A/N: All right. I hate unfinished stories, too. If there are people who would like to read the rest of this story, I promise that I'll do my best to publish it to end.
Chapter 14
"Need a little help here…"
…
Something was terribly wrong.
He wasn't safe.
His life threatened.
He knew it.
He could feel it.
Awareness.
Pain.
…
His senses gradually began to return and vaguely he wished that they hadn't, as he became aware of the growing pain. Dizzying. Excruciating. In his skull. Worse than any he had ever had. His head felt as though it were broken and he had trouble concentrating on anything other than the agony that spread out from his forehead and left temple through his entire skull.
The origin of the pain? He was not sure. He couldn't remember.
For a while he just lay there, balancing on the verge of consciousness. He could not even try to move or try to open his eyes, instinctively knowing this would increase the agony.
Just breathe... In and out...
His mouth was so dry that his tongue clove to his palate. He tried to lick his lips. A new sensation slowly formed in his blurred with pain consciousness. Sand? Some fine-grained particles were inside his mouth as well as covering his lips and face. He tried to swallow, spit lacking, the effort grueling. The sharp particles painfully scratched his dry throat.
In and out...
Another sense rose slowly to the foreground, a smell of smoke, ash and concrete. The air was heavy with dust. He wanted to cough, and he wanted to vomit. A husky whimper reached his ears and he barely realized that this sound was coming from him.
Just breathe...
…
Some time has passed. He didn't know how long.
He was now conscious enough to realize that he obviously badly wounded in the head. He became aware of warm wetness, flowing abundantly down his forehead and over the left side of his head and neck. He knew he was lying on his back and the ground beneath him hard and uncomfortable. And he definitely knew about a crushing weight, pressing on his lower body and a second source of severe pain down there, under this weight, where his right leg lay.
Pain pressed heavily, wore down, not allowing to focus. Thinking was difficult, complicated. Thoughts were tangled. Confusion set in. And yet through the foggy semi-consciousness an inevitable question began to form. What had happened to him?
He tried to concentrate but couldn't. His memory broken, shattered.
Basic things were still there. Ed Lane. Sophie, Clark, the team. SRU, Toronto. But his short-term memory was alarmingly blank. There was absolutely nothing that could explain how he ended up here. And where was this 'here'?
Adrenaline gave him strength and he tried to open his eyes, to find an explanation. He forced his eyelids to move, and they slid open, feeling gritty and scratchy.
He didn't expect the total darkness.
Panic surged through his mind which made Ed's heart beat faster than it should. For a minute or two, the pain soared higher. His stomach lurched. He closed his eyes tightly, breathing hoarsely through the pain and nausea. Then he opened his eyes again.
Same blackness.
He lay petrified as a terror threatened to overwhelm him. I'm blind. First, memory loss, now blindness. Had he suffered some terrible head injury that had left him blind? No, no... I couldn't be blind.
If only he could remember what had gone down before waking up in this dark and dusty hell. However, his memory stubbornly remained a total blank.
He swallowed and licked his dry lips.
"Anybody?.." it came out as a pathetic slurred croak. The throbbing pain behind his eyes spiked. No answer. "Guys..." he called weakly to the inky blackness again. He waited but still nothing. There was almost complete silence other than some creaking and rustling. No sounds out of his headset.
He closed his useless eyes. Focus. What was the last thing he remembered? The briefing. But was that today? A week ago? A year? What day was it? He remembered that he had not been cleared for full duty. Then ... then there was a conversation with the boss. The details slipped away but he remembered that they had agreed that he should only sit in the office or in the truck! When was that? In his mind, it was just yesterday, but the place where he was now was obviously not an office nor a truck. So when was this? How did he get here? And where's here? He was completely unaware of his surroundings.
He moved his hands and was delighted to find them mobile. Tentatively, he stretched his hands out into the darkness and tried to determine what was surrounding him. His fingers met with what felt like sharp rocks or debris, and lots of it. He lay among some debris, on it, under it.
He tried to force his body to move. He prepared himself for the pain but was not ready for the immobility. His legs would not move. Again he felt his panic begin to escalate, but he knew he was not paralyzed; he could feel the pain from his right leg and his left leg moved slightly. He was just covered with something. Pinned down.
Buried alive.
He didn't want to go there, it was way too nightmarish.
Light. I need light. He struggled to raise his hands slowly and bring them close to his face. With trembling fingers, he fumbled with his watch and pressed a tiny button, activating the back-light.
A bright blue light suddenly lit the inky darkness around him. The relief was so great that for a moment he thought he would cry. Not blind. He closed his eyes but after a moment he opened them again. There was something else. Something was right above him, around him. He turned his left hand so the faint light was now facing up.
A bent, twisted almost spiral steel girder blocked his view just a couple feet above him. Scraps of wires hung down from big concrete slab, what had once possibly been a ceiling but now was looming over him. The ceiling of what? Where was he? When was he? Desperately he pushed his throbbing brain for answers but there was still nothing.
And yet, the smell of smoke and thick concrete dust, hanging in the air, the debris and the wreckage... All this added up to a clear picture. He was buried in the rubble of a collapsed building. He swallowed convulsively against a new wave of nausea and fear and tried to direct the light towards his feet. Yes, the pile the rubble. But the back-light was too weak to see the wreckage in detail.
Flashlight. I need my Glock with the under-barrelflashlight. I need to contact the team. I need to free my feet. I need ... I need help. God, so tired... Everything hurts... Slowly, he reached out one hand and touched the left side of his head. His fingers came away sticky with blood. In the weak blue light, the blood smeared across his palm looked black. I need to stop the bleeding ... He dropped his hand letting it lie sluggishly along his side. A noise between his ears rose higher, bees buzzing… It was getting harder to hold his lids open, almost beyond heavy now.
He closed his eyes, his thoughts fading, disappearing…
###
The door of the SUV opened and someone got in the passenger seat next to him.
Slowly, he raised his head from his hands that were folded on the steering wheel. Wordy. They stared at each other for a couple of seconds without speaking. Then Wordy reached out and clasped Parker's shoulder in sympathy. Greg nodded silently.
Neither of them seemed to know where to begin. Greg looked away, refusing to see the grief on Wordy's pale face. He was unable to say anything to make it better because what was there to say? What was there that could possibly make it better?
He did not want to talk right now. He did not even want to move. Why had Wordy come? What did he want? What was he waiting for Greg to tell him? The worst thing would be if Wordy had come to try to comfort him, to try to convince him that he was not responsible for Ed's death... Please Wordy don't, not now, not yet. It's too hard. It hurts too much. Don't ... he pleaded mentally, leaned his head on the headrest and closed his eyes. Nothing could stop the flood of guilt.
"Tell me," Wordy's quiet hoarse voice broke into his thoughts.
Greg frowned, a little confused. "About what?" he asked without opening his eyes.
"The boy," replied Wordy shortly.
Greg opened his eyes. All right. Wordy had not come to comfort him but had obviously come to get an explanation. Greg sighed. The boy. Ed had not told anyone about it. Did Greg have the right to talk about it? Well, he would have to, anyway. He would have to tell the team. They needed an explanation for what had happened. Let Wordy be the first.
"Did he ever tell you about Thomas Hutter?" Greg asked, turning toward him.
Wordy lowered his head. His eyes narrowed slightly and he frowned as if he was trying to remember something.
"Is that the boy he accidentally shot by death when he was in Guns and Gangs?"
Greg nodded.
"No, Boss, he didn't," Wordy shook his head.
"Then how do you know?" Greg asked, a bit confused.
Wordy shrugged. "We have known each other for almost twenty years, Boss," he said, and suddenly his face contorted. "Knew ..." he corrected himself and fell silent.
Greg clenched his teeth, almost painfully.
After a few seconds Wordy continued. "We were never told about it. I found out through mutual friends who worked with Ed then. No one blamed him, it really was an accident. It was night, a fierce shootout … it was not his fault but... "
"But he blamed himself," Greg finished for him distractedly. Now he did not want Wordy to leave him alone. Suddenly, it was good to talk about Ed. To fill this gaping hole in the soul with memories.
"But it's been fifteen years, Greg ..." Wordy whispered. "Why now?"
Greg sighed, "There was something else..."
Briefly, he told him about the bullet that had killed Jackson Barcliffe. He did not give any details; it was not necessary. Everything was clear without details.
They were silent for a long time.
"I should have understood it before, Wordy. All the signs were there. That was my job, God dammit, but I'd failed him," Greg said in a defeated tone. "He needed help, but I didn't do anything. I thought I was defending him, but I just left him alone. I'm his friend, his boss and I left him alone," Greg leaned his hands on the steering wheel and bowed his head.
"No, Boss. It was not your fault," Wordy said quietly, "I'm his friend too and I didn't notice that things had gone so far. We saw what he wanted us to see. It was his choice to try and do this alone. His decision. At any time, he could have put up his hand and said, 'Hey guys, drowning, not waving.' But he didn't. And that's Ed. It's not our fault if he'd rather cut his own throat with blunt scissors than ask for help," Wordy said bitterly before falling silent again.
Greg turned his head to look at him and saw tears on Wordy's face. It was hard to say anything now. His own emotions choked him.
Abruptly, Wordy wiped his eyes with his palm, "Son of a bitch! I told him!" He swore under his breath and slammed his fist into the door, "I told him not to dare leave us like this, with this guilt, thinking that we did not help him," his jaw was trembling from a desperate attempt to contain his emotions. "Boss?" he said after a short pause. "We need to tell Sophie ..."
Greg nodded. "I know ... I'll do it myself but only after they find him."
"Why?" Wordy looked at him.
"She should not be here when they find his body," Greg replied hoarsely and, after a short pause he added, almost in a whisper, "I do not believe that he is gone, Wordy. I'm endlessly telling myself that he has died, but yet I do not believe. I just can't..."
###
Something caused him to wake up again, a rustling sound beside him. He turned his head toward the sound and a new surge of pain made him moan. For a couple of minutes he just lay there in the darkness, listening, waiting for the pain to subside again to a tolerable level. The sound was not repeated.
He wondered how long he had been unconscious that time. He raised his hands again and turned on the back-light of his watch but this time it was to look at the time and date. The last time he had not taken any notice it. Only the fact of being able to see or not had worried him then.
March 10th ... The briefing, the last thing he remembered, was on March 10th! This meant that his memory loss was not as extensive as he had feared. Only a few hours. Not days, not months.
The time? 10.35 am. What does that mean? They usually have the morning briefing at 7:00 am which meant he had lost only about three and a half hours! That suddenly didn't seem so scary.
Briefing.
His team!
He reached out his hand and touched his headset on his left ear. He tried his radio communicator but still no sound came out, not even static. He found the receiver, fixed in his vest, suddenly noticing that his vest and jacket unzipped. Strange. Why would he have unzipped them?
Memory gave him no answer.
He tried to switch channels on the receiver. Still nothing. He pulled off the headset and tried to inspect it. The small device was slippery with blood. In the faint light he saw no external damage and it looked good but it was not working. Maybe the receiver itself or one of the connecting wires between the transmitter and the receiver and headset were damaged... If Spike had been here, he would have dealt with this in a couple of seconds... He dropped his hand with useless headset and wearily closed his eyes.
A dreary feeling overwhelmed him. What was even worse than the pain was not knowing what had become of his team. What if they too were in the building when everything collapsed? What if they too were now somewhere among these ruins? Of course, they had to be. At least one of them. Someone had to have been with him, as back-up. Who would it have been? Wordy? Sam? Lou? All of them? He could only hope that they had been luckier than him.
What if they were lying just a few feet away? Injured? Dying? Already dead? Was he the sole survivor? God, please, anything but that. He moaned weakly.
Or maybe they left without you? Unbidden, a thought began to rise in his mind. Maybe they believed you're dead.
Stop. No way would they have left without him.
"Team One?" he croaked out a pathetic call to his teammates. He listened. "Hello? Need a little help here," he called again, a bit louder now.
No answer.
The back-light on his watch faded and again he was lying in complete darkness.
His cell! How could he forget! His mind is still a mess. He began frantically fumbling on his vest, looking for the pocket with the cell phone. His hands were trembling as he grabbed it and finally pulled out. With his fingers still sticky with blood he pressed a button, exulting when the color screen turned to life. It was brighter than the back-light and most importantly, was thankfully not broken as he feared it might have been.
No signal.
Was it because he was deep underground? He did not know how deep he could be. He did not even know if this place was underground.
Perhaps mobile communications were out for some other reason.
He tried to make his fogged with pain brain to ponder. Communications would be disabled in the immediate area of an explosive device, to prevent the use of radio detonator. But the explosion obviously had happened which meant that communications would soon be re-enabled. He just had to wait.
He looked at the battery level. More than half but still not full. He turned off the screen, not wanting to waste power. Who knew how long he would have to wait until help came. If it came... If it came in time...
As if he wasn't distressed enough, another depressing thought suddenly popped into his head. If it was a bomb, that meant that Spike had been near the bomb... And he would never have left a live bomb, knowing that Ed or anyone else was still in the building. He would not have given up. If the explosion had occurred, it meant that something unexpected had happened. Something had gone wrong which meant...
Spike ... Oh, God, Spike ... no ... please, no...
He felt a tear slide slowly out of the corner of his eye. Spike… Who else? He did not know and probably would never know the fate of his team.
His despondency overwhelmed him for a minute and he let himself drift until his brain got back into gear when another thought rose up through the cotton haze. This wasn't his normal way of thinking, he was usually far more positive about things.
"What happened to your confidence and faith, Ed?" he whispered hoarsely in the dark, and yet he knew the answer to that. He was badly injured and the persistent pain was already wearing him down. He felt weak and helpless. His team, his friends were very likely dead, all of them, or at least some of them. So what is the point for him to resist the darkness? At least there would be no pain ...
Now the darkness insisted. Just close your eyes and let go. And the way his body felt right now, it was a lovely thought. Just let go … and let death claim you.
He nearly gave into it, but his stubborn will quickly rushed to the fore and told him, No way. There is no way you're giving up this easily. You just have to hold on for a while.
He closed his mind off to all depressive thought as he concentrated on fighting the pain and staying alive...
tbc