Fred didn't think.
He just moved.
Shoving past screaming students, ignoring the hands trying to hold him back, he sprinted toward the burning dormitory.
Thick black smoke coiled into the night sky like some furious monster.
The heat was unbearable even from fifty feet away.
> "Get back!"
"It's gonna collapse!"
Security guards yelled, but Fred barely heard them.
All he could think about was J.J.
Her laugh.
Her tough kindness.
Her throwing a bag of clothes at him when he had nothing.
She had saved him.
Now it was his turn.
---
Fred tore off his hoodie and wrapped it around his mouth and nose.
The dorm's front doors had already collapsed inward.
So he circled to the side, kicking open a smaller emergency exit.
Inside was hell:
Flames licking the walls.
Plastic and wood melting into a toxic fog.
Sprinklers hissing weakly, barely working.
He staggered down the hallway, coughing.
He knew J.J.'s room — 2nd floor, west wing, room 213.
Up the stairs, two at a time.
Smoke clawed at his lungs.
The carpet burned under his sneakers.
The ceiling cracked above his head.
Every instinct screamed at him to run — to save himself.
But he kept moving.
---
Finding J.J.
At Room 213, he kicked the door open.
> "J.J.! J.J.!"
Through the smoke, he saw her:
Collapsed near the window, coughing weakly, half-conscious.
A beam had fallen across her legs.
Fred charged forward, muscles screaming, and heaved it off her.
Her jeans were torn, knees bloody.
Face smeared with soot.
Eyes glassy with terror.
> "F-Fred?" she rasped.
> "I'm here! Hold on!"
He threw her over his shoulder — J.J. wasn't light — she was all muscle and fight, even half-dead.
He stumbled back toward the stairs.
---
Trapped
But the staircase he came up was now a roaring inferno.
No way out.
The building groaned — a deep, terrible sound like something alive in pain.
Fred spun, desperate.
The window.
Third-story drop.
Concrete below.
No safety nets.
But if they stayed here... they were dead anyway.
---
Fred kicked at the window with everything he had.
Glass shattered outward in a rain of knives.
He wrapped J.J. tighter against him.
> "Hold on to me!" he gasped.
She clung to him with the last of her strength.
Without thinking — without looking —
Fred jumped.
They flew through open air, smoke trailing behind them like wings.
Fred twisted mid-fall to take the impact on his back.
He hit the concrete with a sickening crunch.
Pain exploded through him — ribs cracking, vision blurring.
J.J. rolled free, coughing violently.
Fred tried to move but couldn't.
He lay there, blinking up at the swirling stars.
--
Paramedics swarmed them.
Students cheered and screamed and cried.
J.J. was lifted onto a stretcher, oxygen mask slapped over her face.
Fred felt hands on him, voices shouting.
He faded in and out:
J.J. screaming his name.
Oxygen stinging his nose.
Sirens wailing.
Through the chaos, he caught a glimpse of Damian Voss standing in the crowd.
Watching.
Smiling.
Like a puppet master admiring his ruined toys.
And then the world faded to black.
---
Fred woke up in a hospital bed, IV tubes in his arm, ribs bound tight.
A police officer stood at the foot of his bed.
Uniform crisp.
Handcuffs dangling from one hand.
> "Frederick Omondi," the officer said coldly,
"You are under arrest for possession and distribution of illegal substances, and suspected involvement in arson."
Fred blinked in disbelief.
His world — what was left of it — collapsed.
Again.
---