my eyes, I had to keep my eyes open. I couldn’t shut them and try to feel my way there.
It was similar in a way to chopping up an onion, so I managed to approach the dump truck with tears in my eyes.
Damn, the driver’s side door wouldn’t open! Maybe it was locked and maybe the frame had been bent. But I sensed someone inside, so I couldn’t break the window and send glass shards raining down on them. I circled to the passenger side. The windshield was so full of cracks I couldn’t see who was inside.
“…”
I felt someone’s gaze on the way.
I looked to my feet and saw a gap between the gray rubble I was walking on. Someone appeared to be trapped below. From what I could see, probably a small child. Damn, they would be roasted alive if the fire spread here!!
The passenger side door rejected me as well. It wouldn’t open.
I couldn’t stand the fire’s heat much longer.
I grabbed a softball-sized piece of rubble at my feet. This was far enough away from the passenger seat, right? I knocked on the window once as a warning and then broke the glass with the small piece of concrete. I nervously unlocked the door from the inside and then it opened.
I climbed in and found a blond man in the driver’s seat. I could hear him groaning and- yikes, both his legs were caught in the crushed part of the truck. He would need a professional rescue team to cut him out.
The driver’s compartment had a lot more stuff than a normal car. There were a few levers in addition to the steering wheel. Which one did I need? I reached for them in order to just try them all, but the man grabbed my wrists.
He stared intently at me.
But I couldn’t speak French and I couldn’t use my translation app without a phone signal, so I could only stare back at him. Then I tried using what little English I knew.
“Help!!”
My voice was cracking and I sounded pathetic.
I had seen on TV that the French wouldn’t respond if you talked to them in English. Not to mention that I had a thick Japanese accent, so even a Brit or American might not understand me.
Maybe my desperation got through to him.
Maybe he was just confused.
Either way, his grip on my wrists weakened and I started moving the levers.
The driver of the burning car had to be dead, but dumping all this dirt on them still didn’t feel great. But I had to do it anyway.
I heard the same warning noise that played when backing up as the rear of the truck vibrated heavily and lifted. Only after starting did I realize the tilting rear of the truck blocked the view of what was happening back there.
Was this going to work?
Would this put it out?
Please work, dammit!! I’m out of ideas if this doesn’t work!!
“Truth!” Anastasia called in from outside. “The fire is out! I think it worked!!”
The strength drained from me.
I did it? Really? It was going to take a lot of time to truly save the people trapped under the heavy rubble or in the crushed vehicles, but at least I had eliminated the threat of fire and smoke. Would this give the experts a chance to rescue them?
Just as the relief washed over me, my head wobbled on my neck.
But this wasn’t due to exhaustion. The ground was shaking in a way I knew all too well.
“Is this…?”
I looked up toward the ceiling on reflex and then froze.
No.
It couldn’t be.
Wait!! Was that really happening now? But all this rubble was so unstable and could collapse at any moment. Who knows how many people were trapped below all that concrete and asphalt!!
But that only mattered to us people.
Nature didn’t care.
This was an earthquake.
I wanted to weep as it mercilessly shook the entire world around me.
Why?
Why was this happening?
I was completely taken aback, but Anastasia shouted in from outside the truck.
“The meteor shower slammed into the tectonic plate, so it doesn’t matter if this region doesn’t normally get earthquakes! The plate received an unnatural level of energy and now it’s springing back!!”
That wasn’t my point.
We had already dealt with nature’s fury. We still hadn’t recovered from the confusion of the meteor shower and the next disaster was already here!? How could nature be so merciless? Didn’t this world have gods like that Valkyrie!?
“Kh!!”
I reached toward the man in the driver’s seat, but it was no use. His legs were trapped up to the thighs in the crushed truck, so there was no pulling him out! But he was in danger if the pile of rubble collapsed!!
That was when I felt an unexpected force.
The man had pushed me away, toward the open passenger side door.
He was smiling.
We didn’t speak the same language and the most I could manage was the word “help” in a thick Japanese accent, but he was definitely smiling at me.
Then the gray landslide crashed into the truck. The driver’s seat was crushed beyond recognition.
I screamed.
My wails did nothing to stop the tremor and the world was shaken up for a full two minutes.
How many people had been crushed during those two minutes?
Hadn’t I saved them by putting out the fire? Was that not enough for you, JB!? Do you think you were so smart for using all your clever technology to send a meteor shower down toward the city? What did any of those people ever do to you!?
I couldn’t get up from the ground anymore.
The next thing I knew, I was curled up on my side in the fetal position.
“Truth.”
Anastasia crossed the rubble once the shaking finally stopped.
But not to comfort me.
“Give me a hand! The collapse widened some of the gaps, so there are people we can pull out now!!”
“…”
It took time for the meaning to seep into my brain.
There were people we could still save?
She put her hands on her small hips and glared down on me where I lay on the filthy ground.
“Are you giving up already after rejecting my wonderful advice and taking this risk!? You’ll lose this chance if an aftershock hits. Lose it forever. You risked your life for this chance, so are you really going to give up before saving anyone!?”
“!!”
I recalled the person trapped below I had seen when circling around to the passenger side.
I was fully focused now.
Anastasia and I pulled the survivors out from gaps in the rubble that stank of rust and gasoline. It was risky work no matter what we did. Too risky, maybe. But every time we pulled someone else out, we would hug and cry with that stranger covered in scrapes. One of them was even a small child. What would have happened if we hadn’t pulled that kid out from that hole in the side of the rubble?
Yes.
They were alive.
And not just them. Anastasia and I were still alive too.
We managed to get away from the rubble when the aftershock arrived. The city might be feeling small quakes for the rest of the day. An amateur like me couldn’t hear any more voices calling for help. Or weak groans, whistles, and metallic tappings. I didn’t think I had overlooked any of those signs. I thought I had done everything I could, but the rescue squad would still need to search the place with specialized equipment or a dog.
“I wonder what my stepmom is up to right now.”
“Who knows.”
Archenemy Lilith was known as a Demon Lord, but she was still family to me. I could only hope she hadn’t suffered this kind of fate elsewhere in the city.
Could I find her?
I was worried about her safety of course, but I was also worried about her preparations for war. She wasn’t still working on that, was she? Unfortunately, I couldn’t say anything for certain. I felt like she and Absolute Noah were capable of anything.
JB had delivered one hell of a preemptive strike, so what if that led Absolute Noah to pull out all the stops? We were in real trouble if the entire organization decided to retaliate.
I felt a chilly sensation on my head.
It came from some rough raindrops that felt like they had iron sand or something mixed in.
I looked up into the night sky to see it had started to pour.
Anastasia didn’t look happy.
“The meteor shower stirred up the air enough for a rapid pressure change. I would recommend not getting any in your mouth. The dirty color is from absorbing all the dust in the air.”
“So an even worse version of acid rain or rain mixed with yellow sand?”
The disasters weren’t done yet.
Knocking over the first domino had set a chain reaction in motion. And here we were without anything as ordinary as an umbrella.
“Let’s get to the embassies. We can start with the Japanese one since you’re not as experienced a traveler. And I bet the Japanese workers will treat a US citizen pretty well too. I can also use my 11-year-old age to its fullest.”
“…”
Without a phone signal, I had no way of tracking down my stepmom.
I doubted we could find her by wandering the city at random.
“Your passport is your most reliable tool at times like this. It’s finally time for you to seek out help, Truth.”
Part 2
The people we had rescued from the interchange went their separate ways. Some were trying to escape Paris and others were heading toward the city center.
We waved goodbye to the small boy who had found his parents and got our heavy legs moving. Our bikes? Who knows where they had ended up. They probably hadn’t survived. They were rentals, but would we still have to pay for them given the circumstances?
The rough rain was not letting up.
Anastasia and I walked through the broken city with our feet making gross sounds on the wet ground. We still didn’t have a single umbrella.
The urban area hadn’t fared much better.
The roads were clogged with rubble in some places and other areas were submerged in mud. Was this known as soil liquefaction? Either electricity or gas must have been causing trouble because dark smoke was rising here and there. I heard a fire truck’s siren, but could they really reach the disaster scene with the roads in the state they were? And did they have enough fire fighters anyway?
“Anastasia, where’s the Japanese Embassy?”
“Near the Arc de Triomphe.”
“And where is that?”
We may have passed it already.
Everything just looked like rubble to me.
I couldn’t spot a single landmark. Had they all collapsed, or had we wandered into unfamiliar territory without a map app to rely on? I couldn’t say for sure either way.
A kilometer through rubble felt so much longer than normal. It was more like walking along a mountain trail or a rocky riverbank than it was walking along the beach. Judging the distance by your pace or how long it felt like simply wasn’t possible at the moment.
“This his hopeless,” I spat, coming to a stop in the rain. I spoke my honest thoughts. “We’ll never reach the Japanese embassy like this! Where are we right now? I need to get a phone signal again so I can use a map! I need to contact Maxwell!!”
“But how?”
Anastasia had decided to focus on the slim ray of hope found in the exhaustion, confusion, anxiety, and irritation of trudging through identical terrain with no end in sight. I knew a hacker like her had to feel the same intense craving for data with all digital options cut off.
“If you have a clever idea I overlooked, I’m all ears. How are you suggesting we get the internet back up with the city in this bad a state? Or do you think a more robust military hotline might still be up?”
“…”
Ordinary phones and computers couldn’t access the internet during this largescale blackout. And even if it was up, ordinary people would have their connections restricted to give the police and firefighters priority.
However.
“There are fire trucks running. Does that mean the police and fire stations have connections?”
“Even if they do, do you really think you can break through their firewall without anything prepared? This is France’s capital and they’re the city’s protectors.”
“What if I did have something prepared?”
“?”
“Remember the remote control virus JB used to hide the approach of the meteor shower? It must have infected the Paris Observatory near the catacombs. We just have to extract the virus from there, modify it a little, and then infect the computers at a police or fire station.”
“Wait, so you’re suggesting we alter the parameters so we’re in charge instead of JB!?”
“Anastasia, you can still use that pet robot of yours, right? You shouldn’t need the internet to rewrite its scripts with your phone. This is a job for a real hacker.”
That settled it.
Getting Maxwell back would open up so many more options for us.
“Then I know where we need to go.”
“Yeah, the ordinary internet is down, so we’ll have to visit the Paris Observatory ourselves and directly extract the virus from their hard disk.”
Part 3
“I’m surprised there aren’t any news helicopters in the air. I thought they would want footage of a disaster like this.”
“The air has to be full of dust. I doubt they would approve a helicopter for takeoff for fear of engine trouble. Or maybe they all switched to Wi-Fi drones controlled with a phone gamepad to cut costs, so the internet troubles have left them all inoperable.”
Reaching the Paris Observatory located near the catacombs meant traveling south. That required us to cross the Seine that ran east to west through the city.
“What happened to the bridges? They’re still crossable, I hope.”
We had just barely avoided being caught in the collapse of that interchange, so I was nervous. My faith in the sturdiness of reinforced concrete had been shaken. The Seine had more than just one bridge crossing it, so if one looked too dangerous, we could skip it and choose another.
“We can’t even locate the Arc de Triomphe and it’s really conspicuous, so I’m worried we might not be able to recognize any other buildings,” said Anastasia.
“At least the Seine isn’t going away. Once we’re safely across, we can head east along the river. How do we reach the Paris Observatory from there?”
“If we’re arriving from the Seine, we take either Boulevard Raspail or Boulevard Saint-Michel south. The Louvre should make a good landmark.”
“The loo?”
“Truth, we passed it by on our bikes earlier, but you completely missed it, didn’t you? The museum’s grounds are big and empty, so it should stand out even now.”
“Then let’s use that.”
A big empty space should work fine. Unless the center of Paris had been transformed into a big crater or lake, a place like that couldn’t have changed too much. It scared me that I couldn’t be too confident about it, though.
Anyway, the first step was reaching the Seine.
Our plan was meaningless if we couldn’t safely cross the river. I didn’t want to get near the Louvre but find all the bridges had collapsed. If we saw a crossable bridge, we needed to take it.
The city was dark with the power out.
There were lights wandering around, but were those flashlights or phone backlights? It felt like we were looking at a field of neon wheat grown by aliens. Everyone had to rely on battery power at the moment, but how long would that last? A phone would only last a few hours unless you had a spare battery or a hand crank generator. Damn, if only the lights powered by a bike’s front wheel used the same voltage and amperage.
It couldn’t have even been past 8 yet.
This was going to be a long night.
“At least it isn’t wintertime,” said Anastasia, holding her small body in the filthy rain. “The city would be doomed if everyone started campfires to stay warm, especially when so many underground gas pipes must have burst. A fire could start just about anywhere.”
Anyone who lost their phone’s backlight because the battery died might try building a homemade torch. There were risks everywhere, but not all risks came from people trying to cause harm.
We made our way south.
Our landmark was the one different color that drew a pointy shape in the night sky: the Eiffel Tower.
That alone was visible from any part of the city. I had seen it while riding my bike alongside the river earlier. I wasn’t sure where we were now, but we would be able to find the river if we made our way toward that tower.
The giant structure was more than 320m tall, but even from this distance, it was clearly tilted and bent. I heard shocked people’s sighs of sorrow as they stared in the same direction from among the rubble. They sounded half sad and half overjoyed it had survived the disaster.
A few times on the way, I grabbed some rebar from the ground and pried open a metal door to save someone trapped in a car.
I threw out the rebar.
I wasn’t going to carry a weapon.
That might sound careless, but a weapon was a visual way of expressing your distrust of those around you. I was afraid of throwing out the possibility of cooperation and inviting in unnecessary trouble. Things would be different if we were dealing with a crazed mob or a Zombie outbreak, but the Parisians still felt cooperative to me.
Maybe that was naïve of me.
There were bad people in any city. A single drop of poison in a large serving of food was enough to kill, so some people would want to have a weapon to put even the smallest doubt to rest. Those people wouldn’t relax even if there was just one bad person in a group of a million.
Also, I had Anastasia to worry about.
That 11-year-old girl’s wet clothing was plastered to her skin.
Everyone else would have someone or something precious to them they wanted to help survive this hell. It was always possible ordinary people would choose to accept evil deeds and abandon the good people.
But.
I felt like inviting in trouble by carrying a weapon would put Anastasia at even greater risk. For now, at least.
“There’s a bridge, Truth.”
Anastasia pointed out ahead.
I heard a watery sound other than the rain.
“Did the meteor shower not fall here? It’s still intact!”
We approached a bridge large enough for cars to cross and I started by shining my phone backlight at the ground before we crossed. There weren’t any weird bumps or cracks where the bridge met the land. But what about the heavy supports made of stone or concrete? My phone backlight was too weak to make them out, but they looked intact when I took a flash photo and increased the contrast to the limit.
Would this really work?
A big truck or bus might be risky, but it didn’t look like it would suddenly collapse if two people walked across.
“We can make it now.”
Wet-haired Anastasia was ready to try it.
She was exhausted, the rain had sapped her body heat, and she wanted to return to civilization. She may have just wanted a place with a roof to rest in. We didn’t know if the Paris Observatory was still intact, though.
“If we don’t use this one, we might find the next one has collapsed. We don’t want to search and search and end up returning here, do we?”
She had a point.
The bridge was only about 100m across. That would normally take only 15 seconds to run across. Maybe there wasn’t that much to fear.
But were my calculations correct there?
If the bridge broke when we were in the center and we were dumped into the river, we would be – what, 50m from the bank? Could we really swim that far in a river’s current with our clothes on? And what if we hit a big piece of rubble or rebar sticking up from the surface and broke a bone? The distances were something else entirely once we were in the water. Screw this up, and we could easily end up dead.
“Truth, are we going or not? Make up your mind!”
“R-right…”
We didn’t need to take a huge risk here, but we also had to cross the Seine somewhere. We had no guarantee the next bridge would be any safer and this one might not remain this safe forever. A large truck or fire engine might try to cross and bring the bridge down.
Could we make it?
I was afraid, but I had to know the truth here. &
