Starsky caught the lean before his partner went down and pushed himself over the back of the seat and into the aisle in time to catch him. Starsky guided Hutch down into one of the seats and held on to his shoulders while Hutch's head swam and his eyes rolled.

"You got a head injury is what you got…" Starsky muttered then, "Why don't you stay here?"

He got a weak, sick groan in response.

Starsky headed up the stairs and knelt by the chicken with a 17-year-old's head and hunted for the buttons or snaps or zipper that would get Molly out of the outfit.

"Pete.."

The voice echoed in her head. It was a voice she hadn't heard in awhile, a voice she had once learned to trust. One of the voices she'd planned on counting on very recently.

"Come on...Pete, need you to open your eyes, sweetheart."

There was a shuffle of cloth and shoes on the concrete, then a grunt and the voice came back.

"Hey Pete, come on. Breathe slow and deep, that's a girl."

She liked that voice. It was the voice of fun, adventure and mischief. And good food, instead of the rotten stuff that Hutch...the other one was Hutch, so this must be Starsky…the nasty stuff Hutch had tried to make her eat more than a few times.

"Starsky?" Molly asked, the 13-year-old he'd once known still recognizable in the 18-year-old Starsky had crouched over. Pained brown eyes opened to slits focusing on the brunet first, then on the distant face of Kiko who was fuming under a veil of concern.

"Mom is gonna be so mad at you." Kiko growled around the tears that were cutting through the white on his face.

Molly winced and closed her eyes and felt Starsky's hand going behind her head.

"Kiko, give me your jacket, huh?" The cop said softly, then Molly heard the rustle of cloth and felt the jacket, smelling of her adoptive brother's cologne, pillowing her head.

"Can you tell me what hurts?" Starsky asked, his hands running down the girl's arms and legs, figuring where there was purple there might be broken bones. After removing the mascot outfit that had cushioned most of her fall, he'd not only found bruises but very little in the way of clothing.

"Everything hurts." Molly groaned, opening her eyes again to find her brother still there, arms crossed over his chest, wiping at his tears.

"You're supposed to be at your summer job. At the library. What are you doing here?" Kiko demanded.

Molly made a face and didn't answer, getting a groan out of Kiko who stomped away a few steps.

"I don't think anything's broken. Think you can sit up?" Starsky asked.

Molly nodded and was pulled forward. Her head rocked a little, protesting the shift in her center of gravity, but the bruises on her back hurt less once she was upright. She was also colder without the shelter of the chicken outfit, and began to shiver. She wrapped one slender hand around the support strut of the banister and held on until the world stopped spinning.

Starsky laid Kiko's jacket over her back before she felt her brother's hands resting on her shoulders, waiting for her to get her bearings. Then Kiko and Starsky got her to her feet and walked her down toward the group of shaken ten- and eleven-year-old boys. Kiko helped her into a seat then sat on the aisle side of her, his still-steamed presence enough to keep her from going anywhere.

Molly kept her mouth shut and closed her eyes, resting.

The other boys were okay, if dust covered and frightened.

But a few flights up, Hutch's face was a mess of blood, his nose still bleeding. Hutch had found a cloth and pressed it over his nose, his head hanging, eyes closed tight.

Starsky braced his ribs and slowly lowered himself to the step by Hutch's chair. His muscles pulled, the area around the bruise tight and hot, but nothing shifted. Blue eyes waited for Hutch's to open before Starsky said, "Your nose looks funny."

"Yeah? Do you think that's because it's broken, maybe?" Hutch grunted, his voice filtered through the swelling clogging his nostrils.

"Maybe….maybe it's your face that's broken and your nose is ok."

Hutch gave his partner a glare over the blood soaked cloth. The position he was in made his face throb but it was the only way to get the bleeding to stop. He needed a moment. Just some time to get the pain under control, the blood to stop threatening to choke him, to get his heart rate lowered, to get some idea of what in hell was going on.

"Molly okay?"

Starsky was feeling out the extent of the damage to his side, avoiding the parts that hurt the most. "She hit her head. Don't think anything's broken. Kiko's ready to lay into her."

"She's supposed to be working at the library for the summer." Hutch said, pulling the cloth away, and finding an unstained side to press to his nose.

"That's what Kiko said."

Around them the other people in the stadium were doing the same things they had done. Checking on the family members or group members they had come with, gathering around the injured, staring stunned at the damage.

Every few minutes someone covered in dust and blood would stagger out of one of the twenty archways leading to the promenade.

"What the hell happened, Starsk?"

"Something exploded."

Hutch groaned, and Starsky gave him an apologetic look. "I dunno. There was a puff of flame and smoke from the archway and then we all went flying. It looked like the same thing happened all around the stadium."

"That can't have been an accident." Hutch said, then raised his head and groaned. The pain in his head had shifted, but not lessened in anyway, and his eyes were still watering.

"You don't think this is our fault do ya?" Starsky asked, giving his partner a sympathetic look that he didn't catch.

"I think that would qualify as overkill, Starsk." Hutch said, then actually thought about the question. He sighed, winced at the pain that air moving through his windpipe had caused and said, "I really hope not."

"Maybe it was a gas main. All those food kiosks have to use something for fuel."

Hutch stared blearily across the stadium. A sort of order was beginning to be established. In the pressbox across the way he could make out faint figures trying to get the announcement system operational. On the field a group of security personnel that had survived the blast were setting up a triage area. Other non-uniformed people were joining them, taking direction from pointed fingers, nodding professionally and Hutch began to remember who made up the majority of people in the stadium that day.

Cops. Firemen. Officers of the court. Probation officers. EMTs. The working people of the infrastructure of the city, a great majority of them gathered together for a single day of appreciation.

It was to their benefit for the moment.

It would be to the great detriment of the city if there were more explosions, or if any part of the stadium should collapse.

"Maybe…." Hutch said, distracted by the disturbing new train of thought.

Then Hutch remembered the pressure of Molly's fingers on his arm before he'd left the promenade.

"Maybe Molly knows something."

"Huh?"

"Molly knows something. She was trying to tell me something up there." Hutch leaned forward far enough to grab the back of the seat in front of him then tried to pull himself onto his feet. His head swam, the pain rushing back in and overwhelming his other senses. He felt Starsky guiding him back into the seat and slumped, panting.

"Sit still will ya, I'll talk to her." Starsky grunted, getting to his feet. He was still favoring his right side, but there was less pain this time.

Each of the ten boys looked up at Starsky, managing to peel their eyes away from the spectacle happening around them, and Starsky gave them each a smile or a nod of reassurance. He got a few high-fives from the ones that still looked shaken, scuffed his hand through Jimmy's hair then looked to Kiko and Pete, perching on the back of the seat a step below them.

Molly was shivering, her hands hidden under the folds of her brother's jacket, pulled tightly around her.

"Hey Pete, how's your head?"

"Hurts." Molly said, giving a piteous sniffle that Starsky knew to be at least partially for show. He smirked a little. He'd missed the feisty girl over the past few years, but work and life had kept him from visiting.

"Think you can talk for a bit?"

Molly didn't respond, but she was fully focused on the brunet.

"You wanna tell me what you were goin' to tell Hutch earlier?" Starsky caught the evasive look that he knew well. It was the look that said that Molly had figured out talking would get her into more trouble than it would get her out of.

"It doesn't matter now." Molly said, with a hint of attitude.

"I think it does." Starsky said, glancing to Hutch who was trying to get to his feet again. "Did you know about the explosions?"

Molly shook her head then looked away.

"Did you know something bad was going to happen?" Starsky pressed, trying to be gentle, but beginning to slip into the cop he became during interrogations. There was a reason neither he, nor Hutch, interviewed children. Speaking of, the blond had made it to his feet and was trying his hand at walking.

Molly pressed her lips together, then shifted her attention to Hutch as he grunted, making it most of the way to where Molly and Starsky were before Starsky eased him down onto a step. He'd cleaned most of the blood from his face, but his nose was swelling and black circles were forming under his eyes.

"Molly...if you know something, you have to tell us. It's important." Hutch said, panting with his mouth open, unable to breathe through his nose.

"You weren't going to listen to me. You said I should talk to the security guys. Well, they're probably all dead now." Molly bit out, her face squeezing into a grimace that emitted tears a second later.

Hutch sighed and leaned his throbbing head against the ever present banister, unable to think beyond the pounding. The headache he'd had before the explosion was now twenty times greater and he felt like his head was going to burst.

Molly's obstinate guilt trip wasn't helping anything.

"Molly...if these explosions were intentional there could be more danger. Danger that we could prevent. Will you just tell us what you know?" Starsky pressed, irritated.

"I don't know anything. I just...I just heard some things. I didn't think they were real you know. I didn't think...but then I saw you and Hutch and...I had to tell you but Kiko couldn't find out cause I'm…" Starsky barely heard the last of it but it sounded like, "...not supposed to be here."

The brunet sighed then looked to his partner. Hutch had gone silent on the step, and his face was a mask of complete concentration, his jaw tight, the vein in his forehead pulsing. There was likely to be ice somewhere and that would numb some of the pain and reduce the swelling, but beyond that Starsky wasn't about to start setting bones. In the meantime there were people worse off than they, and authority figures that one of them should check in with.

They couldn't sit where they were indefinitely, the stadium seats probably weren't the safest place to stay.

If there was a way to get the boys out of the stadium it was probably from the field. Their first responsibility was to see them to safety. Starsky braced his side and twisted, glancing over his shoulder at the trickle of 'volunteers' working their way into the stands.

"Pete, everything you saw and everything you heard...you tell us right now, and you won't get in trouble. But if you say nothing and something else happens, and more people get hurt. You're going to be held responsible. Hear me?" Starsky insisted, letting his voice harden.

Molly's eyes had widened and she looked to Kiko for confirmation, before sinking deeper into the jacket and sniffling. Real tears were streaming down her face, her eyes scrunching against the renewed throb of a headache.

"I was down in the locker room. They gave me a locker to put the chicken in and a special place to change and I was changing. And they didn't see me."

"Who didn't see you?"

"I don't know. I swear I don't know. I heard them through the vent."

"The vent? Where does the vent lead to?"

"I don't know! I've only been in the locker rooms and on the field!" Molly was crying intensely now, her voice rising in volume and pitch.

Starsky put a hand on her shoulder, gently and took a deep breath. "It's ok, it's ok. Just calm down. Tell me what they said."

"They were gonna "level the playing field"." Molly said, real pain entering her eyes, as if she'd only begun to realize the intent behind the statement.

"Did they say how?"

Molly shook her head.

"Did...did they say when? Or why?"

"Starsk…"

Molly was shaking her head more violently, then stopped to cradle her skull, groaning and turning her face into her brother's shoulder.

Starsky floundered for another way to ask the same question then looked to Hutch.

"Get the kids out. We'll figure out the rest later." Hutch said, his voice strained.

The blond looked tired. Wiped out by the pain he was in. The rate at which Hutch was falling apart was fueling Starsky's temper, but laying into Molly wasn't helping.

"Kiko, do you think you can get your sister down to the field?"

As Kiko nodded Starsky got to his feet once more and moved down the seat row to the collection of boys, speaking quietly and calmly. They were soon on their feet, following Kiko and Molly in a slow parade down the steps and into the sunlight filtering through the still dissipating cloud of dust and smoke.

"Come on, partner." Starsky muttered to Hutch last, getting the blond to his feet in increments, before he pulled Hutch's arm over his shoulder.

The boys were on the field in seconds, Kiko and Molly directing them toward the exit that some of the wounded were being walked towards. They were, Starsky hoped, well on their way to leaving the stadium by the time he and Hutch reached the turf.

The splash of heavy duty glass breaking was the only warning before machine gun fire ripped through the stadium. It came from the pressbox, three or four shooters, spraying the field and the stadium liberally. Starsky went from a shocked standstill to dragging Hutch toward the home team dugout, and threw himself back first into the pit, pulling Hutch in after him.

Starsky hit hard, managed to keep his head from hitting anything, felt Hutch land bonelessly against his chest, then pressed both their bodies against the base of the outside wall. Seconds later bullets skipped across the concrete above them, then moved on. There was screaming, heart wrenching cries that were all too familiar to Starsky, then a brief quiet.

Starsky waited, expecting Hutch to protest being squished against the concrete but his partner didn't move. Starsky rolled on his back and watched Hutch's head rising and falling with the surface of the brunet's chest.

"Hutch?" Starsky felt for a pulse, then put his hand a centimeter from Hutch's lips and felt breath coming out. Unconscious, still breathing. Still alive. Starsky pulled his partner's head closer to his own, heard rapid footsteps approaching and tried to curl in around the wounded man.

A few more bodies jumped into the pit a second later, one of them a uniformed guard with blood down one sleeve, another a woman in jeans and a t-shirt, her face bathed with concrete dust and sweat.

Starsky pushed himself up onto his elbows, grimacing at the sharp jab in his side. With the added weight of Hutch's body on top of him, getting upright was a struggle and he felt the uninjured woman's hands supporting his back until he could lean a shoulder against the low concrete wall that separated the dugout from the field.

Starsky scanned his partner's body, his head nearly even with the blond's, and made sure there were no new holes. His ears were open, desperately waiting for the second burst of machine gun fire. The first had lasted about as long as a clip might if fired in one continuous burst. The assailants behind the guns had had enough time to reload. Instinct, born of time in-country, told Starsky this wasn't the end. By now the badguy's targets had scattered, but if Molly's retelling was remotely accurate, they were prepared to wait.

Starsky panted as it occurred to him, another explosion at ground level could be the final devastating act...trapping the people escaping through the tunnels and potentially causing a catastrophic collapse.

A collapse would also trap the people in the press box.

Starsky had to hope that the men behind the first explosion had a strong sense of self-preservation, and that they and the guys with guns were on the same side. Otherwise, if Starsky's depressing train of thought came true, the good guys were effectively out of luck.

"What do you think they're waiting for?" The security guard asked, breaking the breath filled silence.

"Somebody to pop their head up. There were still way too many people in those stands." The woman said, crouched against the concrete wall. She looked like she was ready to stand at any moment and Starsky grabbed her sleeve.

"By now they've reloaded. Let's not give them an easy target, huh?"

"Who are you?" The woman asked, and for a reason Starsky couldn't figure, he hesitated.

"I'm Dave. This is Ken."

"Dave, Ken…" The woman said. "I'm Barbara. You were with those kids, the big group."

"Yeah...part of the Big Brother's organization."

Barbara nodded, putting the pieces together, then listening again. Even before the shooting had begun the stadium had been filled with a hum of quiet conversations pierced every once in awhile by a shout or a scream. Now it was dead silent.

Hutch started to come around a second later, his head rolling against Starsky's shoulder, pained moans coming from his lips. Starsky spotted a stack of towels in the corner of the dugout near the security officer and a water cooler a few feet away.

"Hey...what's your name?"

"Tom, Tom Vallery."

"Tom...you think you can get one of those towels wet and toss it to me?"

The security guy's head tilted up, checking the field. Starsky assumed he was deciding whether or not he was an easy target for the press box if he shifted further back into the dugout. Starsky felt himself sigh in relief when Tom decided it was worth the risk.

A few seconds later he had the cold wet towel bathing Hutch's face, quieting some of the moans.

"Well what are we going to do, just sit here?" Barbara demanded.

Starsky looked up. "Where he goes, I go. And he's not gettin' very far."

"Sta-"

"It's okay. You're okay, just lay there and shut up."

Starsky got funny looks from the lady and the guard and ignored them, gently cleaning the blood from his partner's face.

"There's a door back here. It leads back into the locker rooms, and there's another door from there into the complex but we'd be pretty exposed getting to it." Tom said, his eyes bouncing between the other two conscious people stuck with him.

They were quiet for a moment before Barbara suddenly went into convulsions. Or so it seemed. A second later Starsky realized she was looking for something. She'd patted her chest then her pockets before she started to try to look over the concrete wall. Starsky yanked her down again.

"My camera!"

"Oh god…" Starsky moaned. "You're a reporter aren't you?"

The look Barbara gave him was a mix of pride and suspicion. "Yeah, how'd you know?"

"I'll tell you later. When and if we get outta this alive." Starsky muttered.

"I'd have pegged the two of you as cops, but I've never seen cops dress so…"

Starsky glanced down at his dust covered clothing, some of it torn from flying across the stadium, then he shook his head. "Lady...you're not helping. You wanna be a fashion critic, you're in the wrong place."

Barbara threw up her hands and Tom sighed from his corner. The arena was still quiet, but a low keening sound had started. It sounded like someone in pain, and Starsky immediately recognized what that meant. It sent a chill down his spine and reminded him of long, pitch black nights, sodden through and waiting. Waiting outside a prison on the wrong side of a border, listening to fellow Americans a hundred yards away, moaning. Knowing there was nothing he could do about it.

It had been the thing of nightmares then.

They all jumped when they heard the second set of shots. Single bursts that silenced the moaning. The guns were closer. They weren't echoing from the press box, they were on the field.

"We gotta move." Starsky said, whispering it, and forcing his partner into a sitting position.

Tom was on his feet and Barbara getting there, trying to stoop and offer a hand. Starsky waved her off.

"Go, just go!" He whispered hard, then grit his teeth, got his hands under Hutch's armpits and used every muscle in his body to get him and his partner to their feet.

Barbara was through the door, Tom waiting for the two cops before they heard the voice say,

"Hold it."

Tom was pale and looked like he was going to puke. Starsky felt the warm muzzle of a recently fired gun press against his neck.

"Three of you, outta there." The voice said, the accent muddied by cloth covering the man's mouth.

The push had brought Hutch out of his stupor and Starsky wrapped his left arm completely around Hutch's chest as the blond muttered, "What's going on?"

"We're in a lot of trouble." Starsky said, then took a deep breath and turned to face the masked man.