“Do you smell that?” she asked. He could tell she was serious when he looked at her. Something in her eyes always told him when she was lying. Tilting back his head he inhaled deeply, closing his eyes to intensify his sense of smell.

“Something’s burning.” he answered, with a blink. Her hand found it’s way to her mouth and she gasped.

“The children!” he didn’t have a chance to stop her as she ran into the streets where he began to hear others screaming. Living under the structural support of the upper city was supposed to be the safest place for the ‘rot’ as they were referred as by those who so seldom had to venture into their trash filled streets.

He ran out after her to see several lights overhead, all fixed on the cause of the comotion. There near the top of the large stone support was a large mix of wires and packaging only a trained eye like his would recognize as a bomb. They intended to wipe out an entire sector, not thinking twice about those who also lived on the surface.

If you were to look into the sun for a long time and close your eyes, you would see the sun burned temperarily on your retina, watching this explosion had a similar effect, although it was coupled with the sound of a thousand cannons fired in unison.

Not being sure weather to cover his eyes or ears first made no difference as the ten thousand ton plate that supported hundreds of homes, factories and businesses ended everything he had to worry about as it all came crashing down on top of the screaming people below. The sound of a dam being destroyed and millions of decaliters of water raining down on them would have been the best way to describe it, had anyone survived.

Far away, at the eightieth floor of his home, stands the man, calm and indiferent to the chaos going on out his window. Opera playing softly in the next room, a pipe in his hand.

“It’s finished.” crackles a voice over his PA. He nods, and closes the curtain. That wont be the last time he gives an order like that, he says to himself as a smile crosses his face.

Hey I turned 26 today. Go me.