The entire gallery had all but been reduced to a junkyard of glass, muslin cotton, and splintered wood. The lights overhead cast deep shadows into the wreckage, deep valleys laying between the snapped framework of the model. Specks of insulation fell from the ceiling like a delicate snowfall over the wreckage. An eerie calm after the storm, too quiet.
Rei couldn't see a bloody thing, all the true damage beneath the wings. Sébastien, Gwen, even Cheng were somewhere underneath the fabric. Somewhere between Sébastien's quick dash for freedom and Gwen tackling her to the ground, Rei lost track of Jasper. Let him run. Let him see how far he could get, perhaps sprinting for a fire exit. Who would notice his escape while gunshots reverberated from behind closed doors?
Shaking, Rei pulled herself under the canopy of torn wing skin. The force of the drop had shattered the showcase beneath the behemoth, turning the floor into a minefield of sharp shards. Her ears rung with the memory of it, sounding chaos in her head. It overwhelmed the thundering of blood in her ears, the only thing she could discern. She pulled her sleeves over her hands, pushing aside the pointed edges of glass as she crawled through the debris.
A darker shape stood out among the tinder and fabric. The gun. Rei reached for it, ejecting the clip and tossing it into what was left of the showcase, reproduced journal pages scattered over the base of it.
"Sébastien," she said, finding her voice hoarse. It wasn't until she tried to speak that she realized how hard it was. Her throat had gone raw, both from a scream she undoubtedly let out as the flying machine crashed into the floor and from how hard she fought to hold back tears. Not yet. She was so close, but not yet. She could hold it in a little longer.
Rei shouldered past the snapped braces and there he was, curled into a ball of a person. No bones jutted out of skin, nor did any stakes of wood jut in. Her heart quickened as she flattened to the floor, sliding nearer. Blood seeped into his hairline, trickling down toward his ear.
"Sébastien," she repeated. She could say his name over and over. It rolled so easily off her tongue, but she didn't want to because if she repeated it now, it only meant that he did not respond. Her hand found his shoulder, shaking gently at first, than firmly. "Be alive." It was a demand.
"I'm trying," his voice came gruff. Rei nearly collapsed under the weight of it, a feat considering how low to the ground she already was. The pounding in her ears grew louder.
Except... it wasn't in her ears at all. The more Rei payed attention, the more the ringing sounded like muffled sirens.
"Why did you do that?" Rei demanded weakly. What a stupid boy. How perfectly ridiculous it was, the way he sprang around like a lemur making a run of the place. Over stupid, bloody shares she didn't even want. Her chest felt inexplicably tight, as if someone had wrapped a belt around her and pulled it one notch too far.
"Apparently, I'm worth a million bucks. I haven't been pulling my weight," Sébastien uncurled, resting his weight on one elbow. Rei didn't have the heart to tell him she meant for Gwen to have the shares. Not yet. Maybe another time, when they could laugh about it and it wouldn't hurt bruised ribs and tired lungs.
All at once, the sound around them became clearer, the clatter of footsteps on them all at once, sirens whirring, voices speaking. The doors were open in another world, somewhere separate from their cotton-swathed one.
"You need to see a doctor," Rei said, and Sébastien's body stiffened under her hand.
"I'm fine, really," he insisted, wrestling against the wing to sit up. Rei blinked, stunned. She had watched him fall. She had watched him strike the floor, discarded from the winged beast like an afterthought. Now, she watched him wince.
It had to hurt and it took a moment to understand where the stubbornness came from. He didn't want the pain soothed away, like Diego had explained to her. Sébastien sought out other ways of working through it.
The paramedics would no doubt look at him anyway. There had to be paramedics.
The muslin slipped away and as Rei ducked out from under it, she saw the uniformed responders dragging away their hiding places. She blinked through it, searching for context, searching to understand exactly what was happening. She raised her hands in surrender for something she hadn't done. She was no threat, but she met the eyes of a young woman officer, recognition flickering there. Yes, Rei Collingwood, undoubtedly flashed in photos across the news.
Cheng conveniently granted her victimhood in a flurry that might have otherwise left guilt vague and indistinguishable. None of this could be the fault of the Rei Cheng had painted for the TV cameras.
"Paramedics, please," she said. Sébastien tried to protest, but instead he wheezed, breathing uneven.
She held fiercely to him, clenching her teeth so her face wouldn't give away her rising panic.
"I climbed down your building," he said, with a wry smile, "I promise I'm fine."
Fine. Fine after getting tossed into the boot of a car. Fine after having a gun repeatedly pointed at him. Fine after testing out Da Vinci's understanding of aerodynamics. The blood slipping down the side of his face was unconvincing.
"Oh, did you fall down that too?" Rei quipped, swallowing back the fear rising in her stomach like bile. Every quick, shallow breath did not sound as fine as Sébastien insisted he was. She had to fill the silence, speak over those weak inhalations so she didn't hear them so clearly.
"You do know that model was for display purposes only, don't you? Not intended for joyriding," Rei forced the joke for his sake, to convince him that she believed him. It was not her best use of persuasion, but he laughed anyway. The arm not draped over her shoulders reached for his ribs. Yes, certainly. He was fine. It was fine to ache while you laughed.
The paramedics finally pulled him from her, ready to assess the damage he claimed not to have. They politely nudged her away as they loaded him onto a stretcher, speaking into radios.
Rei watched, trailing after them as Sébastien was loaded into the back of an ambulance. Oxygen was fitted over his face.
She wanted to go too. The back of the ambulance looked peaceful compared to the flurry of emergency vehicles parked haphazardly across the museum lawn. There were responders in uniforms, museum staff bewildered and uncertain, lingering at the fringes of the scene.
Someone touched her arm and Rei turned to a police officer.
"We have some questions to ask you," she said. Rei blinked wearily at her, a protest on the tip of her tongue until the ambulance doors shut and Sébastien was gone from view.
Rei found herself nodding absently.
Another crew of medics from another ambulance sat her down and looked her over, examining the raw skin where Gwen dragged her nails across Rei's arms and face, then prodded the tender spots of flesh that would later turn to bruises. There was little damage to report. Gwen had done her a favor by tackling her to the ground. Already low to the floor, the swinging aircraft had missed her entirely.
The pace of the chaos changed. The urgency vanished entirely from the front of the museum and Rei didn't know how to shift from the adrenaline of the firearm showdown to this methodical cascade of activity. There was no urgency and Rei didn't know what to do with all the blood pumping through her, feeling a fight or flight instinct with nothing to fight or flee from.
There were questions. So many questions. The recanted version of her ordeal carefully skipped over all the details incriminating Sébastien. He found her because he knew her. They were old friends from school. That was only a lie by omission. He did find her because he knew her. The only one who did, evidently.
Rei watched with detached interest as a police officer questioned a handcuffed Cheng and Jasper while a paramedic assessed them for injury. Good. Jasper hadn't escaped in the excitement. The museum's few security personnel stood by and eventually, Rei would extract the full story when she was more capable of absorbing it all. After that, the conversation would undoubtedly turn awkward when Rei admitted to abandoning work willingingly before turning up to trash the place.
Everything Rei sought to avoid came crashing down all at once, responsibility heavy and violent. Her head spun with it. She shut down, forcing the world away as she closed her eyes until a gruff voice called out her name.
"Rei!"
She turned, Diego quickly filling up her view. She winced, prepared for the verbal beat down she would receive. A promise was a promise. If anything happens to him, that's on you... The words echoed in Rei's head, bouncing around and multiplying with each strike like a pong game of guilt. Rei had thought she was only asking Sébastien to break into her brother's house and run away with her.
"I'm sorryâ" she started, arms crushing around her before she could complete the thought. Her silver shock blanket crinkled around her, pressed into Diego's broad chest.
"What the fuck?" was all he asked.
A sentiment Rei shared completely. What the fuck, indeed? What was she doing, sitting outside her destroyed museum, watching her brother get arrested, getting crushed by a man she assumed hated her? There was no room to speak, however, smashed in Diego's unexpected embrace.
He let her go, practically dropping her back onto the bench.
"The police have the video," Diego said.
Rei blinked blankly, searching for an explanation.
"The sports camera? Baz's?" Diego offered, and when Rei still couldn't wrap her mind around it, "They've got Jasper on tape all in black. Matches their descriptions."
A forgotten tension eased in Rei's ribs. Beyond the concern that Sébastien was not dead or seriously injured, there was the buried concern that he would be immediately shipped off to a penitentiary. Jasper on tape! Sébastien not on tape!
"You called in the tip," Rei said. Instead of looking down at her, Diego sat next to her. He cracked his knuckles. Then bounced his knee. Then scraped his thumbnail over the frame of the bench.
"Yeah, well. They had me at gunpoint for almost an hour," Diego said.
Rei's rage renewed, burning somewhere underneath the exhaustion, but at some point, it plateaued. There was only so many emotions she could hold onto at once and the one ruling above all else was fear.
"Baz?" Diego asked, monosyllabically. No more than that was needed. Rei inhaled sharply.
"I'm sure he's fine," she said, "and if he's not... you're right. That's on me."
It all was, to an extent. It all revolved around her and if she had more courage than cowardice... maybe it needn't all dissolve into a mess of broken pieces. Someone more responsible could've handle the situation without hiding, without playing games.
Angelo should've trusted someone else.
Rei buried her face in her hands. It hurt to cry, sobbing so hard and fast that his ribs ached. Finally, it could burst out of her. Guilt, shame, the utter empty sadness of losing someone... it all came pouring out. She feigned optimism for Diego's sake, so his opinion of her wouldn't dissolve into nothing again, but the façade fell apart.
Diego didn't have to, but he put an arm around her shoulders. Even she, woman who promised to take away his best friend, was pitiful enough to offer the smallest sliver of comfort.
"He fell practically from the ceiling," Rei managed between the violent inhalations of childish hyperventilating. She hadn't cried like this since she was a child. She couldn't be responsible for two deaths in her lifetime, let alone in a single day.
"He's done that before and done alright," Diego said softly, though Rei couldn't tell if it was for his benefit or hers.
Diego's phone rang and he answered it evenly, far better at maintaining stoic calm than Rei clearly was.
"Yes. Yes, I do. I see. Thank you."
Rei listened to the clipped one-sided conversation, holding her breath the entire call. There was something very familiar about that phone call, exactly like she'd been on the other end of one herself. Her heart threatened to stop.
"He's conscious," Diego said, "but they have to drain his lung."
Rei paled.