Chapter 35 : The Explosion
The blast came from below — not the fifth floor, but the fourth.
I had one second to process before the shockwave hit. Damaged charges, destabilized by the earlier firefight, finally cooking off. The building screamed around us — concrete cracking, steel groaning, the floor buckling like a wounded animal.
Rachel was thrown backward, her body lifting off the ground before slamming into the corridor wall. I saw her hit, saw her crumple, saw blood bloom across her chest where shrapnel had torn through.
"RACHEL!"
The ceiling came down. Not all of it — just enough to separate us. Debris rained from above as the structure tried to find new equilibrium. Emergency lights flickered, died, came back in sporadic bursts.
I was on my feet before I knew I'd moved, scrambling over rubble toward where Rachel had fallen. The Census pulsed with urgent data:
[STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY: COMPROMISED]
[SECONDARY DETONATION: PARTIAL — FLOORS 3-4 AFFECTED]
[DR. RACHEL SCOTT — STATUS: CRITICAL]
[SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 31% — DECLINING]
Dust choked the air. Somewhere behind me, voices shouted — Alpha Team, trying to reach the fifth floor through the damaged stairwell. Quincy's tag had gone dark, buried under debris that had collapsed from the ceiling.
But Rachel's tag still flickered. Weak. Fading.
I clawed through the rubble, hands tearing against concrete and rebar, ignoring the pain. Three feet of debris separated us. Then two. Then—
She was there.
Blood everywhere. Shrapnel wounds across her torso, her arms, her face. A piece of metal the size of my hand embedded in her side, just below the ribs. Her breathing was shallow, wet, wrong.
"Rachel." I knelt beside her, hands hovering over wounds I didn't know how to treat. "Rachel, stay with me."
Her eyes fluttered. Unfocused. She tried to speak but only managed a sound like drowning.
[SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 24%]
[DECLINING]
[INTERVENTION WINDOW: 4 MINUTES]
"Corbin." Her voice was barely a whisper. "I can't... feel my legs."
Spinal damage. The fall. The debris.
I pulled off my jacket, pressed it against the worst of the bleeding, knowing it wasn't enough. Medical training from another life surfaced — pressure, elevation, stabilization — but she was beyond what first aid could fix. She needed surgery. Blood transfusions. Hours of careful work.
She had minutes.
[SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 19%]
The Census updated in real-time, counting down the death of the woman I—
The woman I what?
The thought dissolved as reality crashed back. Rachel was dying. Right here, in this corridor, surrounded by rubble and dust and the screams of people we'd come to save.
And there was nothing I could do.
[GENESIS BLOODLINE SERUM — EMERGENCY PROTOCOL AVAILABLE]
The notification appeared without my asking. A system offer. A possibility I hadn't known existed.
[EMERGENCY HEALING PROTOCOL]
[TARGET: ADJACENT PERSONNEL]
[EFFECT: RAPID TISSUE REGENERATION]
[COST: 500 GP]
[WARNING: VISUAL MANIFESTATION — STEALTH IMPOSSIBLE]
Five hundred GP. Almost half my remaining reserves. For a protocol that would be visible — impossible to hide, impossible to explain away.
[SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 16%]
[DECLINING]
[INTERVENTION WINDOW: 2 MINUTES]
Rachel's eyes were closing. Her breathing was slowing. The pressure I applied to her wounds wasn't stopping the blood loss — it was just delaying the inevitable.
"Corbin." Her hand found mine, grip weak but present. "I'm cold."
Shock. Blood loss. Her body shutting down, piece by piece, as the damage overwhelmed what remained.
If I use the protocol, everyone will know. The witnesses. The reports. The questions I can't answer.
If I don't use it, she dies.
[SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 12%]
"Command Post to any unit on five." My radio crackled with Green's voice. "What's your status? We're trying to reach you but the stairwell is blocked."
"Medical emergency." The words came from somewhere outside myself. "Dr. Scott is down. Critical condition."
"Can you move her?"
I looked at Rachel — the shrapnel in her side, the blood loss, the possible spinal damage. Moving her could kill her faster.
"Negative. She needs immediate surgical intervention."
"We're working to clear the stairwell. ETA—" Static. Then: "Maybe ten minutes."
[SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 9%]
[INTERVENTION WINDOW: 1 MINUTE]
Ten minutes. She'd be dead in two.
The math wasn't complicated.
Rachel's hand tightened on mine, a reflexive grip as consciousness slipped away.
"What are you?" she'd asked me, over and over. Demanding truth I couldn't give.
Now she'd have her answer.
I activated the protocol.
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