Jakarta’s streets had become a funeral pyre. Skyscrapers groaned as flames devoured their skeletons, raining molten glass onto the pavement below. David dragged a teenager from the wreckage of a collapsed noodle stall, the boy’s leg bent at a sickening angle. Mayang followed, her satchel of herbs slung over one shoulder, her hands already glowing faintly as she pressed them to a woman’s shrapnel-torn side.
“We need to move!” David shouted over the roar of a nearby explosion. A drone streaked overhead, its payload detonating a block away. The ground shuddered, and the air thickened with ash and the metallic tang of blood.
Mayang didn’t look up. “Two more minutes!”
“We don’t have two minutes!” He grabbed her arm, but she yanked free, her eyes blazing.
“Then leave!”