xp_logs | Kaiten: When It All Falls Down (Reply)

Angelo begins the day with a tour of the Elpis office and a briefing on what he and Domino can expect in Burma. No one ends the day in anything approaching the way that they planned.

"So this is your office, huh?" Angelo asked with a grin, following Domino through the main doors. "It's... very shiny."

'Shiny' was perhaps not quite the word, but it was very white - at least on the outside, where the pale stone had been gleaming in the morning sun - and very bright inside, sunlight flooding in from seemingly everywhere. It was an elegant building that, once upon a time, had been a private bank. The modern third-floor addition was mostly glass, but seemed seamlessly integrated into the historic parts of the building.

"It's vintage," Domino said primly. "1920s, like the house, although obvious there've been some substantial renovations here too." She waved cheerfully at the front desk secretary, who looked rather freakishly like a Juliette clone. The dark-haired young woman smiled back professionally.

Angelo smiled at her automatically, but as warmly as he usually did to non-friend colleagues and other professionally-met people. Then he stepped closer to Domino and muttered in her ear, "Did Joel hire your receptionist, too?"

"However did you guess?" Domino asked mischievously, inclinining her head at the stairs. "We're still installing an elevator," she said. "I mean, we've got a grand total of three stories - okay, three and a half with the little sunroom-thingy up top, don't ask me what that was all about - so it's not critical, but just in case we get anyone in a wheelchair at any point..."

Angelo nodded, understanding. "Gotta fit with the regulations. An' it's just good practice, anyway."

There were enormous windows lining the stairs, windows with pointed arch-tops that gave the building a distinctly middle-eastern look. "First floor is meeting rooms and the public area," Domino said, "second is offices and all the boys' computerized toys, and the big conference room is on the third floor."

"Do I get to see the computerized toys, or are they a no-touch zone?" He was kind of hoping to hear he'd be allowed to play with them.

"I'll have Vasily and Gar give you a tour," Domino said with a grin back over her shoulder at him. "They've got a fully operational workshop in there. We kind of let them do what they want - except for the whole no-explosives rule, of course. But they've come up with a number of helpful things. They're not Forge, obviously, but they do manage to tweak already-existing devices in highly useful ways."

"Niiiice," he said, impressed. "I'll look forward to seein' that later. But where next?"

"Up to the third floor. Mac's got the briefing stuff for us up there, and we should keep out of the way downstairs - the orientation's going to be starting in..." Domino checked her watch. "Less than a half-hour, actually. Busy morning."

"Third floor it is!" he said cheerfully, following her towards the stairs. The large conference room was indeed very large, and equipped with what looked like ultra-modern A/V equipment. MacInnis was sitting at the large round table, and glanced up, raising an eyebrow at Domino and Angelo.

"You two look none the worse for an evening of carousing," he said dryly.

"We were good," Angelo told him with a valiant attempt at innocence. "Came home early an' everythin'."

"And if you're not used to people coming to work after a night of carousing yet, you're being a slow learner, you old grouch," Domino said flippantly, flopping down into one of the chairs. She was looking in Angelo's direction, and didn't catch the brief, crooked smile MacInnis gave her.

Angelo did, though, and smiled to himself before turning back to Domino with a grin. "An' here I thought you said you were behavin' these days." It was pure teasing, of course.

"Did I say that it was me doing the carousing?"

MacInnis coughed in a way that suggested he was perhaps trying to cover a laugh. "If we're done rehashing the evening's festivities-" Domino batted her eyelashes at him, and he actually rolled his eyes at her. "Nadia."

"Colin."

"Angelo," he supplied helpfully, then looked innocent when they both looked at him.

"They're just going to love you two in Burma. I should start planning the rescue mission right now, shouldn't I?"

--

"Ian's down there telling the new children horrible, horrible stories," Isabel said plaintively as she reached the top of the stairs. At this point in the morning, the conference room was a fair bit busier than it had been when Angelo and Domino had first arrived to talk to MacInnis. In a blatant example of the communal way the Pack and their Mistra additions tended to go about things, there were no less than four small meetings going on in the same large room, with everyone listening to what was going on around them and volunteering suggestions freely. Eavesdropping was not an issue at Elpis.

David looked up from the report he and Gavin were dissecting. "Gah, I told him not to do that. Poor kids - they don't actually need to be terrified in advance of being out in the field."

"Oh, let him be," MacInnis said dismissively, handing a copy of yet another UN document on human rights in Myanmar to Angelo. "If they're scared, they'll be cautious. It's not a bad strategy."

Angelo took it and added it to his stack, chipping in cheerfully, "An' if they don't run away now, they can probably take it."

Theo gave a rumbling laugh. He and Lien and Chris were poring over maps, plotting what sounded like a fairly leisurely swing through Mongolia for the spring. As Angelo had discovered, a lot of the travel that the Tel Aviv members of Elpis did was more investigatory than anything else even at this point, as they tried to discover just how mutants in the more remote corners of the world lived.

"Oh, I get it. You survived all of Nate's hair-raising stories," he said to Angelo with a toothy grin, "so you have no pity. That's kind of funny."

"You think almost everythin's funny, Theo," Angelo pointed out utterly affectionately, with a pat to the huge man's arm.

Chris got up, smiling a bit wryly. "I'll go down and make sure he doesn't get too out of hand," he said. "Good strategy or no, Ian sometimes doesn't have much of a sense of proportion."

"I find that a charming trait," Domino said from where she was trying to memorize a list of Myanmar contacts MacInnis had compiled. "Nothing wrong with living large." She slanted an amused look at Chris, who actually flushed as he headed down the stairs.

"Isabel, could you come help?" The soft request came from Laura Carey, one of the former second-generation operatives and a member of MacInnis's original team. For someone who had been utterly fearless protecting the children in the downed helicopter in Canada the year before, she was almost painfully shy, and had barely said two words to Angelo despite the several times they'd met. Vasily was sitting beside her, both of them poring over something on her laptop; theirs was definitely the quietest of the meetings currently going on up here.

Isabel gave the younger woman a kind smile. "Translation issues?"

"Uh-huh. Vasily's program isn't working."

"What's it meant to translate?" Angelo asked curiously, wandering over after Isabel.

"Everything," Dom put in dryly, if a bit distractedly. She kept staring down at the file in front of her, even as she went on. "It's Vasily's version of Babelfish. It doesn't work very well." Vasily grumbled at her. "Hey, Vas, I'm not saying anything you don't already know."

"She's feeding it Uyghur, of course it's choking."

"I studied Uyghur for an undercover mission with Mistra," Isabel explained, sinking down in the chair on Laura's other side. "I should be able to do better than the program."

"Babelfish doesn't work very well either," Angelo pointed out. "Always comes unstuck on the difficult grammar. Or words that mean more than one thing."

"I'll get it working," Vasily muttered. "You'll see."

"I've got full faith in your persistence, son," MacInnis said with a perfectly deadpan expression, then turned back to Dom. "Nadia, you still memorizing that list?"

Dom, still staring down at it and didn't answer. At the other end of the table, David raised an eyebrow at her. "Photographic memory doesn't work so well when you have too much to drink the night before, does it?"

There was no witty retort immediately forthcoming. Domino rubbed at the back of her neck, a frown tugging at her lips. David shook his head at her and turned his attention to Angelo. "I mean to ask - you did bring your image inducer, right?"

"Yeah," Angelo answered immediately. "Got it in my carry-on back at the house. When d'you think I should put it on?"

"Before you get off the plane, I'd say. Just to be safe," David said seriously. Sounding oddly like Nathan. "I know you're comfortable without it more than you used to be, but I think in this case-"

"Nadia," MacInnis said suddenly, sharply, and every pair of eyes in the room went right to Dom. Who was teetering slightly in her chair, her eyes unfocused.

Angelo started towards her instantly, confused and worried. "She didn't drink that much... Dom?"

David was rising out of his chair. "Dom?" he asked, and in a blur was across the room and right behind her chair. His hands came down on her shoulders and she stiffened, her eyes going almost impossibly wide. Her already-pale skin was almost gray.

"What the hell?" Theo said worriedly, getting up as well. "Her nose is bleeding."

Angelo was crouched beside her chair by now, peering at her face. There was indeed a trickle of blood there, all of a sudden. "...power overload?" was all he could suggest. He knew that could cause nosebleeds, and he didn't want to think about what else could bring these symptoms on so suddenly.

"But what could doing that?" Gavin, also on his feet, said with a concerned frown. "Should we call someone, or-"

"Someone needs to go and see what's going on downstairs," MacInnis said abruptly, his voice cutting through the room like a cold wind. The people who hadn't gotten up started to do so, almost automatically.

Isabel crossed to the windows, peering down, as Lien headed for the stairs, followed closely by Gavin. "Nothing on the street," she said with a frown. "Just the odd person walking by."

Angelo was just focusing on Domino, one hand raised and not quite touching her hair. He was only half-listening to the talk.

David's hands tightened slightly on her shoulders. "Someone needs to call an ambulance," he said tightly. "Whatever's happening-"

"... out." Domino's voice was barely audible, and David's attention snapped back to her.

"What?"

"Get out." Domino's hands went up, tangling in her hair as if she wanted to pull it out by its roots. "Get out of here."

David and MacInnis locked eyes for an instant. Barely a heartbeat, really, and almost before anyone had a chance to recognize the grim realization in both men's eyes, David was whirling around, and yelling.

"EVAC! NOW!"

Domino had had hunches before, after all. Many, many times.

Angelo had half-straightened, instinctively, at the first shout to get out, but now he ducked back down to get an arm around Domino and lift her. There was no way on Earth any of them were leaving her there, after all.

Everyone dropped what they were doing and headed for the stairs. Not quite running, but not wasting any time either. Domino, as Angelo pulled her in that direction, was already straightening, stumbling a bit but noticeably coming back to herself.

"David," she breathed shakily, "David, get downstairs, get them out of the conference rooms-" David shot her a single anguished look but then darted ahead at top speed. Theo turned back towards her and Angelo, but she shook her head at him. "Get moving, Theo!" she snarled at him, sounding more like herself.

"We'll be okay, Theo," Angelo said with a nod, moving faster now Dom was moving more under her own steam. "Just go, we'll be right behind you."

Even so, they were bringing up the rear. They reached the second floor, close enough to hear the commotion downstairs, David shouting again, and Dom gave a wild, definitely cracked-sounding laugh.

"Back way - oh, God, go out the back way-"

"OUT THE BACK WAY!" Isabel yelled, pushing Laura and MacInnis in front of her and down the hall instead of down the stairs that led to the lobby.

Dom was absolutely white, blood still trickling from her nose, and she stumbled as she tried to follow. As Angelo tried to help her, she grabbed his arm tight enough to bruise.

"Too late," she whispered - and shoved him, hard, back into the stairwell.

And the whole world blew up.

---

Smoke. Everything seemed to be smoke, the air everywhere, choked with smoke. Thick, gray, plunging the world into zero visibility, blotting out the sky. Blotting out everything. Maybe that was a blessing, maybe it wasn't.

Angelo was already coughing as he fought his way back to consciousness - the blast had thrown him off his feet and into a wall, hard. Staggering to his feet, he stared around in disbelief, squinting through the smoke. From what he could see as he emerged, staggering, from the stairwell, most of the internal structure of the building below him was just... gone, lying in a huge heap in what had been the lobby. And there was no sign of... "DOM!"

In the distance, there was the sound of sirens. There were other voices beginning to make themselves heard, calling out from one direction or another. Screaming, from somewhere out on the street. But no answer to Angelo's question.

She couldn't be dead. She couldn't be dead. He began picking his way, carefully, around what was left of the second floor, hoping for any sign of her. He kept up the shouts of her name, too.

Nothing on what remained of the second floor, and as he approached the edge too closely, part of it collapsed into the lobby, sending him back hurriedly. The debris a floor below him shifted as the piece of floor hit, and the impact shifted some of it just enough to make visible a patch of red, through the smoke.

Domino had been wearing a red shirt.

It was enough of a hope to decide him. He had to get down there. Somehow.

A moment later, he dashed back to the stairwell, realizing that they'd been mostly shielded from the explosion. He'd been right, as it turned out, and most of the stairs were still there enough to run down... even if he had to resort to sliding down the wreckage for the last part.

As he approached the spot where he'd seen the patch of red, there was a shower of sparks from somewhere towards the rear of the building, and a yelp. No movement from the debris in front of him, though, and for all that people were still yelling, no one seemed to be coming through the smoke towards him, either.

If he'd been thinking about it, he'd have figured nobody could see him, grey against the smoke. As it was, he had more important things on his mind, peering ahead of him for another glimpse of whatever he'd seen.

More of the second floor collapsed, adding to the debris. When it shifted again, he could see that yes, it was Dom. Buried, in the wreckage. That got an outburst of harsh swearing in a variety of languages and he moved forward, carefully but as quickly as he could, to get nearer to her. "Dom!" Please wake up.

No answer. Even when he cleared some of the debris away, uncovering her face, it was nearly unrecognizable beneath the blood and her eyes stayed shut.

Right. Okay. She was hurt, but she was breathing, and that meant there was something he could do. Very, very carefully, Angelo began trying to clear away the rest of the rubble pinning her down.

As he was doing that, there was suddenly a shape moving through the smoke towards him. It was MacInnis, looking considerably the worse for wear but moving easily enough that it was fairly clear he wasn't badly hurt.

"Angelo... you all right, son?" he coughed.

Oh, thank God, someone can help was the first, almost delirious, thought, and then he nodded, wincing at the pain in his head. "I think so. Mostly. Dom's not." He moved aside a little, so the older man could see, without stopping his efforts.

"Shit." MacInnis said nothing more beyond that breathed profanity, though. He immediately picked his way over the debris to Angelo's side, and helped him try and uncover Dom. Who just laid there, unmoving, terrifyingly still.

It wasn't right, her being so still. Not when she was so full of life, had been so full of life, had been so Dom... fuck. His thoughts kept wandering, fracturing, and he was pretty sure that couldn't mean anything good. He kept working, though, almost mechanically, skin spread out to stop any rubble that might shift from hitting Domino.

MacInnis's hand came down on his shoulder suddenly. "The girders," he coughed. "Can't move them... I'm going to have to go try and find Theo, or Gavin..." The debris covering the lower half of Domino's body was much heavier. Too heavy for the two of them.

Angelo looked up at him, eyes red. From the smoke. Nothing else. "...okay," he said after a moment, reluctantly. He didn't want to be alone in this place, but he did see they needed more help.

"Just stay with her," MacInnis said, unneccessarily, and moved away, back into the smoke.

The sirens were getting closer. It seemed bizarre that it had only been a few minutes, that the smoke hadn't cleared. That this was all happening so fast and so slow at the same time.

This explosion, any explosion, was virtually bound to leave people with ringing in their ears at the very least. Smaller sounds were swallowed up by it. So it wasn't until Angelo actually looked back down at Domino that he realized she wasn't breathing.

No, no, no... He pressed a hand to her heart, frantically, and almost choked on the relief when he found a beat, if not a very strong one. That just left making her breathe again.

He was still trying to do that when Theo appeared out of the smoke, giving what sounded almost like a moan as he saw what Angelo was doing. He didn't react beyond that, though, just started lifting the rest of the debris off Domino.

This should not be this difficult, he thought distractedly. Not when her heart was still going. He barely noticed Theo, focused on that one thing. Breathe!

In the end, she did. Barely, and the blue tinge to her lips was still there, but she was breathing on her own. Theo heaved the last of the girders aside just as emergency personnel appeared. There were red lights from the direction of the street, flashing and visible even through the smoke.

Angelo sat back with a sigh - that had taken too long, it had, but at least he'd got there - and then tried to push himself unsteadily to his feet. It didn't exactly work very well.

"Easy," one of the paramedics, a woman, said in lightly accented English, pushing him back down as her two colleagues turned their attention to Domino. "What's your name? Do you know where you are?" she asked, shining a light into his eyes.

He blinked, turning automatically away from the light, which hurt. Was it supposed to hurt? "...yeah. Elpis. Angelo."

"Concussion," she reported back over her shoulder.

"We've got a critical one here," was the curt reply.

"I know," he answered though it hadn't been meant for him, trying to get up again. "Her name's Nadia. Domino. Nadia. Everybody calls her Domino, but she doesn't... Theo!"

They ignored him, the two working over Domino, although the female paramedic went right back to checking him for other injuries. Theo was standing over Dom as if he was frozen, tears trickling silently down his cheeks.

She didn't find much but bruises and a few cuts from the occasional especially sharp piece of wreckage as he'd tried to get to Domino, mostly on his hands. He blinked, trying to focus. "Theo?"

Limping - he was hurt, too, it was obvious - Theo came over, enormous clawed hands coming down onto his shoulders from behind, steadying him. The female paramedic looked up at him, then back at her colleague. "I'm going to take these two out to the street, look them over out there." One of the others was on his radio, saying that he needed a stretcher.

"No!" The protest was sharp and automatic, though it made him wince almost as much as the light had. "I want to stay with her. She's... she's my sister." Well, it wasn't really a lie.

The paramedics conferred briefly, the woman winning out as she pointed out that keeping a concussion case as not-agitated as possible was a good idea. By then, the stretcher had arrived, and Domino was shifted onto it - strapped onto it, rather, her head and neck immobilized.

Angelo's paramedic took him by the arm, leading him behind them, Theo trailing along behind. There seemed to be dozens of emergency vehicles out on the street, and a whole horde of other paramedics, some of whom were helping faces that were familar beneath the blood. There were other stretchers, however, and a few where the faces of the patient -of the dead - was covered.

The leading was probably a good thing, as faces Angelo knew kept catching his eye... and those stretchers, much as he might wish they weren't there... and in his current state he might just have stopped in his tracks without someone to keep him going. Theo's presence at his back was a comfort, though.

They loaded Domino into one of the empty ambulances, and the female paramedic urged Angelo in as well. Theo hung back, watching them, as the doors were closed, and stayed visible through the windows, looking like he wanted nothing so much as to run after the vehicle.

On the way to the hospital, Domino's heart stopped. Twice.