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Dust choked the air. Pulverized concrete and the faint, acrid tang of burnt wiring stung Madylin's nostrils. She coughed, a harsh, hacking sound that scraped her lungs raw. Her left hand felt like it was on fire, screaming in protest. She leaned forward, elbows braced on her knees, trying to force air past the grit clogging her breathing passages.
Thomas was beside her, his silhouette shaking against the dim, unnatural light filtering in from somewhere above. Brenda laid a few feet away, already moving, already recovering.
"Everyone good?"
Thomas let out a ragged breath that sounded more like a laugh than an answer. "Yeah, great."
Madylin couldn't manage words. Her mouth tasted like iron. She forced air in, focusing only on the slow, deliberate pull of oxygen. She didn't want them to see the trembling in her fingers, the slight nausea clinging to her vision. She swallowed the metallic taste hard, nodded once, sharply, and let her functional hand fall heavily to the debris-strewn ground beside her.
Brenda pulled a flashlight from her pack. She clicked the beam on, a tight white circle cutting through the darkness. Brenda rummaged in the bag again, tossing a second flashlight toward Madylin.
Madylin caught it automatically, the plastic cool against her scorched palm. She clicked it on. The beam stuttered for a moment, then held steady. She swept the light across the wreckage around them. Twisted metal frames, chunks of ceiling hanging like broken teeth, and the dark smear where the elevator shaft had been. It looked like the guts of the building had been ripped open.
She turned the flashlight beam back toward Brenda.
"Why are you helping us?"
Brenda shook her head; her eyes stayed fixed on the bag, refusing to meet Madylin's gaze.
"Trust me, it's not my idea."
"Then whose?" She pressed.
"Jorge seems to think that you guys are our ticket to the Safe Haven."
Thomas scoffed, a dry, humorless sound in the confined space. "The what?"
"You know, paradise? Safe from the sun, Free from infection." Brenda's tone was flat, conveying nothing but fact. "Supposedly, The Right Arm has been taking kids there for years." She shifted the weight of the backpack onto her shoulders. "Immuses, anyway."
Madylin pushed herself up, every joint protesting the movement. She put weight on her left foot first, then gingerly shifted to the right, the weight on her damaged hand shooting a fresh wave of pain up her arm. She released her grip on the flashlight momentarily to press the back of her throbbing hand against her thigh.
