Us Mutants Prefer the Term "Special"

x40x

Coughing, I was wandering through the worst possible place I could be in a collapsing building. It was confirmed even when Indica protected me from a falling structure. But I didn't care. We needed to find Isaac and Warren.

"There!" Indica yelled. I looked back to see her pointing forward, to an area of the hall where there were moving figures. I squinted at first, but then jogged over, seeing the smoke misting out of the way to reveal Professor Maxwell being assisted by Isaac, but then right behind them, Warren was covered in blood and limping while carrying Sentara, who seemed to be unconscious. The boys looked exhausted and as if they would fall over at any given moment, but Maxwell looked as normal as possible aside from the smoke residue on his clothes.

"Isaac!" Indica shrieked in relief. She grabbed the other side of Maxwell and they hurried out as I neared Warren to help him.

"You can't carry her," he huffed, even though I'm sure I could. The hallway shook and we shared eyes of concern as we tried to pick up the pace, Indica throwing up force fields at any given time of falling objects. We had to go up the stairs and it was challenging even opening up the heavy door that revealed a stairwell with dangerously cut pieces of cement that had fallen from the walls.

"Go through," Warren said, most of his breath going into holding up himself and Sentara.

"We can't," Indica said.

"We have to try," I told her and then started to step cautiously by weaving though the obstacles and making sure none of the stairs gave through. Maxwell was well enough to use telekinesis to move things over if there was truly no path, but other than that, with every elevated step, I had to pull up someone else. I got to the ground floor and took a breath as the catastrophe happened as soon as we would open the door. Suddenly the whole stairwell shook and in the next second, there was some explosion that threw open the door and I stumbled down the stairs onto the others with chunks of wall and ceiling on top of me. I heard a humming and saw as pink force fields tried pushing against the metal and cement, but it was useless.

"We're stuck," Indica said. I felt movement beneath me and then saw the smallest fragments of conjoined rock moving and then looked up to see Isaac on the other side.

"What—"

"Move out of the way," Isaac said.

"But—"

"Go down another level!" he yelled at his sister and the rest of us. We moved the debris as well as we could to escape it and then went down a flight of stairs as Isaac said. Suddenly, there was another small quake and we were seeing an avalanche of rocks barrel down the stairs and through the wall straight ahead, leaving us a tiny path to the top. We quickly ran to the top, Maxwell and Warren behind us all. And as I saw Isaac's body shrinking down to a human size, there was a break in the ceiling as his previous size needed room, but it left us space to exit.

"Sh!t," Warren cussed when he had tripped up the stairs and dropped Sentara in the process. Even though Indica was supporting Maxwell on their way out, I turned to help Warren, but Isaac grabbed me.

"Get him; I'll stay and get Sentara," he ordered and I nodded before bouncing down half the flight of stairs and grabbing Warren's forearm as he was already nearly up and turning to go down a couple stairs to get Sentara. But he trusted me and ran. We followed in Indica/Maxwell's pursuit and made it outside, where Warren immediately collapsed on the sidewalk and I was starting to see a block's worth of people surrounding, including some people in lab coats or uniforms that worked in the building; and firefighters doing their job around us.

"It's gonna blow!" one yelled as I tried to pull Warren up and further away. Draco had appeared at my side and wrapped his arm on the other side of Warren to pull him with me and to the others. I was out of breath and just as exhausted as I should be, but then I heard the explosion right as I laid back onto the concrete sidewalk, closing my eyes in relief. But it was short lived once Indica's voice made my eyes snap open.