Susan's point of view:
"Hey!" A voice calls out from a few dozen yards away, sounding anxious and rushed. "I think I found someone!"
It was Cade, calling over Cassia and Genevieve to a particularly large pile of ruin. I watch him point at something underneath, the two girls nodding their heads at whatever he's trying to explain.
Something that must've been too heavy for Cade to lift on his own blocks whomever they're looking for, so all three of them grab onto the piece of debris to try to move it.
Their faces contort painfully as they try to push what looks to be an entire section of a semi- intact, cinder block wall, barely moving it at all.
They stop, catch a breath, try again, and then the same disappointing result.
I feel my heart catch a bit at the sight, something unspoken telling me that I could help, that I needed to help.
I still had Kyle's body cradled in my arms, not entirely ready to leave him just yet on the foolish hope that maybe, just maybe he would wake up. But I've been holding his body for hours now with no such thing having happened. Deep down, I do understand that he won't be coming back to me, but it doesn't mean that I've accepted it.
I look at my friends again, still unsuccessfully pushing on the wall.
Cade found Jacqueline about an hour ago, miraculously still alive with a piece of wood impaled in her shoulder and a huge gash on her head. Cassia healed her as best as she could under the current conditions, and she now lies comatose not far away from me.
If we had all survived somehow, then perhaps whoever it is underneath that wall could do so as well.
I have to help them.
And so, feeling my body ache with every tentative moment, I finally set Kyle's body down on the ground and shakily rise to my feet, giving him one last look before I walk toward my friends.
Haunched over slightly from my only half-healed back, I try not to trip over everything that litters the ground, a shaky hand rising to my face to straighten my crooked glasses.
Genevieve sees me coming before Cassia and Cade do, tapping them both on the shoulder to alert them of my presence.
"Need...some help?" I rasp out, surprising myself with the broken quality of my voice. I quickly mask it however, offering them a weak smile despite the emptiness I feel.
"Are you sure?" Cassia asks uncertainly, knowing what the toll of today has done to me. I can see it in her eyes, that silent but full permission from her that it's okay for me to go sit back down, okay for me to keep holding Kyle's body.
"I'm sure," I tell her, sounding a bit stronger this time.
Cassia doesn't press the issue further, slowly scooting away from Cade a bit to allow me to shuffle between them.
"Alright, we're gonna push on the count of three," Cade says, his arms tensing in readiness.
"1..." I take a breath.
"2..." I hold said breath.
"3!" We all push with our might.
The wall doesn't move than a few inches, but compared to the way it was moving minutes ago, the difference is monumental.
"Again," Cade repeats, and we repeat the action.
A few more inches.
This goes on for quite some time, the pain flaring up my spine so powerful that white spots dance in my vision, but we finally manage to move the wall back about three feet, now having a much better view of what lies underneath.
Peering down, I can see that this piece of the wall was covering a small crater about four feet deep that other pieces of debris had made, the ruin underneath shrouded in shadows. However, it's impossible to miss an arm that hangs limply out of a pile of wood, the fingers twitching slightly.
"I'm gonna crawl down there and try to pull them out," Cade says to us, kneeling down to the three feet of open space and slipping in the hole.
He lands in a crouching position and crawls on his hands and knees over to the arm, not being able to stand up in the shallow crater.
Cade hesitates for a moment at the exposed limb, slightly anxious at what he'll find when he pulls the entire body out. He doesn't want to do what Genevieve has had to do now twice today.
However, Cade quickly swallows his fear and delves in, grabbing the person's arm and pulling them carefully out of the pile of wood.
He grunts but keeps persisting, a shoulder and a head and then an entire body finally freed from the destruction.
"Who is it?" Genevieve calls down.
I swear to God if it's Will...
"Adam," he responds.
Relief floods through me at this, but fear almost immediately replaces it when I see Cade trying to gather a very limp Adam in his arms to get him out.
"Is he...is he dead?" I ask.
"Can't tell, but he's got a piece of wood stuck in his stomach. Maybe if I removed it..." Cade trails off, but Cassia frantically voices her opposition.
"No don't!" She yells down to him, Cade giving her his full attention now. "Don't touch anything; if you remove that piece of wood, he might bleed out. Just bring him up here to me."
"Alright," Cade obeys, half carrying/half dragging Adam to the opening that Cade crawled through to get down there.
He lifts Adam up and the three of us reach down to grab at him, lifting him slowly but surely out of Cade's arms and onto the concrete above him.
Once Adam is settled, Cassia reaches down and grabs Cade's hands, pulling upwards and helping him out of the crater. He falls forward slightly with a huff when he makes it out, laying on the ground and trying to catch his breath after such a feat.
Cassia gives him a soft smile before turning her attention to Adam, sitting next to his body and assessing his condition.
Much like Kyle, Adam's red hair is limp and his face is an ashy grey, basically lifeless. However, despite the piece of wood lodged in his stomach and the countless abrasions littering his body, various in their severity, he breathes. Not only that, but his fingertips continue to twitch with the effort of moving.
"How are you still alive..." Cassia mutters under her breath, a look of awe on her face as she heals him as best she can.
Once the cuts and bruises on his body have faded, Cassia steels herself and moves her hand to the piece of wood in his stomach, wrapping her fingers around it and carefully pulling it out.
Adam makes a low, gravelly sound of extreme discomfort, and I smile in relief when his eyes flutter open.
Thank God I didn't lose you, too.
"Adam?" Cassia tries talking to him, pressing her hands over the hole in his stomach to stop any more blood from leaking out.
His eyes are glazed with pain and confusion, but when his head starts to clear, he points to the stick that was in his stomach and says to Cassia, "That."
"What?" She asks.
"You muttered earlier...asking how I was still alive," Adam gets out. "Will shot me in the stomach before the building came down, remember?"
We nod.
"After the building...collapsed..." He pauses, trying to catch his breath. "I landed in a pile of wood. One of the pieces entered the same place the bullet did, somehow. Essentially, it plugged up my wound. Kept me from...bleeding out."
Adam begins to cough, the wound in his stomach pulsating unhealthy amounts of blood out with it. Cassia attempts to get him to relax, using her powers once again to close the wound in his stomach.
"I'll have to surgically remove the bullet in your stomach later, but I've healed you enough to where it won't do anymore damage than it already has. You'll be fine until it's out," she explains, slowly helping him rise to a sitting position.
He looks around for a minute, blue eyes trying to absorb everything around him, trying to make sense of it all.
"How many have we lost?" He asks, almost afraid to know the answer.
The pain rears its ugly head at me once again, and I turn to look at Kyle's body in the distance with a lump in my throat. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Genevieve doing the same with Victoria.
"Two...so far," I choke out, relying on my power to bring me some sort of relief but still finding none.
Adam doesn't dare ask who, seeming to figure it out on his own based on our reactions. However, instead of acting like the strong big brother as I would've expected, I watch as his eyes fill with tears.
"No," he mutters, putting his head in his hands. "No no no."
"There's nothing you could've done. The best we can do now is to keep looking for more survivors," Cade says, putting a hand on Adam's shoulder.
"I was supposed to keep you all safe," Adam replies in shame, rising to his feet while clutching his stomach.
"We just need to keep looking," Genevieve explains, remembering that her mother and father are still among this rubble somewhere.
She distances herself from us, wanting, needing to find her parents. Cassia and Cade soon follow her, but I stay back a moment to help Adam.
"You gonna be able to help us look? It's alright if you can't; Cassia let me sit out for a while, too," I offer, trying to sound positive but failing miserably. Adam doesn't respond at first, instead pulling me into a very tight hug.
After a minute, he whispers, "I'm so sorry; I wouldn't have wished this kind of pain on anyone, least of all you and Kyle."
My eyes start to water again at this, so I carefully wrench myself out of his embrace to wipe them. "I don't...I don't want to talk about it right now. We need to look for survivors."
He seems to compose himself a bit at hearing this, trying to stand up a bit taller with his head held high. We walk together in the same direction our friends went.
I end up splitting from him to cover more ground, Adam walking away while muttering things about rebuilding and healing and how we're all going to be fine. As smart as he is though, I'm surprised he thinks that last option is a possibility.
None of us are ever going to be fine again.