The sound came before the image.
Sirens. Screams. The rattle of a helicopter flying too low. Someone was calling for help over and over, though no one seemed able to find them.
Barcelona was still there, hidden beneath the dust.
The buildings were still standing, most of them at least. The streets still had their names, their traffic lights and their café terraces, but something had torn away the normality that held them together.
Glass lay across the tarmac. Cars stood sideways in the middle of the road. A motorcycle burned beside the pavement while two firefighters tried to contain the flames.
People walked without knowing where to go.
Some shouted names.
Others stood motionless, covered in dust, staring at the sky as though they were still waiting for an explanation.
An ambulance edged between the stopped vehicles. It barely managed a few metres before reaching a mountain of rubble. The medical crew got out and continued on foot.
The grey cloud parted for an instant.
Between two crashed cars, a boy lay on top of a young woman.
He was shielding her with his own body.
His clothes were covered in dust and there were several cuts on his arms. A trickle of blood ran down from the right side of his head, across his eyebrow and on down his cheek.
He struggled to breathe.
Beneath him, the girl kept her eyes wide open.
They were so close that he could feel the tremor of her breathing.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
He could barely get the words out.
She took a second to answer.
“Yes… Yes, I’m fine.”
The boy tried to move away, but his arms would not respond. His full weight sank back onto his elbows.
The sound of the sirens began to recede.
Not because they had gone away.
He was the one fading out.
He blinked.
The stranger’s face blurred. All he could make out were her eyes and the movement of her lips.
He supposed she was saying something.
He could not understand her.
So this was it.
He would die on some ordinary street, covered in dust, without knowing what had fallen from the sky or whether his sister was all right.
It did not seem a particularly dignified ending.
He looked at the girl again.
She was still breathing.
At least it had done some good.
“Well…” he murmured. “Could have been worse.”
The young woman frowned.
“Hey…”
The boy tried to stay awake.
“Hey, wait.”
Darkness crept in from the edges of his vision.
“Are you all right?”
Black.
THREE HOURS EARLIER
The café terrace was full.
A waiter threaded between the tables carrying three coffees and a bottle of water in one hand. Nearby, a couple were arguing about where they had parked the car. Two children chased pigeons while their father pretended not to notice they were bothering everyone.
Barcelona sounded the way it always did.
Engines. Conversations. Brakes. The constant murmur of a city that stopped for no one.
Daniel walked through the crowds with his phone pressed to his ear.
He wore sunglasses, a black cap turned backwards and a backpack slung over one shoulder. He had tried several shops and was beginning to regret agreeing to this errand.
“Yes, that’s why I came all the way here,” he said. “But no luck. They don’t have it.”
At the other end of the call, Lina was silent for a moment.
“Did you ask?”
“No, Lina. I went into four shops just to admire the walls.”
“I’m asking because you’d look for two minutes, fail to find it and leave.”
“I asked.”
“In all four?”
Daniel dodged a man who stopped suddenly to check his phone.
“In three.”
Lina laughed.
“Knew it.”
“There was a massive queue in the fourth.”
“Of course.”
“And I have a life.”
“You also have a sister who asked you for a favour.”
“A sister who could have ordered it online.”
“It wouldn’t have arrived in time.”
“That detail would have been useful yesterday.”
Daniel heard her holding back another laugh.
They had had this sort of conversation hundreds of times. Lina asked for something. Daniel complained. Then he ended up crossing half the city to find it.
“Never mind,” she said. “Leave it. I’ll find something else.”
“I’ll try one more place.”
“You don’t need to.”
“Since I’m here…”
“Daniel.”
“What?”
“I said you don’t need to.”
“And I said I’m going to try another place.”
“You’re impossible.”
“You’re welcome.”
This time Lina laughed openly.
Daniel smiled as he waited at a pedestrian crossing.
Around him, several people took advantage of the red light to cross. A delivery cyclist rode between them and received a collection of insults he seemed not to hear.
“Right,” Daniel said, “see you tonight, okay?”
“Yes. See you tonight.”
There was a very brief pause.
“Love you,” Lina added.
Daniel lowered his eyes, still smiling.
“Love you too.”
He hung up.
The light turned green.
Daniel put his phone away and crossed with everyone else.
For a few minutes, nothing happened.
And that was what he would remember most afterwards.
The absolute normality.
A woman leaving a shop with too many bags. An old man studying a shop window. A teenage girl taking a photograph with her friend. A bus stopping. Someone impatient sounding their horn.
Thousands of small lives moving forward at once.
No one knew they were about to divide their memories into two parts.
Before that day.
And after.
“Hey…”
The voice came from somewhere behind Daniel.
He paid no attention.
He kept walking.
“What’s that?”
The second voice sounded closer.
Daniel turned.
A young man was pointing at the sky while his friend tried to find whatever he was looking at. Several people slowed down. A woman raised her head and shaded her eyes with one hand.
Daniel followed their gaze.
At first he saw nothing.
The sky was clear. Just a few thin clouds above the buildings.
Then he spotted the point of light.
It was too bright to be a star.
It hung high above the city, though it seemed to be moving slowly. A barely visible trail stretched behind it.
“Must be a plane,” someone said.
“A plane?”
“It’s reflecting the sun.”
A girl raised her phone and began filming.
Other people did the same.
Daniel narrowed his eyes.
The point had grown larger.
Not much.
Enough.
A murmur spread along the street. People who had not yet stopped began to do so when they saw the phones aimed at the sky.
The traffic continued for a few more seconds.
Then a car braked in the middle of the road.
The driver wound down his window.
“What’s going on?”
No one answered him.
Daniel took off his sunglasses.
The object grew again.
It no longer looked like a point. It had an irregular shape, surrounded by a white light so intense it was hard to keep looking.
A man began to back away.
“That’s not a plane.”
The trail thickened.
The sky seemed to vibrate.
Daniel felt a strange pressure in his ears, like the sensation when a plane descended, but much faster.
Several phones lost their signal at the same time.
The screens froze.
A flock of birds rose above the buildings. They flew chaotically, colliding with one another as they tried to get away.
The light changed.
For a fraction of a second, the object seemed to stop.
Then it split apart.
There was no immediate explosion. First, several glowing lines appeared across its surface. Then a piece broke away from the main body.
Then another.
And another.
Dozens of fragments began spreading across the sky.
The silence lasted barely a second.
“Run,” someone said.
No one moved.
“Run!”
The first thunderous crash shook the shop windows.
The crowd reacted.
Daniel was dragged backwards by people trying to get away. Someone collided with him. A woman lost her handbag. Traffic ground to a halt as several drivers abandoned their vehicles.
The nearest fragment cut through the clouds.
An incandescent mass fell somewhere beyond the buildings.
Daniel did not see the impact.
He saw the light.
White.
Absolute.
Then came the shock wave.
The air struck the street.
The windows shattered at the same time.
Daniel felt his feet leave the ground. He instinctively covered his head before slamming into the side of a car.
For several seconds, he did not know where he was.
The world had become a hum.
He tried to get up. A glass door tore free of its fittings and fell a few metres away. Car alarms began sounding one after another.
Someone stumbled beside him.
Daniel reached out and kept them from falling, but lost sight of them when another mass of people ran between them.
The street filled with dust.
“Move!”
“My son! I can’t find my son!”
“Get out of the buildings!”
Daniel searched for his phone.
He found it several metres behind him, its screen cracked. He picked it up and tried to call Lina.
The call would not connect.
He tried again.
Nothing.
He typed a message.
Are you all right? Call me.
The phone kept trying to send it.
Daniel looked up.
Another fragment crossed the sky.
This time he saw the impact between the buildings, far enough away that he could not make out the exact spot and close enough to feel the ground rise beneath him.
A column of dust rose at the far end of the avenue.
People began running in the opposite direction.
Daniel called again.
“Come on… Come on, Lina.”
The screen lost its signal.
A second wave struck the city.
It was not as strong as the first, but it was enough to bring down several cornices and finish breaking the windows that had held out.
Daniel took cover behind a car.
When he got up again, there was a cut on his hand.
He did not remember how he had got it.
He looked around.
Everything was happening too fast. There was no safe direction. Every street seemed full of people fleeing a different danger.
A police officer tried to move people away from a cracked façade. Two men were lifting a fallen sign to free a woman. A bus had mounted the pavement and stood tilted against a lamppost.
Daniel took a deep breath.
He had to get out of there.
He had to find a signal and get through to Lina.
He moved with the crowd.
For a stretch of time he could not measure, he let himself be swept through streets ever more thickly covered in dust. He helped a fallen man to his feet, skirted two burning vehicles and checked his phone so many times he stopped counting.
When he checked the time, he found that more than two hours had passed since his conversation with Lina.
The message still had not sent.
The first sirens had begun to multiply. In the distance he could hear orders through megaphones, but the echoes between the buildings made them impossible to understand.
Then he heard a knock.
He stopped.
The sound came again.
Three short knocks from inside a partly collapsed shop.
Daniel looked towards the street. Everyone was still moving away.
Another knock.
Weaker.
Beneath the hum still filling his ears, he made out a voice.
“Help…”
Daniel stood motionless for an instant.
He looked at the sky.
Then at the cloud of dust advancing along the avenue.
Everything in his body told him to keep going.
“Is someone in there?” he shouted.
There was no answer.
He went towards the shop.
Part of the entrance was blocked by suspended ceiling panels, broken glass and a metal frame. Daniel pulled aside a plank and bent down to look through the gap.
“Can you hear me?”
A cough.
“Here…”
Daniel set his backpack on the ground.
“Move away from the entrance.”
“I can’t.”
He crouched as he went in.
It was dark inside. An emergency light flickered on the ceiling, turning the suspended dust red.
A shelving unit had fallen across several tables. Further in, a young woman was trapped between a lightweight beam and part of the ceiling frame.
There was blood on one knee and small cuts covered one of her arms. She was trying to free her leg, but every movement made the wreckage above her sink a little further.
When she saw him, she let out a breath.
“Don’t move,” Daniel said.
“I wasn’t planning to.”
The answer surprised him.
She did not sound calm. She sounded terrified, and angry with herself for it.
Daniel approached and examined the frame.
“Does your leg hurt?”
“Yes.”
“Can you move your foot?”
The girl tried.
“I think so.”
Daniel took hold of one end of the beam.
“I’m going to lift this. Tell me when you can get your leg out.”
“It’s too heavy.”
“Probably.”
“That doesn’t reassure me.”
“Me neither.”
Daniel found a steadier position. He braced one shoulder beneath the frame and pushed.
At first nothing happened.
He gritted his teeth.
The beam rose a few centimetres.
“Now.”
The girl tried to pull her leg free, but a piece of metal was still blocking it.
“I can’t.”
“Try again.”
“I’m trying.”
The frame creaked above them.
Daniel lost some of his support.
“Wait.”
He slowly let the weight down and took a breath. His shoulder hurt. He could feel his arms trembling.
The girl looked towards the exit.
“You have to go.”
“Yes, of course.”
“I mean it.”
“So do I. As soon as I get you out.”
Daniel found a metal bar among the wreckage. He slid it beneath the beam and used a block of concrete as a fulcrum.
“When I lift, pull towards me.”
“What if everything falls?”
“Don’t let it fall.”
She looked at him, bewildered.
“That was a joke,” Daniel explained.
“It’s not funny.”
“I get told that quite a lot.”
Daniel pushed down on the bar.
The frame rose.
The young woman managed to bend her knee. She groaned as she freed her leg and crawled towards him.
Daniel let the beam fall.
The impact raised another cloud of dust.
He caught her before she lost her balance.
“Can you walk?”
“I think so.”
She tried.
Her leg gave way at once.
Daniel held her by the waist.
“That looked like a no.”
“I can walk.”
“Perfect. Do it leaning on me.”
He draped one of her arms across his shoulders.
They made their way slowly towards the exit.
Outside, sirens filled the city.
Daniel checked his phone once more.
The message to Lina still had not sent.
“Is there someone you know here?” the girl asked.
“My sister. I can’t get through to her.”
“Is she nearby?”
“She shouldn’t be.”
Daniel wished that answer meant she was safe.
A deep noise travelled along the street.
They both stopped.
It was not coming from the sky.
It was much closer.
Something small darted between two cars.
Daniel only caught a glimpse of a bare tail disappearing beneath a vehicle.
He thought it was a rat fleeing the collapse.
Then the car moved.
Not much. Just a sway on its suspension.
But something underneath had just pushed it.
The girl clung to Daniel.
“What was that?”
Daniel did not answer.
A head appeared beside one of the wheels.
An elongated snout. Rounded ears. Whiskers coated in dust. Two incisors visible between its lips.
It was a rat.
Or at least that was what his mind insisted on telling him.
It was roughly the size of a medium-sized dog, but its size was not the only thing wrong with it. Its front legs were too long. The joints seemed to bend a little further than normal and its body stayed too close to the ground.
Beneath its grey skin, the muscles moved in directions Daniel could not follow.
The animal came out from beneath the car with a sudden movement.
Then it went completely still.
Its snout trembled.
It was sniffing.
Daniel began to back away, making the young woman move with him.
The rat turned its head towards them.
It did so so quickly that the movement barely seemed natural.
“Don’t run,” Daniel whispered.
“I can’t.”
“Better.”
“That’s not funny.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
The rat took a step forward.
Its claws scraped the tarmac.
Daniel searched for a way out.
To the left, a bus blocked the street. To the right, part of the façade threatened to fall. Behind them was the collapsed shop.
The rat approached a crashed car and placed its front paws on the bonnet.
The metal buckled beneath its weight.
Daniel stopped backing away.
That should not have happened.
The animal raised its snout and opened its mouth. A hoarse, low shriek came from its throat, too deep for the body producing it.
The girl gripped Daniel’s shoulder harder.
“We have to go.”
“When I tell you, get to that van.”
Daniel pointed to an overturned vehicle a few metres behind them.
“What about you?”
“I’ll follow.”
The rat climbed down from the bonnet.
Daniel helped the young woman stay upright.
“Now.”
She struggled forwards.
Daniel picked up a metal bar from the ground.
It was ridiculous.
It would not do much against something that could deform a car, but holding it felt better than having nothing.
The rat took another step.
Daniel struck a fallen sign with the bar.
The clang echoed between the buildings.
The animal turned towards him.
“Here.”
The rat drew in its hind legs.
Daniel understood what it was about to do an instant before it jumped.
He stepped back.
The rat landed where he had been and turned with impossible speed for its size.
Daniel swung the bar.
The metal grazed its back.
The creature shrieked and struck the bar with one paw. Daniel felt the jolt in both arms. The metal flew from his hands and fell several metres away.
“Come here!” the girl shouted from the van.
Daniel ran towards her.
The rat crouched again.
The distance was too short.
Daniel knew it before he saw it jump.
He reached the young woman, wrapped his arms around her and turned to put his body in the way.
He saw the rat coming.
One paw outstretched.
Its claws aimed at him.
He would not be able to get out of the way.
He closed his eyes and hunched his shoulders, waiting for the blow.
It did not come.
There was an instant his mind could not put in order.
Before he closed his eyes, the rat was on top of him.
When he opened them again, he thought he saw it twice: one silhouette still in the air and another falling beside the van.
He blinked.
Only one remained.
The claw passed so close to his cheek that Daniel felt the air of its movement. The rat sailed past and slammed into the side of the vehicle.
Daniel fell with the girl.
For a second, neither of them moved.
The creature scraped at the tarmac as it tried to get up.
The young woman looked at Daniel.
“Did you see…?”
Daniel looked at the spot the rat had jumped from.
Then he looked at the scratch its claws had left on the van.
“I don’t know.”
Perhaps the animal had misjudged it.
Perhaps Daniel had moved without realising.
It could have been the dust, the dizziness or simply a confused image caused by the speed.
It had to be one of those things.
A dull pressure appeared behind his eyes. For a moment, the street seemed to tilt.
Daniel braced one hand on the ground until he regained his balance.
It had been the fall.
Or the collision with the car.
The rat got up again.
A metallic taste filled his mouth.
Daniel swallowed and looked for the bar.
It was too far away.
The animal turned towards them.
Then three shots rang out.
The first struck the tarmac in front of the rat.
The second hit the side of the vehicle.
The third made the animal shudder and retreat.
“Get down!”
Daniel covered the girl’s head.
A Spanish soldier appeared through the dust with his rifle raised.
His uniform was covered in ash and one side of his helmet was scratched. Neither goggles nor a visor hid his face. Daniel could see his expression clearly: focused, firm, without a trace of the false confidence in some of the emergency voices in the distance.
He did not seem to understand what kind of animal was in front of him either.
But he did not let surprise stop him moving.
He advanced with his weapon aimed.
The rat bared its incisors.
The soldier fired again.
One of the bullets hit the animal in the flank. The creature shrieked and ran between the vehicles at a bewildering speed.
It disappeared beneath the cloud of dust.
The soldier tracked its path with his rifle.
He waited several seconds.
Then he backed away without turning his back on the place where it had fled.
“We have to get out of here,” he said. “Now.”
His voice was firm, but he raised it no more than necessary.
He helped Daniel up. Then he crouched beside the young woman.
“Can you walk?”
“With help.”
The soldier put an arm around her waist.
Daniel moved to the other side.
“There’s an aid station at the end of the street,” the soldier explained. “Stay together.”
They began moving.
The soldier glanced once towards the van, then at Daniel. If he had seen the whole jump, he gave no sign of it.
“Are you both all right?”
Daniel checked on the girl first.
“Are you all right?”
She nodded.
“Yes… I think so.”
Daniel looked back towards the place where the rat had disappeared.
Nothing strange remained.
Just dust, abandoned cars and the scratch of claws across the bodywork.
“He got me out of there,” the girl said.
The soldier looked at Daniel’s cuts.
“When we get there, you’ll let them check you over.”
“They need to see her first.”
“They’ll check both of you.”
A helicopter passed above the buildings.
The force of its rotors stirred up the dust, filling the street with paper, ash and small fragments of glass.
The soldier raised an arm to shield his face.
Daniel heard a crack.
He looked up.
A section of the façade was tilting above them.
“Look out!”
The first block fell behind the soldier.
The impact threw him against a van and raised a curtain of dust between him and the two young people.
Daniel pushed the girl towards the gap between two vehicles.
Fragments rained down onto the street.
Something struck his shoulder.
He lost his balance.
The young woman fell with him.
Daniel saw a shadow cut through the dust. He did not know whether it was another piece of the façade or whether the rat had come back.
He had no time to check.
He placed himself on top of the girl and covered her with his body.
A second impact shook the ground.
The edge of a piece of metal struck Daniel’s head.
The light vanished for an instant.
When he opened his eyes again, he no longer knew how much time had passed.
Sirens.
Ambulances.
Firefighters.
Police.
Helicopters.
People shouting names through the dust.
Daniel tried to move.
He could not.
Beneath him, the girl was still conscious.
They were almost face to face.
A trickle of blood ran from his head and across part of his face.
He struggled to breathe.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
The young woman took a second to answer.
“Yes… Yes, I’m fine.”
Daniel tried to move away.
His arms failed him.
The sound of the sirens began to fade.
Everything was receding.
The voices.
The helicopters.
The pressure of the girl’s hands on his shoulders.
Somewhere behind the curtain of dust, he heard the soldier’s muffled voice.
“Hold on! I’m coming to you!”
Daniel could barely make out a silhouette rising among the rubble.
Then he lost sight of it again.
The stranger’s face blurred.
Daniel thought of Lina.
Of the call.
Of the message he had not managed to send.
Of the possibility that she would never know what had happened to him.
So this was how he was going to die.
Without understanding anything.
Crushed between two cars beside someone whose name he did not even know.
He had imagined better endings.
Worse ones too.
He looked at the young woman.
She was still alive.
That would have to be enough.
“Well…” he murmured. “Could have been worse.”
“Hey…”
Daniel blinked.
“Hey, wait.”
He wanted to answer, but could not find the strength.
“Are you all right?”
Darkness crept in from the edges of his vision.
The girl held his face.
“Hey.”
Daniel could no longer see her.
“Hey… wait.”
All the tension left his body.
He fell onto her.
“Are you all right?”
He did not answer.
“Hey!”
Black.
Above Barcelona, the dust hung in the air.
The fragments that had struck the city were still hot. Some were buried beneath the tarmac. Others had pierced buildings and lay in rooms open to the sky.
Firefighters, medical crews, police officers, soldiers and ordinary people moved among the rubble.
A faint glow appeared inside one of the fragments.
It lasted barely an instant.
It went out before anyone could see it.
Several streets away, another fragment answered with the same silent pulse.
Then nothing.
The Fall was over.
Its consequences had only just begun.