Separated in war, chapter 1: Panic

A little girl named Sapa is lost in a river of people, her parents torn from her by the panicked stampede.

Earlier in the day, she had been awoken by her mother as her parents rushed her out of their dwelling.
"Get up, Get up! We need to go quickly, there isn't any time."
"But mama, where are we going?"
"To the train, we don't have time to talk."
"Can I bring my toys?"
"No time!"
Her mother then grabbed Sapa's arm and forcefully took her down to the local maglev station. Sapa whined and pulled back the whole way, until she noticed that the entire neighborhood was crowded urgently rushing to the maglev station. She retreated to her mother's grasp, scared by all of the rushing people. The trio made their way out of the maze of courts apartments, narrow halls and precarious walkways of the residential district up to the vast platform where the maglev trains were being boarded. The station was far more crowded than Sapa had ever seen it, and people were climbing over each other to get inside the train before it departed. Sapa's father guided their way through the throngs of people tothe train doors and had them crawl in order to reach a tiny opening in the crowd within the train. Sapa held tight to her mother, lest she get lost in the crowd.
The train doors closed seconds after the trio entered, and just as as the train was about to depart power went out across the local district of the city. The people within the train immediately began to panic, as they were now trapped behind unpowered doors. The windows were smashed out with concerted effort, and people began to surge out through the broken windows, trampling each other in the scramble for escape

Sapa's father crawled under the seats to reach the back of the train, and the other two followed. At the back, the mob was thinner, and they managed to safely climb out the window to reach the walkways that lined the underside of the great artery, where the crowd rushed to the aircraft docks in search of escape. As soon as the trio entered into the mob Sapa's parents were torn away from her by the stampede. Sapa crawled to the edge of the walkway and curled up, holding on tight to avoid falling over the edge, which was precariously suspended half a mile over a grand chasm in the darkened hivelike city. She dared not re enter the deadly sea of trampling feet and grasping hands that had torn her parents from her. Sapa looked to where the panicked crowd was going. At the end of the walkway the mob surged over departing aircraft and weighed them down, every inch of their surfaces covered with people grasping for their lives as the craft flew off. One such aircraft was unable to take the weight of so many passengers, and careened of to the side, crashing into the walkway and slicing it in two, sending hundreds raining down into the city below. The sudden pause caused the crowd to rapidly compress, people behind surging into the people trapped at the edge. Realizing that they were trapped, the people at the edge scurried around, some hanging onto the walkway girders while others scaled the the supports to hang from the train tracks. Unsure of what to do, Sapa crawled into a nearby suitcase torn about by the stampede and hid inside, staying as still and quiet as she could She could here a whine in the distance, which rapidly escalated into the roar of a thousand jets being flown at once. The panicked roar of the crowd escalated into shrieks of raw terror, and several booms deafened Sapa, an explosive force blowing her suitcase several feet into the air. After that, she felt an intense heat permeate the air, enough to start the cloth of the suitcase smoking, and the panicked shrieking stopped. The roar of the jet engines faded, and all was still for a very long time.



A few hours later, the ringing in Sapa's ear had subsided and she finally felt safe coming out. She had not broken any bones in the explosion, but much of her back and sides were bruised, making moving around difficult. The very first thing she noticed was the silence. It was quieter than she had ever heard in her life. Aside from the echoes of wreckage collapsing or a faint shout in the distance the only sound to be heard was the wind. Gone was the comforting murmur of millions of conversations at once, or the faint roar of thousands of aircraft zipping around to thousands of destinations. Even the ever present rumble of the city's inner machinery beneath her feet had ceased. Sapa looked around in awe at the devastation. The buildings around and below her were gutted and smoking. The lower portions of the city, usually lit by incandescent light imitating the sun, were now dark, starkly illuminated by the mid afternoon light of the true sun. The platform she was stuck on had been blown out on either end by the swarm of jets, and she was trapped on a stretch of walkway about 50 feet long, tilted as it hung on the remaining intact supports. Sapa painfully crawled through the luggage and singed, dismembered corpses, her bruised body aching in pain, calling "Mama, papa?"
Searching for over half an hour, Sapa gave up, not finding her parents, or for that matter, anyone that could talk. Now knowing that she was all by herself, with no way of leaving, Sapa sat down in the suitcase and wept quietly to herself.

Around an hour later, Sapa got up as she heard the familiar drone of a jet engine and looked around for the source. Her hope turned to fear as she saw it was an aircraft similar in design to one of the swarm that had attacked the walkway, and she ducked for cover in her suitcase once more. The aircraft flew closer, and landed on the walkway. When Sapa heard the doors on the aircraft open and people walk out, her curiosity compelled her to poke her head out, but she tucked it back in right away as one of the people from the aircraft shouted and pointed her out. She heard footsteps muffled by boots, and her suitcase was lifted up, dumping her out. She landed in a circle of strangers. All of them were rather tall, and had very straight, jet black hair. They were dressed in strangely designed body armor and pocketed vests filled with a multitude of weaponry and other devices. They all murmured as they stared at her, and a tall, bearded man with skin paler than she had ever seen made the first attempt at communication. He spoke in her native tounge with broken, awkward speech, his accent bizarre and unfamiliar to Sapa

"Child, you are called what name?"

Sapa looked away and sat silent and curled up. The pale stranger spoke the second time with much more force.

"Child, answer, please!"

"Sapa..." she murmured inaudibly.

"Please respond again, I could not hear."

"Sapa!" she answered more loudly, still not making eye contact. The other strangers continued to murmer in an unfamiliar tongue, frightening her.

"Child, you survived how?"

"I hid in this suitcase." she responded, pointing up at the suitcase he had taken. The murmering by the strangers grew much louder as the man communicated her response to them in his native toungue.

Sapa then decided to ask a question of her own. "Mister, do you know where my mama and papa are?"

The man just stared at her with an uncomfortable expression attempting to come up with a good response, but was interrupted by a command from another stranger, so he grabbed her roughly by her arms. Sapa immediately began to scream and shout.

"Let go, let go! I need to find my mama and papa!"

"Child, do not move."

"No! No! let me go, let me go!"

The other strangers snickered as the man dragged Sapa into the ship, some of them making derisive sounding comments that Sapa could not understand. The man took her up the ramp to inside of the ship. The inside of the ship was dark and confined, unbukckled seats arrayed everywhere they could fit and electronic screens adorned with writing foreign to Sapa displaying countless diagrams and camera feeds. The other strangers followed them in and sat down in the seats, but the man took Sapa down a short corridor into small room that looked like a medical bay. In the room, four people that looked like that they were also from the endless city were constrained in various positions. Three of them were currently stretched out on beds being cared for by medical aid machines, but one of them was struggling against tight restraints that restricted all of his joints. The tightly restrained one began to make muffled shouts behind his gag when he saw Sapa and the man enter the room. The man let go of Sapa as he closed the door to the room behind them, his expressions changing from one of worry to one of cautious relief. The man began talking to her in a much softer tone of voice than he had used in front of the other strangers.

"Sapa, I do not know the place that your parents are at. But I do know the place that you will be safe. Your parents may be there also. I can take you to that place, but not now.

"Where is it? Tell me mister!"

"Shhhhhh! Do not tell that I said that to no one never."

"But you have to! you have to!"

"The other people do not like me, and they do not want you to go to that place. You have to secret it!"

At that, the man picked up Sapa and placed her on the bed of a medical machine and strapped her down. After typing in some commands, he left, the door closing and sealing behind him, and the medical machine began to work on Sapa's bruises and burns, a mild anaestethic quickly putting her into a deep sleep. Right before she closed her eyes, Sapa could feel the rumble of the engine as the aircraft took off.