Zahra felt good. She dreamt of being tucked in for the night as a child on a cold winter night back in Long Island. The layer of blankets and quilts kept her toasty warm. Zahra loved a comfortable blanket. It didn’t matter how hot it was. She had always needed one to fall asleep.
Except, she wasn’t a kid anymore, and she wasn’t back in New York with her brother and parents. The last thing she remembered was a flash of light and a shockwave that knocked her off her feet and out of consciousness. The soothing warmness wasn’t coming from her blankets either. It was coming from a fire — and not a crackling fireplace or firepit, but
Zahra jerked into an upright position. Her head throbbed, and her vision was severely blurred. She knew she had suffered a head injury. She needed to take it easy before she either passed out or vomited all over herself, and then passed out. The room spun, and the roof swirled with red, orange, and yellow lights.
She closed her eyes and kneaded her forehead with her palms, pausing the therapeutic massage shortly after starting it. The lighting inside the museum was all wrong. It flickered as if it were lit by flames. Zahra kept her face covered but opened her fingers far enough apart to see that she was in deep shit.
Zahra lowered her hands and blinked against the heat. “Oh. My. God.”
She followed the burning ceiling down to the gaping hole in the building where the front doors should have been. The explosion… The Scales of Anubis had set off a bomb. It’s what had sent Zahra into La-La Land, and it’s what had caused the damage she now found herself gawking at.
The revelation helped clear Zahra’s thoughts. She scooted forward on her butt and dismounted the platform containing the remains of the quartered Maasai tribesman. Zahra had smashed through the man and sent his arms and legs in different directions.
The bombing would make the heist look more like a
Multiple murders had also occurred, along with a kidnapping. And forget the irreplaceable destruction caused by the blast. She looked around the Great Court and spotted a dozen-plus invaluable artifacts either in pieces, or on fire.
Zahra knew she needed to get out while she still could. So far, the ceiling had held up, though quite a few of the triangles had cracked or flat-out shattered. Regardless, Zahra didn’t know how long it would be until the rest of them came down. She shambled forward, avoiding the pooled blood that encompassed the freshest body. Odai had died where he had fallen. Zahra circled around his corpse and headed for the front of the room. The heavy doors had been peeled open like a banana. Steel, glass, and concrete and marble rubble were strewn about, covering nearly all of the floor. It was an obstacle course that Zahra wasn’t prepared for, and one she would have never imagined tackling.
It was her fault. If the jar hadn’t been on the premises, then the museum would have been spared.
She tried to look back toward the old man but couldn’t see through the billowing, abusive miasma. Zahra tucked her nose and mouth into the crook of her right elbow and coughed. The air was getting more unbreathable as she closed in on the entrance. She pushed forward, squinting against the sting of the intense heat and smoke.
The gift shop and diner stationed just inside the front doors were now nonexistent. Their wares, like some of the historical pieces behind her, were unrecognizable.
Tears streaked down her filthy cheeks. Zahra had no idea what she looked like, nor did she care. She was alive — that was better than everyone still in here could boast. Stepping through the ruined entryway, she said a prayer, thanking whoever was listening for allowing her to survive the heinous attack.
As soon as Zahra left the high temperature of the fiery museum and was struck by the cool breeze swirling about outside, her mind swirled, and she fell to her knees.
Zahra collapsed atop the front steps. Her forward momentum caused her to roll down them like a limp, beat-to-hell Raggedy Ann doll. She flopped onto the sidewalk, landing face-up on her back. She was so out of it that even the nip of the autumn air didn’t stir her.
But the wail of faraway sirens did.
As she had just done inside the museum, Zahra snapped awake and sat up. She only made it halfway up before she was run over by a wave of nauseating vertigo. There was too much pain to move, and the world was still spinning way too fast to try.
