The Final Showdown - The Moon Trilogy - Book 3

Chapter eleven:

   Everything was black. Clarity's head was pounding with a mysteriously serious ache, and there was someone crying nearby. A very heavy weight pressed down on her leg, only revealed by the strange sense of pressure, because the limb itself was worryingly numb.

   She teleported out from under the slab of stone that had crushed her as soon as her thoughts cleared enough to concentrate properly.

   When she was out, she was able to see a little bit better, because a stream of dusty, gray light was coming through a crack in the quickly-deteriorating ceiling.

   Clarity took a second to gather herself before limping carefully towards the crying.

   She could barely make out a bunch of people strewn about the dusty, broken pace, many of them unconscious or even... dead.

   The person crying seemed to be the only one awake. Clarity, with more than a lot of struggling, managed to get to her. She got in contact with as many as she was physically able to in her present condition, and then she teleported out.

   Within the first moments of arriving, she could see plainly that the group of workers still hadn't broken through the blockage at the door, nor were they very close to doing so.

   She breathlessly told the others about what had happened, leaving out the part about her crushed leg. Though the main attitude was a hurried determination to get down there and help before the whole building exploded, there was also a mingled anger that she'd gone in without backup.

   They all teleported down with no more dallying, and with their help, Clarity was able to get many more people out at once.

    The whole time they were working, a slight rumbling had filled the building.

   Just as they were going in for the last group of people, the relatively calm vibration intensified to a rather threatening quake. Chunks of rubble fell on their heads as they gathered the few remaining of the trapped group.

   With one last earsplitting crack, the weakened remains of the ceiling finally gave in. The huge plate of rubble fell as if in slow motion.

   It came within seconds of flattening the whole group, but Clarity and Scarlett got them out in the nick of time.

   Clarity's leg was starting to regain its feeling, and she immediately wished that it would stay numb. The pain was shooting up her spine, all that way to her neck. It served as the perfect amplifier to the painful soreness in the rest of her body.

   She tried not to limp as she moved, lest she give away how badly she'd been hit. The team was already angry enough with her for not telling then about her expedition into the building.

   Gas masks were pulled off, and a headcount was performed. It was revealed that a single person was unaccounted for.

   Though she was immediately flooded with relief that they'd managed to recover nearly everyone before the infrastructure collapsed, she couldn't help the twang of guilt that corrupted that feeling. She hadn't been fast enough to save everyone...

   Many of the gathered crowd wanted to know who they were, and Clarity couldn't count how many people thanked her profusely. The faces past in a blur of crying, smiling, angry, confused people that she regretfully forgot as soon as they left.

   After an almost ridiculous amount of thanks were passed between both the team and the workers that had already been there, they managed to break away in order to finally teleport out.

   Though there hadn't been any immediately visible cameras in the vicinity of the sight, the news stations were exhaustedly persistent. Dust-blurry pictures of the team were plastered over nearly every headline she came across as she checked her phone in her room, sitting wearily on her bed.