Summary: International Rescue's rules are there for a reason. If they're broken, there can be deadly consequences. But there can also be unforeseen benefits, as the Tracy family is about to find out.

Notes: Rated for language (mostly) and it might get a wee bit graphic, medically speaking.

BROKEN RULE

In his mind's eye, he imagined that the building above was nothing more than a pile of rubble. That his brothers had seen it collapse; had watched in horror from their video feeds as the grand behemoth that had once stood fifty stories and boasted the square footage of a New York City block, had given in to structural deformities exacerbated by a heretofore unheard-of 7.8 earthquake.

He himself could hardly believe that not only had there been an earthquake in Florida, of all places, but that he was still alive to be confounded by that fact. Because by all rights, he and the two people with him should be dead.

"Are you hurt?" he'd asked once the shaking had ceased; an aftershock that felled the mall-slash-apartment complex-slash theater above them.

"No," the women had answered simultaneously.

Scott was relieved to hear it, but at the same time, fearful for his own health and well-being. Because while the women he'd gone in to get out – there simply hadn't been enough time to wait for Thunderbird Two to arrive – said they were okay, Scott was not.

How many times had he drilled it into his brothers' heads? "You never enter an unstable danger zone until there is reasonable assurance that you can safely effect a rescue without becoming a victim yourself," had been his mantra to them early on. And when Alan had disobeyed that fundamental rule of the rescue business, Scott had seen to it military-style that the kid never forgot that axiom again.

And yet here Scott was, not only having disobeyed his own rule, but now paying the price for that monumentally effed-up decision. Leaving the two women in the bank vault with him – the place he'd urged them into when the aftershock had hit, knowing if anything could withstand it, the vault could – without anyone to help them get out.

Of course, if they were buried under miles of rubble, Scott wouldn't have been able to dig them out even if he had been functioning at one hundred percent.

Which, at the moment, he most certainly was not.

Scott had notified Base that he was going in because seismologists were predicting an aftershock within thirty minutes, Thunderbird Two wouldn't be there for another forty-five minutes, and there were two female bank tellers unaccounted for. The last their manager knew, they'd taken their fifteen-minute breaks together, yet they'd not been outside once headcount was taken, which meant, he thought, they might've been in the bathroom.

"It'll be a quick in and out," Scott had reassured his concerned father. "By the time Virgil gets here, that building might be on the ground. Those women will be dead!"

And while Jeff hadn't exactly given him his blessing, he'd sighed and nodded his head once, and that'd been all Scott needed to pass-code Mobile Control, arm himself with a flashlight and a first aid kit, and sprint past the area the local firefighters had blocked off with black and yellow CAUTION tape.

"Hey!" the Chief had called out after him.

But there was no time for explanations or pleasantries, or arguing about safety. There were two women whose lives Scott could save, if Time and Luck stayed on his side.

Evidently, those two things had run for the hills as soon as Scott Tracy entered the building.

He'd taken a bad hit to his ribcage. Blood was bubbling up into his mouth. He kept having to spit it away, hating the metallic taste that made him envision sucking on a length of rebar.

"Are you okay?" one of the women asked.

"Not particularly," Scott replied, and knew his voice didn't sound good.

Broken ribs, probably a punctured lung, who knew what else. God, this sucked: dying with strangers who might wind up dying, too, all because he didn't get them out in time. Dying a needless death because if he'd followed his own rules, he wouldn't be here in this mess right now.

"Is there anything we can do?" the other woman asked, and Scott felt her searching hand touch his booted foot.

"Maybe if you can locate the flashlight I was holding," Scott suggested, but then had to stop, because breathing was not coming easy to him right now.

"Feel around, Kelly," the first voice said. "You go to that side of him, I'll go to this side."

Scott felt hands touching his feet, his shins, following the line of his body up, moving away to search the floor for the shape of an industrial-strength flashlight.

"Hey, hey, Mari, I think I found it!" the second voice crowed. It echoed in their small enclosure.

Just like that, they were engulfed in bright LED light.

When both women looked at him and gasped, hands flying up to cover their mouths, Scott figured he'd been right: whatever had happened to him was not good.

He took a couple of breaths that weren't deep by any stretch of the imagination, and looked down at himself, and nearly chuckled at the irony of his rebar thoughts. Because that's exactly what had punctured his left side directly below his pectoral muscle, right into his ribcage: rebar.

"You're bleeding from your mouth," the nearest woman said as the other scooted closer to his back.

The one in front of him had a smart businesswoman haircut, hair alternating in stripes of brown and blonde. Her eyes were small and pale green, and she squinted at him, reaching a hand out, toward his face, then pulling it back.

Scott turned his head to look at the second woman. "I'm Kelly McInerny, Irish and proud of it," she said in what he guessed was an attempt at levity. Well, she had the fiery red hair, pale skin and emerald green eyes to prove it that heritage, anyway. Scott blinked, transfixed by her even in the predicament they were in. She looked almost surreal in the LED light. "What will happen if I pull this metal pole out of your side?"

"Probably bleed out, maybe collapse my lung altogether," Scott replied.

Because Scott was lying mostly on his right shoulder and the spot between his right hip and right butt cheek, he had to crane his neck around to see Kelly. After a few seconds, he found it too painful and let his head drop back down to the metal vault floor, right cheek feeling how cool it was and reveling in it as his body temperature climbed.

"You could get tetanus from that," the other woman – Mari – said, backing away on her knees a bit like she was scared to be near a dying man. Hell, maybe she was. Scott couldn't blame her.

"I think that's…the least of…my worries…right now," Scott said, having to take small, shallow breaths just to keep oxygen coming.

Shit. He was going to die here. He could almost feel the figure in a black robe with skeleton hands holding a scythe, creeping closer in the eerie silence surrounding them. He knew on some level it was blood loss and a lack of enough oxygen just making him batty, but still and all, he had a feeling this really and truly was the last rescue for IR's field commander.

"Hey," Kelly said, hiking her business suit skirt up high enough that she could move from Scott's backside to his front by straddling his legs to cross over them. He could see her much better now as she leaned down so far that her elbows were resting on the floor in front of his abdomen. Not a bad way to go, with her in my line of sight, he thought when she gave him a small smile.

Kelly turned and handed the flashlight to Mari, who shone it beyond Scott's head about a foot, enough so that they were all still illuminated, but not being blinded. Kelly reached up and lifted his left hand from where it rested along his hip. She pulled it in to cradle it between her own two small, pale hands.

"I'm sorry," Kelly finally said. "When the first quake hit, we were both, uh…indisposed. And by the time we got ourselves together, the bathroom door was blocked."

Scott tried to smile, but he figured it looked more like a bloody grimace at this point than anything. "Not…your fault," he managed to say, even as his head started to spin.

"Oh, no, you don't," Kelly said, squeezing his hand between hers and lowering her torso so that her eyes were right in front of his. "You're a hero."

"Not right now," Scott whispered, eyelids fluttering as he tried desperately to keep them open.

"Sure you are," she soothed, one hand leaving his to smooth the wavy a-little-too-long hair off his sweat-damp, filthy forehead. "You're International Rescue. You risked your life to save us. If we'd been in that bathroom still, we'd probably be dead right now."

"Yeah, but instead we're trapped and he's not doing very well," Mari said.

"Shut up!" Kelly hissed, shooting her friend a look. Then she turned back to Scott. "Do you have a way for me to contact anyone? Any of your team, tell them where we are?"

Scott had nearly been asleep…sweet, blessed darkness…but when she said the word 'team,' he forced himself to remain conscious. "Watch," he said. "Button."

I fucked up. I'm sorry, Dad…

And that was all he had left to give.

"Jesus Christ, did he just die?" Mari breathed.

Kelly paid her friend little mind. She felt the wrist she still held in her hand, shoving a watchband aside to get to where she wanted. There was a pulse, but it was thready. Then she looked at the watch and blinked. "He said 'watch'," she breathed, and looked more closely at the face of the gold Rolex.

It had a digital display that told a lot of things other than the time, including the date, the current temperature and few other symbols and numbers she didn't know the meaning of. "Button," she muttered. Seeing nothing on the watch face that resembled a button, she ran the tip of her index finger around the left side of the face, then the right. She missed finding anything the first couple of passes, but then her finger detected a slight bump. She twisted the watch into the flashlight's beam to have a look, and found a really small button that was nearly flush with the metal. She pressed it and-

Nothing happened.

At least, not at first.

Then suddenly a face appeared where the time display had once been. It was a man she didn't recognize, but who was wearing a telltale blue hat on his head. He looked concerned. "Scott, come in!" he said.

"Hi," Kelly said as Mari scooted closer to have a look. "Um…I'm Kelly. Is…Scott the team member of yours with dark hair?"

"Yes," the chestnut-haired man on the watch face replied. "Where is he?"

"You have to get us out quick, he's not too good. He's unconscious, and has a metal bar sticking out of his ribs."

"And blood dribbling out of his mouth," Mari added from over Kelly's shoulder.

"Damn," the man in the watch replied. "We've just arrived. Where are you?"

"In the bank vault," Kelly replied. "It's directly behind the bank president's office. That is, if the office is even there anymore."

"Are you able to get out of the vault?"

Kelly took the flashlight from Mari, and shone it all around in a complete three-sixty. "No," she said, looking back down at the worried International Rescue operative's face. "The only way out of the vault is the door, and it was smashed in the last aftershock. It's covered over by concrete and stuff now. Your Scott, he got us out of the bathroom before it hit, but there wasn't time to get out of the building."

The man in the watch face appeared to be talking to someone slightly behind him and to his right, but Kelly couldn't hear what was being said. Then he turned back to look at her. "Have you tried seeing how much of the crushed vault door is buried, how deep the debris there is?"

"No. It's only been a couple minutes since that last aftershock. I was more worried about your friend here."

"Okay, let me see the injuries. You'll need to take his watch off. There's a clasp over his wrist. Push down on it and slide the cover toward his thumb."

Kelly nodded, managed to unclasp the watch, and held it up in front of her face. Her left hand still held Scott's tightly. "Okay, do I just point you in the right direction?"

"Yes."

So Kelly did, first showing the operative Scott's face, where a trickle of blood was still coming out of the corner of his mouth, and then moving around behind Scott. She motioned to Mari to bring the flashlight around. "Shine it directly on the metal rod," she instructed, then turned the watch toward the area.

She heard the sharp intake of breath from the watch, and didn't blame the guy one bit. The rebar had pierced Scott's uniform and the entirety of the back of the shirt, as well as part of the pants, were soaked in blood.

"All right, what's your name again?"

"I'm Kelly McInerny and my friend Mari Stevens is here, too. It's just us and Scott."

"All right, we're advancing on the structure as we speak."

Kelly could see the bright blue sky beyond the IR operative's head, and every now and then another operative who had very light blonde hair bobbed into view as well. "What do you want us to do?"

"I need you to keep our man alive," the Watch Face Man stated. "You let us worry about getting you out of there."

"But I only have basic first aid and CPR," Kelly protested. "He's been skewered! How do I keep him alive?"

Suddenly the man's movement ceased, and he came so close that Kelly could see his unusually-colored eyes very clearly. "Keep him breathing. Keep his heart beating. Please."

Kelly nodded. "O-okay. I'll…do whatever I can."

"Thank you. Virgil out."

So there you had it. International Rescue was a brave man named Scott and a really worried man named Virgil, and undoubtedly more members out there with Virgil. And they were working hard to get Scott, Kelly and Mari out of the vault…but depending on Kelly to keep Scott alive.

She wasn't quite sure how to go about doing that, so she did the only thing she could think of, remembering childhood tales woven by her grandmother about how she'd kept her own mother alive after she'd been kicked in the chest by a horse, doing nothing more than talking to her, touching her and telling her she would live.

Kelly wasn't sure she'd ever quite believed that tale, but what the hell else could she do?

First, she scooted around to Scott's front. Then, she fastened the watch back onto his wrist. After that, she picked up his left hand, held it tightly and laid down facing him, her forehead nearly touching his.

"What the hell are you doing?" Mari asked as she moved around so that she was behind Kelly, flashlight still illuminating their small little world.

"I'm just going to talk to him," Kelly said. "Try to keep him with us."

"He's unconscious!"

"You got any better ideas?" Kelly snapped. Honestly, sometimes Mari was such a friggin' pain-in-the-ass. So literal about everything, so 'if it's your time to go' always. Kelly didn't know why she hung around with the woman at all, except that they worked together and she was a hoot during breaks from their windows.

"No, I just…you can't keep him alive by talking to him, Kelly. Not if his lung's punctured or whatever."

Kelly shot Mari a look. "Just try me," she said. "He risked his neck to save us. I'll keep him alive by sheer willpower if I have to."