VII. The Last Good-bye
The line to board the spaceship moved at a positively glacial pace. Misha was soon exhausted and had to sit down in the grass. Katya would have loved to sit down as well, but she feared that if she did, they’d both lose their place in line. So she stayed on her feet, increasingly weary.
They’d almost reached the head of the queue, when the next quake hit. It was a bad one, knocking Katya to the ground. She landed half on the grass and half on the tarmac, scraping her knee in the process. Katya was just about to push herself to her feet again, when another quake hit, barely a few seconds later. This one knocked down not just several children, peacekeepers and even soldiers, but also the antenna studded tower at the edge of the shuttleport. It collapsed in a rumbling
