Virgil made it home before he threw up.
He kept it together that long only because he had to.
A skyscraper in the middle of New York suffering structural collapse, likely due to poor materials and design.
The GDF gave their hall pass surprisingly easily. Gordon and Alan picked up Virgil and Scott in One and Two respectively. Most of Auckland stared up at the top of Jack's building as the two 'birds swooped in to collect their primary pilots before shooting off across the Pacific.
There were people trapped and tonnes of concrete threatening their lives. Two and her heavy lifting were called into play, her grapples and VTOL hauling away chunks while Scott, Alan and Gordon darted in and pulled people out. Virgil spent most of the rescue scanning and calculating lifts. Several of the slabs of concrete skimmed along the edge of Two's capability, but Virgil made it work.
It was what he did.
It was his skill set.
Someone banged on the door of his bathroom and Virgil bowed his head over the toilet bowl, screwing his eyes shut.
How had it happened?
How?
God, how?
"Virgil!"
Scott.
It was always Scott.
He didn't answer.
"Damnit, Virgil, open the door."
His calculations had been correct. Two should have been able to lift that last chunk of concrete. Sure, it had been most of a floor, but Virgil knew his 'bird, he knew the structural limits of the material, he had scanned it within an inch of its existence, the math was there...
Bile rose in his throat again and he dry heaved into the bowl.
"Virgil!"
She had lifted it. He heard the strain on her engines. He knew there was something wrong, but she had already raised the concrete off the building.
Scanners repeated the safe levels.
Two wailed. The sound defying the information he was receiving.
The icons that were his brothers darted under the concrete slab and his instincts joined in the screaming.
His yell over comms had hurt his throat as the grapples shouted a warning.
His brothers' acknowledgements.
Sixty-three people dead as Two lost her grip and the concrete came down, the movement destabilising the fragile supports below and crushing the floor.
Scott and Gordon barely made it out.
Alan didn't, dragged from the edge of the rubble with a concussion and broken leg.
Lucky.
Lucky.
Virgil let his forehead drop to the edge of the ceramic seat, his breathing harsh in his ears.
The door behind him was kicked open.
Footsteps on the tiles and hands on his shoulders. "Virgil."
A breath turned into a sob and those hands turned him around, drawing him into a blue wrapped embrace. "Alan's going to be okay."
Virgil knew that. He had hung Two in the sky, rappelled down, scooped his brother out of the concrete dust and up to their medbay. Gordon had come with him while Scott managed the hell that Virgil couldn't afford to acknowledge.
The fact he had killed sixty-three people.
Sixty-three people.
Scott's arms tightened around him.
There had been little left to do other than recover bodies.
He made it home. Saw to his little brother. Set Grandma on him. Ignored the fear on Gordon's face.
He made it home, but the first moment he had to think...
Sixty-three people.
"It wasn't your fault."
The sound that answered that statement was more whimper than anything else. Numbers ran through his mind, shunting into automatic columns, calculating. They all matched up correctly, the results saying that what happened, shouldn't have happened.
"Brains has checked your calculations. You were right. The weight was well within Two's limits."
Sixty-three people.
When he didn't answer, those arms tightened even more. "John is on it. Brains is on it. We will find out what went wrong."
Sixty-three people.
"You are not to blame."
Sixty-three people.
His shoulders dropped, his weight falling onto his brother. "Then who is?" It was tired and wrenched from him.
Scott's shoulder shifted under his cheek. "I don't know. But I will find out."
His brother's tone was so cold it broke through Virgil's pain and froze his heart.
-o-o-o-