by Will Lindsay, TC Blane and Keiran O’Sullivan
90219.2200
After Mandatory Eight Count
-=Temporal Investigations Headquarters, Earth=-
90219.2200
After Mandatory Eight Count
-=Temporal Investigations Headquarters, Earth=-
The first thing he was aware of as he came around was that his lungs were on fire.
He was face down on the floor, surrounded by a cloud of dust that made it impossible to see more than ten centimeters in front of his face.
For however long he had been unconscious, dust had been filling his lungs. It was the involuntary wheezing in attempt for a breath of fresh air that finally brought him back to reality.
Keiran O'Sullivan coughed until he nearly lost consciousness again, as the very attempts to find oxygen only served to further inundate his lungs with dust.
He rolled over, to force the chunk of a beam lying on his back off, and looked straight up through what was once the ceiling to the room above. Through the haze he could only make out the lights dangling 15 meters above him, but he knew from gauging the distance that the floor above them must have completely collapsed down into the room where he and Thomas had been working out.
Thomas…
“Blane!" Keiran called out. He pulled his sweatshirt up over his mouth to filter the dust, and finally managed to breath in a reasonably clean amount of room air.
The dust was beginning to settle some and he could begin to make out some shapes in the room. Mostly pieces of mangled metal, furniture and exercise equipment was all he could see.Panic grew in him as Blane did not immediately answer. He tried again.
"Blane!”
There was a nerve wracking pause and then he could hear coughing not too far away from a particularly large mound of debris.
“Thomas,” Keiran yelled and he made his way over to the now shifting pile of rubble. He grabbed the larger pieces and flung them off to the side. Eventually he found the dust-covered face of TC Blane.
TC choked out several large coughs and was finding it hard to catch his breath. It was not until Keiran helped him clear the dust from his face and mouth that he finally was able to breathe somewhat normally. The white chalky dust made both men look like albinos; especially Blane, who had been shirtless at the time of the explosion.
Now streaks of dark crimson began to seep through the pasty white on TC’s body. The numerous small and not so small cuts he obtained from the falling ceiling began to bleed. Keiran did a quick check of his friend and while a few of the gashes would need medical attention nothing appeared life threatening.
“Ya alright, yeah?”
TC nodded. “I don’t think anything is broken.” He coughed again. “But I swear if I have to have breathing treatments again I’ll be pissed.”
Keiran nodded. “Let’s get ya up.” He grabbed TC under the shoulder and tried to lift only to find that he could not move him.
“Uh oh.” TC frowned, and looked down. Keiran followed his eyes and saw what TC was referring to. A large beam had fallen across his legs. Luckily for TC the heavy punching bag had fallen on him before the beam.
The bag had cushioned the blow from the steel beam and most likely saved TC’s legs from being crushed. Even still, both of his legs were stuck fast under the heavy beam.
Keiran’s first instinct was of course to contact the Sera. Even if for some reason they couldn’t beam Blane to Sickbay, the doctor could at least tell him whether this was a ‘take it off or leave it on’ situation.
Unfortunately both he and TC had removed their combadges when they’d changed and assuming they’d even somehow still be operational they would still be trapped under one of numerous piles of rubble and Keiran didn’t think he had the time to search them all.
“Looks like we’ll have’ta shift it,” was all he said as he took a tight grip on his end of the beam. He strained, pulling the beam upwards but even with his massive strength he could do no more than lift it an inch.
Blane was not particularly optimistic at seeing this but O’Sullivan kept trying, an almost primal groan escaping his lips as if he were giving voice to the screams of the burning muscles in his arms.
O’Sullivan was not about to concede this fight, but it was taking everything he had just to keep the beam at the height he had it. His attention was so focused on the task that he didn’t even notice the approach of a man from behind him until his hands were next to his own on the beam.
With their combined strength they were able to lift it enough that they could twist it around to the side before their arms gave out and it fell to the ground.
It crashed loudly as it hit and it was close enough for TC to feel the vibrations through the floor. It was a sign of just how unstable the room was that further debris from the roof started falling at that moment.
“Why’s it that every time we go somewhere together these days the place ends up collapsing around us?” Will asked, and Keiran turned to see he was the man who’d come to offer assistance. Will's tone was light to try to disguise the fact that he was trying very hard not to notice the state both TC and Keiran were in.
It was a relief to be sure to see that Will was alright but there was one question he had to ask before he could actually let himself feel anything close to relief.
“Liis?” he asked with urgency.
“Beamed up to the Sera,” Will somberly replied. There was no need to say she’d been hurt as Keiran could figure that out from Will's eyes and from the fact that Zanh Liis would never have beamed herself out to safety while they were all still here.
“She’ll be okay,” Will assured him, but from the look on Keiran’s face he wasn’t sure how much he was being believed. Even TC’s often unreadable features showed that he didn’t like the chances of a woman who was just recovering from what Liis was and then found herself in an explosion.
There was only a brief pause as the realization hit Keiran before he snapped back into professional mode and flipped the bag off TC’s legs, its weight seeming like nothing compared to the beam.
“What of Salvek?”
“I don’t know. My badge isn’t workin’ so I’ve no line of communication to the ship. Anything could be happening,” Lindsay explained.
“Well, we’ll need to… get…” Keiran’s attention once again began to lapse. This time Will took him by the shoulders and shook him.
“Keiran, listen to me. Liis was hurt, but alive. Maybe just knocked out. I got her back to the ship, and I think she’ll be fine.”
“We’ll see.” Keiran wished more than anything to be the one up there injured. He’d rather have her healthy in this mess than hurt and in sickbay. He was just getting her well from the ordeal with the Romulans and now this.
Once she was up and about he was taking her straight off to Ireland to finish their Honeymoon, and the rest of the damn galaxy would need to find another axis to spin on for a while.
Blane had stood up by this point. “We need to get to Lassiter, see if we can help look for any survivors,” he said, breaking the tension.
“Could ya see what happened?” Keiran asked Will.
“After I came down from the roof, I saw the wall and floor to the computer archives was collapsed, and came down here ta see if anyone was in the gym. Glad I did,” Will said.
Keiran looked around the room, and realized that the floor around them was littered with the charred remains of computer cores from the archives.
A beam above him groaned and Keiran instinctively braced himself for something to fall from the ceiling. Looking up he saw the precariously dangling beam with a fallen computer core lying against it. The entire configuration looked like it was ready to give way at any moment.
“Let’s move, gentlemen,” Blane advised.
The trio stepped around shards of broken equipment and twisted metal towards the exit. Again the beam groaned, and the computer began to slide, causing the beam to snap off.
“Get back!” Keiran shouted. Will and TC were already dropping back, as the core and beam dropped directly down in front of the door, effectively blocking the exit all together.
“How much do you suppose that thing weighs?” Lindsay asked, as he assessed the damage.
“At least a ton. I don’t think even the three of us are going to budge it,” Keiran concluded, shaking his head.
Blane looked up to the floor above, and at all the equipment and beams lying around them that could possibly be fashioned into some sort of pile to climb.
“Then there is only one way out of here,” TC said. Unfortunately they all realized that way was up, through the room that had not long ago collapsed down onto them. All three men stood looking up to what had been the roof and making their own appraisal of their chances.
*********************************
Captain William Lindsay
Interim Director
Temporal Investigations
Commander TC Blane
Second Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012
and
*Commander Keiran O'Sullivan
Security Liaison to
The Alchemy Project
Captain William Lindsay
Interim Director
Temporal Investigations
Commander TC Blane
Second Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012
and
*Commander Keiran O'Sullivan
Security Liaison to
The Alchemy Project