What Raine did not see was that at the sight of her plummet, Devin had demolished the wave of zombies with two wide swings and rushed to her, just in time to catch her before she hit the ground. Raine had clearly been weakened and could not catch herself from tumbling backwards as her skin turned paler and paler by the minute. Her skin felt colder and colder by the touch, the pink in her cheeks draining. She could not make an effort to awaken, and perhaps, she would not awaken. Devin shook Raine's motionless form and shouted for any signal of awakening, before noticing the shallow cut underneath her chin. A red stain loomed there, and it reminded him of what had happened to Candi. Tai had told him that the red that emerged from Candi's sleeve really wasn't blood, but ketchup. Apparently, Candi liked to always keep ketchup with her just in case, and it was lucky that she wasn't bleeding for they would not know how their immune systems would react to "zombie viruses".
This definitely wasn't ketchup though, and Devin gasped, and hacked at the particles of ash in the air. When Malice had disappeared into a coil of gray haze, it had touched Raine and vanished on the spot. Raine couldn't be… Devin refused to believe it. "What did she do to her?!" he hollered as he could feel tears emerging at the edge of his eyes. He refused to back away from Raine's possibly infected form. She was still alive— for now. He wasn't sure if Raine could hear him weep, but that didn't matter. He knew that he would be there for her till the end. He took off his glasses, shielded his face from view, and let the tears fall. There was no point to withdraw them, so he made no effort to hide his despair. He did not hear the others approach, but he knew that they were there now. He could feel their sorrow and helplessness. He felt a surge of anger that they weren't doing anything else but stand there, but he swallowed his fury, for he was couldn't help either, all he could do was just kneel there and acting as company to Raine.
Marie wanted to tell Devin to back away from Raine's possibly infected form, but she did not when she sensed the sorrow pouring from his heart.
"Will he be alright?" whimpered Candi as Melody charged towards her cousin while Ani pinned Fern's infested form down on the ground and sat on her to keep her still. Melody rushed up to Raine wordlessly as Tai responded to Candi, "We can hope. We can comfort. Human strengths are all put aside for one thing, empathy." After he finished speaking, Tai advanced towards Devin and kneeled, and put his one arm around Devin, and the other one around Candi, who clung tearfully at his side. As they struggled to battle frustration away, they didn't know that Raine was battling too.