Chapter Text
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He paused in the middle of the wreckage. A wide expanse of road dangled in front of him, the whole section of freeway broken free, tentatively suspended from thin spokes of rebar that flared out like exposed ribs. Where the two highways crossed, one elevated above the other; the sections had collapsed, crushing one another before both fell onto the local roads below, taking down supports and, along this block, critically damaging nearby buildings. The front of what might have been a grocery shop lay in a twisted mass of brick, awning, and streetlamp. He could hear the hiss and gurgle of water where a fire hydrant hadn’t yet been shut off, spewing water uncontrollably somewhere below the rubble.
Shuddering, he turned away. If anyone had been trapped with it, they might have drowned before anything else killed them. As it was, almost twelve hours after the rampage, the whole area smelled like death. A battlefield of innocents, brutally killed on their morning commute or families caught up in the violence while they went out to enjoy the summer.
Dust cast a haze over the area, not yet settled from the concrete pulverized during the destruction and he took a few slow breaths through the mask to steady his nerves, pushing away memories of a long-ago collapse. He hated the smell of concrete dust, now more than ever. The lingering acrid stench of smoke from the fires didn’t help.
A few more long breaths and then, steadier, he continued forward. He half listened to the chatter on his channel as others did the same work: trekking through the ruins, trying not to fixate on broken bodies and the personal effects strewn everywhere as windows shattered, cars spilling their contents as they tumbled. A cooler here, a tennis racket there, a purse, a doll… even a beach ball had tumbled into a nook, unscathed though it would never reach the beach.
He’d crawled over dozens of cars so far, but there were no more survivors, and, judging by the slowly lengthening shadows, the effort would soon move to recovery instead of rescue.
“Eraser Head,” he froze as Mandalay’s voice echoed in his head instead of his ears. “Ragdoll says you have a survivor, 2 or 3 meters ahead, and then however far below you.” Her voice was eager, urgent and he didn’t need to be told that time was of the essence. He grunted a reply, squinting in concentration as he picked his way over the rubble, grateful that it wasn’t yet dark and he could still see enough to move quickly.
“There!” She called out and he looked around. He’d climbed higher, which meant whoever it was, they were buried deep.
He measured his steps, circling the area she’d indicated, and reached up to his earpiece. “I’m setting a flare. There are slabs of road and half a support column down. I might need Thirteen or someone to help me get in or shore up this mess so it doesn’t fall in on us.”
“I’m sending them your way.” Mandalay’s response was immediate, and the chatter on the line faded into the background as he inched his way toward an opening. Too small. The next was too shallow, not going anywhere. The third… he cracked a glow stick and dropped it in. It went deep enough to be useful.
He set another flare and tapped his earpiece.
“How close am I?”
“If you’re down at their level, you’re almost in arm's reach.”
Prongs of rebar jutted out from what might have been the divider and with that as an anchor, he used his capture scarf to slowly rappel down to the sickly green light of the glow stick.
He tapped on the light he’d strapped to his boot, trying to pierce the little caves of space that might hide who he was searching for. He’d half expected another car, but it was all concrete. Even through the mask, he could smell blood and he turned his attention to the floor. There might be a survivor, but smell alone told him someone hadn’t made it.
He found the slick of blood behind him. It was drying, but still wet enough to shine dully in the light, most visible where it had pooled, and he made his way toward the gore. Ducking into a tent-shaped space, he tossed another glow stick down before he squeezed between blocks of concrete and asphalt, shrugging to pull his jumpsuit off the jagged edges that tried to snag him.
“Eraser, you’re there.” Mandalay’s voice was soft, neutral, not daring to hope. She used the comm and all chatter on Line 4 silenced. Everyone collectively held their breath.
“Yeah,” he managed to get the word out, breath shaky. The woman was lying on her side, long hair splayed out behind her, legs crushed, her arms around a boy with his head on her chest. In another setting, the posture would be sweet, mother and son holding each other but here, he wondered if the boy had been awake when she died in his arms.
Down on his stomach, he slid into their space and reached for the boy, touching him gently. The steady pulse was a huge relief, but before he could move his hand away, the boy lifted his head. It might have been the glow sticks, but they were the greenest eyes he’d ever seen.
“Hey kid, I’m going to get you out of here.” He promised, pushing bright blue eyes out of his thoughts. “Can you come to me?”
The boy looked down at his mother, tears immediately welling in his eyes. “Mom…”
“I know, we’ll come back for her. We won’t leave her down here.” He promised softly, hand held out, palm up in invitation.
The boy sniffed, shaking as he hugged her one last time and slowly began to crawl forward.
Inch by inch, they made their way back to the bottom of the hole Eraser had lowered himself down, the capture weapon dangling listlessly in the still air. With a little more room to move, he drew the boy in close to sit, stretching out his leg so the light attached shone upward, illuminating the space.
Blood was smeared down the side of the boy’s face. There was a cut across his forehead, but judging from the matting of his hair, there was a second cut higher, hidden in the curls. Only the head wound looked serious, the scrapes and cuts on the boy’s arms and legs looked superficial. He finished checking for injuries and tapped his comm.
“I’m bringing him up.”
“Cementos is there with Majestic. Everything should be stable and they’ll get you both to the front line.” Mandalay’s relief was almost tangible.
It took a bit of careful maneuvering; pulling himself up in the narrow space and helping the boy do the same. The kid was still quietly crying, every other breath a sniffle, hiccup, or sob, and down in this tomb, the audible grief was vastly preferred to silence.
More light shone down and now that he could see them, Cementos peeled away the debris. Eraser grabbed the loop of his scarf, gave it a tug to free it, and used it to secure the boy to him before Majestic lifted them out of the hole.
The sky above was painted in pinks and purples, the terrain below in the red and blue flash of lights as Majestic carried them to the line of emergency vehicles. As their feet touched down the boy spoke.
“Thanks Eraser Head.”
The voice was so small it was almost lost in the chaos of people talking into radios and shouting to co-workers.
“You know who I am huh?”
“Yeah, Mom likes Underground heroes and I recognize the capture weapon.” The boy sniffed, and Eraser had to catch his hand before he could rub his eyes. “She says they don’t get enough credit.”
“I can agree with that,” the hero replied, unraveling the scarf gently, ready to hand the boy over to the emergency crew.
The boy never looked up, head and shoulders drooping. Words failed him. Saying goodbye felt wrong when the kid had already had to do that, and everything else he thought of felt equally inadequate and awful. Accepting the silence between them, he reached over and gently ran his fingers along the uninjured side of the boy’s head, rubbing his thumb along the side of the boy’s face, wiping away muddy tear track to reveal a smattering of freckles before dropping his hand to squeeze the boy’s shoulder, and then he let the medics take the kid away.
“You should get checked out too,” Majestic stopped beside him. “There are concerns about the materials that were burning earlier.” The older hero rested his hand on his shoulder but left without waiting for an answer.
Covered in grit, with his nose filled with the stench of the dead and dust, his head full of memories, new and old, it wasn’t like he was going to sleep any time soon. So he submitted to the nervous medics hovering at the back of an empty ambulance, watching as others took care of the boy before loading him up and taking him away. Sirens quiet but lights swirling as they departed.
