All civilian communications across California had gone dark—cell phones, landlines, everything dead. But S.H.I.E.L.D.'s encrypted channels were still holding for now.
Bella grabbed Natasha's secure phone and dialed home.
The line rang for a long time before someone picked up.
"Hello, who's this?—Oh, it's Bella, I'm studying right now... hehe, who's looking for me?"
The voice was breathy and baby-soft, stretching every syllable in a lazy, deliberate drawl—and doing a shameless impression of Bella herself. Bella wanted to crawl through the phone line and throttle this idiot.
She kept her voice even. "It's me. The actual me. Can you tell the difference? There's an earthquake happening. Did you not notice?"
Sakura had been napping and dragged herself over to peer out the window. Los Angeles wasn't doing much better than San Francisco—the streets outside were pure chaos, high-rises collapsing at intervals, and even the Swan house had partially collapsed.
Sakura found it genuinely difficult to be alarmed by this. She was a dragon—she could expand or contract at will, disappear whenever she pleased. Short of America literally sinking into the ocean, no earthquake was going to touch her.
"Listen—go to my desk, activate the array, and send all my books and notes to Clone Island," Bella rattled off. "And also—"
She ran through the rest of the list quickly, then shifted tactics.
"The quake is just as bad in LA. Come find us. The power is about to go out—and no power means no cartoons."
That was calculated. Bella knew exactly what made Sakura move. Left to her own devices, Sakura was fully capable of sitting through an apocalypse as long as the entertainment held out. In fact, Bella had a feeling she'd been about to watch one more episode before bothering to come.
The no-power clause hit immediately.
Still worried Bella might be bluffing her, Sakura sat up straight and padded through the house checking switches—lights, air conditioning, outlets.
The power was definitely out.
She let out a long, aggrieved sigh. Some days were just like this.
The Swan house was far from the city center, bordered by a park on one side—and after over a century of reinforcement by the many fierce ghosts that had passed through it, the structure was genuinely formidable. Even so, the walls were webbed with cracks, several fixtures and paintings had been destroyed, and the exterior rooms on the southwest and northwest sides had partially collapsed.
Tough as the house was, Bella had no faith it would survive a 9.5.
"Go. Now." She pushed.
Only when she confirmed that her notes and books had been transferred did she breathe again. And in that short window—barely five minutes—the ground had shaken twice more: magnitude 8.1, then 8.7.
Sakura, it turned out, was deeply distressed about abandoning her animation collection.
"I'll buy you new ones. All of them."
"Some of those are limited editions," Sakura said flatly.
"I have money."
Bella directed Sakura to take the water route and rendezvous with them immediately, then called Sadako.
Sadako, as it turned out, had the best timing imaginable. She was currently on a film shoot somewhere in Europe and wasn't in the country at all.
"Who's Sadako?" Natasha asked the moment Bella hung up, with a suspiciously bright smile. "Japanese name. Did you meet her during your exchange year?"
"It's not what you're thinking. Let me explain—Bee, ahead! Faster! The bridge is breaking!"
The Golden Gate Bridge cracked at its northern third. The deck came apart like falling dominoes, unraveling south along its full length at terrifying speed.
Watching a bridge collapse from a theater seat was one thing. Being on it was something else entirely.
They pushed through with everything they had, barely crossing before the bridge dissolved behind them, and drove hard toward the waterfront. The entire landmass was shaking—there was nowhere safe to run on land. Bella's plan was to get to open water and ride it out. If a tsunami came for them, she wasn't worried. Give her a few moments and she could summon the Flying Dutchman.
But the approach to the port was blocked. A massive fissure had torn open across the road—hundreds of meters long, over thirty meters wide, seemingly bottomless. The road surface had buckled and risen sharply on both sides. Looking back toward the city from the break point, the Bay Area was already a panorama of fire and ruin.
Two and a half years at Stanford. Bella had more than just Heather and Barbara—there were professors and classmates she genuinely respected. She was going to try to pull Stanford out of this. A car alone wouldn't do it. Bumblebee alone wouldn't do it. She needed ships—a lot of ships.
S.H.I.E.L.D. had supposedly left a vessel at the port for Natasha, but their designated contact was either dead or already gone.
Bella didn't waste time asking. She commandeered a fishing vessel in the harbor—something like the boat Lu Ren had piloted off Yamatai Island, the kind one person could handle solo. Everything non-essential went overboard to make room.
Bumblebee disguised himself as an ordinary parked car and stowed in the hold. Bella took the helm and turned toward Stanford.
Elsewhere.
Max—the mustachioed shopkeeper—had returned from Japan a changed man. Apparently Yashida Shingen had used a katana to permanently cure him of his tall-tale habit. He was resolved to run his shop properly from now on.
Today was already off to a good start.
He'd barely unlocked the door when a haggard-looking middle-aged man walked in looking for a good-luck charm. Perfect. The flagship product of what was now officially called Max's Mystical Emporium—a genuine lucky rabbit's foot—came straight out from under the counter.
The customer seemed to want to test him, and asked directly: "Do you know what 666 means?"
Max hadn't expected an informed customer, but this happened to be something he actually knew—he'd had it explained to him at length at some point in the past.
"Absolutely. It represents absolute imperfection. There's a passage in the Book of Revelation..." The exact wording escaped him, and his Latin was nonexistent, but the general idea came across clearly enough.
The man relaxed. Decided the rabbit's foot might do him some good. How much? Five thousand dollars? Done.
Max nearly fell over with joy. Customers like this—two a month and he'd be set for life.
Unfortunately, his luck ended there.
He stepped outside to take a call from Heather. She told him to run—get to high ground, head for the port, regroup with the others.
He hadn't even gotten the full picture when—BOOM.
The wall of Max's Mystical Emporium split open. In the time it took to blink, the two-story building—the one Heather had traded her family's farm to Bella for—was rubble.
The poor mark was buried beneath it.