At first, Merle could hardly believe his eyes when suddenly, like ghosts, two human silhouettes appeared among the dust and smoke clouds wafting through the crumbling lobby of the administration building. They stumbled toward the three people making their way toward the collapsing building, trying to avoid the flying splinters as best they could in the gathering darkness, with all the lights inside the building dead now and the street lamps in the immediate vicinity blown out by the explosion.

Grabbing his flashlight off his belt, he switched it on and trained it roughly in the direction of the two people approaching them, careful not to blind them with it. "Police, you're safe with us. Hurry, it's collapsing around you!" He instantly frowned at himself, certain that, given the way they looked, covered in dust, cuts and bruises, these two knew exactly what was happening around them.

The long-haired one resembled Sandra, one of the few human administrative assistants – the dust, combined with the flickering shadows, just made it hard to make out the distinctive color of her hair which was normally what he recognized her by from afar. The other, with short curls and a pixie face, looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn't remember where he might have seen her before. She, on the other hand, seemed to remember quite well as her eyes were wide as she stared at him.

"Officer Dixon?" she asked, her voice hoarse.

.-.

Glenn watched the two limping figures step out from under the roof and one of them address the policemen. It was impossible to hear what they were saying over the noise of the collapsing building. Chunks of the lobby ceiling were still crashing down, the noise punctuated by the groan of the ceiling as a whole lowering as the slabs it had cracked into started falling asunder. Dust was still raining down, and objects from the office located above the lobby were beginning to fall down amid the rubble.

So far, no surviving Feina had shown up, but that was no surprise, given the deactivated elevators, the controls still blinking red, and the fire still raging on the wooden staircase, blocking the way down from the upper stories as well as the hallway leading to the offices in the back of the building on the ground floor.

When the woman who had addressed the police officers turned toward the other one, supporting her when she stumbled over a chunk of concrete, the light from a distant street lamp hit her face. Under all the dust and grime and blood he recognized her and rejoiced.

So Carol had survived the explosion. The woman in her company was probably the one who had found him and Jim sitting on the carpet in front of the door, but where was Daryl?

With another glance at Jim, who was still sobbing beside him, he made up his mind. "Jim", he murmured softly into his companion's ear, the tickling of his long, dirty hair going completely unnoticed this time. "Jim, this is Carol. We went in together, looking for Daryl. When we found you instead, I came out with you and she stayed inside to keep looking for him." Frowning, he kept his eyes on Jim's face, trying to discern if he was following. "She has just come out and is talking to some policemen now. I will go to her, but I will come back. Maybe she knows something about where we can find Daryl."

Another look inside the building gave him little hope that any knowledge as to Daryl's whereabouts would be useful at this point. If he had still been downstairs when his charges blew he had been incinerated, and being lost in the lobby was little better. But he had to try. When Jim gave him a nod, accompanied by a hiccuping sound, he nodded back and stood.

Sirens could be heard in the distance now, approaching the site of the disaster.

.-.

"What are you doing here?" Merle asked, suspicious. "Who are you? Do you know anything about what happened here?" Looking into the lobby behind the two women, he tried to make out if any Feina were approaching that needed help, but so far, none were to be seen.

"Officer Dixon, do you have a brother?" the short-haired woman asked him.

Merle stared at her as his heart started doing double-time in his chest. His mouth went dry, and he didn't think this had anything to do with the dust in the air. "How do you know that?" he asked, squinting at her. Where had he seen this elfin lady before - why did she look so familiar?

"Is his name Daryl?" she all but whispered, her voice barely audible over the sounds of destruction still emanating from the building behind her back. And as he stared at her, trying to figure out where he had met her, and in what context, he recognized her soulful eyes, her short, curly hair which had been mostly gray even without concrete powder dusted over it.

He felt rather than saw or heard someone coming up behind him and turned around – and the Asian was instantly recognzable. "You!" Merle called out in surprise. "What are you doing here? How do you know 'bout Daryl?" He was terribly afraid for his baby brother now – why did random strangers that he had never met until today know about him?

.-.

"He was with me, in there", Carol explained, nodding toward the administration building just as the first large slab of concrete crashed onto the torn marble floor of the lobby. Strangely, she seemed to see the slab falling in double vision. Maybe a piece of debris had hit her in the head. Merle suddenly found it hard to breathe - he was desperate to protect Daryl, but how would he find him in that nightmare? "We were on our way out when there was this … noise … like an explosion … and it started collapsing." Turning around fully now to see if she could spot Daryl somewhere near the nonexistent doors, attempting to get out, she continued, trying to make herself heard over the noise, but Merle still had to strain to hear her over the din. "We were separated by the blast, and we can't find him."

She turned back around to face him, her eyes catching and holding his. She ignored Shane completely, convinced that only the emotional bond between the officer and his brother would get these two – three? Wasn't this one of the limo drivers she had seen coming and going? – to join their search. "The building will come down any moment, and if we don't find him before then, he will be crushed by the ceiling. He's injured - he can't get out on his own." Merle had started to shake his head, desperately denying that his brother might be in there, facing death.

"He will die if you don't help us."

But Merle was already on his way in.

.-.

The slab crashed down on top of him, and if he hadn't been lying between two boulder-sized chunks of concrete already, it would have crushed him. As it was, total darkness descended upon him and as one of the chunks that had saved his life was smaller than the other, some of the slab's weight came down on him, keeping him from crawling out from under it and grinding his chest and pelvis into the rubble beneath him. His crippled left leg had gone mercifully numb by now, probably from shock, but his broken arm was radiating waves of pain into his shoulder, and his whole body was aching from the fall he had taken.

He could feel warm blood trickling across his face, leaving patterns in the white dust covering him. Trying to concentrate despite the high whine in his ears that drowned out even the deafening noise of the building collapsing around him, he made a desperate effort to lift the slab weighing him down, but had to give up – it was too large, too thick, its weight kept him from breathing, and he almost blacked out from the sheer effort.

With a jolt he came out of his daze and remembered that he hadn't been alone when his two charges in here had blown, setting the tanks on fire – and with his mind clear right now, he remembered just who had been with him.

Carol.

Was she alive? Had she made it out of here?

Going completely limp, he closed his eyes and reached out with his mind, hoping that his implant hadn't been damaged by the falling debris or the heat washing over him from the blast itself and the fire raging behind his back now. In his panicked state, it was difficult to open himself up at all, but he reminded himself of the day when he had tried to find her against her will – and succeeded. He could do it again. This was too important.

He had to know.

.-.

Although several fire trucks and patrol cars had arrived in front of the building now and the firemen were preparing their gear for entering it, the five of them had somehow made it in without getting stopped. Glenn was leading a paramedic to Jim so he would receive the medical care he needed – maybe he could still be saved.

Meanwhile, Merle led Shane and Andrea into the crumbling lobby which looked and felt like an inferno by now, with flames licking up from the basement and through the gaping cracks in the floor. It was hard to see farther than two or three feet by now. Dust was constantly seeping down from the upper levels of the building through the holes in the ceiling which looked as if it would come down any moment if you looked at it the wrong way. Many large concrete slabs were hanging askew already, held together only by their rough, uneven edges grinding against each other.

Merle's mind was in turmoil. What had his brother been doing here tonight? And then, looking about himself, he understood – or at least began to. He had no idea about the how or the why of it, when they had never personally felt the clout of their extraterrestrial guests. But somehow, deep down inside, Merle was certain of it.

Daryl had done this.

.-.

Carol and Sandra had returned to the area where the carpet had been lying in front of the destroyed doors. As they had been nearly at the doors, with Sandra already having her card read to open them, this was where he had to be, so this should be where they could find him. Carol believed that Daryl would have been unable to maintain his balance on just one good leg in the shaking building with the floor bucking under him, so he had to be close to where they had been separated.

Maybe, if he wasn't unconscious … She deliberately tried to relax sufficiently to open up to touches from outside, which was difficult with the sagging ceiling groaning threateningly above her. This might be their only chance, with the noise too loud to hear him calling. Remembering her double image of the falling concrete slab, she looked about to find the angle from which it had appeared to superimpose itself over her own view of it while at the same time still reaching out and trying to be receptive to the lightest of touches. He was injured – he might not be able to reach out to her as forcefully as usual.

He might be dying in this inferno, with his touch nearly unnoticeable.

She had to find him.

.-.

"Don't mention Daryl, or what you did, or what he is", Glenn whispered urgently as he knelt down beside Jim, the paramedic behind him. "Come with us, you'll be taken to a hospital now. It's over for good – you'll be taken care of, and you'll get well and go home. Do you have family?"

Suddenly, as if through static, probably because he was so upset and frightened, Glenn felt someone touching him through his implant, and then he heard the familiar voice of an older man inside his head. "It's okay, This is Hershel. We know his family and will inform them where to find him." Glenn froze with surprise at this, watching as the paramedic knelt next to Jim with a horrified expression on her face and started to examine him. Hershel? Hershel, his soon to be father in law, was a member of TE? What the ...? Did Maggie know this?

Leaning down toward the woman who was opening her bag now, he called out to make himself heard over the noise of the falling concrete and the fire in the background of the destroyed lobby. "Can I go back now to look for my people?" Both the paramedic and Jim nodded. Gently placing a hand on Jim's shoulder, Glenn managed a smile. "Your family will be informed. You'll be okay, you're safe."

Tears of pain, relief and joy ran down Jim's face as Glenn turned to enter the burning building again.

.-.

A mental touch.

Feathery, because they were all afraid for their lives and high on adrenaline, but definitely there.

Gentle, careful, apprehensive – laced with fear and sorrow.

And something else.

She was alive, she was looking for him – and she was close. He could sense it, and it jolted him into action.

He sucked in his stomach to get enough maneuvering space to pull his good arm out from under his abdomen, bringing out some of the sharp ceiling fragments digging into his chest and belly with it. His fingers scrabbled along the underside of the slab holding him down, looking not for purchase but for its end so he could maybe signal her with his hand – but the slab was too large and his movement too limited.

But maybe, if he kept digging the fragments out from under himself, he would have just enough room under the slab to move again and squeeze himself out from under it … He could feel his T-shirt and his skin tearing as they yanked on a particularly sharp-edged bit of concrete that had been digging into the soft tissue under his right collarbone, but the pain, minimal compared to what his body had endured tonight, only served to spur him on.

Unable to stop it, overwhelmed by hope and the will to live, he started pumping out a mixture of pain, fear and joy so heady it nearly overwhelmed her.

.-.

Looking out over the wasteland of concrete rubble and splintered office furniture, she was acutely aware of the heat radiating toward her from the fire raging under her feet with only another layer of collapsing concrete between it and her, and of the constant threat of falling debris from above. A chair had just crashed to the ground a few feet from her, one of its armrests covered in greenish blood. How many Feina had been working at this hour? Were any of them left alive to seek revenge right here and now?

She finally came up on the large slab of concrete she had seen from two angles as it had fallen down, lying askew on two smaller pieces of ceiling that supported it. By now, she was certain that the lobby was not as dark as she kept seeing it - she was convinced that the dark veil superimposed over everything was visual input from Daryl, just as the pain and the excitement that were flooding her now were his.

And then she saw movement under the edge of the slab she was approaching. Fingers, a hand, a forearm, caked in a mixture of concrete dust and blood. The fingers encountered a chunk of debris and curled around it, using it as a handhold – and the arm bent, the straining muscles visible through the torn jacket sleeve, and a head appeared as he laboriously pulled himself out with his good arm, dragging along the last bits of debris holding him back.

Sobbing with joy and relief, she stumbled toward him, pulled him out from under the slab with a strength she hadn't known was in her, and helped him stand on his good leg. The world around them ceased to exist as she held him close to her, supporting his weight and feeling his good arm snake around her. They each breathed in the scent of the other – blood, sweat, dust, smoke -, feeling each others' heartbeat, and sensing, through their meld, each others' overwhelming relief.

His head sank onto her shoulder and his breath tickled her cheek as he whispered it again, into her ear this time.

"Carol."