A long, spiny construct made of bone and metal poked Harlan on the shoulder.

“What?”

“Take deep breaths,” Mr Theseus suggested. “We can’t land if there’s turbulence.”

Harlan growled, but complied. As he turned back to resume staring out the window restlessly, the gathering clouds dissipated as swiftly as they’d arrived, prompting the pilot to crack a cheesy joke about something or other, which he ignored. Harlan wasn’t in the mood for jokes.
After news of the attack on Brockton Bay had broken, it was clear that no one was really paying that much attention to the ceremony, and it had wrapped up very quickly after that. None of the other parahumans at the ceremony were Movers, which was a major oversight, but they’d been on the next flight back anyway, which was the next best thing.

“Pick up, damn you,” Harlan muttered, jabbing at his phone, and raised it to his ear again. 

No response.

He must have dialled Colin at least twenty times in the past few hours. Where the fuck was he?

A cloud of smoke wafted past his window, and Harlan turned to look at it before peering down at the land below. He could recognize the familiar Brockton Bay skyline, but it looked different, somehow. For one thing, there were columns of smoke wafting in the air. From ruptured gas mains, perhaps, or still-smouldering fires. For another thing, several skyscrapers that Harlan had been expecting to see had simply… disappeared.

A passing stewardess opened her mouth, saw her colleague shaking her head, and meekly proceeded on to where she was going. Technically, Harlan wasn’t supposed to be using his phone onboard a flight, but he’d blown up at the last person to tell him that. And since he and Theseus were in first-class, it simply wasn’t worth the effort.

“I do hope Colin and Gustav are alive,” Theseus said, his voice a monotone.

“You and me both, buddy,” Harlan breathed, then returned to staring out the window as the plane banked to the right.

They touched down in a hastily-repurposed military airport some distance from Brockton Bay proper. There was probably a good reason why they hadn’t landed at the usual airport, but Harlan didn’t care. He was too busy trying to hail a taxi that would be willing to take them to Brockton Bay. In the end, he resorted to buying the taxi from the pleasantly surprised driver and speeding there himself.

The city was in shambles.

The maniacs who had wrecked the city had either been put down or fled, because Harlan couldn’t see any ongoing parahuman altercations. He cruised through the streets, unable to prevent himself from staring with horrified fascination at the devastation, and eventually stopped at Colin’s house. Which was empty.

“Good news,” Theseus said, sliding his phone into his breast pocket. “Gustav is alive.”
Harlan shrugged. “Good.” He had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Shit, Max.” Wheeling around, he turned to Theseus. “Do you need to go anywhere?”
“I can walk.”
“Great.”

When he arrived at his apartment building, he found a pile of rubble. A paramedic was talking quietly to a boy wrapped in a shock blanket, and looked up as Harlan approached. “Sir?”
“My apartment,” Harlan said hoarsely. “There… did you pick up five girls? Asian. Teenage. Uh, they were having a sleepover.”
The paramedic gave him a strange look. “Probably the previous shift. You can try Brockton General. It’s the only one that survived mostly intact.”

Harlan got back into his newly-bought taxi and started the car. Then, he began driving around aimlessly. There was a terrible ringing in his ears.
A few people hailed him down, and he stopped for them. He’d come to know Brockton Bay after more than a few years in the city, and it turned out that he was a passable taxi driver. None of his passengers spoke as he ferried them from place to place. None of them paid him, but neither did he ask them to pay him. After all, he wasn’t a qualified taxi driver.
The inside of his taxi was cool and had a faint smell. Harlan wanted to tilt his seat back, close his eyes, and never wake up again.

His apartment was gone. Colin was incommunicado. Katie and Max were probably alive, sure, but what about Colin? He should never have gone off to Langley without him. They should have gone to Langley with an entourage, him and Theseus. It was the only way to keep them all safe. Hadn’t they left all this city-destroying shittery behind them when the Endbringers had gone dormant?
He picked up a few more people and sent them where they needed to be. 
Brockton Bay was barely recognizable, but that didn’t mean that Harlan didn’t recognize it. It was just that what little he could pick out was all the more shocking, because they were all that had survived. The devastation was truly immense.

At some point, he got a call from the hospital.
“Are you Colin Tyrell’s next-of-kin?”
“I am. Harlan Tyrell.”
“Mr Tyrell, I am so sorry…”

Harlan parked his taxi on a desolate street corner. Hours passed. Slowly, the sun sank below the horizon. When night had finally fallen, he exited his vehicle, lit a cigarette, and worked his way through the entire pack, crushing the empty paperboard underneath his shoe. Then he staggered across the road and into the only brightly-lit shop on the entire street.

There was an old man behind the counter, reading a magazine. He nodded at Harlan as he entered. “What’ll it be, son?”

“A pack of cigarettes.”

As the old man unlocked the drawer, Harlan spoke.

“Why are you still open?”

The old man shrugged. “Someone has to make sure that people keep getting what they need. Candy, cigarettes, food and drinks… life goes on.”

He rung up the purchase, handed Harlan the pack of cigarettes, and settled back onto his chair again. Harlan left the shop, stood outside for a few minutes, and stared up at the night sky. A droplet of water landed on his face. As it began to drizzle, he drove down to Brockton General.

A panel of harried-looking nurses were at the reception. A dozen different ringtones became audible as Harlan approached them. Picking up a pen, he scribbled his purpose on a nearby notepad and showed it to one of the nurses, who pointed him the right way. He spent a few long minutes in the morgue, then continued on to the wards in the east wing.

Brockton General was packed. Harlan shuffled through the corridors at a snail’s pace, his ears filled with the sounds of crying children and whimpering adults. All of the wards that he passed were filled to capacity, and people were spilling out into the halls. When he was almost at his destination, someone grabbed his sleeve. It was Max.

“There you are.”
Harlan turned to face her, and saw that she’d been crying. It didn’t surprise him. Very little could surprise him after today. Her friends, the four of them, flanked her. Their faces weren’t blank, but they were… unreadable. He didn’t have the mental capacity to interpret the expressions of a bunch of teenage girls. “You’re okay,” he said, haltingly, and coughed. “That’s good.”
“Yeah,” Max croaked. “My parents are dead.”

There was nothing to say.

Harlan opened his mouth, closed it, then tried again. “What happened at my apartment?”
“Someone showed up and started killing people,” one of Max’s friends said. She’d told him about them before, but he’d never paid that much attention. That had probably been a mistake. “We got out. The whole thing collapsed. He’s probably dead. Good riddance.”

Another long silence fell.

“Oh, and, uh, my parents are dead too.”
“All our parents are dead, Hailey. You aren’t special.”

Harlan pinched the bridge of his nose.