A huge, warm fist slammed into Daryl's back, driving him forward even as the boom of the explosion reverberated through his body. The glass wall in front of him crackled into tiny splinters and disintegrated into a billowing cloud of glass fragments that blew out ahead of him. From above, he heard a deep, wrenching groan as the ceiling cracked apart. The fluted concrete columns supporting it snapped with loud cracking sounds. He was torn out of the grasp of the two women supporting him, and the blast wave of the explosion slammed him to the ground moments before the concrete slabs from above started raining down around him.

.-.

Carol felt Daryl's arm getting torn off her shoulders even as her own right arm all but remained glued to his back until he fell as a blast of hot air hit her from behind. Since she had had her weight mainly on her left side, balancing Daryl's on her right, she almost pirouetted around her left foot before hitting one of the columns that were collapsing all around them. She could feel the concrete vibrating under her touch as it cracked and started falling.

.-.

Given the deafening noise from the cracking ceiling, the crumbling columns and the exploding glass front, the moan Sandra thought she'd heard as he was getting torn away from her had to be a figment of her imagination. The hot air whooshing up from the basement and tearing the building apart slammed her into the column holding the card reader she had been reaching out for, and her world turned into blood-red pain.

The noise was enough to cause physical agony. She imagined that she could feel her bones thrumming with it as she slid down to the ground. The column she was still leaning on vibrated against her, seeming to tear itself apart as the upper half of the building collapsed in on it. Over the din of the cracking ceiling, she could hear fire crackling up the stairways, and she could smell the carpet in front of the elevators catching fire – a horrid smell like singed hair, which she had smelled once, as a child, when she'd held her parents' ancient hair drier too close to her head after her bath on Friday evening.

Dimly, the collapsing building still louder than anything else, she could hear the clinking of the glass shards of the building's front hitting the ground outside now – a little like the bell that had called her and her sister into the living room on Christmas once they were allowed to come in and see the tree and the gift that Santa had brought for each of them, only multiplied a thousandfold, a millionfold … billions of tiny glass splinters hitting the plaza in front of the building.

Above her, a deep crack sounded as the floor supported by her column was torn asunder. She managed to lift her head and look up and saw the ceiling of the floor above her raining down on her through the opening in the ceiling right above her. A huge slab of concrete was lazily turning in the air on its way down, almost in slow motion. Even before she consciously realized what she was seeing, her body was flooded with adrenaline and she surged to her feet again, scrabbling away from the column and the dancing slab of concrete rushing down toward her.

.-.

Carol desperately tried to keep from panicking as she pushed herself off the collapsing column. They had to get out from under the roof caving in on them or they would all die here. By now, clouds of dust had started billowing up from the slabs of stone that had already crashed down and were descending threateningly from the breaking ceiling, obscuring her view of the hall. The gray, dry dust started clogging her nose and throat, making it a struggle to breathe.

The first fragments of the ceiling started breaking free from the steel mesh holding them together and hitting the ground around her, making it hard to walk, let alone run because she suddenly had to watch her footing. She looked around herself, trying to penetrate the drifting dust clouds in a desperate effort to find Daryl, who had been right next to her just seconds ago, and maybe even Sandra, whose hand she had felt against her flank, supporting Daryl on his good side.

Stumbling through the rubble, the air still filled with the rumble of cracking and falling concrete, she scanned the ground, certain that he must have fallen without their support. A falling piece of debris grazed her back, painting a burning line of pain from her shoulders down to her bottom, and a scream of shock and surprise wrenched itself from her throat.

With her view of the ground obscured by a stream of dust raining down in front of her as another crack opened in the ceiling above her, she fell when a piece of debris turned under her foot, cutting her hands on the sharp edges of the concrete pieces littering the ground around her as she held them out in reflex. Her pants got snagged by several sharp edges and she heard the fabric tearing amid the deafening noise. Her hands left bloody prints in the dust as she pushed herself to her feet again, unable to give up. Black, oily smoke started filling the hall like a floating pall.

.-.

Sandra felt the ground trembling beneath her with the force of the explosion. The noise of the fire raging behind them was coming closer and getting louder now, and she was beginning to feel its heat. The floor of the huge hall had been torn up in the two places directly above the charges Daryl had planted, as if by an earthquake, with large slabs of concrete with a thick veneer of polished marble standing out askew, much like chunks of ice in the Arctic Sea when they crashed into the glaciers flowing down into the water. The idea that one man had caused such destruction was mind-blowing. But where was he?

She tried to spot him, either trying to regain his feet or still on the ground with the force of the push they had received, but the dust was too thick and she had no idea how far his momentum had carried him before he had fallen – surely, in his condition, he hadn't been able to stay on his feet without their support. Finding her way across the uneven ground, strewn now with chunks of the ceiling still disintegrating above her, she suddenly saw the sharp outlines of a bloody handprint in the dust covering the floor and looked all around herself, her eyes full of hope.

Then she saw the gray-haired woman approaching her like a specter, everything about her gray with dust now, blood running down the side of her face from an ugly gash in her temple and her hands dripping – so she was the one who had left the handprints in the dust. The woman's lips were moving, but Sandra heard nothing but a high-pitched whine that seemed nearly as loud as the sounds of destruction filling the hall and the crackle of the fire behind her. Pointing at her ears, she shook her head to signal that she didn't hear a word the woman was saying.

.-.

Carol was flooded with relief when she saw Sandra stumbling toward her across the rubble, but devastated at the same time because she was alone. She had hoped that somehow she and Daryl had stayed close to each other in the wake of the blast. The ceiling had cracked into several large segments that seemed to be held together solely by the embedded steel mesh and some of the edges no longer fitting together, and it wouldn't be long now before it came down on them. They needed to hurry.

Trying to make herself heard over the noise, she called out to the woman coming toward her. "Have you looked near the doors?" Sandra shook her head and pointed at her ears, and Carol understood that she was probably hearing the same high-pitched sound that was nearly drowning out every other sound around her and gestured toward the general area where the doors had been before Daryl's terrible gifts had wrought their work.

Together, they stumbled across the torn floor and the debris littering it, careful not to turn their ankles and hurt themselves even further. Each of them was bleeding from multiple cuts, and the bruises from the impact on the columns and on the ground after the blast were already blooming on their skin under their coats of dust. After the initial shock they were both beginning to feel the pain of their cuts and bruises, and moving was getting harder by the minute, not just because of the increasingly difficult terrain but also because they were both hurting badly now.

If they didn't find him soon, they'd have to get out from under the collapsing building without him, and leave him behind to die.

The reason for the rules had never been so clear to her.

No attachment.

.-.

Merle stared, open-mouthed, as the impressive administration building with its all-glass front and its suspended concrete floors seemed to first inhale and then disintegrate in a billowing cloud of glass and concrete splinters. Staring at Shane and Andrea, who seemed equally dumbstruck, all he could think of was that if Andrea hadn't followed them and if they hadn't stopped to wait for her, the two of them would have been in that thing when it blew, and they would probably both be dead.

Only when he looked over at Shane did he see that, over behind the admin building, there was another column of fire and dust where Tactical HQ stood, and it dawned on him that this was no accident. Stunned, he turned to look around and saw another fire pillar rising from the living quarters where most of the Feina stationed in Atlanta would have been at this time.

This was coordinated.

And it was on a scale sufficient to permanently take out the New Atlanta base.

.-.

Glenn's blood froze when he watched the building turn into a cloud of glass and concrete before his eyes with Carol and Daryl still inside it. It couldn't end like this. The guy had been the most caring guide he had ever worked with, constantly looking out for Carol even when he had already been out himself to complete her mission, making sure that everyone he cared about came out of this alive. It couldn't be him now who didn't come out.

Remembering that he wasn't the only one to witness this, he looked at Jim, and his heart broke.

Jim was in a woeful physical and probably mental condition after eight months of confinement, apparently without access to sanitary installations or medical help when he would have desperately needed both. There were festering sores all over his malnourished body and a weeping wound in the back of his head where his implant had been pried out of his skull bone. He had every reason to not care about anyone or anything and simply rejoice over getting out of this mess alive.

Yet he was sitting beside Glenn, hunched over as if in unbearable pain, crying bitterly, mourning his guide.

.-.

Through the clouds of dust still seeping down from the cracks in the ceiling, Carol saw three human figures approaching the collapsing building, and for the first time since she had started up the stairs with Daryl at her side did it occur to her to wonder how many Feina had been in the building – apart from the two she had stabbed in Daryl's cell – and if any of them had survived the blast.

Peering up through the crack in the ceiling above her, she saw no movement apart from more falling debris from the floor above that, raining down on what was her ceiling. The staircase up from the basement and to the second floor had turned into a raging hell, with the flames from the explosion dancing not only on the stairs but also in front of the elevator where the carpet was still burning. Some indicator light on the elevator controls was flashing red, probably telling people to stay away from the elevators and use the stairs instead. Good joke, that.

Unsure of who to expect from outside, she turned to face the newcomers.

And recognized the two cops who had arrested Ed.

Dixon.

.-.

The pain was incredible – and he had been in pain before the explosion.

He managed to catch a glimpse of the ceiling above, cracked into several large chunks that were barely holding together for the time being but were certain to crash down within the next few minutes, and he couldn't help but feel proud over what he had achieved. Against all odds, he had reduced this building to rubble. The structural damage it had taken made it completely unsalvageable. If they decided to stay and rebuild their base, they would first have to tear it down completely. The same went for the other two buildings they had destroyed tonight – and as one of them was the housing facility where most of the Feina in New Atlanta had probably been spending their evening, they were running desperately low on staff right now.

He just wished he could see the other two buildings crashing and burning to the ground as well, but there was no way he was getting up again.