Chad gagged on the omnipresent smoke. "Cree…" he said doggedly, but his voice wasn't more than a croak by then. He was unable to find Cree in the mainframe's housing unit, so he continued to stagger around the corporation, eyes watering and blinded by smoke, barely even able to think straight from the fumes. Only one thing was clear—he had to find Cree.
He stumbled through the dark, smoky hallways, pausing every now and then in an attempt to catch his breath. Finally he heard a voice, muffled by the sound of the conflagration. He stopped. Could he trust his ears?
He pulled in a suffocating lungful of smoke and shouted, "CREE!" as loudly as he could manage.
The voice repeated. He was certain now that it was Cree, and not his oxygen-deprived brain playing tricks on him.
"Cree! Where are you?" he hollered, punctuated with rasping coughs. He stepped tentatively in the direction he thought the sound was coming from.
At last he saw a figure emerge from the black fog, and his terror eased just slightly. Cree was all right. For now, at least.
"Chad?" she said, surprised, though muffled from her helmet and facemask. "What are you--? Chad, I can't find Maurice, I've looked everywhere." She stared at him with anxiety in her eyes.
"He's okay, he's outside. We have to get out of here."
"He's out…? Oh, good."
Chad was too focused on trying to remember the way out to try to read her expression.
"Here, it's this way." He held out his hand to her and she took it.
Chad was too busy trying not to pass out from smoke inhalation to realize this was the first time they held hands.
They hastened back the way Chad had come.
"Are you sure this is the way?"
"Yeah, it's not much further," he lied.
"Where's your helmet?"
He frowned at the seemingly pointless question, wondering if it were worth the expenditure of oxygen to reply. "I left it at home." Those things were useless anyways. Battle Ready Armor could barely stand up against a pillow fight, much less a raging inferno.
Cree released his hand and he stopped to look at her. She was removing her facemask.
"What are you--?" he began when she pressed it to his face and fastened it. His question was answered immediately when he took a breath and found the air noticeably cleaner than simply breathing through a shirt. He gratefully drew in large draughts of air.
"It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing." She coughed.
Chad was then stunned by his own selfishness. "I can't take this," he said, beginning to remove the mask.
"Don't. We'll take it in turns. Let's not waste any more time discussing it and get out of here. That's an order."
He nodded. "Thank you."
They took each other's hands again and pressed forward.
Soon they were back in the expansive mainframe's chamber. It was even smokier than when Chad first came through. He cast a worried glance towards Cree, who was coughing into her sleeve. The path to the other side of the room was now blocked by fallen debris and they had to wend their way around not only charred furniture and collapsed support beams, but live flames that seemed to jump out at them as if they had a will of their own.
Chad stopped short when they reached a pile of shattered concrete that stretched to the ceiling.
"What's wrong?" Cree shouted over the noise of roaring flames and falling building.
"This…is the way out."
They both stared at the obstacle for a second before Chad dived forward and began digging into the concrete.
"Idiot!" Cree yelled, pulling him back. "Armor up first." She began to pull at large chunks of debris with her protected hands.
Chad frowned at the broken skin of his hands. It seemed so insignificant compared to the prospect of imminent death, but he obeyed. Together they broke through the barrier until they were forcibly blown back by the intensity of heat from the other side.
Chad peered into the hole they had made. Through it was nothing but violent blazing. He could see no hope of escape through there.
Devastated, he turned to Cree who was assessing the situation herself.
"We'll have to find another way."
They looked around them.
"What other way?" Chad asked desperately.
Cree's expression was clear—she couldn't answer that question.
A sudden idea occurred to him and he extended his arm laser and aimed it at the wall, any wall.
"Don't!" Cree shouted just as his laser began to power up. "You don't know where that might lead to, and this whole building's already weak--it could collapse any minute!"
"Then I don't know what else to do!"
"We'll…think of something," she tried to sound confident between chokes. "Don't look at me like that! We'll be okay."
Chad averted his eyes to fix on something else. Despair had sunk in. I wanted to save her…but now…. When I wished I could spend the rest of my life with Cree, this isn't what I meant at all….
He unfastened her facemask and returned it to her.
"You can hold onto it for a little longer," she offered, clearly gagging on the fumes.
He only shook his head sadly and held it to her.
"Okay," she said, fastening the mask. "But don't give up hope. Let's go back the way we came." She took his hand again and he followed.
They were exiting the room when a figure leapt out at them from the smoke, and they both jumped in surprise.
"Cree! Thank God!"
"Maurice!"
Chad's hand was immediately released as she rushed to her boyfriend and clung to him. "Chad said you were outside."
"I was. I panicked and ran when the fire started. I'm so sorry."
Chad just stared at the two of them as they left together, Maurice leading Cree away, saying, "there's another exit this way, the fire hasn't quite reached it yet," Cree still holding fast to him, confessing, "I was so scared." Chad, forgotten, stood rooted in place. The room was starting to tilt and distort, the stifling heat and smoke was pressing in all around him. Somehow he felt worse than when he thought he was going to die.
He thought he heard someone call his name as the ground rushed up at him.
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author's notes: to be continued, of course. ;P
have you noticed that both as a football player and as a Battle-Ready-Armor-wearing teen, Chad doesn't wear a helmet? (check out the Official KND Production Site to see Chad in all his BRA-wearing, helmet-disregarding glory!) one ponders why he doesn't bother with the helmet. does he not want to mess up the hair?
vanity aside, it's true--Battle Ready Armor seems fairly useless. those of you who saw how poorly they fared in SLUMBER know what i mean.