Okay I'm sorry for the delay, but the reviews have been disappointing and I just started classes again ;D bye holidays…

WARNING (SPECIALLY FOR THOSE PARTICULARLY SENSITIVE ABOUT SEPTEMBER 11TH 2009, OR ANY OTHER BUILDING-COLLAPSING CATASTROPHE) this chapter deals with episodes of city catastrophe that may affect the sensitivity of some readers.

Chapter 21: Names and stories.

Beca stopped and breathed deeply, calling Wyatt quickly.

"Beca, finally" he answered.

"I just saw the news" Beca said pulling through her shock "Wyatt. W-What…? What?!"

"I know, I was in shock too. Just breathe deeply Beca. Listen, I saw it on the news this morning, I called you many times! I was in Canada, with Eva's family, but right now I'm an hour away from landing in Norfolk. Where are you?"

"Florida" Beca replied "With the Beales. Wyatt I… I don't… what the fuck?!" she sobbed. And Chloe rubbed her back with tears in her own eyes. Beca had worked there for almost eight years, years of knowing everybody there, having parties together, dinners, lunches, celebrations, meeting each others families… they were a huge family there. And now nineteen of them were dead. And the others, who knew "Are you alive? You weren't… you weren't…"

"I wasn't there, I was coming in tomorrow. I'm alive, I'm alright. Angela is fine too, I called her, she called you too. She wasn't there either, but we've been contacting everybody we could that we knew had to be there, and we don't have names of the dead yet, and there are like forty something injured, around half of them very badly, but others were perfectly fine, just emotionally destroyed, but we checked on them and they told us… well, the same the news did really" Wyatt explained "I called police too, they said they called you, and that you needed to go there so they could tell you all they figured out. Angie went to the hospital to check with everybody, I'm gonna go there too. You book the first flight you can here, calm down, breathe deeply, and pull yourself together, okay? We gotta be strong. Call me when you're in the plane, I'll pick you up and we'll go find the cops that know everything. We'll get answers."

"Okay" Beca nodded rubbing her eyes, breathing deeply "Okay, I can do that. I'll be there soon, I'll take a jet or something… I'll call you. I'll call Angie and the cops too. I'll send a global text to all the employers to let them know that we're taking the bull by its horns. I'll call my manager too, better than any of the info leaks to press before the families know. They have to be the firsts to know."

"I agree. We'll get to the bottom of this boss. See you later!"

"See you!" Beca hung up, and looked around. Everybody was staring at her, and she breathed deeply one last time, and felt herself strong again, and very pissed off, which made her stronger "I have to go immediately. I'll go pack my bags, Wyatt is about to arrive to Norfolk and Angie is already there and in the hospital trying to get information about the deaths and the wounded, so Wyatt is going to join her and then he'll pick me up and we'll go find the police. I have to go."

"Go, I'll call Angie" Chloe said, gave her a quick peek on the lips and, carrying Noah better, stood up, followed by Beca.

Beca's manager and Wyatt met her at the airport in Norfolk, and they were in the police station half an hour later. Apparently, they suspected it had been a bomb that was placed inside of a package of the mail that arrived the company daily and was never opened or checked for bombs or anything. The building hadn't fallen after the explosion, that had happened in the second floor, in a corner of a building, shattering that floor and the one under and over it, but only one corner of the building, and the firefighters had already declared it safe to be inside. The deaths had ascended to twenty three, and their bodies, or parts of them, were in the morgue. Their names were all confirmed and written on a list that was given only to Beca, who didn't dare to read them yet.

The three of them joined Angela at the hospital, and then, after talking with the doctors, Beca was given a list of forty five names of all the wounded employees the hospital had admitted, a list completed by a sentence or two about what wounds they had, and how bad they were. Beca spent three hours going room after room, talking with the ones that could talk, or just sitting for a bit with the ones that couldn't, and if she couldn't get into someone's room, she would stand for ten or fifteen minutes watching them from the window of their rooms. Then, she went down to the morgue, and went death body by death body, checking their names in the list, and was told the sixteen people from the list that were there had been identified by their pieces. Beca didn't let a tear drop the whole time, even if her eyes were swollen and red. She knew each of her employees, even the mail guys who only came one time per day or per week, she had spoken with everybody. She had devoted herself to be the best job and gain personal connections with everybody beyond their work. Learn names, faces, find reasons to appreciate them. Two days more, and everybody would have been there, that day only a third of the total of employees were there. Only a third. Sixty eight employees of a total of two hundred four, the sixty eight were all people Beca had in her archives that were all that had to be there. She thought maybe it was luck, but still every freaking dead hurt so deep, and she knew many of the most badly injured would join that list before the week ended, but she, that never prayed, that hadn't prayed in God knows how long, prayed for them until she was crying too hard to keep going, that night, alone at her house.

Afterward, she lied on her bed, too big for her alone, and she sniffled cleaning her cheeks with her sleeve, turning her head to a side. With her eyes barely opened, she saw her nightstand, and in the alarm clock she saw it was past one in de morning, too late to call Chloe. But then, she was contemplating her cell on her nightstand, next to a framed picture of Beca and Chloe laughing while opening a champagne bottle on their wedding, and she decided to try. After the first beep, Chloe answered.

"Hey" Chloe said tenderly "I was hoping you would call me." Beca breathed deeply. She was so lucky of having that woman.

"How was your day?" Beca asked, her voice lacking strength "How are the children?"

"My day wasn't really bad" Chloe replied "And they are fine. Noah was a bit upset you left, but he's asleep against my chest right now."

"Good" Beca nodded for herself "I should let you sleep…"

"We are in the living room with the adults. All the kids are sleeping, but we've been watching the news all day and we were too worried to go to sleep until you called. I was about to call if you didn't."

"I haven't had two seconds free until now" Beca explained "We've been up and down all day."

"Is it true what the news say?" Chloe asked "Sixty eight?"

"Yes. A third of the employees" Beca replied "Twenty three are dead. I saw seven of them, the others are dismembered."

"Twenty three… God Beca." Chloe sighed "I'll be there tomorrow. The plane arrives at noon. My family will take care of the children for a few days until everything clears up enough for them to be safe in Norfolk."

"I'll pick you up at the airport" Beca said.

"Is there anything you can do for them?" Chloe asked.

"Be there. I've spend all day in the hospital visiting the forty five wounded and the doctors say it's most likely that some of them will be dead before the weekend because some of them are very bad. Of course, there are also many that only have a few scratches or are just emotionally wounded. All of this is confidential, of course."

"I imagined" Chloe nodded "I know is not a priority, but do you still have a place to work or did it crumble down?"

"It's still standing, and the firefighters say there's no risk of demolition. A corner of the building was affected, nothing else. But there was a big fire, and smoke, and many people were injured inside, like the lungs. And then it was the part of the building where all the people that had to be there work, the other parts were practically empty because those are other departments of people that was still on holiday. I'll see the building tomorrow."

"It's a stupid question, but how are you doing?" Beca sighed.

"I don't know. I'm exhausted, but at the same time I don't think I'll be able to sleep, so I'll probably just go to the hospital again. All the families are there, and if somebody dies tonight, I'd like to be there" Beca replied "It was a stupid package, Chloe. And back in the day my chief of security suggested that packages went through some sort of X-Ray machine, but I thought it was being paranoid. This could've been avoided."

"It's not your fault" Chloe stated "And honestly, I don't think anything you could've done would have avoided that. It could have exploded inside the X-Ray machine, it could have been inside the bag of some client that wasn't really a client, it could have been left by the entry. Revising packages seems paranoid to me too, it's a music production company, not a government building, who would do something like that? It doesn't make sense."

"I've been thinking about that too" Beca said "What if it was a message to me Chloe? Attacking a music production company makes zero sense, but maybe they weren't attacking the company, but me."

"I don't know Beca…" Chloe seemed unsure.

"It wouldn't be the first time" Beca stated "I don't even know who I got pissed off this time. What did I do, say no to someone? Did I forget to pay something? Did I sleep with someone else's wife, or something?!"

"Becs, calm down" Chloe said "Listen, don't eat your brain out with that, let that to the police, okay?"

"Okay" Beca played with a ball of her cotton sweater "I never wanted any of this to happen." She interrupted the silence, and her voice was a bit broken as a silent tear fell down her cheek.

"I know sweetie" Chloe was using the same tone of voice she used when one of her students fell in the playground "You couldn't have done nothing to avoid this Beca, I'm just happy the rest of you were still on holiday or that could've been a real massacre."

"If I could've taken the punch for all of them…"

"You would have" Chloe interrupted "I know."

"All the parties we've had… and that one before the holidays. Had I known I would never see them again, and…" Beca shook her head, not knowing how to finish the sentence.

"Don't torture yourself Becs. Don't put yourself through more crap only because you think you deserve it because you don't. And it won't help you at all. It'll help no one."

"I have a text" Beca said feeling the phone vibe in her hand. She stared at the screen, and saw the brief text from the hospital "Keegan Reynolds, a barman from the cafeteria, just died. I have to get back to the hospital. His wife is there and they have a toddler and a teenager."

"Yeah, I remember him and his family" Chloe sighed "Okay, go. Beca."

"Yeah?"

"You're bulletproof, remember? You're allowed to feel the hit, but you're not allowed to let it destroy you inside, okay?" Beca sighed.

"Okay. I love you."

"I love you too. Stay strong and try to sleep later, okay? I'll see you at noon." Beca opened her bedroom's door. In front of her, the girls' bedroom, to her left a bathroom.

She turned to her right, following the dark corridor, leaving the boy's bedroom at her left, and then another room that they used mostly as a place to save boxes and stuff. It was the end of the corridor, so she turned to her right, leaving a small room where the children could play with things that were too big to keep in their bedrooms, to her left, and next to this room was a tiny bathroom. She had her hand on the banister of the stairs' balcony and when that corridor ended, she faced a wall in the darkness before turning to her right, having the stairs at her right. The stairs that leaded to the attic were in the left of the stairs that leaded to the living-dining room, which she took, crossing paths with Avery, their female cat that meowed on her way upstairs. Once in the living-dining room, she turned to her right, following a short corridor towards the entry, where she took her coat, putting it on again, and left the house, locking the door after her. Sleepy, she crossed their little porch and turned to her right to go to the garage. Her car, that they had left in Norfolk, was parked in front of the garage, and Chloe's car, a bigger, family car, was parked inside. Beca got into her car, and drove through the dark roads through the suburbs where they lived, crossing the city until she got to downtown, where the big skyscrapers and some other big, but not that big, buildings, like her company, also were. She got into the hospital's parking lot.

As she walked into the artificially illuminated white corridors, she couldn't avoid thinking on the number of times she had been there. When Beth was born, when Micah was born, sometimes they had doctors' appointments for them, or for Kai, when Noah was born, when Chloe was in a car crash, when Beca cut her finger and wouldn't stop bleeding, when Chloe fainted, when Beth got gastroenteritis, and so many other moments. And then there she was, walking towards the crying family that was gathering next to a room as they pulled a body covered in a blanket out of it.

A cushion flew through her living room that morning when Beca came back from the hospital, the sun already up and enlightening the room, and her raged scream resounding in the empty house. The cushion crashed against a wall and fell on Billie-Jean's bed, making her bark.

"Sorry Billie" Beca apologized pressing a hand against her face and sighing. She had been awake for the last twenty six hours, and Chloe would be landing in less than two, so she decided to give herself a shower, try to have an apple and coffee for breakfast, and go to the Bulletproof Productions building.

She walked to the empty company, the contrast of the zones that were completely shattered and destroyed, with the ones that had dust and blood, and the ones that were like new. Her office was in this last zone, and when she came in, and saw everything just as she left it around May or June, she started laughing hysterically. Twenty four people died there, but her office couldn't have been cleaner. There was only a little change and it was a frame on the wall that had twisted slightly because of the trembling of the building with the explosion. It was such a joke of the Universe, her laughs soon turned into cries, and she sat on her sofa, her face between her hands, until it was all out.

When Chloe launched herself to her arms wrapping her in the tightest hug ever, she almost cried again. But instead, she hugged her back, and hid her face on the crook of her neck. They pulled apart, and Beca let Chloe take her face between her hands softly, her penetrating blue eyes scanning Beca's, and then a sad smile appeared on her face.

"You haven't sleep one bit" Chloe whispered "Come on, we'll go home and you'll sleep." But in that exact moment, Beca's cell beeped, and with a knot in her throat and one only question in her mind, who? Beca took her cell with trembling hands.

"Twenty five" Beca whispered.

"Who?"

"Jenna Jenkins" Beca replied "She worked on the third floor, she was a cleaning lady. The floor was destroyed under her feet. I saw her yesterday, it was a miracle she was still alive." Chloe nodded and took her suitcase while Beca took her bag.

"Let's go to the hospital then."

After being a shoulder to cry on, Beca went with Chloe back home. Beca sat on the sofa while Chloe made lunch, with her eyes closed but not falling asleep. They ate together and then Chloe handed Beca a mug.

"An infusion to sleep" Chloe explained to Beca's questioning eyes. Beca nodded taking a long sip "We'll sleep a bit now, and later you can keep doing your job, but you need to rest."

After the infusion, Beca felt so numb Chloe had to drag her to their bedroom, where they let themselves fall on their bed, Beca snuggled against Chloe, and fell asleep soon after.

The next day, Chloe's siblings came to bring them their kids and their other suitcases they left in Tampa, to spend the day and then go home the next morning. Jesse and Aubrey, who had heard everything on the news, came with their children. That day they were having all of them for lunch, together with Wyatt's family and Angela's. They were having lunch after Beca and Wyatt spend the morning in the hospital, when Beca's cell rang, and she went to take the call.

"Another one" Wyatt whispered when Beca went to another room.

"Many friends so far?" Aubrey asked.

"They were all our friends" Wyatt replied "After this many years, even the cleaning people."

"The cops don't even know what explanation it has yet" Angela added eating without much enthusiasm. Beca didn't come back until ten minutes later, and by that time, the children had already ran to the garden to play with Billie "Bad news?"

"Indeed" Beca nodded shoving her phone on her pocket "Three more in the past five hours, Troian Adams, from the cafeteria, Ella Dix, from the mail people, and Lloyd Gowan, from the informatics team. And they'll doing one funeral to bury the twenty eight of them, some kind of typical act to say goodbye and stuff. Also, I've got a meeting afterwards with the administration team that will probably be long." Beca sat again and rubbed her temples.

"Are we going to like, close?" Wyatt asked.

"No" Beca replied "Some suggested it… but we are not closing. We'll just have a free month in the time they take to rebuild everything. Even if they've said the building is safe, I don't want anybody in there until it's rebuilt. And I'll make sure everybody is paid this month just like if they had been working, and we also need to prepare an economic compensation because even though it's not a failure from the company, many of the families lost the only person that had a job in their families, and they need money. I also offered to pay for the funerals, they deserve that at least."

"Sure" Chloe nodded looking at her "You okay?"

"Of course not Chloe" Beca whispered "But that's the last one of my problems. Those families are looking at me like I could say a word and fix everything, and I've lost family, I know what not to say, but I still have no idea what to say. What do you tell people that have lost their parents, siblings, partners or children because they were working because you sent them to their death?"

"You didn't send them to their deaths, a bomb did. You could've died too" Jesse reminded her "They were doing their jobs. Is like if you go to work or to school by bus, and the bus crashes and you die. It sucks and it's a huge kick in the ass, but is not your boss' fault they give you a job and money to keep your family alive and happy."

"Yeah, it's like the 11S, the ones to blame are the ones that put the bombs." George added.

"Talking about 11S, is terrorism dismissed already?" Sophie asked.

"Yes" Beca replied "The President called this morning because the White House was already getting their noses into this because it's an offence to the United States, but I think it was the FBI that just said rests of the bomb have been found and it's a homemade one, but by people who have some kind of formation, not as much as military formation, but enough to create a bomb capable of blowing the corner of three floors. It didn't fit with the terrorist's style, so now they are interrogating the ones that were there but are good enough to be interrogated, and the families of everyone. They think it could be revenge, that somebody very nuts got really angry with an employee. They also interrogated us" She pointed to Wyatt and herself "and the administrative team, the big fishes of the company I guess. But they also say if it was something against one of us, who weren't going to be there, they would have done it when we were there, because it was so planned there's no way they didn't know when we were going back to work." Her cell sounded again and she just smashed it against her ear tiredly "Mitchell. Yeah, okay, right. I have no idea yet, miss Jenkins, but we'll know after a meeting later today and I'll send mails to everybody. Yes, I'll be there, the whole company will be. Don't worry, I'm taking care of everything alright? You just try to rest and relax for a bit, this afternoon will be exhausting enough. Bye…" she sighed turning the call off and leaving the cell on the table "The families are worried about everything they can be." She whispered.

"Don't take too much on your shoulders alright? I don't want you getting sick now" Chloe kissed her on the cheek.

"I know" Beca sighed "I'm going to take a shower, I think I'll be wearing the same shirt for three days straight and smelly bosses aren't welcome at their employees' burials."

After showering, Beca started getting ready for the ceremony. It was going to be a big ceremony with a few speeches from her, other co workers, and families, and then they would just bury them all in the cemetery. Elegant, but with soft –water proof- make up, with jewelry, but not in a way she seemed a rich bitch, and black dress, black jacket, black everything. She had done her speech the night before according to a few indications she had been given, but at the end she decided she wanted whatever she said to come from her heart in the moment, because how they were going to feel while listening to it would also come from the moment.

Half Norfolk was going to the ceremony, that would take part in the Bulletproof Productions' auditorium, so it could fit more people, because the city had proclaimed a week of mourning and black flags or bracelets were visible here and there. Some politicians, like the Governor, were also going to be present and giving speeches. They had wanted to do it in some building of the government, but Beca spoke to the families and decided the best place was that one. The whole city was there, but the families, politicians, and the members of BP had privileged seats in the front, close to all the coffins that had been brought. Cameras weren't allowed, but some press was around taking notes. Beca greeted with warm hugs each employee that was there, included many victims from the bomb. After the families and the governor, Beca raised from her seat and walked to the podium and cleared her voice.

"Thanks Governor, thanks everybody for coming. Firstly I'd like to let you know that firefighters have assured me that the building is safe, but I'll try to be quick anyway. I'm Rebeca Mitchell, and I'm the founder and owner of Bulletproof Productions¸ but more than as that, I'm here as a friend, because here, we are all friends. We weren't just people that come here eight, ten, twelve hours per day sometimes, and work individually, we worked as a team, as we call them in here, there are the feeding team, the mail team, the numbers team, the administrative team, the info nerds, the technicians, the musicians, the composers, the law team, the cleaning team… everybody. And we work together as a family, and that's how it's been since January 2019, when we got here in this same room all together, and partied all night long for the new beginnings. This was my new beginning, I moved here from LA to begin again, and this company has been my dream ever since I can remember, and I will never forget each person that made it possible every single day, and that will keep making it possible from now on. We all knew each other and our families pretty well, we celebrated birthdays together, company events, and to be honest, every day was kind of a party here, and we went out so frequently I've seen more hangovers here in eight years than in all the years of my life, and with that I only want to mean that we were friends before co-workers. And that we aren't pretending to care, we do care, and we are all together in our anger and our deep sadness for this tragedy" Beca cleared her throat again and got a paper out of her pocket with all the names of the dead "Co-workers, I'd like to let you know we'll have a meeting ourselves in private soon… but yeah, now I'd like our twenty eight dear friends to be remembered individually, and not as some dizzy mass that most people don't even know their names. So I'll tell you all who these people were. Tatiana Harrods, receptionist and occasional nanny, at least for my kiddos" in the wall at the end of the stage appeared a giant picture of her, as it happened with each name Beca read "Garrett Wilkinson, our biggest specialist with technologies, like our handyman. Keegan Reynolds, barman, he worked at the cafeteria and entertained himself drawing hearts in our cappuccinos" she smiled at the memory, contemplating his name on the paper "Troian Adams worked in the cafeteria too, and she made the best toasts. Ella Dix, a wonderful lady who brought the mail every morning with the sweetest smile. Lloyd Gowan, from the informatics team. Jenna Jenkins, she kept my office and many other parts of this building clean. Denise Atwelk, she was a programmer. Wendel Russ, he worked in our studios." She kept going, name after name, after the twenty eight names were mentioned "You were our friends, and I'm so sorry this happened at our place, where you were supposed to be safe. We'll miss you and we'll keep you in our hearts, forever."

That night, Beca felt the sleeping Chloe hugged to her as she contemplated the dark ceiling of their bedroom. She couldn't sleep, but this time, it was only because her mind wouldn't shut up. She felt like if her heart was being tightened in a fist, and she was thinking of how present death had been in her life in the past nine years. She had lost her brother, mother, sister in law, nephew, she had lost a baby, she had lost all these friends, they had lost Noah, Chloe's best friend after whom they had named their son. She closed her eyes and let one tear travel down her cheek.

During the night, nobody else died.

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