“What the fuck?” he murmurs as he shuts off his car and stares. Neither of us moves, frozen from shock.
“Is this a dream?” I ask and then add, “A nightmare?”
“I don’t know, but we need to call Jericho,” Glenn murmurs, before stepping out of the truck and approaching the disaster. Rain is still falling from the sky, growing puddles on the ground. I skirt around them as I follow, trying to make sense of this. Everything we worked so hard on is gone.
Who did this? It looks like a tornado came through, yet not. We would have heard about a natural disaster. And there aren’t enough hills around to cause this level of mudslide.
No, this was planned. Someone did this. But how?
“Where’s the security?” I ask, looking around for the car I usually see patrolling. But it’s nowhere to be seen.
“No clue. Fuck.”
Glenn pulls out his phone and puts it up to his ear, eyeing me as it rings. “No fun times in the trailer, it seems.”
All I can do is nod, unable to even think about sex at a time like this.
“Yeah, Boss,” Glenn says suddenly. “You need to come down to the site. Someone fucked with it.” He pauses and then sighs. “It’s all gone.”
I can hear Jericho bark out questions on the other end of the line, Glenn wincing as he listens.
“I don’t know. It’s just destroyed. Almost like a mudslide. Right. I’ll send the pictures and meet you here.”
I walk away from Glenn, skirting around the most obvious puddles, swiping my wet hair back from my forehead. My heart sinks as I take it all in once more; the realization that someone did this on purpose is a hard pill to swallow.
Was it because of me? Someone didn’t like an omega running the project? Or maybe it’s my fae side that got us in this mess.
My gaze flits to the forest edge, and I see something glittering in the distance. I blink, rubbing at my eyes, and when I open them, whatever I saw is gone. It could just be a hallucination, a trick of the mind. Or it could be the reason for all of this.
“Jericho will be down soon. I’ve called the cops, too,” Glenn says, pulling my mind from a spiral.
“Who do you think did this?” I whisper.
“I don’t know. But I know what you’re thinking. You’re not to blame for this.” His finger moves to the small crease I know is between my eyebrows. He smooths it out. “Neither of us knew this was coming. And whoever did it, this is on them. Not you. You did nothing wrong.”
“It could be because of me, though.”
“No, Arbor. It’s not.”
We continue walking around the site, taking in the mess, our shoes caked in mud, our feet slipping occasionally. The only sound is the rain hitting the leaves and the occasional nervous twitter from a bird that hasn’t yet fled the site.
Glenn’s hand wraps around mine and squeezes. It should make me feel grounded right now, but it doesn’t work.
And then suddenly the ground growls. It starts as a slow rumble and then turns into a vicious shake. My heart thrums loudly in my head, my ears. I can almost feel the metallic taste on my tongue, and I feel a zapping move across my skin.
“Run!” Glenn shouts, and he yanks me forward. A violent roar meets our ears as the ground starts to cave in behind us. Trees snap in half, soil collapsing like waves beneath us. We sprint toward the truck, our feet sliding and our lungs burning as the world behind us falls into the abyss.
As fast as it started, it stops, the cacophony of noise suddenly eerily silent. The lone bird stops singing, and even the rain ceases to fall.
All we can sense is our uneven breaths and the stillness they’re exhaled into.
We fall back against the truck, our chests heaving as we look around, trying to comprehend what just happened.
The job site is completely gone. The earth just opened up and swallowed it all. All that remains is a gaping hole, dozens of feet deep.
If there was any hope of rebuilding, it’s gone now. There’s no way anything can ever be built on this plot of land again.
Our employers just lost a lot of money on this project, and there’s a good chance we will lose our jobs as well.
