Allain had agents in the chemical factory. Their mission was to start a fire that would spread rapidly and cause maximum destruction. It began with a series of explosions that caused a major inferno.
Liala and Bryn saw it from the truck park. Dawn was breaking and the sky was lit by blazing buildings. A fuel depot was threatened and the entire industrial area was being evacuated.
Sirens wailed as people crammed into cars and rushed to safety. Liala watched them drive over grass verges and smash through hedges in a desperate attempt to get ahead of one another. Trolls streamed in from the opposite direction in huge fire trucks and crashed through everything that got in their way.
Carnival vehicles added to the confusion. They were decorated for the festival and crammed with people who had got up early and dressed in their carnival costumes. The Plaid Koerno fighters wore theirs over their military uniforms. Allain was a guardian and Bryn was a Crispin lookalike.
Allain had arranged for Liala to be taken to a place of safety. That wasn't going to happen as far as she was concerned. She was determined to be with them when they attacked the prison and the best way to do that was to sneak into the truck with the Liala lookalikes.
Bryn would be directly in front in the truck with the Crispin lookalikes. She put her arm around him. Even if they both died that day they were now truly united. They had sealed their love during the night and nothing could divide them now.
She wondered what happened after death. Would people who were united in this world be united in the next? Her mother thought you went to a perfect place if you were good and an awful place if you were bad. Liala knew she and Bryn would go to the perfect place if they died fighting for other people's freedom.
But mother may have got it wrong. The strange man, called Balduur, thought you were reborn back into this world once your soul had escaped into a place he call the Void. If he was right, then she and Bryn could meet again if they returned to earth at the same time and place.
But, if the guardians were right there would be no reunion. They believed that death was the end of everything. That was why they put so much effort into keeping alive. Liala hoped they were wrong. Father said the guardians got most things wrong so they were probably wrong in this.
Sirens wailed in the truck park. Emergency pods flew overhead.
"Pink Alert! Pink Alert ..."