Chapter 102 - Back There Again (2)

We said nothing more after that. We raced up the stairs, Riccardo pulling ahead. I couldn't match his speed.

My chest still hurt. Running seemed to make the pain worse, too.

But I hid it. If I let it show, he would definitely leave me on the ground.

We ran up to the fourteenth floor, where we could go no farther.

From there, rubble buried the stairs, making them unusable. We threw open the stairwell door and entered the corridor. It was no better off, so we cleared the debris blocking our path as we made our way to a window.

Riccardo tied a wire around me.

"You had a wire?"

"It's not a weapon, so they didn't take it~."

According to him, Ami was about the only person who used wires as weapons.

He perched on the windowsill and leaned his upper body outside.

Fortunately, the night was bright with moonlight and there was no wind. He attached the suction cup at the end of the wire to the building's wall so we could climb up the exterior.

"You can climb up, right?"

"Yes."

He disappeared through the window, and I leaned out after him.

Beneath my feet, the wasteland stretched away through the blue-tinged air.

Again, neither of us said much. We climbed the wire in the cold night air.

At one point, Riccardo stopped climbing and struck a window.

CRASH!

The glass shattered inward. He jumped inside, and I quickly followed.

Oh.

The sight before me left me speechless.

I had never wanted to see a scene like this again. When I had been trapped in a building with Forden, no one had been crushed beneath the rubble. When Riccardo and I had been buried in the corridor, Mari had been the only one pinned beneath it.

But this was different.

We had entered through a nineteenth-floor window because the arena's ceiling—the nineteenth floor—had collapsed onto the spectator stands.

They probably wouldn't even find most of the bodies.

I turned away from an arm protruding from between the layers of a concrete sandwich.

It was terrifyingly quiet.

All the lights were broken. We had to rely on moonlight to see.

I stood at the highest point and looked down. My eyes, now accustomed to the dark, picked out the arena far below. Half of it had collapsed.

The northern side, where Riccardo and I had been, had fallen through.

The opposite side was covered in rubble, but its floor appeared intact. It was precisely where the waiting area had been.

Where the elder who had been torn to death had briefly sat. Had they avoided planting bombs nearby because he would be waiting there? Faced with this hopeful sight, I released the breath I'd been holding.

"Sir."

I called to Riccardo as he descended the sloping rubble, following him with my feet firmly braced. It was so quiet that I didn't need to raise my voice.

"Do you know roughly where they are?"

"More or less."

He didn't look back. Instead, he made steadily for one spot, moving quickly but carefully. I marveled at how he could descend toward the arena so fast without slipping or kicking loose any rubble that might upset its precarious balance.

Even with moonlight as his only light source, he never slowed.

Dust hung thick in the air.

For a while, I focused solely on getting down to the arena.

"Winter!"

Riccardo finally jumped from the edge of the rubble onto what remained of the arena floor.

"Fisker!"

I, too, jumped down from nearly two stories up and landed in the arena.

There were only so many places we could search anyway. I ran toward the waiting area, careful not to lose my footing and fall through the arena floor.

"Sir!"

That startled me.

Riccardo and I both flinched. But the shock that had sent my heart racing quickly gave way to joy.

She was alive.

I felt the anxious grip around my heart loosen. I let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. Profound relief also filled Riccardo's face as he approached the buried waiting area.

"Winter."

He carefully touched the rubble covering the waiting area.

"Give me a situation report~..."

"A-Achille..."

What about Achille?

"We weren't crushed, thanks to you covering us with your weapon, but Achille's not... I think the poison's spread. The creature's poison, I mean..."

"Calm down and breathe~."

"We didn't get crushed to death because you made a space with your weapon, you know? The ceiling did collapse, but luckily the weapon was strong..."

"Winter. Breathe."

I could hear Bobby trying to steady her ragged breathing.

I walked over to Riccardo and narrowed my eyes, feeling over the rubble to determine its shape.

"I can't see anything."

I also tried to pinpoint exactly where Bobby's voice was coming from.

"It's a little hard to breathe, and my head hurts. I think we're probably running low on oxygen, but more importantly, Achille's breathing keeps getting worse..."

"We can't wait for backup."

Riccardo made his assessment quickly and turned to me.

I nodded.

THUD!

Having another pair of hands made things much easier.

One by one, we dropped the pieces of rubble covering the waiting area through the collapsed arena floor. Protruding shards of rebar and sharp concrete cut my hands, but I had no time to care.

We hauled away several heavy chunks, sending them crashing down.

As we repeated the process, the waiting area emerged, compressed like a crepe cake. Its ceiling bowed downward, with seemingly endless rubble piled on top.

If Riccardo hadn't hastily covered them with his weapon, Bobby and Fisker would have been sandwiched to death. I frowned at the cross section of the concrete sandwich revealed before me.

Even now, things didn't look good.

"Your leg."

Riccardo's voice was rigid.

With the rubble gone, Bobby lifted her head and saw us standing in the moonlight. She gazed at us with joy in her eyes before following his gaze.

"Oh."

Looking at her right calf pinned beneath the rubble, she spoke in a flat voice.

"Right. Lucky it's only one leg, huh?"

"I should have made it cover more."

Riccardo's voice was tight. He meant the silver ceiling above Bobby and the prone Achille, which was holding up well under the weight of the rubble.

Bobby smiled at his furrowed brow.

"No. Then it wouldn't have been thick enough or high enough, and we'd both have been flattened like dried fish. I should have lain down straight. My mistake. Look, Achille isn't pinned."

"We can't move what's on your leg."

"Anyone can see that."

Bobby kept smiling even as tears streamed down her face.

"As long as I get out alive, I don't care."

I should have paid more attention.

I shouldn't have dismissed the warning from the elder who had been torn apart by a creature. With a heavy heart, I looked at Bobby's trapped leg.

Even a shot of the Green Dream antidote wouldn't save it.

Just a few hours ago, it had been perfectly fine.

"Get Achille out first."

Bobby met my eyes as I stood there biting my lip.

"Look at his arm. It's completely swollen. He did that catching me... What if he dies?"

"He won't..."

Riccardo bent down and injected the antidote into Achille's arm. Then he pulled our limp, unconscious, silver-haired senior out over Bobby and held him out to me.

"Take him down."

"You need to come with us," I replied, taking Achille.

"The shape-shifting weapon won't hold much longer. Neither will this floor."

"Agreed."

Bobby reached a hand out toward the arena.

"I've been hearing strange noises overhead for a while now. Hurry up and give me the antidote, then cut my leg off. And get me out of here."

Riccardo drew a long breath.

He seemed to be barely keeping himself from hyperventilating.

Yes. He'd held out well so far, in a place where countless people had been crushed to death. Even I felt as if I was losing my mind. How much worse must it be for him?

But there was no time to calm him down.

I held Achille back out to him.

"I'll do it."

Riccardo turned his head slightly and met my eyes. He was breaking out in a cold sweat again.

"Start heading down, sir. I'll be right behind you."

"Right."

Bobby murmured as she stared blankly up at the silver ceiling.

"You're good with a sword. I think it'll hurt less if you do it."

I couldn't get emotional.

Now wasn't the time to wallow in guilt and sadness. Biting my lip, I waited for Riccardo's decision as he cast a quick glance at the rubble layered over his shape-shifting weapon and the arena floor, cramped with just the two of us standing on it.

A suffocating silence hung over the place.

Riccardo soon made his decision.

"Come right after me."

"Yes."

"Winter."

Riccardo squeezed Bobby's outstretched hand, then let go.

"Hang in there."

Bobby gave a small laugh. Still lying down, she waved at him as he slung Achille onto his back and climbed the arena wall.

When she finished waving, she turned to look up at me.

"Sorry for making you stay."

What piece of rubble could serve as a sword?

I didn't answer Bobby. Turning sharply, I scanned our surroundings with the antidote syringe in my hand. Something small enough to hold, with an edge as sharp and straight as possible.

I soon picked up two pieces of rubble from a corner of the arena and knocked them against each other to shape them.

"Ah!"

Seeing me approach with the rubble, Bobby suddenly screamed.

"Now that we're actually doing it, I'm scared!"

"I'll make it quick."

I'd done this often... Usually on a battlefield.

Back then, I'd had to resort to the crude method of cauterizing with a heated sword, but luckily we had the antidote now.

If I cut off her leg while her enhanced body was active, the wound would soon seal itself. Though the severed lower leg wouldn't grow back.

I sank the syringe needle into Bobby's arm.

"I feel like I'm going to live."

Thank goodness.

I slipped the syringe into my pocket and picked up the piece of rubble I'd set down. Then I examined the point where her calf disappeared beneath the heavy concrete. Her leg extended beyond the silver ceiling and lay buried there.

I had to do it in one stroke.

"Sir?"

"Hm?"

"Which class were you in?"

"Huh? Me?"

Puzzlement filled her eyes.

"I was in the ten..."

CHOP!

A clean cut.

Bobby screamed.

Ignoring her shrill cry, I pulled her newly freed body out from beneath the silver ceiling and lifted her. When she straightened her bent left leg, the difference between it and her right became painfully obvious.

I said, don't get emotional.

I slung her over my shoulder and ran toward the arena wall.

"I'm sorry."

Stepping onto the rubble, I leaped up and scrambled over the edge of the arena. I murmured as I quickly climbed the sloping debris.

"I'm so sorry, sir."

"For what?"

Bobby mumbled behind me, her face pressed into my back as she clawed at my shirt.

"What are you sorry for? What...?"

"If I'd just been a little faster..."

"No."

She firmly cut me off. Then, her face still buried in my back, she added,

"Thank you for coming back."

Unlike before, her voice was steady.

"Thank you for getting me out..."

If only I'd paid a little more attention.

If only I'd known Mari was an agent. If I'd acted more wisely when I alone retained my enhanced body's abilities. If I'd killed the creatures a little faster, or hadn't ignored the elder's final warning. If I'd picked up Riccardo and run over to them, this might never have happened.

As I headed for the window, I endlessly regretted the mistakes I'd made.

Until it was time to climb down the outside of the building, and I had to shove my self-recrimination aside.