Listen to Her || A Chicago P.D. Fanfiction

30- Case 11

A/N: The episodes being used for this chapter are called 'Deathtrap' (from Chicago Fire) and 'Emotional Proximity' (from Chicago P.D.).

Monday night, 8:30 p.m.
"Thank you so much again for dinner, Antonio. I really appreciate it." Danielle thanks her partner who's getting ready to leave her apartment. He had stopped by and brought some Chick-Fil-A after she had mentioned she loves their lemonade earlier today. Adam and Kevin were having a debate about which restaurant was better: Chick-Fil-A or Raising Canes, and that's how it came up. "Of course. I wanted to make sure you actually ate a real meal for dinner because Pocky Sticks don't count." He says with a smile, earning one back. "Lalalalala, I'm not listening." She says, jokingly covering her ears, making them both laugh a bit. "I really do appreciate that, thank you." She says as he looks at her, leaning against her apartment's doorway. "You're welcome." He says with a small smile. Before he says anything, he hears music thumping from the second floor, he and Danielle looking up at the hallway ceiling. "Oh come on. A party?" She groans softly. "Good luck sleeping with that ruckus." Antonio teases. "Gee, thanks." Danielle playfully says, hugging him. He kisses her cheek before letting go of her, the sniper blushing as she does the same to him. "I'll see you tomorrow." He tells her with a smile, watching her nod a bit. "See you tomorrow." She says, waving at him as she watches him walk down the hallway until he exits the building. She closes her apartment door and goes back to sitting on the couch, watching the show 'Snapped'. It's about 45 minutes into the episode when the sniper hears a loud popping sound coming from upstairs. "Someone broke something." She says softly, figuring the people who are partying on the floor above her have broken a thing or two. As she looks at the TV screen, her vision becomes the slightest bit foggy, so Danielle blinks a few times but her apartment gets foggier by the second. Utterly confused, she opens her apartment door to air out whatever is infiltrating the room and is met with tons of youngsters screaming as they all rush down the hallway, coming from stairwell. There must be over 100 high school kids that are packing the hallway as they all scramble to get out of the building. Sticking her hand out into the hallway, she grabs onto someone's shirt, a guy no more than 16-17 years old looking at her. "C.P.D. What's going on?" She asks the guy who looks like he's just seen a ghost as she shows him her badge. "There's-There's a fire upstairs. It's spreading! You need to get outta here!" He says before another guy drags him away as thin smoke begins filling the hallway. It's the same smoke that's filling the sniper's apartment. Once there's a bit of clear space, she begins knocking on her neighbors' doors, showing them her badge and ordering them to evacuate the building. "Danielle!" A familiar voice calls out to her, the sniper turning to see the two brothers she helped last month, Matthew and Oliver, standing at their apartment doorway. "Boys, you need to get out of here. Duck down and exit. Go, go!" Danielle tells them, making sure they get to half of the hallway before continuing to knock on doors. She makes her way to the second floor, pushing past kids who are now coughing and are helping injured peers down the staircase. Black ashes cover some of their faces, so Danielle covers her nose and mouth with her hoodie's neckline, quickly climbing up the rest of the steps. "Chicago P.D.! If you can hear me, call out!" She yells through the scorching hot hallway, a thick black smoke cloud invading the second floor and making its way downstairs. She walks through already wide open apartment doors, checking each and every room, making mental notes of ones she still needs to clear. Even though she's covering her mouth, her nostrils feel like they're on fire, the sensation heading into her chest and lungs. 'Keep calm, keep calm.' The 20 year old reminds herself as she begins coughing slightly. After checking one of the last rooms, half of the roof collapses, catching the sniper off guard as she ducks out of the way and into the last apartment just in time. "C.P.D.! If you can hear me, call out!" She shouts as best as she can, her voice cracking slightly. A noise catches her attention as she nears an already empty bedroom, so she strains her hearing. A cry causes the sniper's senses to kick into overdrive when she realizes it belongs to a baby. She calls out again, hoping the child will keep crying as Danielle avoids dancing flames that have already consumed majority of the apartment she's in and the second floor. Shielding her face with her arms, she makes it towards the loud yet almost barely audible baby cry in the bedroom, finding the small child in it's crib. "I got you, I got you." The young detective says to the screaming baby, seeing it's a girl as she covers the little girl's face, Danielle making her way towards the front door. Before she can even exit, some of the roof's boards collapse in front of her, blocking her path as the fire roars. The baby screams as the sniper tries to keep herself and the child calm, holding the child closer to her chest. "There's gotta be a way, come on, come on, please." Danielle talks to herself through some coughing, trying to keep the baby's mouth and nose covered instead of her own as she makes a jump over one of the broken boards, now rushing through whatever is left of the burned down hallway. About to make her way down the stairs, a loud blast of flames traps Danielle and the baby in a corner. Not knowing what else to do, the sniper leans against the corner crease and carefully slides her back against the wall until she's sitting down on the floor, still hugging the child close as the sniper hunches over the baby to protect her from the flames. It's not until now that the 20 year old realizes that her eyes are crying on their own, that her whole body feels hotter than being in a sauna, that she's happy she found this baby but isn't even sure if they'll both get out of here as the debris and flames surround them, not letting them make an escape. Beginning to feel a bit dizzy, she takes out her phone, pressing the power button three times in a row. That feature, which she enabled a few years ago, alerts her phone to automatically send a prewritten text to the 5 contacts she input as emergency. When she had joined the Intelligence Unit, she updated those contacts; she left Scar and Demon as her main ones and added Hank, Alvin, and Antonio. Putting her phone back in her pocket, she cradles the crying baby who begins coughing. Doing what she can think of, she hurriedly takes off her hoodie and wraps it around the child, using the hood to loosely cover the girl's face so she doesn't inhale so much smoke. To try and calm her down, the young woman hums a slow song into the baby's ear, hugging the child close to her as much as possible.
At Firehouse 51, an alarm blares as the firefighters sit in the lounge area. "Battalion 25. Engine 51. Truck 81. Squad 3. Ambulance 61. Still and box alarm. 1100 Fulton street." A woman's voice says, causing the firefighters hurry to their trucks, putting all their equipment on before getting settled in the vehicles. "Main to Battalion 25. Be aware, we've received multiple calls on this fire." A woman says to Boden through his radio. "Battalion 25 copies that message." Boden says as he grabs his helmet and heads to his own vehicle. "1100 Fulton, that's commercial, isn't it?" Casey asks Otis who's driving. "Yeah." "Must be burning pretty good to have so many people called in." Casey says. "Unless they're calling from inside." Otis says. "How far are we?" Kelly asks the second driver of the second truck. "Four or five blocks." The driver answers. "You guys smell that? I think we got ourselves a working fire." Severide tells the guys riding in the back. "I got a feeling we're not getting any shut eye tonight." Cruz says. "I want everyone ready to go as soon as we land." Casey tells the crew he's riding with in the first truck. "Got it, lieutenant." Kidd responds. "Hermann, bring the rope bag. We have to expect the worst." Casey says as the fire trucks slow down near the burning apartment building. "We're gonna need every company in the city." Casey tells Hermann as they and the others are greeted by people running out of the building wherever they find an exit, coughing and looking for people they live with. "How many inside?" Boden asks a guy who's barely made it out of the apartment building. "I don't know. Over 60, 70? We were having a party on the second floor....there's a lot." The guy answers, coughing horribly. "It's like a maze. I barely found my way out." He adds before Boden thanks him. "Battalion 25 to main. 2-11 alarm and an EMS plan 2." Boden says into his radio. "51, get two lines inside. You hold that fire til we evacuate. 77, grab a hydrant on fuller and feed 51. Ambo 61 is triage. The fire is in the tresses. We need to move fast, save as many as we can." He tells his team who all nod before getting to doing their jobs. "Casey?" Wallace asks. "Yeah?" "Let Hermann take point. I need you out here to recon the outside of the building." "Copy that, Chief." "Hermann, Mouch, Otis, Kidd, inside for primary search." Casey orders his group. "Copy that, lieutenant!" Hermann acknowledges. He and Otis walk up to a door where people are banging and screaming on the other side of it. "Hang on! We're gonna get you out!" Hermann shouts to the tenants trying to evacuate. He pulls on the door but finds it stuck, so Kidd hands him a crowbar to be able to pry the door open, Otis helping him. As soon as the door bursts open, multiple tenants that range from elderly to children all overlap and fall on each other. "Slow down! Slow down!" Kidd tells them, she and Mouch helping the fallen ones up, telling everyone else to go to triage to get checked. "Alright, let's go!" Otis shouts, leading the way inside the building. "All units, be advised: Battalion 51 is requesting backup at 1100 Fulton Street. Again, Battalion 51 is requesting backup at 1100 Fulton Street. Multiple people injured in a fire, all hands on deck needed." A man's voice from squad comes in through Antonio's radio. His brows furrow together as he picks up his radio, not believing the address he's hearing. "Squad, this is Detective Antonio Dawson with Intelligence. Repeat that address one more time." He says, slowing down and pulling over to a small empty space of the busy street he's on. He had met an informant to check up on him, so the second in command detective is barely making his way home. "1100 Fulton Street. I repeat, the address is 1100 Fulton Street." The man answers, Antonio hearing his phone ding with a notification. As soon as his eyes fix on his phone screen, he sees a text from his partner.