Balancing The Scales - Part 15
by MMB
Sam looked around his office with a critical eye. Not that he'd ever kept very much of any personal nature in this tiny cubicle over here on this far end of the sweeper's wing, but he was determined to make sure he left nothing behind. His small cardboard box on the desk had what few personal items had migrated from home that he could find piled on top of the few file folders with information that he felt would come in handy as he assumed his position as head of SIS.
Contented that he had it all, he picked up the box from his desk and had just turned his back to leave the small room when a rolling underfoot nearly rocked him off his feet.
Then the force of the nearby explosion pushed violently through the glass of his window and threw him towards the far wall and the door, cut and bleeding from the many flying shards of glass. He connected hard with the edge of the door and fell, unconscious, box flying and scattering picture frames and paperwork like so much confetti around the ruined office.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Miss Parker could hear the morgue attendant rolling the table with Raines' body laid out on it back toward the wall where it had been stowed out of the way awaiting the cremation oven's reaching its peak temperature. The sound brought the gooseflesh up on the back of her neck, but she walked with some sense of relief toward the elevator and pushed the button.
The elevator door had just swooshed open when the ground seemed to rock beneath her feet, and then she was thrown to the floor as the lights above blinked once and then out. In the pitch darkness she heard the sound of agonized metal shriek, then drop away. As the red light of the sublevel's emergency generator kicked in, she gave a small squeak of alarm and rolled way from the elevator threshold only inches away from her, at which there was no longer an elevator car waiting. Far below, she heard the sickening sound of the car crash into the bottom of the shaft.
She scooted backwards on her backside until she felt safely distanced from the gaping hole that was once an elevator, back through the swinging doors of the morgue itself, then shakily got to her feet.
What the hell had just happened?
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Ngawe turned from having leveled a withering glare at Tanaka and lifted a finger to one of his associates. "Contact Miss Parker, immediately!"
"Yes, sir!" the bodyguard replied, stepped to a side table that had a telephone on it, and picked up the receiver. "Let me speak to Miss Parker. Mr. Ngawe needs to speak to her immediately. This is an emergency." The man listened, then hung up the phone. "Miss Parker is out of her office at the moment, sir."
"Damn!" Ngawe spat, then turned on Tanaka. "Whatever possessed you to try such a..."
At that moment, below them, they heard a loud blast. They looked at each other, realizing that their time had run out.
Fujimori only had time to utter "Namandabu..." once, determined to face this moment in the right way.
Then everything fell.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Broots had Sydney's briefcase opened on the psychiatrist's desk, and was slowly filling it with the files that he had requested. It had finally occurred to the computer technician that, with Sydney taking over the mentoring of Kevin in a manner of speaking, having his notes regarding Jarod's reactions and the methods he'd used over time would be an excellent resource to have at hand. No longer questioning the older man's motives, he had sorted through the heavy and well-used file cabinet and marveled at the amount of research that his old friend had conducted on top of the decades of work on the Pretender Project and Jarod.
The balding man was just reaching into the cabinet for another file when the lights overhead blinked twice then went out - and then the floor beneath his feet bucked as if alive. The file cabinet, with its top drawer pulled all the way out, was overbalanced.
When Broots fell, it fell on top of him and landed heavily. In the red lights from the sublevel emergency generator, the blood that began to slowly trickle looked black and oily .
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Ikeda couldn't believe his eyes. One moment he was watching his target drop in his tracks from a single, killing shot, then next he was knocked on his butt from the force of the blast at the Centre. The assassin sat up dazedly and stared out through the brambles at the huge fireball that was still rising to the skies like a fiery moat around the Centre Tower. Then he gaped in awe and shock as the Tower seemed to ripple in upon itself and crumble like a pile of building blocks.
With shaking hands, Ikeda dragged himself to his feet and set off through the brush, retracing his steps to where he had left his briefcase when he'd begun his hunting. He wanted to leave no trace of his activities other than the body of his victim. And he wanted to get the Hell out of there NOW, before the rescue personnel and law enforcement people descended on the area like locusts.
And he knew he had very little time to do that.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Debbie finished clearing the kitchen of her lunch mess and covering Sydney's tray for later, and then wiped her hands on the hand towel. He had demonstrated an interesting mixture of cantankerous and apologetic when she'd caught him sitting at the base of the stairs in his bathrobe talking to her father, but had let her assist him back up the stairs and back into bed without too much grumbling. She'd promised not to tell Jarod or Kevin about his jaunt only after he'd promised her that he'd stay put and not exert himself again that day, and then had given him his pain medication. Sydney took his pills without complaint, and then settled back to wait for her to bring lunch. By the time she had the tray prepared and had come up the stairs with it, however, he was once more dozing - and she'd simply turned around without waking him.
Now she climbed the stairs quietly, just in case he was still asleep. She was just setting her foot on the top stair when the quiet of the early summer afternoon was shattered by the sound of a huge explosion that rattled the windows of the house violently. She cowered on that top step until she heard Sydney bellow, "DEBBIE!!!" and then she ran to his room. He was sitting bolt upright in bed, hair mussed from sleep, but his expression of near panic abated somewhat when he saw her fly through the door.
"What was THAT?!" she asked in a tiny voice, suddenly very glad that she had him to stay with today.
"Go to the window and tell me what you see," the older man directed anxiously, and the young woman hurried to do as he asked.
She looked up and down the sleepy street - nothing looked out of place or disturbed. But then she turned and saw it. "Grandpa! My God! I think that came from the Centre! There's a lot of black smoke..."
Sydney thrust aside his covers and very carefully and slowly climbed from bed and came over to peer out the window with her. Without looking down at her, and in a chilled and emotionless voice, he told her, "Go get me the phone from the nightstand, Deb." When she brought him the handset, he dialed one number and waited for an answer, then hung up and dialed another number and waited. His heart beginning to pound in his throat, he dialed a third number and again waited.
"What is it, Grandpa?" Deb asked, picking up on his anguish as he hung up yet again and dialed a fourth number. He held up a finger telling her to wait a moment.
"Jarod? This is Sydney. Come home NOW. Something's happened at the Centre." He heard the man on the other end disconnect abruptly, and then he leaned heavily against the window sill. He felt ill, but for the sake of his granddaughter didn't dare give any indication of the fears that he was facing. If he was right, she'd be as upset as he was soon enough.
"Grandpa?" Debbie moved closer to him, seeing his face get two shades paler.
He looked down at her with eyes that couldn't hide his fears, and then he opened his arms to her and let her lean on him even as he continued to lean on the windowsill to keep from falling down. He didn't have much comfort to give, but what he did have, she was welcome to - and frankly, right now, she was comforting him as much as he was her.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Jarod snapping his cell phone closed caught Davy's attention, and the boy's eager smile of anticipation faded slightly at his father's expression of worry. "Daddy?"
The older Pretender rose from his seat, where he'd been waiting for Kevin to finish trying on the clothing he'd selected, and went towards the dressing room. "Kevin. We have to go. NOW."
The young man's sandy hair and blue eyes suddenly popped up over the top of one of the little stall doors. "What's wrong?" he asked, chilled by the expression in his friend's face.
"I just got a call from Sydney," Jarod stated expressionlessly. "Something's happened and we need to head home immediately."
Kevin's head disappeared from the top of the stall door, and then within moments Kevin was emerging, slithering into his pull-on shoes - still Centre-issue - and zipping his olive-drab trousers up. All of the clothing he'd been trying on was as it had been when Jarod had interrupted him - hanging from hangers. He was walking away from it all.
"Wait a minute," Jarod halted him. "Take what you know will fit, Kevin. You do need the clothes, and we can check out quickly and be on the road in no time. A couple of minutes isn't going to change anything."
"Did the bad men come and hurt Mommy again?" Davy asked in a small voice, his hand seeking out and finding his father's and hanging on tightly.
"I don't know, son," Jarod answered truthfully as Kevin sorted quickly through the hangers, taking some and leaving behind others.
"I'm ready," he announced and led the way to the checkout clerk. Suddenly, the adventure of buying himself something other than olive-drab to wear had lost its appeal. He wanted to get home too - to Sydney, and to Debbie. They WERE his home now, his family - anything that touched them threatened him.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"Are you OK, ma'am?" the morgue attendant came over to Miss Parker and peered into her face carefully.
"Just peachy," she replied with a brittle snap to her voice. Here she was, down on sub-level 8, with no elevator to get her back up to where she needed to be. "Where's your phone?"
"Over there, on the wall," the man pointed.
"What's your name?" she asked as she walked slightly unsteadily across the room. She shuddered as she walked past where Raines' body lay on its table and noticed that the shock wave had disturbed the corpse. One arm was now hanging down with a hand visible below the edge of the plastic sheet. She turned impatiently when she didn't get an immediate response. "What's your name?" she demanded a little more loudly.
"Tyler, ma'am," the attendant managed finally.
She picked up the receiver from the wall phone unit and listened to the sound of silence, then crashed the receiver back into the wall unit with a hissed oath. "Well, 'Tyler-ma'am'," she imitated his thick, Southern accent, "I need to find a way out of this hole - and you might as well come with me, since there's very little you need to do for any of your 'clients' here that's truly important."
"I... I... really should stay on the job..." Tyler stammered. "I don't want to lose my job..."
Miss Parker stood for a moment with her head thrown back, then looked back down at the young man. "Do you know who I am?" she asked him quietly.
"N..no," he admitted. "I was just told that someone was coming down to see the body there - not WHO was coming."
She shook her head. "I guess the Centre grapevine has its gaps. I'm your boss, Tyler - I run this place now. So when I tell you that you don't need to stay here with a bunch of dead bodies, I'm telling you that you can come with me and be reasonable assured that you'll have a job to come back to tomorrow - or the next day, depending on when we get the Hell out of here." She put her hand on her hip. "So... Are you with me now?"
"You're the Chairma... Chairwo... uh..." The young man stared.
Miss Parker drew her fingers through her hair and pulled it back from her face. "That's right. Coming?" She decided that she didn't have either the time or patience to worry about whether he believed her or not - she needed to get to someplace where she could find out what the hell had happened.
She moved out into a corridor that was slowly filling with personnel from other labs and offices on the sublevel. Most looked dazed and confused, a few looked as if they'd been bounced around fairly well - much as she had been. And there were those who had the beginnings of a look of panic about them - and Miss Parker was well-aware that in situations such as these, panic could kill. Making use of a childhood skill she hadn't practiced in decades, she slipped her thumb and middle finger into her lips and issued a sharp and piercing whistle that caught everybody's attention, then raised her hands into the air to give herself visibility.
"OK. Listen up, people. The elevator's out, so we're going to have to climb out of here. How many injured do we have?"
"Who the Hell are YOU?" a half-angry, half-terrified voice came from the distance.
"My name is Miss Parker, and I am the Chairman of the Centre as of today..." she began.
"Helluva way to start a new job, lady..." came a rejoinder that had several people chuckling - including Miss Parker herself.
"You got THAT right," she fired right back, earning her own chuckle from several. "But of course, that also means that all of you have your asses on the line if you screw up working directly for the boss, right?" And that comment earned her several groans. "OK. Now that we have our pecking order established, do we know if this is everybody from this level? Is anybody hurt?"
There was a hum of discussion, then another voice spoke from the middle of the group: "I think the worst is bumps and bruises."
"Anybody who can't walk or who will have problems with stairs?" she persisted.
The hum returned, much more short-lived than before. "I think we're all fit, ma'am."
She nodded in an exaggerated movement. "Now THERE'S a man who understands authority," she quipped, and once more had her people chuckling softly. "Alright. This is what I want you to do. The emergency stair well is a the end of that corridor," she pointed to her left. "I want each of you to pair off and we'll go up those stairs by twos. The people down on that end of things can go ahead and start now. Don't run! There's no need to have or cause accidents. Understand?"
There was a general hum of "yes, ma'am's" and "got it's".
"OK. Let's do it, folks." Miss Parker turned and found Tyler standing behind her, his eyes wide. "Looks like you get to be MY buddy for the time being, 'Tyler-ma'am'." She continued to imitate his Southern accent when pronouncing his name.
The young man's eyes just got wider, and she had to struggle not to laugh at the hesitant way in which he accepted his role at her side. She smiled encouragingly at him instead, and tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow. "Mind you, this doesn't mean we're going steady," she quipped at him, and finally the humor broke through his shock and his lips twitched with the beginnings of a smile.
"Yes, ma'am," he answered, a little of his nervousness evaporating. He'd heard horror stories about the 'Ice Queen' in the few years he'd been working in the morgue - somehow the striking and intimidating woman with her arm on his didn't seem quite so nasty as all that...
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
By the time Ikeda was on the outskirts of Blue Cove, it seemed like every possible emergency vehicle in the state had either already passed him going in the opposite direction or was coming at him heading that way. The tired Yakuza assassin breathed a huge sigh of relief as he pulled into the motel parking lot and turned off the engine. All around him he could hear the howl of sirens.
He turned the key in the lock and walked into a room where his temporary roommate was obviously awake and restless. "What's going on out there," Randy demanded irritably. The sirens had been endless, and there was no way he could sleep with all this racket in the normally silent and sleepy village.
Ikeda looked at him and tossed his briefcase on the other bed. "I don't think you have to worry about going in to work tonight," he told the younger man calmly, then headed off in the direction of the bathroom and a very hot and cleansing shower before he could be forced to answer any questions. He wasn't ready for that yet.
He could still see the fireball that had engulfed the Centre Tower in his mind - and he could imagine how many people were employed in that section of the facility that had just had their lives snuffed out. He'd seen people killed before - and done his share of relieving people of their miserable lives after they had caused his employers harm or headaches. This massacre was killing with no honor at all - too much innocent death.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Sam stirred amid the detritus and slowly rolled over and groaned. His head was throbbing and the back of his neck and scalp stung as if it had been scoured. He pushed himself slowly up into a sitting position and put a hand back to ease the burning of his neck, then yelped softly as he pressed some of the glass shards and slivers from his shattered window just that much more into his flesh. He pulled back a hand covered in blood and stared at it for a moment before wiping it on his pant leg.
Then he very gingerly used his fingertips to touch his forehead where he had connected with the edge of the door and found a rather large and very painful lump there. He groaned again - even the delicate touch had made the throbbing more acute. He rolled onto all fours and crawled over to the door and used it to help himself pull himself erect, then swayed and staggered over to lean heavily into the doorjamb while he struggled to regain even a bit of his equilibrium.
He looked out into the corridor, and his eyes widened with surprise and shock. His little office in the sweeper's wing had been half-way between the very end of that long leg of Centre annex and the Tower. Of the corridor that led to the Tower, however, there was very little left much past three doors down. There was only fire and tumbled walls and brickwork - and sky where a ceiling had once protected the corridor from the elements.
And where the Tower had once stood: only more smoking rubble - lots of it.
Sam sagged against the only barely stable wall as his meager supply of energy to hold himself erect waned at the sight. Miss Parker - he'd left her in her new office on the Tower's top floor...
Oh God...
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Jarod's face was grim by the time he was steering Sydney's car up and into the psychiatrist's garage. Kevin had slowly withdrawn into silence, while Davy had sat in the back seat of the car with huge tears rolling down his face. Jarod had wanted several times to stop the car to get to his son and comfort him, but knew the press of time to get home to Sydney, to Miss Parker... Oh God...
He did take the time once the car was turned off, however, to be there as Davy climbed out of his seat and simply pull his son up into his arms. The little boy wrapped his arms around his father's neck tightly and whimpered as he leaned his head against Jarod's. Kevin didn't stop, but headed straight into the house looking for Sydney and Debbie with Jarod following still carrying Davy.
The trio found the two in the den, huddled together at one end of the couch staring at the television screen, upon which was playing out their worst possible nightmares. The newscasters had already had a chance to gather, and were standing a reciting facts and rumors in front of the demolished and still smoldering ruin of what was once the Centre Tower. Sydney had Debbie tightly in his arms while she sobbed softly, and he turned utterly devastated eyes on Jarod and found he had no words.
"Did you try..." Jarod started, only to have his words fade to a stop when Sydney nodded at him, his chestnut eyes filling and overflowing. "What about..." Sydney merely shook his head slowly and then closed his eyes and pulled in a gasping breath of grief and horror.
Davy glanced over his shoulder at the TV, then whimpered, "That's where Mommy and Uncle Broots work, isn't it?" and began to cry in earnest now. Jarod held his little boy just that much tighter as his own eyes filled and overflowed.
Kevin went over to the couch and sat down behind Debbie, unsure of just what to do in such a situation. He finally settled with putting one comforting hand on her shoulder, then another, and then leaning against her back like a blanket to protect her from the rain of tears falling from her grandfather's closed eyes.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Miss Parker was very glad she had chosen not to wear heels that day, but rather a pair of comfortable sandals - climbing this many stairs in stilettos would have been murder! The line of people climbing slowly in front of her had slowed, however, and soon came to a complete halt. She cupped her hand to her mouth and shouted up the stairs, "What's the hold-up?"
"End of the line," somebody yelled back down at her. "Everything's collapsed up here."
She patted Tyler's arm and let go of him. "Stay here for the time being. I'll be back," she promised him then stepped carefully forward between the pairs until she came to the head of the line and saw what they'd been talking about.
A heavy cement slab had fallen from above - from either SL-1 or the ground floor, she had lost count already - and completely blocked passage any further. This was, as the man had shouted down to her, the end of the line.
She turned and looked down the stairwell at the pairs of anxious and trusting eyes that were focused directly on her and felt the weight of authority at the Centre land squarely and heavily on her shoulders. These people were depending on her to see them to safety.
"OK, folks, we've hit a snag here. There's a slab up ahead that won't let us climb any higher. I want you all to just sit down where you're at - be sure to be kind and share the stair with your partner. They will be coming to rescue us presently, and they'll be digging to get to this stairwell. All we have to do is be patient and wait for them."
"How long?" a frightened voice trickled up from below.
She shrugged. "As long as it takes. It's not as if any of us have anywhere else to be at the moment, is it?" She sighed - she could feel the collective disappointment welling up at her. "Look, I know it isn't what we were expecting. But the air here is fresh and we have light. We're OK. All we have to do is wait it out."
She slowly descended the stairs down to where she'd left Tyler, very near the end of the line of pairs. "Look, I'm going to go back down and see if there are others who need to be guided into this stairwell. You stay here..."
"Uh... with all due respect, ma'am, I think I'd rather stay with you," Tyler shook his head firmly. "You may need some help along the way."
"There are a total of 26 sublevels, Tyler. This isn't a picnic I'm going to..."
"I understand, ma'am. I'm still with you, if you don't mind." The young man's dark eyes were determined. "It just ain't right for a lady to go into danger alone, ma'am."
Miss Parker found herself buoyed just a little bit by this display of loyalty and bravery. "OK, 'Tyler-ma'am', you come with me." She turned and aimed her larger voice back upwards. "I'm going back down to see if there are others who need a little direction, people. You are all going to be fine - just stay where you are."
"You be careful, Miss Parker," a female voice ricocheted down the stairwell, to the accompaniment of several grunts of agreement.
"I will. I'll be back before you miss me." She turned to Tyler. "Ready?"
"Yes, ma'am."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Five people sat at the dining table staring at each other without seeing much. Debbie was tucked securely beneath Kevin's arm, with her head on his shoulder. Her tears hadn't stopped flowing yet, and his entire attention was on her and his clumsy attempt to offer comfort. Davy had been carefully lifted onto his grandfather's lap and now clung to the older man's pajama top beneath the flannel robe with both hands, as if his life depended on it. Sydney's chin had dropped to rest on the top of his grandson's head, and he held the boy tightly to him. His tears had ceased and left in their wake an ache in his heart that wouldn't ease and a stitch in his side that caught agonizingly at every breath.
Jarod had taken himself off to the kitchen. He needed space from Davy for venting his own shock and grief in a way that wouldn't upset the boy anymore than he already was. He allowed himself to sob silently while he stood at the sink, staring out at the backyard landscaping dully. What was it she had said last night, during that moment of worrisome fretting, about the devil himself climbing up and raising Hell? He bit his lip. It wasn't fair! It was only last night, after all these years of pushing each other away one way or another, that they had... No!
He straightened and dashed the tears from his eyes. He turned on the faucet and splashed cold water on his face, then dried it on his shirt sleeves and then walked back into the dining room. "I'm going to go find them," he announced firmly, bringing all four other sets of eyes around to him instantly.
"Jarod..." Sydney began.
"I have to, Syd. We all need to know." He looked down at his son. "You take care of Davy for me while I'm gone, and I'll be back as soon as I can."
"You going to go bring Mommy home?" Davy asked hopefully in a very small voice, not noticing that his question brought a new tear to his grandfather's cheek above him.
"I'm going to find her, Davy - and if she's OK, I'll bring her home, I promise. Uncle Broots too, if I can," he swore, looking into Deb's grief-stricken face.
Kevin straightened. "I should go too..." he started, only to see the older Pretender put up a restraining hand.
"I need you more right here, taking care of our family, Kevin. Syd still needs medical attention, and Deb's in no condition to take care of him right now. I was a fireman several times, many years ago. I know what I'm doing. I trust you to take care of our family while I'm gone."
The younger Pretender would have begun complaining bitterly until he heard what Jarod had just said. 'Our family, Kevin'. He had been included. He looked up into the face of his older counterpart and nodded agreement, tightening his hold on Debbie.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Broots slowly regained consciousness, slowly became aware that he couldn't feel his legs. And when he tried to prop himself up on his elbows and roll over to get a look at what the problem was, the pain in his crushed pelvis of his slow movements became so agonizing that he simply dropped off the edge of blackness into unconsciousness again.
And the pool of blood where his shattered leg bones had sliced through his flesh grew steadily wider.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Even though he towered over the fireman who had found him, Sam was grateful for the set of shoulders upon which he leaned so heavily as he walked through a landscape composed in Hell towards a waiting ambulance. There were other walking wounded slowly beginning to trickle out of the severed annex wings, some merely in shock, and some - like him - victims of shattering windows and the percussive force of the blast itself.
The fireman finally seated his husky rescuee on the edge of a collapsible ambulance gurney, then patted the man on the shoulder comfortingly before setting off once more into that scene from Dante's Inferno in search of more survivors needing assistance. Sam looked up into the man's face gratefully, then found himself staring out across piles of rubble and steel, some of it still smoking.
Somewhere under all that was Miss Parker. His boss. His friend.
He didn't care anymore if touching that horrible lump on his forehead made him ache worse. He didn't care that the ambulance attendants were trying to get him to lay down so they could transport him to the hospital.
He put his head in his hands and, for the first time since he was a small child, wept.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Tyler stood next to Miss Parker and watched another sublevel's worth of staff file two by two out the door and begin the long trudge toward the top of the stairwell to join the others. By now the young morgue attendant was not only no longer intimidated by his boss, but thoroughly impressed with her ability to coax calm and cooperation out of people who, when they were found, were near panic. She was using every trick in the book to get through to her people - humor, cajoling, firmness - and it was WORKING. He could see the change come over the collected faces like a changing tide - fear and intimidation at the sound of the Parker name became admiration and willingness at the sight and sound of Miss Parker down in the trenches right along with them. From a confused mass of individuals slowly came an organized team focused on a single goal.
For all the time he'd worked for the Centre, there had been an Us VS Them mentality between The Powers That Be in the Tower and the regular working stiffs down in the trenches and labs and offices. By the time Miss Parker got finished working a sublevel staff and had them ready to start up the stairs, however, there was only an Us - with her firmly and confidently leading the pack.
"Ready, Tyler?" she asked him as the last few turned up the stairs and left them standing in the doorway of an empty sublevel.
"Yes, ma'am," he answered quickly and led the way in the other direction, down toward the next sublevel.
"Tell me something?"
He glanced over his shoulder and up at her. "Sure."
"Why morgue assistant?" She gifted him with a smile. "Why not medical technician - or sweeper?"
Tyler shrugged. "I didn't have what it took to get into the sweeper corps, and my medical training wasn't complete enough to get a tech job. They had an opening in the morgue - I needed the job."
"Hold it," she ordered him and then leaned against the stairwell wall bathed blood-red with the emergency lights. "What do you mean you didn't have what it took?"
"I have a punctured eardrum, ma'am," the young man answered her, resting his backside against the metal railing opposite her. "I couldn't take the firearms practice without ending up with a migraine." He grinned. "Having a black belt in karate didn't seem to earn me any brownie points either - too many sweepers already have 'em to be very impressed."
Miss Parker's eyebrows soared halfway up her brow. "Do you like your job?" she asked, now completely curious.
Again the young attendant shrugged. "I guess... It's quiet down there in the morgue - not a whole lot of folk want to come down and bug me. I wouldn't mind something a little more challenging, but until it comes along, I'm not complaining." He looked over at her evenly. "Ready?"
"Lead on," she waved at him and waited for him to get two steps ahead of her before she started moving again. If she ever got out of this hole, she'd make sure her impromptu assistant had 'something a little more challenging' offered him. Oh yeah...
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Jarod attached to his shirt lapel the California Division of Forestry ID that he'd quickly created on his laptop and laminated before leaving Blue Cove and then climbed out of the car, unable to stop staring around him at the devastation. The TV broadcast hadn't done the scene justice - the rubble that had once been the proud Tower was widespread, and what the TV hadn't shown was the amount of collateral damage done to the outlying wings. His eyes searched out a Dover fire truck and hurried over to it and it's captain.
"My name's Jarod Russell, CDF," he announced with little fanfare. "I was on leave visiting some family here in Blue Cove, and I thought I'd come out and see if you could use my help..."
"Grab yourself some gear, son - you bet your ass we could use the help!" the captain turned a smoke-stained face his way. "Right now, most of what we're doing is search and rescue. Gear's that way," the man pointed at the temporary command post a short distance away, "and then do what you can. I'm Captain Jerry Talmann, and you can consider yourself attached to my company for the time being. We're engine 36, DFD."
"Thanks, Cap," Jarod shook the fire captain's hand and hurried over to the command post, where with but a few words he was able to acquire coat, hat, pants, boots, oxygen and a pickaxe. Now suitably garbed for the task at hand, he set out toward the smoldering pile at a trot.
In his mind, he reviewed the blueprints of the Tower structure he had studied while trying to figure a way for Angelo's escape. But while he would have loved to have started climbing the debris pile and heading for the area where anything from the Chairman's office might have fallen, he found his help needed far more desperately by the walking wounded still trickling out of the ruins of the annexes. More than once he found himself glad for both his beard and the oxygen mask when he would slide under the arm of yet another injured sweeper that he could remember from his days as an inmate. He made no effort to avoid them, however, and helped one after another limp into the triage station near the edge of the debris field.
Once, after calling for a stretcher to bring in a collapsing sweeper bleeding profusely from a deep cut on his forehead and neck, the Pretender took the time to wander through the cots of injured still on-site awaiting transport to area hospitals. There were a few women mixed in with the men - but none of them the one he was most looking for, and few of the men were other than sweepers.
He felt his heart lurch into the pit of his stomach - he'd foolishly let his hopes rise that maybe she'd been somewhere else in the complex and not buried beneath the smoldering and still hot tons of cement and steel. He knew better. He readjusted his oxygen mask and set off once more towards the remains of the Tower.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Kevin had never felt before so much like he was sitting, quietly, waiting for the hammer of doom to fall on him and everyone he had come to care for. Once Debbie had reached the end of her tears and trembling, she had been glad to help him turn the couch in the den into a day-bed for Sydney and settle the older man back down again. The telephone handset had been placed within easy reach for him, but the TV had been turned off. By mutual agreement, all of them had decided that watching the horror that was where the rest of their little non-traditional family was would be too taxing emotionally.
He was worried about Sydney. The psychiatrist's color had gone from merely pale to almost transparent after Jarod had left, and he'd been obviously having trouble with his breathing. His worry had gotten to the point that he'd offered the man an additional dose of pain medication, only to have the offer refused on the grounds that Sydney felt he needed his mind working and not functioning in a medicated fog. He had not fought the day-bed idea at all, however, which told Kevin volumes about just how poorly the man WAS feeling.
Davy had claimed what little space could be found at the edge of his grandfather's couch-bed and stretched out in it, still clinging desperately to Sydney's pajama shirt and unwilling to let himself be removed without loud complaint. Sydney had finally just waved the young adults away and cradled his grandson into his good side - and eventually both had dropped off into a restless sleep. Debbie covered them both with an old-fashioned knit afghan and then motioned to Kevin to join her in the kitchen so that the others could sleep away the time before any news would be coming their way.
"Are you OK?" the young Pretender asked the girl who couldn't seem to sit still, but was up and pacing the floor in front of the sink.
She looked at him and shook her head. "I'm worried about my Dad and Miss Parker. I don't want to think about what I'd do if..."
"Jarod will find them, if anybody can," Kevin reassured her quickly. "Vernon used to throw Jarod's successes at me every chance he got - I don't know whether it was just to make me feel bad because I never was as good as he was, or in order to try to motivate me to BECOME as good at it as he was."
Debbie stared at him sadly, and somehow found another tear deep within that suddenly needed to make a track down her pale cheek. "It's a big 'if', Kevin. Both Miss Parker's and my dad's offices were in the Tower - second floor. That means that if they were there, they fell, and then had the rest of everything fall in on top of them..." She started to shake again.
"What about Sam? Doesn't he work there too?" Kevin blurted out the question as it hit his mind.
Debbie whimpered and wrapped one arm tightly around herself while the other carried her hand up to cover her mouth as a sob shook her. Kevin could stand to watch her suffer no more, so rose and came over to her and wrapped his arms around her and pulled her tightly to him. "I'm sorry - I shouldn't have..."
"No," she shook her head against his shoulder, "Sam's part of 'us' too. But his office was in one of the wings, if I remember. He may be OK."
"Wouldn't he have called? Why wouldn't he have called?" he demanded, confused.
"Oh, I don't know, Kevin - maybe his phone got ruined. Maybe he's so busy right now trying to find Dad and Miss Parker that he doesn't have time to call." As she spoke, her voice was rising and getting more and more stressed.
"Shhhhhhh..." Kevin soothed, rubbing his hands on her back as she leaned against him. "I just wish I could be out there doing something - I feel so helpless."
"Me too." Her voice had diminished to a muted squeak. "What am I going to do, Kevin? What am I going to do?"
Kevin closed his eyes and just held on tight. He had no answers for her; so that was the best he could offer.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Sam suffered the emergency room doctor to peer into his left eye beneath the lump on his forehead with a painfully bright light, then blinked madly to get the after-images to fade a bit. "Will I live, Doc?" he asked impatiently. "I need to get back..."
"Not so fast there," the doctor said, putting a hand down on the big man's chest and keeping him from rising from the examination table. "You have one helluva goose-egg on your noggin, and I don't like what I see with your left eye. I think you're going to be a guest of my fine hospitality for the time being - at least until we get a better idea what's going on here."
Sam glared at the man. He'd been here for over an hour already. He'd lain very still while nurses had patiently pulled glass shards and splinters from the back of his head, from the back of his neck and from those places where they'd sliced straight through his suit and shirt to the skin of his back. He'd held still while the worst of those little wounds had received their stitches. But his patience was rapidly coming to an end. "Look, Doc, I have friends - family - at the Centre. I gotta get back..."
The doctor simply shook his head at him. "Uh-unh. You have a slight concussion from the blow to your head, and the last thing you need to be doing right now is exerting yourself. I hear tell there's been a call put out to all regional emergency crews to donate personnel to help with the search and rescue, so there's not going to be a lack of able hands to help out there. You stay put, young man - you won't do your friends or family any good by passing out and having to be brought back here."
"Then I need to get to a phone..."
"In due time," the aging doctor shook his head again. "Right now you're headed off to X-ray. Once we get you settled in a room, THEN you can have your phone."
"But that will take forever!" the sweeper shouted, then groaned as his head swam and his stomach turned over sickeningly and he sank back into the discomfort of his glass shrapnel wounds pressed necessarily against the mattress of the exam table. "My family will worry..."
"Not," the doctor watched him patiently, obviously used to working with surly and uncooperative patients enough in his life. "When we took your name for the admitting forms, your name was added to the list of known survivors. If anybody calls for you, the emergency clearing center will let them know where you are and your current condition. So RELAX!" the doctor patted Sam on the shoulder in a gesture that was meant well but certainly didn't sit well.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Randy watched in silent frustration as his temporary roommate obviously was making motions of packing up. Finally the younger man could stand the non-communication of his associate no longer. "Where are you going?"
"Home," Ikeda answered in a monotone. His job was done - and all he wanted to do was relax in a place where people spoke a civilized tongue and understood things like honor and face.
"Home," Randy repeated the word. "So that's it? You stay two nights, then pack up?"
Ikeda's eyes flicked dangerously in the younger man's direction. "That's right," he replied tersely, seeing no need to either explain or justify his actions.
Randy sensed that he was treading on thin ice with the assassin and backed down a bit - but considering what Ikeda had told him earlier, he felt he needed to know more. "You know I can't reach Tanaka-sama? Not even Fujimori-san..." He felt Ikeda's eyes upon him, and looked up defiantly. "Well, if there's no Centre for me to go back to work at, like you said, then what the hell am I supposed to do now? Sit here in a damned motel with my thumb up my ass waiting for someone to notice that I'm stuck here?"
"You can't reach Tanaka-sama?" Ikeda's voice was calm, but he felt a chill run down his spine. Tanaka-sama had called him the last time from Dover - he was HERE for some reason. If he'd been in the Centre when... No! He didn't want to consider that. "Have you tried both numbers?"
"Several times. The Tokyo exchange just keeps telling me to try the cell - and the cell just tells me he's either 'out of the service area' or has his phone turned off." Randy glared at Ikeda. "Since when does a Yakuza out of country leave his cell turned off?"
"Pack your bags, Obayashi-san. I have a feeling deep in my gut that we want to be out of here and on our way back to Tokyo soon."
"You didn't..." Randy stumbled at voicing the question that had haunted him since he'd given up trying to sleep with all the emergency vehicle traffic and turned on the TV to see what the hell was going on. "You weren't..."
"I had nothing to do with it, I swear on my ancestors and on my oath as Yakuza," Ikeda stated fervently. His young associate had probably lost acquaintances, if not friends, in that blast. "I was close enough to see it happen, but I had no part in causing it."
Randy bent over and dragged his large suitcase out from under his narrow bed. "Just making sure, Ikeda-san," he said and stood to walk over to his dresser. Technically, Ikeda WAS his superior - so Ikeda's telling him to pack his bags was technically an order.
And it was an order he was more than happy to comply with. At last - he was going home!
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Jarod accepted a small bottle of water from the relief station and then went in search of Captain Talmann. He had been simming the situation for the entire time he'd been working to help first one victim and then another to medical attention, and only one detail had occurred to him that the officials here might have missed. "Hey Cap!" he yelled from a short distance, then trotted across the torn-up lawn to the fireman. "Has anybody checked to see if there are survivors from the underground levels?"
Talmann stared at the soot-covered volunteer. "What do you mean, UNDERGROUND levels?"
Jarod stared back. "You mean, you didn't know? There are twenty-some-odd levels to this place UNDERground. Has anybody checked to see if there are survivors down there?"
"How do you know this?" Talmann demanded, his face grim and disbelieving.
"I told you, I was visiting family here. My... father... worked on one of those underground levels - and the only reason he's not down there right now is because he caught the 'flu." Jarod figured he might as well continue the misdirection about Sydney's condition - much fewer complications that way.
"Oh shit." Talmann grabbed up his walkie-talkie. "This is Talmann, Engine company 36. We just got reliable information that there is an underground complex here. We're going to need people to start looking for access to a stairwell or elevator shaft."
"What?!" the voice on the other end of the walkie-talkie link demanded harshly. "Are you SURE?!"
"I've got a fella here who says his dad worked UNDERground here." Talmann could see that his California volunteer was looking very upset and ready to jump out of his skin. "How many levels underground did you say?"
"At least twenty-five or six," Jarod answered with a frown of worry.
"Damn!" The walkie-talkie clicked off, and then the same voice came over the bullhorn from the command center: "All rescue personnel not currently involved in triage assemble on the north-east corner of the debris field. We're looking for an elevator shaft, or a stairwell, going DOWN. We may have more survivors who are trapped."
Jarod quickly drained half of his little bottle of water, then dumped the rest of it over his head to cool his face a bit before putting his hat and oxygen mask back in place. Then he trotted out to join the swarming group of rescuers that was forming at the corner of what had been the Tower. Now all he had to do is 'accidentally' uncover the access to the stairwell that he knew existed not far from where they were standing.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Davy slowly crawled out from under the afghan and his grandfather's arm and got to his feet. He was thirsty, hungry, and just couldn't stay still any longer. He looked over at the recliner in which Debbie had eventually curled up and dozed off, then walked into the kitchen. Kevin was patiently making sandwiches and had a pan with some condensed soup slowly heating for an early light supper.
"Has my Dad called yet?" the boy asked the young man.
Kevin shook his head. "Nobody's called, Davy," he answered softly, not wanting the voices to carry far enough to awaken the sleepers in the next room. "Not yet."
"Is Debbie OK? She doesn't normally sleep in the daytime..."
"I told her to rest. She's worn herself out being so upset," the younger Pretender told him. "I don't know how any of you are keeping from going crazy."
Davy's dark eyes watched the young man's movements with the sandwich makings. "Mommy told me once that getting all crazy and upset didn't do anything except get you tired. She said..." The boy's eyes narrowed and he spoke slowly as he struggled to properly remember the axiom she had told him in the past. "'If you worry about something that never happens, you waste energy, and if you worry about something you cannot change, you only make yourself sick. So it isn't wise to worry - it's better to just accept life as it comes and deal with it accordingly.'" Davy looked back up into Kevin's thoughtful face - the young man having turned in surprise to hear such words coming from one so young and not a Pretender. "She told me once that it is simple to say, really HARD to do."
"Your mother learned that while she was in the university in Japan," Sydney's voice spoke from the kitchen door, where he was leaning. He shuffled into the kitchen and took a seat at the table near Davy, putting the telephone handset that he couldn't bring himself to leave very far behind within easy reach in the middle of the table. "She had a very interesting course of study," he added for Kevin's benefit. "She was being groomed to take over the Centre, after all."
"You should be laying down," Kevin tsked at Sydney over his shoulder. "You were SUPPOSED to get two days' worth of complete bed-rest, remember?"
"I know," Sydney sighed and then grimaced at the ache such an act inspired. "I needed to use the bathroom, then heard voices out here." The psychiatrist waved a hand half-heartedly and dismissed his own condition from his mind and then turned an assessing glance on Kevin. "How are you holding up?"
Kevin trained his eyes on his hands carefully, the question catching him by surprise. "I'm... OK... I guess..."
Sydney glanced over at his grandson. "Davy, would you mind very much if I talked to Kevin alone for a bit? You can go play your video game with the headphones on, if you need something to do..."
Davy took one look at Kevin's face and nodded, gave his grandfather a peck on the cheek and walked steadily back into the den.
"Talk to me, Kevin."
"I..." The young Pretender glanced over his shoulder at the man who had opened his home to him and looked away again, embarrassed. "You have enough to think about..."
"Kevin, talk to me." Sydney's voice was firm despite being underscored with pain. "What's going on?"
"I'm wondering if I really want to be out here - free - anymore." The young Pretender's voice shimmered with confusion and distress. "I see you hurting because Miss Parker... and Debbie because of her Dad... It hurts me to watch you hurt..."
"Come sit with me for a bit," Sydney invited, pushing the chair that Davy had been in out a little more. "This is important. The sandwiches can wait." Kevin sighed deeply and put the spatula down obediently. He walked over and sat down in Davy's chair without looking at Sydney directly. "Look at me," the psychiatrist told him firmly, and eventually the young man complied.
"The hurt you feel is the same hurt I feel and Deb feels - you've started to care. And when you begin to care for someone - to accept that person as a part of your life - it makes you vulnerable to that person and the things that touch THEIR life. This is one thing that your life as a Pretender, at least the way Vernon shaped your life, had no way of preparing you for."
"It's hard," Kevin nodded.
"What you're experiencing, though," the older man explained gently, "is the most difficult part of that equation, Kevin. You haven't been out long enough to have the feeling of exultation that comes when that feeling of caring begins to sing - or, maybe," he said with a knowing glance at the door that led into the den, "you've had only the faintest glimpse of what that could be like. I know that I'm asking you to trust me a great deal here, but don't pull back just because it hurts to care. When the hurting finally stops, and you get a chance to be with those you care about in a GOOD way, you'll find out why we all prefer life this way."
Kevin's blue eyes probed Sydney's tired and pained chestnut gaze. "When will that happen, Sydney?"
"Nothing lasts forever, Kevin - not the good times, and not the bad ones. Even your life locked away from the world came to an end eventually. This is a hard time we're all passing through right now, but it WILL end eventually." Sydney smiled ruefully and lifted a greyed lock from the side of his head. "These grey hairs should tell you that I've seen my share of pendulum swings between good and bad, hurt and joy."
"That doesn't answer my question," Kevin grumbled, folding his hands on the table and staring at them.
"It will happen when it happens, and not one moment before," Sydney responded quietly. "And because there is no way to know when or how, the advice Miss Parker gave Davy about worrying is very apropos. This is what takes philosophy from the realm of the intellectual and makes it practical."
"I want to help," Kevin sighed in vehement frustration eventually, after he'd thought through everything Sydney had told him. "I want to be a part of making the hurting stop."
"You already are," the psychiatrist said and reached out to pat the young man's arm as it lay on the table. "You've helped Debbie keep from climbing out of her skin, you've got a meal nearly prepared for whenever any of us gets hungry. You heard Jarod, you're taking care of your family while he's doing what he needs to." He patted the arm again reassuringly. "That's a lot."
"My family?" Kevin turned a hesitant gaze on the older man. "Am I a part of this family now - really? Just like that?"
Sydney's lips twitched in the beginnings of a smile. "One of the things that Jarod taught me during the first years he was free was that the bond of family have more to do with the heart than they do with blood ties." He gripped the arm that lay beneath his hand with gentle pressure. "What does your heart tell you?"
Kevin's blue eyes were studying Sydney's face closely when the telephone in the middle of the table began ringing abruptly. Sydney's hand flew out and snagged the receiver immediately before a second ring could sound, punched the Talk button and put the device to his ear. "This is Sydney."
Then his face broke into a weary smile. "Sam!"
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Sam could hear the raw relief in the older man's voice on the phone. "I'm stuck here in the hospital in Dover, Doc. The sawbones here wants me overnight to make sure I don't end up with complications from the concussion or something..." He leaned back into his pillow carefully - any pressure on the raw meat that was the back of his neck and shoulders was definitely uncomfortable.
"Sam..." Sydney's voice got soft and unsure, and the sweeper swallowed hard. Here it came - the question he knew he had to answer, but didn't want to think about, stuck here. "Do you know..."
"I left Miss Parker about an hour before," Sam recounted slowly and sadly, "in her new office in the... Tower. I had a couple of errands to run before I went down to clean out my old office. I was there, in my old office, when the... when things..."
"So you don't know for sure..." Sydney's voice had an agonized hitch to it. Sam found himself hoping Jarod or Kevin were nearby, because the old man didn't sound too good.
He shook his head. "I do know that she got a visit from Ngawe about noon, and found out that Raines had been shot while being removed from the Centre. She said that she was going to go down and check out the body just to make sure the ghoul had finally stopped breathing air for real." The sweeper paused. "Now whether she had gone down right away or waited a bit, and so was down THERE when things..." Sam shook his head again. "God, Syd, I just don't know..."
"But there's a chance she wasn't even in the Tower?" There was the vaguest hint of hope now in the old man's voice.
"It's possible," Sam shook his head and shrugged. "Stranger things have been known to happen..."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
They heard it at the same time - a low rumble and a crash. Tyler and Miss Parker looked at each other in consternation in the red light. The obvious consequence of having something catastrophic happen in the building above would be that the weight of that building would have been shifted from points of strength designed into the subterranean complex. And when that weight shifted and landed on points never meant to sustain it, eventually things would begin to give and collapse.
"Shit!" Miss Parker hissed, looking over the rail and up the stairwell shaft in concern. "How far down have we come?"
"We're down about ten or eleven levels now, ma'am," Tyler responded tiredly. His admiration for her strength of will and ability at handling her staff was now compounded by a flat-out awe of her stamina. They had been hours, now, climbing steadily deeper into the hole that was the Centre, and she hadn't flagged, hadn't stumbled. Over a hundred people had been herded up the stairs already.
"Damn! Not even half-way down yet."
"We'll make it, ma'am," Tyler offered encouragement quickly. This entire exercise would come to a screeching halt if she began to lose faith in her ability to succeed - if she began to be overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task she'd set herself. "We've made it this far without a single one of those. Maybe they built this place better than they thought they did?"
"Yeah, maybe..." Now she looked down over the railing at the very long way to the bottom of the stairwell shaft, backing away when it began to make her dizzy.
He didn't like that look of flagging confidence - not one bit. "You know, I really didn't know what to think of you when you came through the morgue doors - pretty lady like you from the pinnacle of power descending to my little wharf on the River Styx. But I have to hand it to you," he stated firmly and with complete faith, "you've got stainless steel ones, Miss Parker. You're probably the first person who's ever DESERVED to run this place. If any of us get out of this alive, it will be because you're in charge and did the right thing and didn't quit on us."
She turned and looked at him with an eyebrow cocked. "Are you buttering me up, 'Tyler-ma'am'?" she asked, revisiting her favorite name for her emergency assistant.
"No, ma'am. Just telling you what I see." The Southern morgue assistant met her cocked eyebrow with complete equanimity. "Don't let the size of the job you're doing keep you from just keeping plugging away at it."
"God but you were completely wasted down there in that morgue, Tyler," she said with a shake of the head as she finally let his words lift her spirits again. "WHEN - not if, but when - we get out of here, I think I have 'something a little more challenging' for you to do than catalogue stiffs in a subterranean hermitage."
"Then with all due respect, ma'am, may I suggest we get ourselves moving again? There's folks below us that need help." He nodded his head in the direction of the stairs leading further downward.
"God, you sound just like Jarod sometimes!"
"Is that a good thing or a bad thing, ma'am?"
Her eyes grew distant for a moment. "There was a long time I wasn't sure - but I know now it was a good thing. A very good thing." She smiled at him. "Yes, I think I can come up with something very interesting to lure you out of your little hidey-hole when this is all over."
"Yes, ma'am!" he grinned back at her. "After you?"
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Broots swam back to consciousness as if against a strong current pushing him ever backwards into the blackness. He moved his fingers and his hands, then his arms, slowly determined to find out how badly he was hurt. Everything seemed hale and sound until his hand wandered down his side to his waist and encountered the cold and ungiving edge of the file cabinet.
He shivered. He'd never known the sublevels to be this cold before - maybe it was having been laid out on the floor for so long. His head was feeling a little light too.
"Help me!" he called as loudly as he could, and became concerned when the only size of voice he could muster was pitifully small. And he didn't have the energy to continue calling often.
He'd have to conserve his energy, pray he didn't fall unconscious again and miss his chance to catch somebody's attention. Surely they'd miss him and come looking for him.
Wouldn't they?
Feedback, please: mbumpus_99@hotmail.com
by MMB
Sam looked around his office with a critical eye. Not that he'd ever kept very much of any personal nature in this tiny cubicle over here on this far end of the sweeper's wing, but he was determined to make sure he left nothing behind. His small cardboard box on the desk had what few personal items had migrated from home that he could find piled on top of the few file folders with information that he felt would come in handy as he assumed his position as head of SIS.
Contented that he had it all, he picked up the box from his desk and had just turned his back to leave the small room when a rolling underfoot nearly rocked him off his feet.
Then the force of the nearby explosion pushed violently through the glass of his window and threw him towards the far wall and the door, cut and bleeding from the many flying shards of glass. He connected hard with the edge of the door and fell, unconscious, box flying and scattering picture frames and paperwork like so much confetti around the ruined office.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Miss Parker could hear the morgue attendant rolling the table with Raines' body laid out on it back toward the wall where it had been stowed out of the way awaiting the cremation oven's reaching its peak temperature. The sound brought the gooseflesh up on the back of her neck, but she walked with some sense of relief toward the elevator and pushed the button.
The elevator door had just swooshed open when the ground seemed to rock beneath her feet, and then she was thrown to the floor as the lights above blinked once and then out. In the pitch darkness she heard the sound of agonized metal shriek, then drop away. As the red light of the sublevel's emergency generator kicked in, she gave a small squeak of alarm and rolled way from the elevator threshold only inches away from her, at which there was no longer an elevator car waiting. Far below, she heard the sickening sound of the car crash into the bottom of the shaft.
She scooted backwards on her backside until she felt safely distanced from the gaping hole that was once an elevator, back through the swinging doors of the morgue itself, then shakily got to her feet.
What the hell had just happened?
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Ngawe turned from having leveled a withering glare at Tanaka and lifted a finger to one of his associates. "Contact Miss Parker, immediately!"
"Yes, sir!" the bodyguard replied, stepped to a side table that had a telephone on it, and picked up the receiver. "Let me speak to Miss Parker. Mr. Ngawe needs to speak to her immediately. This is an emergency." The man listened, then hung up the phone. "Miss Parker is out of her office at the moment, sir."
"Damn!" Ngawe spat, then turned on Tanaka. "Whatever possessed you to try such a..."
At that moment, below them, they heard a loud blast. They looked at each other, realizing that their time had run out.
Fujimori only had time to utter "Namandabu..." once, determined to face this moment in the right way.
Then everything fell.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Broots had Sydney's briefcase opened on the psychiatrist's desk, and was slowly filling it with the files that he had requested. It had finally occurred to the computer technician that, with Sydney taking over the mentoring of Kevin in a manner of speaking, having his notes regarding Jarod's reactions and the methods he'd used over time would be an excellent resource to have at hand. No longer questioning the older man's motives, he had sorted through the heavy and well-used file cabinet and marveled at the amount of research that his old friend had conducted on top of the decades of work on the Pretender Project and Jarod.
The balding man was just reaching into the cabinet for another file when the lights overhead blinked twice then went out - and then the floor beneath his feet bucked as if alive. The file cabinet, with its top drawer pulled all the way out, was overbalanced.
When Broots fell, it fell on top of him and landed heavily. In the red lights from the sublevel emergency generator, the blood that began to slowly trickle looked black and oily .
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Ikeda couldn't believe his eyes. One moment he was watching his target drop in his tracks from a single, killing shot, then next he was knocked on his butt from the force of the blast at the Centre. The assassin sat up dazedly and stared out through the brambles at the huge fireball that was still rising to the skies like a fiery moat around the Centre Tower. Then he gaped in awe and shock as the Tower seemed to ripple in upon itself and crumble like a pile of building blocks.
With shaking hands, Ikeda dragged himself to his feet and set off through the brush, retracing his steps to where he had left his briefcase when he'd begun his hunting. He wanted to leave no trace of his activities other than the body of his victim. And he wanted to get the Hell out of there NOW, before the rescue personnel and law enforcement people descended on the area like locusts.
And he knew he had very little time to do that.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Debbie finished clearing the kitchen of her lunch mess and covering Sydney's tray for later, and then wiped her hands on the hand towel. He had demonstrated an interesting mixture of cantankerous and apologetic when she'd caught him sitting at the base of the stairs in his bathrobe talking to her father, but had let her assist him back up the stairs and back into bed without too much grumbling. She'd promised not to tell Jarod or Kevin about his jaunt only after he'd promised her that he'd stay put and not exert himself again that day, and then had given him his pain medication. Sydney took his pills without complaint, and then settled back to wait for her to bring lunch. By the time she had the tray prepared and had come up the stairs with it, however, he was once more dozing - and she'd simply turned around without waking him.
Now she climbed the stairs quietly, just in case he was still asleep. She was just setting her foot on the top stair when the quiet of the early summer afternoon was shattered by the sound of a huge explosion that rattled the windows of the house violently. She cowered on that top step until she heard Sydney bellow, "DEBBIE!!!" and then she ran to his room. He was sitting bolt upright in bed, hair mussed from sleep, but his expression of near panic abated somewhat when he saw her fly through the door.
"What was THAT?!" she asked in a tiny voice, suddenly very glad that she had him to stay with today.
"Go to the window and tell me what you see," the older man directed anxiously, and the young woman hurried to do as he asked.
She looked up and down the sleepy street - nothing looked out of place or disturbed. But then she turned and saw it. "Grandpa! My God! I think that came from the Centre! There's a lot of black smoke..."
Sydney thrust aside his covers and very carefully and slowly climbed from bed and came over to peer out the window with her. Without looking down at her, and in a chilled and emotionless voice, he told her, "Go get me the phone from the nightstand, Deb." When she brought him the handset, he dialed one number and waited for an answer, then hung up and dialed another number and waited. His heart beginning to pound in his throat, he dialed a third number and again waited.
"What is it, Grandpa?" Deb asked, picking up on his anguish as he hung up yet again and dialed a fourth number. He held up a finger telling her to wait a moment.
"Jarod? This is Sydney. Come home NOW. Something's happened at the Centre." He heard the man on the other end disconnect abruptly, and then he leaned heavily against the window sill. He felt ill, but for the sake of his granddaughter didn't dare give any indication of the fears that he was facing. If he was right, she'd be as upset as he was soon enough.
"Grandpa?" Debbie moved closer to him, seeing his face get two shades paler.
He looked down at her with eyes that couldn't hide his fears, and then he opened his arms to her and let her lean on him even as he continued to lean on the windowsill to keep from falling down. He didn't have much comfort to give, but what he did have, she was welcome to - and frankly, right now, she was comforting him as much as he was her.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Jarod snapping his cell phone closed caught Davy's attention, and the boy's eager smile of anticipation faded slightly at his father's expression of worry. "Daddy?"
The older Pretender rose from his seat, where he'd been waiting for Kevin to finish trying on the clothing he'd selected, and went towards the dressing room. "Kevin. We have to go. NOW."
The young man's sandy hair and blue eyes suddenly popped up over the top of one of the little stall doors. "What's wrong?" he asked, chilled by the expression in his friend's face.
"I just got a call from Sydney," Jarod stated expressionlessly. "Something's happened and we need to head home immediately."
Kevin's head disappeared from the top of the stall door, and then within moments Kevin was emerging, slithering into his pull-on shoes - still Centre-issue - and zipping his olive-drab trousers up. All of the clothing he'd been trying on was as it had been when Jarod had interrupted him - hanging from hangers. He was walking away from it all.
"Wait a minute," Jarod halted him. "Take what you know will fit, Kevin. You do need the clothes, and we can check out quickly and be on the road in no time. A couple of minutes isn't going to change anything."
"Did the bad men come and hurt Mommy again?" Davy asked in a small voice, his hand seeking out and finding his father's and hanging on tightly.
"I don't know, son," Jarod answered truthfully as Kevin sorted quickly through the hangers, taking some and leaving behind others.
"I'm ready," he announced and led the way to the checkout clerk. Suddenly, the adventure of buying himself something other than olive-drab to wear had lost its appeal. He wanted to get home too - to Sydney, and to Debbie. They WERE his home now, his family - anything that touched them threatened him.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"Are you OK, ma'am?" the morgue attendant came over to Miss Parker and peered into her face carefully.
"Just peachy," she replied with a brittle snap to her voice. Here she was, down on sub-level 8, with no elevator to get her back up to where she needed to be. "Where's your phone?"
"Over there, on the wall," the man pointed.
"What's your name?" she asked as she walked slightly unsteadily across the room. She shuddered as she walked past where Raines' body lay on its table and noticed that the shock wave had disturbed the corpse. One arm was now hanging down with a hand visible below the edge of the plastic sheet. She turned impatiently when she didn't get an immediate response. "What's your name?" she demanded a little more loudly.
"Tyler, ma'am," the attendant managed finally.
She picked up the receiver from the wall phone unit and listened to the sound of silence, then crashed the receiver back into the wall unit with a hissed oath. "Well, 'Tyler-ma'am'," she imitated his thick, Southern accent, "I need to find a way out of this hole - and you might as well come with me, since there's very little you need to do for any of your 'clients' here that's truly important."
"I... I... really should stay on the job..." Tyler stammered. "I don't want to lose my job..."
Miss Parker stood for a moment with her head thrown back, then looked back down at the young man. "Do you know who I am?" she asked him quietly.
"N..no," he admitted. "I was just told that someone was coming down to see the body there - not WHO was coming."
She shook her head. "I guess the Centre grapevine has its gaps. I'm your boss, Tyler - I run this place now. So when I tell you that you don't need to stay here with a bunch of dead bodies, I'm telling you that you can come with me and be reasonable assured that you'll have a job to come back to tomorrow - or the next day, depending on when we get the Hell out of here." She put her hand on her hip. "So... Are you with me now?"
"You're the Chairma... Chairwo... uh..." The young man stared.
Miss Parker drew her fingers through her hair and pulled it back from her face. "That's right. Coming?" She decided that she didn't have either the time or patience to worry about whether he believed her or not - she needed to get to someplace where she could find out what the hell had happened.
She moved out into a corridor that was slowly filling with personnel from other labs and offices on the sublevel. Most looked dazed and confused, a few looked as if they'd been bounced around fairly well - much as she had been. And there were those who had the beginnings of a look of panic about them - and Miss Parker was well-aware that in situations such as these, panic could kill. Making use of a childhood skill she hadn't practiced in decades, she slipped her thumb and middle finger into her lips and issued a sharp and piercing whistle that caught everybody's attention, then raised her hands into the air to give herself visibility.
"OK. Listen up, people. The elevator's out, so we're going to have to climb out of here. How many injured do we have?"
"Who the Hell are YOU?" a half-angry, half-terrified voice came from the distance.
"My name is Miss Parker, and I am the Chairman of the Centre as of today..." she began.
"Helluva way to start a new job, lady..." came a rejoinder that had several people chuckling - including Miss Parker herself.
"You got THAT right," she fired right back, earning her own chuckle from several. "But of course, that also means that all of you have your asses on the line if you screw up working directly for the boss, right?" And that comment earned her several groans. "OK. Now that we have our pecking order established, do we know if this is everybody from this level? Is anybody hurt?"
There was a hum of discussion, then another voice spoke from the middle of the group: "I think the worst is bumps and bruises."
"Anybody who can't walk or who will have problems with stairs?" she persisted.
The hum returned, much more short-lived than before. "I think we're all fit, ma'am."
She nodded in an exaggerated movement. "Now THERE'S a man who understands authority," she quipped, and once more had her people chuckling softly. "Alright. This is what I want you to do. The emergency stair well is a the end of that corridor," she pointed to her left. "I want each of you to pair off and we'll go up those stairs by twos. The people down on that end of things can go ahead and start now. Don't run! There's no need to have or cause accidents. Understand?"
There was a general hum of "yes, ma'am's" and "got it's".
"OK. Let's do it, folks." Miss Parker turned and found Tyler standing behind her, his eyes wide. "Looks like you get to be MY buddy for the time being, 'Tyler-ma'am'." She continued to imitate his Southern accent when pronouncing his name.
The young man's eyes just got wider, and she had to struggle not to laugh at the hesitant way in which he accepted his role at her side. She smiled encouragingly at him instead, and tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow. "Mind you, this doesn't mean we're going steady," she quipped at him, and finally the humor broke through his shock and his lips twitched with the beginnings of a smile.
"Yes, ma'am," he answered, a little of his nervousness evaporating. He'd heard horror stories about the 'Ice Queen' in the few years he'd been working in the morgue - somehow the striking and intimidating woman with her arm on his didn't seem quite so nasty as all that...
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
By the time Ikeda was on the outskirts of Blue Cove, it seemed like every possible emergency vehicle in the state had either already passed him going in the opposite direction or was coming at him heading that way. The tired Yakuza assassin breathed a huge sigh of relief as he pulled into the motel parking lot and turned off the engine. All around him he could hear the howl of sirens.
He turned the key in the lock and walked into a room where his temporary roommate was obviously awake and restless. "What's going on out there," Randy demanded irritably. The sirens had been endless, and there was no way he could sleep with all this racket in the normally silent and sleepy village.
Ikeda looked at him and tossed his briefcase on the other bed. "I don't think you have to worry about going in to work tonight," he told the younger man calmly, then headed off in the direction of the bathroom and a very hot and cleansing shower before he could be forced to answer any questions. He wasn't ready for that yet.
He could still see the fireball that had engulfed the Centre Tower in his mind - and he could imagine how many people were employed in that section of the facility that had just had their lives snuffed out. He'd seen people killed before - and done his share of relieving people of their miserable lives after they had caused his employers harm or headaches. This massacre was killing with no honor at all - too much innocent death.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Sam stirred amid the detritus and slowly rolled over and groaned. His head was throbbing and the back of his neck and scalp stung as if it had been scoured. He pushed himself slowly up into a sitting position and put a hand back to ease the burning of his neck, then yelped softly as he pressed some of the glass shards and slivers from his shattered window just that much more into his flesh. He pulled back a hand covered in blood and stared at it for a moment before wiping it on his pant leg.
Then he very gingerly used his fingertips to touch his forehead where he had connected with the edge of the door and found a rather large and very painful lump there. He groaned again - even the delicate touch had made the throbbing more acute. He rolled onto all fours and crawled over to the door and used it to help himself pull himself erect, then swayed and staggered over to lean heavily into the doorjamb while he struggled to regain even a bit of his equilibrium.
He looked out into the corridor, and his eyes widened with surprise and shock. His little office in the sweeper's wing had been half-way between the very end of that long leg of Centre annex and the Tower. Of the corridor that led to the Tower, however, there was very little left much past three doors down. There was only fire and tumbled walls and brickwork - and sky where a ceiling had once protected the corridor from the elements.
And where the Tower had once stood: only more smoking rubble - lots of it.
Sam sagged against the only barely stable wall as his meager supply of energy to hold himself erect waned at the sight. Miss Parker - he'd left her in her new office on the Tower's top floor...
Oh God...
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Jarod's face was grim by the time he was steering Sydney's car up and into the psychiatrist's garage. Kevin had slowly withdrawn into silence, while Davy had sat in the back seat of the car with huge tears rolling down his face. Jarod had wanted several times to stop the car to get to his son and comfort him, but knew the press of time to get home to Sydney, to Miss Parker... Oh God...
He did take the time once the car was turned off, however, to be there as Davy climbed out of his seat and simply pull his son up into his arms. The little boy wrapped his arms around his father's neck tightly and whimpered as he leaned his head against Jarod's. Kevin didn't stop, but headed straight into the house looking for Sydney and Debbie with Jarod following still carrying Davy.
The trio found the two in the den, huddled together at one end of the couch staring at the television screen, upon which was playing out their worst possible nightmares. The newscasters had already had a chance to gather, and were standing a reciting facts and rumors in front of the demolished and still smoldering ruin of what was once the Centre Tower. Sydney had Debbie tightly in his arms while she sobbed softly, and he turned utterly devastated eyes on Jarod and found he had no words.
"Did you try..." Jarod started, only to have his words fade to a stop when Sydney nodded at him, his chestnut eyes filling and overflowing. "What about..." Sydney merely shook his head slowly and then closed his eyes and pulled in a gasping breath of grief and horror.
Davy glanced over his shoulder at the TV, then whimpered, "That's where Mommy and Uncle Broots work, isn't it?" and began to cry in earnest now. Jarod held his little boy just that much tighter as his own eyes filled and overflowed.
Kevin went over to the couch and sat down behind Debbie, unsure of just what to do in such a situation. He finally settled with putting one comforting hand on her shoulder, then another, and then leaning against her back like a blanket to protect her from the rain of tears falling from her grandfather's closed eyes.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Miss Parker was very glad she had chosen not to wear heels that day, but rather a pair of comfortable sandals - climbing this many stairs in stilettos would have been murder! The line of people climbing slowly in front of her had slowed, however, and soon came to a complete halt. She cupped her hand to her mouth and shouted up the stairs, "What's the hold-up?"
"End of the line," somebody yelled back down at her. "Everything's collapsed up here."
She patted Tyler's arm and let go of him. "Stay here for the time being. I'll be back," she promised him then stepped carefully forward between the pairs until she came to the head of the line and saw what they'd been talking about.
A heavy cement slab had fallen from above - from either SL-1 or the ground floor, she had lost count already - and completely blocked passage any further. This was, as the man had shouted down to her, the end of the line.
She turned and looked down the stairwell at the pairs of anxious and trusting eyes that were focused directly on her and felt the weight of authority at the Centre land squarely and heavily on her shoulders. These people were depending on her to see them to safety.
"OK, folks, we've hit a snag here. There's a slab up ahead that won't let us climb any higher. I want you all to just sit down where you're at - be sure to be kind and share the stair with your partner. They will be coming to rescue us presently, and they'll be digging to get to this stairwell. All we have to do is be patient and wait for them."
"How long?" a frightened voice trickled up from below.
She shrugged. "As long as it takes. It's not as if any of us have anywhere else to be at the moment, is it?" She sighed - she could feel the collective disappointment welling up at her. "Look, I know it isn't what we were expecting. But the air here is fresh and we have light. We're OK. All we have to do is wait it out."
She slowly descended the stairs down to where she'd left Tyler, very near the end of the line of pairs. "Look, I'm going to go back down and see if there are others who need to be guided into this stairwell. You stay here..."
"Uh... with all due respect, ma'am, I think I'd rather stay with you," Tyler shook his head firmly. "You may need some help along the way."
"There are a total of 26 sublevels, Tyler. This isn't a picnic I'm going to..."
"I understand, ma'am. I'm still with you, if you don't mind." The young man's dark eyes were determined. "It just ain't right for a lady to go into danger alone, ma'am."
Miss Parker found herself buoyed just a little bit by this display of loyalty and bravery. "OK, 'Tyler-ma'am', you come with me." She turned and aimed her larger voice back upwards. "I'm going back down to see if there are others who need a little direction, people. You are all going to be fine - just stay where you are."
"You be careful, Miss Parker," a female voice ricocheted down the stairwell, to the accompaniment of several grunts of agreement.
"I will. I'll be back before you miss me." She turned to Tyler. "Ready?"
"Yes, ma'am."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Five people sat at the dining table staring at each other without seeing much. Debbie was tucked securely beneath Kevin's arm, with her head on his shoulder. Her tears hadn't stopped flowing yet, and his entire attention was on her and his clumsy attempt to offer comfort. Davy had been carefully lifted onto his grandfather's lap and now clung to the older man's pajama top beneath the flannel robe with both hands, as if his life depended on it. Sydney's chin had dropped to rest on the top of his grandson's head, and he held the boy tightly to him. His tears had ceased and left in their wake an ache in his heart that wouldn't ease and a stitch in his side that caught agonizingly at every breath.
Jarod had taken himself off to the kitchen. He needed space from Davy for venting his own shock and grief in a way that wouldn't upset the boy anymore than he already was. He allowed himself to sob silently while he stood at the sink, staring out at the backyard landscaping dully. What was it she had said last night, during that moment of worrisome fretting, about the devil himself climbing up and raising Hell? He bit his lip. It wasn't fair! It was only last night, after all these years of pushing each other away one way or another, that they had... No!
He straightened and dashed the tears from his eyes. He turned on the faucet and splashed cold water on his face, then dried it on his shirt sleeves and then walked back into the dining room. "I'm going to go find them," he announced firmly, bringing all four other sets of eyes around to him instantly.
"Jarod..." Sydney began.
"I have to, Syd. We all need to know." He looked down at his son. "You take care of Davy for me while I'm gone, and I'll be back as soon as I can."
"You going to go bring Mommy home?" Davy asked hopefully in a very small voice, not noticing that his question brought a new tear to his grandfather's cheek above him.
"I'm going to find her, Davy - and if she's OK, I'll bring her home, I promise. Uncle Broots too, if I can," he swore, looking into Deb's grief-stricken face.
Kevin straightened. "I should go too..." he started, only to see the older Pretender put up a restraining hand.
"I need you more right here, taking care of our family, Kevin. Syd still needs medical attention, and Deb's in no condition to take care of him right now. I was a fireman several times, many years ago. I know what I'm doing. I trust you to take care of our family while I'm gone."
The younger Pretender would have begun complaining bitterly until he heard what Jarod had just said. 'Our family, Kevin'. He had been included. He looked up into the face of his older counterpart and nodded agreement, tightening his hold on Debbie.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Broots slowly regained consciousness, slowly became aware that he couldn't feel his legs. And when he tried to prop himself up on his elbows and roll over to get a look at what the problem was, the pain in his crushed pelvis of his slow movements became so agonizing that he simply dropped off the edge of blackness into unconsciousness again.
And the pool of blood where his shattered leg bones had sliced through his flesh grew steadily wider.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Even though he towered over the fireman who had found him, Sam was grateful for the set of shoulders upon which he leaned so heavily as he walked through a landscape composed in Hell towards a waiting ambulance. There were other walking wounded slowly beginning to trickle out of the severed annex wings, some merely in shock, and some - like him - victims of shattering windows and the percussive force of the blast itself.
The fireman finally seated his husky rescuee on the edge of a collapsible ambulance gurney, then patted the man on the shoulder comfortingly before setting off once more into that scene from Dante's Inferno in search of more survivors needing assistance. Sam looked up into the man's face gratefully, then found himself staring out across piles of rubble and steel, some of it still smoking.
Somewhere under all that was Miss Parker. His boss. His friend.
He didn't care anymore if touching that horrible lump on his forehead made him ache worse. He didn't care that the ambulance attendants were trying to get him to lay down so they could transport him to the hospital.
He put his head in his hands and, for the first time since he was a small child, wept.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Tyler stood next to Miss Parker and watched another sublevel's worth of staff file two by two out the door and begin the long trudge toward the top of the stairwell to join the others. By now the young morgue attendant was not only no longer intimidated by his boss, but thoroughly impressed with her ability to coax calm and cooperation out of people who, when they were found, were near panic. She was using every trick in the book to get through to her people - humor, cajoling, firmness - and it was WORKING. He could see the change come over the collected faces like a changing tide - fear and intimidation at the sound of the Parker name became admiration and willingness at the sight and sound of Miss Parker down in the trenches right along with them. From a confused mass of individuals slowly came an organized team focused on a single goal.
For all the time he'd worked for the Centre, there had been an Us VS Them mentality between The Powers That Be in the Tower and the regular working stiffs down in the trenches and labs and offices. By the time Miss Parker got finished working a sublevel staff and had them ready to start up the stairs, however, there was only an Us - with her firmly and confidently leading the pack.
"Ready, Tyler?" she asked him as the last few turned up the stairs and left them standing in the doorway of an empty sublevel.
"Yes, ma'am," he answered quickly and led the way in the other direction, down toward the next sublevel.
"Tell me something?"
He glanced over his shoulder and up at her. "Sure."
"Why morgue assistant?" She gifted him with a smile. "Why not medical technician - or sweeper?"
Tyler shrugged. "I didn't have what it took to get into the sweeper corps, and my medical training wasn't complete enough to get a tech job. They had an opening in the morgue - I needed the job."
"Hold it," she ordered him and then leaned against the stairwell wall bathed blood-red with the emergency lights. "What do you mean you didn't have what it took?"
"I have a punctured eardrum, ma'am," the young man answered her, resting his backside against the metal railing opposite her. "I couldn't take the firearms practice without ending up with a migraine." He grinned. "Having a black belt in karate didn't seem to earn me any brownie points either - too many sweepers already have 'em to be very impressed."
Miss Parker's eyebrows soared halfway up her brow. "Do you like your job?" she asked, now completely curious.
Again the young attendant shrugged. "I guess... It's quiet down there in the morgue - not a whole lot of folk want to come down and bug me. I wouldn't mind something a little more challenging, but until it comes along, I'm not complaining." He looked over at her evenly. "Ready?"
"Lead on," she waved at him and waited for him to get two steps ahead of her before she started moving again. If she ever got out of this hole, she'd make sure her impromptu assistant had 'something a little more challenging' offered him. Oh yeah...
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Jarod attached to his shirt lapel the California Division of Forestry ID that he'd quickly created on his laptop and laminated before leaving Blue Cove and then climbed out of the car, unable to stop staring around him at the devastation. The TV broadcast hadn't done the scene justice - the rubble that had once been the proud Tower was widespread, and what the TV hadn't shown was the amount of collateral damage done to the outlying wings. His eyes searched out a Dover fire truck and hurried over to it and it's captain.
"My name's Jarod Russell, CDF," he announced with little fanfare. "I was on leave visiting some family here in Blue Cove, and I thought I'd come out and see if you could use my help..."
"Grab yourself some gear, son - you bet your ass we could use the help!" the captain turned a smoke-stained face his way. "Right now, most of what we're doing is search and rescue. Gear's that way," the man pointed at the temporary command post a short distance away, "and then do what you can. I'm Captain Jerry Talmann, and you can consider yourself attached to my company for the time being. We're engine 36, DFD."
"Thanks, Cap," Jarod shook the fire captain's hand and hurried over to the command post, where with but a few words he was able to acquire coat, hat, pants, boots, oxygen and a pickaxe. Now suitably garbed for the task at hand, he set out toward the smoldering pile at a trot.
In his mind, he reviewed the blueprints of the Tower structure he had studied while trying to figure a way for Angelo's escape. But while he would have loved to have started climbing the debris pile and heading for the area where anything from the Chairman's office might have fallen, he found his help needed far more desperately by the walking wounded still trickling out of the ruins of the annexes. More than once he found himself glad for both his beard and the oxygen mask when he would slide under the arm of yet another injured sweeper that he could remember from his days as an inmate. He made no effort to avoid them, however, and helped one after another limp into the triage station near the edge of the debris field.
Once, after calling for a stretcher to bring in a collapsing sweeper bleeding profusely from a deep cut on his forehead and neck, the Pretender took the time to wander through the cots of injured still on-site awaiting transport to area hospitals. There were a few women mixed in with the men - but none of them the one he was most looking for, and few of the men were other than sweepers.
He felt his heart lurch into the pit of his stomach - he'd foolishly let his hopes rise that maybe she'd been somewhere else in the complex and not buried beneath the smoldering and still hot tons of cement and steel. He knew better. He readjusted his oxygen mask and set off once more towards the remains of the Tower.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Kevin had never felt before so much like he was sitting, quietly, waiting for the hammer of doom to fall on him and everyone he had come to care for. Once Debbie had reached the end of her tears and trembling, she had been glad to help him turn the couch in the den into a day-bed for Sydney and settle the older man back down again. The telephone handset had been placed within easy reach for him, but the TV had been turned off. By mutual agreement, all of them had decided that watching the horror that was where the rest of their little non-traditional family was would be too taxing emotionally.
He was worried about Sydney. The psychiatrist's color had gone from merely pale to almost transparent after Jarod had left, and he'd been obviously having trouble with his breathing. His worry had gotten to the point that he'd offered the man an additional dose of pain medication, only to have the offer refused on the grounds that Sydney felt he needed his mind working and not functioning in a medicated fog. He had not fought the day-bed idea at all, however, which told Kevin volumes about just how poorly the man WAS feeling.
Davy had claimed what little space could be found at the edge of his grandfather's couch-bed and stretched out in it, still clinging desperately to Sydney's pajama shirt and unwilling to let himself be removed without loud complaint. Sydney had finally just waved the young adults away and cradled his grandson into his good side - and eventually both had dropped off into a restless sleep. Debbie covered them both with an old-fashioned knit afghan and then motioned to Kevin to join her in the kitchen so that the others could sleep away the time before any news would be coming their way.
"Are you OK?" the young Pretender asked the girl who couldn't seem to sit still, but was up and pacing the floor in front of the sink.
She looked at him and shook her head. "I'm worried about my Dad and Miss Parker. I don't want to think about what I'd do if..."
"Jarod will find them, if anybody can," Kevin reassured her quickly. "Vernon used to throw Jarod's successes at me every chance he got - I don't know whether it was just to make me feel bad because I never was as good as he was, or in order to try to motivate me to BECOME as good at it as he was."
Debbie stared at him sadly, and somehow found another tear deep within that suddenly needed to make a track down her pale cheek. "It's a big 'if', Kevin. Both Miss Parker's and my dad's offices were in the Tower - second floor. That means that if they were there, they fell, and then had the rest of everything fall in on top of them..." She started to shake again.
"What about Sam? Doesn't he work there too?" Kevin blurted out the question as it hit his mind.
Debbie whimpered and wrapped one arm tightly around herself while the other carried her hand up to cover her mouth as a sob shook her. Kevin could stand to watch her suffer no more, so rose and came over to her and wrapped his arms around her and pulled her tightly to him. "I'm sorry - I shouldn't have..."
"No," she shook her head against his shoulder, "Sam's part of 'us' too. But his office was in one of the wings, if I remember. He may be OK."
"Wouldn't he have called? Why wouldn't he have called?" he demanded, confused.
"Oh, I don't know, Kevin - maybe his phone got ruined. Maybe he's so busy right now trying to find Dad and Miss Parker that he doesn't have time to call." As she spoke, her voice was rising and getting more and more stressed.
"Shhhhhhh..." Kevin soothed, rubbing his hands on her back as she leaned against him. "I just wish I could be out there doing something - I feel so helpless."
"Me too." Her voice had diminished to a muted squeak. "What am I going to do, Kevin? What am I going to do?"
Kevin closed his eyes and just held on tight. He had no answers for her; so that was the best he could offer.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Sam suffered the emergency room doctor to peer into his left eye beneath the lump on his forehead with a painfully bright light, then blinked madly to get the after-images to fade a bit. "Will I live, Doc?" he asked impatiently. "I need to get back..."
"Not so fast there," the doctor said, putting a hand down on the big man's chest and keeping him from rising from the examination table. "You have one helluva goose-egg on your noggin, and I don't like what I see with your left eye. I think you're going to be a guest of my fine hospitality for the time being - at least until we get a better idea what's going on here."
Sam glared at the man. He'd been here for over an hour already. He'd lain very still while nurses had patiently pulled glass shards and splinters from the back of his head, from the back of his neck and from those places where they'd sliced straight through his suit and shirt to the skin of his back. He'd held still while the worst of those little wounds had received their stitches. But his patience was rapidly coming to an end. "Look, Doc, I have friends - family - at the Centre. I gotta get back..."
The doctor simply shook his head at him. "Uh-unh. You have a slight concussion from the blow to your head, and the last thing you need to be doing right now is exerting yourself. I hear tell there's been a call put out to all regional emergency crews to donate personnel to help with the search and rescue, so there's not going to be a lack of able hands to help out there. You stay put, young man - you won't do your friends or family any good by passing out and having to be brought back here."
"Then I need to get to a phone..."
"In due time," the aging doctor shook his head again. "Right now you're headed off to X-ray. Once we get you settled in a room, THEN you can have your phone."
"But that will take forever!" the sweeper shouted, then groaned as his head swam and his stomach turned over sickeningly and he sank back into the discomfort of his glass shrapnel wounds pressed necessarily against the mattress of the exam table. "My family will worry..."
"Not," the doctor watched him patiently, obviously used to working with surly and uncooperative patients enough in his life. "When we took your name for the admitting forms, your name was added to the list of known survivors. If anybody calls for you, the emergency clearing center will let them know where you are and your current condition. So RELAX!" the doctor patted Sam on the shoulder in a gesture that was meant well but certainly didn't sit well.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Randy watched in silent frustration as his temporary roommate obviously was making motions of packing up. Finally the younger man could stand the non-communication of his associate no longer. "Where are you going?"
"Home," Ikeda answered in a monotone. His job was done - and all he wanted to do was relax in a place where people spoke a civilized tongue and understood things like honor and face.
"Home," Randy repeated the word. "So that's it? You stay two nights, then pack up?"
Ikeda's eyes flicked dangerously in the younger man's direction. "That's right," he replied tersely, seeing no need to either explain or justify his actions.
Randy sensed that he was treading on thin ice with the assassin and backed down a bit - but considering what Ikeda had told him earlier, he felt he needed to know more. "You know I can't reach Tanaka-sama? Not even Fujimori-san..." He felt Ikeda's eyes upon him, and looked up defiantly. "Well, if there's no Centre for me to go back to work at, like you said, then what the hell am I supposed to do now? Sit here in a damned motel with my thumb up my ass waiting for someone to notice that I'm stuck here?"
"You can't reach Tanaka-sama?" Ikeda's voice was calm, but he felt a chill run down his spine. Tanaka-sama had called him the last time from Dover - he was HERE for some reason. If he'd been in the Centre when... No! He didn't want to consider that. "Have you tried both numbers?"
"Several times. The Tokyo exchange just keeps telling me to try the cell - and the cell just tells me he's either 'out of the service area' or has his phone turned off." Randy glared at Ikeda. "Since when does a Yakuza out of country leave his cell turned off?"
"Pack your bags, Obayashi-san. I have a feeling deep in my gut that we want to be out of here and on our way back to Tokyo soon."
"You didn't..." Randy stumbled at voicing the question that had haunted him since he'd given up trying to sleep with all the emergency vehicle traffic and turned on the TV to see what the hell was going on. "You weren't..."
"I had nothing to do with it, I swear on my ancestors and on my oath as Yakuza," Ikeda stated fervently. His young associate had probably lost acquaintances, if not friends, in that blast. "I was close enough to see it happen, but I had no part in causing it."
Randy bent over and dragged his large suitcase out from under his narrow bed. "Just making sure, Ikeda-san," he said and stood to walk over to his dresser. Technically, Ikeda WAS his superior - so Ikeda's telling him to pack his bags was technically an order.
And it was an order he was more than happy to comply with. At last - he was going home!
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Jarod accepted a small bottle of water from the relief station and then went in search of Captain Talmann. He had been simming the situation for the entire time he'd been working to help first one victim and then another to medical attention, and only one detail had occurred to him that the officials here might have missed. "Hey Cap!" he yelled from a short distance, then trotted across the torn-up lawn to the fireman. "Has anybody checked to see if there are survivors from the underground levels?"
Talmann stared at the soot-covered volunteer. "What do you mean, UNDERGROUND levels?"
Jarod stared back. "You mean, you didn't know? There are twenty-some-odd levels to this place UNDERground. Has anybody checked to see if there are survivors down there?"
"How do you know this?" Talmann demanded, his face grim and disbelieving.
"I told you, I was visiting family here. My... father... worked on one of those underground levels - and the only reason he's not down there right now is because he caught the 'flu." Jarod figured he might as well continue the misdirection about Sydney's condition - much fewer complications that way.
"Oh shit." Talmann grabbed up his walkie-talkie. "This is Talmann, Engine company 36. We just got reliable information that there is an underground complex here. We're going to need people to start looking for access to a stairwell or elevator shaft."
"What?!" the voice on the other end of the walkie-talkie link demanded harshly. "Are you SURE?!"
"I've got a fella here who says his dad worked UNDERground here." Talmann could see that his California volunteer was looking very upset and ready to jump out of his skin. "How many levels underground did you say?"
"At least twenty-five or six," Jarod answered with a frown of worry.
"Damn!" The walkie-talkie clicked off, and then the same voice came over the bullhorn from the command center: "All rescue personnel not currently involved in triage assemble on the north-east corner of the debris field. We're looking for an elevator shaft, or a stairwell, going DOWN. We may have more survivors who are trapped."
Jarod quickly drained half of his little bottle of water, then dumped the rest of it over his head to cool his face a bit before putting his hat and oxygen mask back in place. Then he trotted out to join the swarming group of rescuers that was forming at the corner of what had been the Tower. Now all he had to do is 'accidentally' uncover the access to the stairwell that he knew existed not far from where they were standing.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Davy slowly crawled out from under the afghan and his grandfather's arm and got to his feet. He was thirsty, hungry, and just couldn't stay still any longer. He looked over at the recliner in which Debbie had eventually curled up and dozed off, then walked into the kitchen. Kevin was patiently making sandwiches and had a pan with some condensed soup slowly heating for an early light supper.
"Has my Dad called yet?" the boy asked the young man.
Kevin shook his head. "Nobody's called, Davy," he answered softly, not wanting the voices to carry far enough to awaken the sleepers in the next room. "Not yet."
"Is Debbie OK? She doesn't normally sleep in the daytime..."
"I told her to rest. She's worn herself out being so upset," the younger Pretender told him. "I don't know how any of you are keeping from going crazy."
Davy's dark eyes watched the young man's movements with the sandwich makings. "Mommy told me once that getting all crazy and upset didn't do anything except get you tired. She said..." The boy's eyes narrowed and he spoke slowly as he struggled to properly remember the axiom she had told him in the past. "'If you worry about something that never happens, you waste energy, and if you worry about something you cannot change, you only make yourself sick. So it isn't wise to worry - it's better to just accept life as it comes and deal with it accordingly.'" Davy looked back up into Kevin's thoughtful face - the young man having turned in surprise to hear such words coming from one so young and not a Pretender. "She told me once that it is simple to say, really HARD to do."
"Your mother learned that while she was in the university in Japan," Sydney's voice spoke from the kitchen door, where he was leaning. He shuffled into the kitchen and took a seat at the table near Davy, putting the telephone handset that he couldn't bring himself to leave very far behind within easy reach in the middle of the table. "She had a very interesting course of study," he added for Kevin's benefit. "She was being groomed to take over the Centre, after all."
"You should be laying down," Kevin tsked at Sydney over his shoulder. "You were SUPPOSED to get two days' worth of complete bed-rest, remember?"
"I know," Sydney sighed and then grimaced at the ache such an act inspired. "I needed to use the bathroom, then heard voices out here." The psychiatrist waved a hand half-heartedly and dismissed his own condition from his mind and then turned an assessing glance on Kevin. "How are you holding up?"
Kevin trained his eyes on his hands carefully, the question catching him by surprise. "I'm... OK... I guess..."
Sydney glanced over at his grandson. "Davy, would you mind very much if I talked to Kevin alone for a bit? You can go play your video game with the headphones on, if you need something to do..."
Davy took one look at Kevin's face and nodded, gave his grandfather a peck on the cheek and walked steadily back into the den.
"Talk to me, Kevin."
"I..." The young Pretender glanced over his shoulder at the man who had opened his home to him and looked away again, embarrassed. "You have enough to think about..."
"Kevin, talk to me." Sydney's voice was firm despite being underscored with pain. "What's going on?"
"I'm wondering if I really want to be out here - free - anymore." The young Pretender's voice shimmered with confusion and distress. "I see you hurting because Miss Parker... and Debbie because of her Dad... It hurts me to watch you hurt..."
"Come sit with me for a bit," Sydney invited, pushing the chair that Davy had been in out a little more. "This is important. The sandwiches can wait." Kevin sighed deeply and put the spatula down obediently. He walked over and sat down in Davy's chair without looking at Sydney directly. "Look at me," the psychiatrist told him firmly, and eventually the young man complied.
"The hurt you feel is the same hurt I feel and Deb feels - you've started to care. And when you begin to care for someone - to accept that person as a part of your life - it makes you vulnerable to that person and the things that touch THEIR life. This is one thing that your life as a Pretender, at least the way Vernon shaped your life, had no way of preparing you for."
"It's hard," Kevin nodded.
"What you're experiencing, though," the older man explained gently, "is the most difficult part of that equation, Kevin. You haven't been out long enough to have the feeling of exultation that comes when that feeling of caring begins to sing - or, maybe," he said with a knowing glance at the door that led into the den, "you've had only the faintest glimpse of what that could be like. I know that I'm asking you to trust me a great deal here, but don't pull back just because it hurts to care. When the hurting finally stops, and you get a chance to be with those you care about in a GOOD way, you'll find out why we all prefer life this way."
Kevin's blue eyes probed Sydney's tired and pained chestnut gaze. "When will that happen, Sydney?"
"Nothing lasts forever, Kevin - not the good times, and not the bad ones. Even your life locked away from the world came to an end eventually. This is a hard time we're all passing through right now, but it WILL end eventually." Sydney smiled ruefully and lifted a greyed lock from the side of his head. "These grey hairs should tell you that I've seen my share of pendulum swings between good and bad, hurt and joy."
"That doesn't answer my question," Kevin grumbled, folding his hands on the table and staring at them.
"It will happen when it happens, and not one moment before," Sydney responded quietly. "And because there is no way to know when or how, the advice Miss Parker gave Davy about worrying is very apropos. This is what takes philosophy from the realm of the intellectual and makes it practical."
"I want to help," Kevin sighed in vehement frustration eventually, after he'd thought through everything Sydney had told him. "I want to be a part of making the hurting stop."
"You already are," the psychiatrist said and reached out to pat the young man's arm as it lay on the table. "You've helped Debbie keep from climbing out of her skin, you've got a meal nearly prepared for whenever any of us gets hungry. You heard Jarod, you're taking care of your family while he's doing what he needs to." He patted the arm again reassuringly. "That's a lot."
"My family?" Kevin turned a hesitant gaze on the older man. "Am I a part of this family now - really? Just like that?"
Sydney's lips twitched in the beginnings of a smile. "One of the things that Jarod taught me during the first years he was free was that the bond of family have more to do with the heart than they do with blood ties." He gripped the arm that lay beneath his hand with gentle pressure. "What does your heart tell you?"
Kevin's blue eyes were studying Sydney's face closely when the telephone in the middle of the table began ringing abruptly. Sydney's hand flew out and snagged the receiver immediately before a second ring could sound, punched the Talk button and put the device to his ear. "This is Sydney."
Then his face broke into a weary smile. "Sam!"
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Sam could hear the raw relief in the older man's voice on the phone. "I'm stuck here in the hospital in Dover, Doc. The sawbones here wants me overnight to make sure I don't end up with complications from the concussion or something..." He leaned back into his pillow carefully - any pressure on the raw meat that was the back of his neck and shoulders was definitely uncomfortable.
"Sam..." Sydney's voice got soft and unsure, and the sweeper swallowed hard. Here it came - the question he knew he had to answer, but didn't want to think about, stuck here. "Do you know..."
"I left Miss Parker about an hour before," Sam recounted slowly and sadly, "in her new office in the... Tower. I had a couple of errands to run before I went down to clean out my old office. I was there, in my old office, when the... when things..."
"So you don't know for sure..." Sydney's voice had an agonized hitch to it. Sam found himself hoping Jarod or Kevin were nearby, because the old man didn't sound too good.
He shook his head. "I do know that she got a visit from Ngawe about noon, and found out that Raines had been shot while being removed from the Centre. She said that she was going to go down and check out the body just to make sure the ghoul had finally stopped breathing air for real." The sweeper paused. "Now whether she had gone down right away or waited a bit, and so was down THERE when things..." Sam shook his head again. "God, Syd, I just don't know..."
"But there's a chance she wasn't even in the Tower?" There was the vaguest hint of hope now in the old man's voice.
"It's possible," Sam shook his head and shrugged. "Stranger things have been known to happen..."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
They heard it at the same time - a low rumble and a crash. Tyler and Miss Parker looked at each other in consternation in the red light. The obvious consequence of having something catastrophic happen in the building above would be that the weight of that building would have been shifted from points of strength designed into the subterranean complex. And when that weight shifted and landed on points never meant to sustain it, eventually things would begin to give and collapse.
"Shit!" Miss Parker hissed, looking over the rail and up the stairwell shaft in concern. "How far down have we come?"
"We're down about ten or eleven levels now, ma'am," Tyler responded tiredly. His admiration for her strength of will and ability at handling her staff was now compounded by a flat-out awe of her stamina. They had been hours, now, climbing steadily deeper into the hole that was the Centre, and she hadn't flagged, hadn't stumbled. Over a hundred people had been herded up the stairs already.
"Damn! Not even half-way down yet."
"We'll make it, ma'am," Tyler offered encouragement quickly. This entire exercise would come to a screeching halt if she began to lose faith in her ability to succeed - if she began to be overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task she'd set herself. "We've made it this far without a single one of those. Maybe they built this place better than they thought they did?"
"Yeah, maybe..." Now she looked down over the railing at the very long way to the bottom of the stairwell shaft, backing away when it began to make her dizzy.
He didn't like that look of flagging confidence - not one bit. "You know, I really didn't know what to think of you when you came through the morgue doors - pretty lady like you from the pinnacle of power descending to my little wharf on the River Styx. But I have to hand it to you," he stated firmly and with complete faith, "you've got stainless steel ones, Miss Parker. You're probably the first person who's ever DESERVED to run this place. If any of us get out of this alive, it will be because you're in charge and did the right thing and didn't quit on us."
She turned and looked at him with an eyebrow cocked. "Are you buttering me up, 'Tyler-ma'am'?" she asked, revisiting her favorite name for her emergency assistant.
"No, ma'am. Just telling you what I see." The Southern morgue assistant met her cocked eyebrow with complete equanimity. "Don't let the size of the job you're doing keep you from just keeping plugging away at it."
"God but you were completely wasted down there in that morgue, Tyler," she said with a shake of the head as she finally let his words lift her spirits again. "WHEN - not if, but when - we get out of here, I think I have 'something a little more challenging' for you to do than catalogue stiffs in a subterranean hermitage."
"Then with all due respect, ma'am, may I suggest we get ourselves moving again? There's folks below us that need help." He nodded his head in the direction of the stairs leading further downward.
"God, you sound just like Jarod sometimes!"
"Is that a good thing or a bad thing, ma'am?"
Her eyes grew distant for a moment. "There was a long time I wasn't sure - but I know now it was a good thing. A very good thing." She smiled at him. "Yes, I think I can come up with something very interesting to lure you out of your little hidey-hole when this is all over."
"Yes, ma'am!" he grinned back at her. "After you?"
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Broots swam back to consciousness as if against a strong current pushing him ever backwards into the blackness. He moved his fingers and his hands, then his arms, slowly determined to find out how badly he was hurt. Everything seemed hale and sound until his hand wandered down his side to his waist and encountered the cold and ungiving edge of the file cabinet.
He shivered. He'd never known the sublevels to be this cold before - maybe it was having been laid out on the floor for so long. His head was feeling a little light too.
"Help me!" he called as loudly as he could, and became concerned when the only size of voice he could muster was pitifully small. And he didn't have the energy to continue calling often.
He'd have to conserve his energy, pray he didn't fall unconscious again and miss his chance to catch somebody's attention. Surely they'd miss him and come looking for him.
Wouldn't they?
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