Unsung

Chapter Eighty-Eight

I'd expected to feel a sort of weightlessness before I began to fall. Like when the coyote hovered in the air before going off the edge of the cliff in the cartoons. But the truth was, there was no pause—no moment of buoyancy—before I plummeted to the ground. Just the instant pull of gravity as soon as my legs left the platform.

But then the world exploded into a million pieces around me and I experienced what I would have described as flying. And believe me, it wasn't nearly as glamourous as I drew it in my comics. At least, not the way I did it. Suddenly, direction didn't exist. Up was down. Down was up. My body was flipping in ways I'd only ever seen in the Olympics. And before I could process what was happening, I'd crashed into something hard and everything went black.

When my eyes opened again, I tried to remember where I was. What I'd been doing. I'd jumped from the building, but somehow I'd ended up back inside it? And I'd been flying? Or something that had resembled flying? The details were all foggy and confused.

What the hell happened?

I lifted my head from the ground and groaned as pain exploded in the base of my skull. Staggering forward on my knees, I pulled myself toward a flickering light in the darkness. When I finally made it to the opening of the tiny room I was in, I had to blink to be sure I was seeing correctly.

Debris lay in piles around the room and fires crackled on nearly every surface, giving the room a slightly ethereal glow. Dust hung in the air like fog, making it difficult to breathe or even see more than a few feet in front of your face. The rock wall lay across the blue mat where my friends had been standing only minutes before.

Moments before? How long had I been out? What had happened?

Without warning, I erupted into a coughing fit that filled my entire body with agony and I gripped the edge of the wooden floor to keep from sobbing. It was so hard to breathe. Not just because of the dirt in the air or the smoke that was beginning to fill the room, but there seemed to be something wrong with my chest. I was only able to take in short, shallow breaths before my side screamed out in pain. Placing my hand gingerly to my ribs, I felt around until I came to a spot that made me cry out. I was pretty sure I'd bruised a rib or two, possibly even broken one.

What were you supposed to do for a broken rib? We'd covered gashes and blood loss, concussions and broken arms and legs in class, but nothing about ribs. Was I supposed to bandage it?

I forced myself into a sitting position and gritted my teeth as I pulled my long-sleeve t-shirt over my head and wrapped it around my chest. But when I pulled the sides tight, the pain only grew and I felt like I couldn't catch my breath at all.

Letting my shirt fall slack again, I took in a few ragged gasps of air and then slowly secured my overshirt around my waist instead.

I was beginning to hear sounds around the room other than the odd ringing that had been playing in my ears since I'd woken up. There were muffled yells. Groans. Cries for help.

I tried to decipher where they were coming from, but visibility was still bad, and it was hard to tell what was rubble and what were bodies. There was so much of both.

My friends. Where were my friends?

The thought seemed to jump at me out of nowhere and suddenly gave me crystal-clear focus.

I had to help them.

Grabbing onto the doorframe with one shaky hand while reaching across my chest with the other, I was able to pull myself up into a standing position and surveyed the scene below me.

Everything was on fire.

Parts of the ceiling, crash pads, blocks, all the equipment in the area was in flames, ignited as if it had been doused with gasoline.