Liora is a lioness.

  She stared into the mirror, she threw her hair back, tossing it. Her golden hair was in loose curls that were carefully and deliberately straightened - just enough for the acknowledgment of her peers, but not enough to seem like she spent too much time on it.

  She chose her lipstick for the night and applied it to her lips. I look good.

  She pressed a button under her table and the mirror slid to the right, revealing her jewelry. She chose a gold necklace.

  “Liora. Let's get going. ”

  Her husband stood by the door, lame man who had nothing going on but their wealth. They both knew that they had their own paramours to the side, but stuck together for nights like these - dinner parties for their investors.

  He had the money, and she had the foresight to buy up and consolidate land from the stupid idiots who had to sell their homes because they couldn't afford the neighborhood - they should have managed their budgets better.

  She looked out of her window and looked down at the ugly little plaza that was surrounded by the modern, luxury high rises. They were lucky that she didn't sue to get the little rathole condemned. That little plaza was putting a ceiling on property values and somehow kept attracting undesirables to the neighborhood.

  Fucking migrants that couldnt assimilate or grow up even if they tried. We give them a home and they can't even adapt? Pathetic. They were picky beggars too. She has been trying to hire some janitors and housekeep for her buildings and no one was biting. She was even paying a good wage, sure it was the minimum wage, but it was probably what they would make in a year in their countries. The government gave the leeches too much.

  She heard a tapping. Her husband was still waiting for a response. She got up, “I'm ready, let's go.”

  They walked through their long hallway to get to the stairwell leading up the roof of their penthouse apartment. She felt his hand awkwardly claw for hers and she brushed them off. The agreement was to stick together, not necessarily be together.

  They walked out to a large dining table set up, her guests mostly standing around in small clumps chatting as they waited for their hosts. Their teenage son was off in a corner, chatting with some uncle - some cousin of her husband known for his wandering hands. She called for the maid to watch over the two.

  She sat down at her place at the end of the table along with her husband.

  “Thanks everyone for coming. Greg and I are delighted to welcome everyone to our home. It's been a challenging couple of years for the development industry, with rising interest rates and rising costs of living across the board, we have had a challenging environment where occupancy rates have struggled to keep up with our desired profitabil…”

  Ring. Ring. Ring.

  A phone rang. Liora’s eye twitched. One of her guests pulled out his phone, checked the caller and swiped out of the call. He mumbled an apology and looked awkwardly at Liora, who glared at him.

  Before she had a chance to say anything else, everyone's phone started to go off. Alerts ringing. Everyone started looking at their friends, trying to figure out what was triggering their alarms.

  “What is going on?” Liora looked at her phone. It was from her head of security.

  Find shelter, make your way to the emergency stairwell and descend to the safe room basement. National Emergency Alarm Eminent. Don't use the elevator.

  Surely he wasn't expecting them to walk down the stairs from the penthouse.Plus, they had their own private elevator - from the ground floor to the top - hidden away from the other residents in the tower.

  The guests stayed calm, their own guards and drivers were on their way to escort their patrons down.Most of them hired ex-military, often single, but always available at their beck and call. The life insurance policies were generous, as was their pay, there were no qualms in pushing people aside to guarantee the safety of their employers.

  Coming up, head down the south stairwells, Catch you on the way up. DO NOT CHANGE CLOTHES. CHANGE INTO BETTER SHOES.

  Liora sighed, she expected more composure from her head of security, depending on the outcome of the night, she may need a new one. She turned to her husband, who was chatting away with a guest, before realizing that he certainly had no more idea of where her son was than she did.

  She found the maid, trembling in a corner, her hands clasped in prayer.

  “FIND MY SON!” She screamed at the young woman, who was shellshocked into cohesion. Liora clapped her hands with each syllable. The maid pushed herself up, her legs trembling like a newborn fawn, and went off to look for the child.

  Look! One of the guests yelled.

  He pointed out the window at a helicopter that was passing by, and to everyone’s shock, it veered straight into the penthouse.

  ??———————— Reflection ————————-??

  When Liora regained consciousness, she found herself sitting down and strapped down. It was pitch black, though she felt like she could see the roles that tied her to a chair, and the door that was almost certainly the entrance to the small,holding her captive.

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  She writhed for a few minutes, trying to break out of her bondage. She went from uncertainty, to panic, to rage. She screamed, quickly regretting it as the echo screamed back in full.

  “LET. ME. FREE”

  FREE

  Free.

  free.

  The was a pause and in response, she heard the clunk and hum of a power breaker being turned on. As the echo bounced through the room, it suddenly cut off.

  CLUNK

  Clunk

  clu-

  The lights suddenly turned on. Liora had to close her eyes, wincing as the bright light blinded HER. A gush of fresh air blew in, rustling her hair and blowing past her ear. She opened her eyes.

  She found herself not in a small room, but in nature. She could see beautiful white capped mountains in the distance and the flowing waves of tall grass, that billowed with the wind. It was majestic. It reminded her of the Italian Dolomite alps, where she went last spring for her birthday. It seemed like a scene from a dream then, and what played would fit in a fantasy as well.

  It was what was different. The sky was a sickly pale purple and she could see what appeared to be a moon, hanging in the sky. About the size of a dinner plate, even in the distance, the natural satellite was clearly immeasurably large and intimidatingly close. She could see it slowly move across the sky.

  Click click click click click.

  She pivoted her head back down in front of her, to the edge of the Grassy plain that had somehow crept up right in front of her, was it the grass that made the noise? TIme suddenly started to speed up. The moon shot across the sky - over and over again, the long grass wilting, decaying, growing all whilst jerking back and forth.

  It was dozens if not hundreds of cycles - enough to see a forest to start to grow. She saw the trees sprout and grow from sprouts to young saplings and from saplings to trees. The ever growing grass were like theater curtains, as if mother nature was swapping out props in the background, the trees growing foot by foot before reaching their maturity, before they started to wilt and decay as if collapsing on their own weight and returning into the ground.

  Hi Liora.

  A voice projected straight into her head.

  The grass curtain drew back once again to reveal…a thing.

  It looked like a short mannequin, the size of a small child. Its smooth nondescript body was porcelain white. It stepped forward and unveiled a pair of silvery, shimmering wings that unfolded from its back. It had no facial features, its head was smooth white ceramic.

  It walked forward in a silky smooth motion and got right in front of her face. Raising a hand, it traced Liora’s face before grabbing the hair on the back of her head and slamming its face straight into Liora’s.

  Liora was staggered by the sudden headbutt. It felt like she hit a wall. Her head snapped back in recoil and her ears rang. It seemed like the thing didn't let go of her hair, and she felt like she was scalped.

  She only felt pain. I'm going to kill you, she thought.

  She paused and opened her eyes. The thing now had a face. A misshapen face. Red lipstick was slathered over its bulbous lips. Artificially high cheekbones just accentuated the work done on a seemingly plastic face. An adult head on a child sized body.

  It held Liora’s hair in its hands, awkwardly placing the hair on its own head. The hair slid over and down onto the ground, the golden hairs laid on the ground next to its feet. It recognized Liora’s confusion and started to speak.

  “Don't recognize me?” its voice was out of sync with its mouth, but if it meant to be sarcastic, it got that right.

  It took a second but Liora realized that she was looking at herself?

  “Ugly… So ugly.” the creature said, its voice was sad, and uncoordinated with its newly developed lips, that twitched and flapped chaotically.

  Liora tried to scream but her mouth wasn't there anymore. She ran her fingers over her face, it was smooth like porcelain with not one feature dent or protrusion.

  ??————————————————-??

  On the penthouse floor. Liora’s body lay prone on the ground as the first responders were making their rounds, checking on and attempting to save the lives of their various benefactors.

  It wasn't long, but it took a few minutes for the medics to make their way to the older woman,

  One of the paramedics rushed over. Getting on his knee, he lifted Liora’s arm to take a pulse for the arm to pop right off. Blood gushed from the appendage, yet where one would expect the limb to connect… was blank, flat, porcelain.

  Stunned, the parametric held the bleeding limb in his hands. He could only watch as the body started to shine, the remaining limbs falling off one by one, and a flash was the last thing he saw.

  BOOM!

  The top of the skyscraper exploded violently, a cloud of dust and smoke billowing from the wreckage. Beneath the moonlight, one could see rainbows, forming from the refraction stemming from the glass and steel shards that were about to rain on the streets below.

  Emerging from the smoke was a giant torso. No head, no arms, no waist, no legs. It was white like marble, its curves shined under the moonlight. It groaned, the noise vibrating, penetrating through the bedrock and deep underground, echoing through the subway station where the people hid.

  Juan looked up at the rattling lights as he helped shepherd the crowd of refugees deeper into the tunnel system. He noticed Juliette running by.

  Its body started to shimmer, before starting to hum. Like a snake charmer, it pulled the steel beams away from the skyscrapers around it. The steel beams stretched from the ground to reach the floating body. Once they reached the body, the beams snaked around the torso and tightened around the breasts, boxing them in like shibari rope. Having tied themselves to an anchor, they pulled up the rest of their bodies from the building and from the foundations rooted into the ground.

  Hundreds upon hundreds of floors started to collapse upon themselves, as their steel skeletons abandoned their body to join the one in the sky, quickly covering the marble body and clinging like skin tight spandex.

  I am going to kill you all. You Filth. You Dirty Scum.

  A telepathic voice boomed from the body. The air vibrated like a heavy bass, making smaller pebbles bounce around. A giant foot formed in the air under the torso and slammed down repeatedly, flattening the Sebastien’s Plaza, the eyesore that she oh so hated. The entire underground station shook. Mid-rage, the giant steel foot turned into a cloud of steel dust.

  Gusts of steel dust were pushed down the exit stairs, knocking people closer to the entrance down onto the ground, filling their lungs. Most ended up coughing up blood and doubling up in unbearable pain just a few minutes later. A few influencers recording their escape for prosperity, ended up showing

  [Going to expand on this scene later - all we know is that these underground humans will be the most human, no matter how grotesque they evolve.]