There was crashing and burning. Heat soaked the room, smoke clouded my lungs and stung my eyes as I ran. I could barely make out Harrison's form in front of me. I prayed that Adira was in front of him. I stumbled over the remains of a burning chair and kept running.

Then there was an ear-splitting crack and I turned to watch one of the massive beans of the warehouse, already charred and smoldering, come crashing down right above my head.

And then everything went black.

-

"Axel!"

Someone was yelling.

"Axel!" Came the voice again.

Then my senses exploded.

The sound of crackling fire and crashing wood filled my ears again. I felt my hands and forearms on cement ground. Dull pain spiraled out of each bone. I blinked a little bit, but saw nothing but smoke and tints of bright orange flame licking through debris in various spots. I tried to shakily get to my feet and continue to run out the building, but got quickly dragged back down by something clamping down on my right foot.

And then I felt the pain.

I would have screamed if I didn't have smoke in my lungs. Red-hot intensity sliced through my foot and rushed up to my knee like lightning as my senses came back. I desperately tried to yank it out from where a bit of beam was crushing it to the floor, but it only made the pain worse. In my broken shoulder it felt like the bone was completely dislodged from its socket.

"Axel!"

I coughed and looked up with watering eyes. Harrison got down on his knees and immediately started to desperately pull and yank at my hands.

"I'm stuck," I croaked.

"Well get un-stuck, this place is coming down hard!" He yelled.

I managed to turn on my side to get a better look at the beam that was holding me down. "Can you move it?" I coughed some more.

Harrison scrambled to his feet and jumped over my back to inspect the burning beam. He reached out a hand to touch it but immediately retracted it. "Fuck, it's hot!" He tried again and this time burnt his hand.

"Then just go, I'll keep pulling myself out," I said, trying to yank my own foot out from under the beam.

"Fuck no, I'm not leaving you here!" He yelled, just before ducking as another beam came down and landed dangerously close to his head. As it hit the ground more dark smoke billowed out from it and right into our faces. We both burst into coughing fits.

Our struggles to pull me out got more and more hopeless as minutes passed and the beam still didn't budge in the slightest.

"We are not dying together Laurie, that's not how I want to be remembered!" Harrison yelled over the burning, collapsing to the ground after more futile clawing at the beam.

I didn't have the breath to respond, just started to dry heave with the smoke.

Finally Harrison shrugged off the dress vest he was wearing and wrapped it around his hands and neared the flaming beam again. "Harry wait," I croaked, "it's gonna catch."

My vision started to blur. The smoke was getting thick, the air getting thinner. And I was still trapped on my stomach, where the air was even more barren. The throbbing in my head picked up as the pain in my foot got worse. I felt everything grow heavy and my eyes start to roll back.

"Hey!" Harrison yelled. I barely heard him. "Do not pass out on me Laurie, not now!" Fear clouded his voice and made it higher pitched. I just managed to turn on my side to see him grab the fiery beam with his vest-clothed hands and start to lift it up. He strained under the weight for a few seconds, and I started to lose feeling in my neck when the pressure on my foot suddenly lightened.

Every late night and crazy early morning training hit me like a truck and my eyes flew open. I summoned every ounce of strength I contained and inched forward on my burnt forearms, yanking my foot out from under the beam. It crashed down millimeters behind me and embers singed through my pant leg as it hit the floor, but I was finally free.

Harrison clawed the flaming vest off his hands and hoisted me to my feet. He slung one of my arms around his shoulder and gripped it tight.

The debris was too scattered to see much of anything, the burning too loud to hear anything, and the smoke too thick to say or breathe anything.

But together Harrison and I struggled forwards the initial way we'd been going out the factory. I slumped into him since my ankle and foot were crushed. We skirted more beams and sweltering hot tables where the bombs had been laid out for tinkering with. Lab coats and wooden crates were aflame all around us. Every few seconds one of the fire bombs would go off and the blast would throw us on the ground again, breaking my ankle even more. Yet we got up and Harrison tightened his grip on me and draped my arm farther over his shoulder and we still pressed in the general direction of the exit. If it was even still there.

My eyes started to droop again. My lungs were too clogged with the dark billows of smoke, and the hot pain in my ankle was peaking. Harrison's hair was glimmering with sweat and the cuffs on his sleeves and ankles were scorched.

But then a rectangular pocket of light came into view just a few yards in front of us. Harrison yanked me in the direction of it and I found enough energy to hop on one foot.

We fell through the doorway just as another explosion thundered behind us, and landed on our stomachs, both coughing and gasping in the clean air.

Strong arms gripped me tight and I felt myself being dragged farther away from the building. I saw a figure grab Harrison too and they let us go in the same place. I flipped onto my back and coughed up at the sky once the hands pulled us a safe distance from the factory. Next to me Harrison found the air to groan and pushed himself onto his side facing me.

"You good?" He asked breathlessly.

"Yeah," I quaked, "I'm great." I reached my hand over to him and shoved his head to the side. He tried to laugh but doubled back onto his chest and coughed some more. "Thanks Harry," I managed, even though my lungs were still screaming.

"You two," someone said from above me. I squinted and made out huge brooding shoulders and a cloud of black hair. "Look like a fucking mess," Zach finished.

"Thanks Patterson," Harrison said, turning on his back like me. "'Preciate your concern." He found the strength to flip him off.

My eyes widened. "Harry, your hands!" Then I doubled over in a coughing fit again.

Harrison glanced down at his hands and then sat all the way up. "Fuck," he whispered as he turned them over and examined the redness and peeling white skin over his palms. Underneath where the skin had been burned away was a sickening pink and yellowish color.

"Does it hurt?" I asked.

Harrison continued to stare open-mouthed at his torn hands. "I—uh...no. It's just sorta...numb. For now."

Zach beckoned for Cal and the Irishman came rushing over. He got down in his knees to get a look at my foot. I managed to sit up and take a glance at it too. Cal very gingerly lifted up my pant leg and Zach made a noise at the back of his throat and looked away as the air hit my bare ankle. Or what was left of it.

"Jesus fucking Christ," Harrison said, slowly getting to his feet while trying not to use his hands.

My foot looked...dead. I could see bone. My skin was hanging off it in some parts. All around the edge of the wound were burns like the ones on Harrison's hands, red and white skin licked off muscle by the flame of the fire. All of a sudden I felt light-headed.

Suddenly Cal dropped his hands from my leg. "Where's Blitz?"

I swallowed.

"Where is Blitzen?" He repeated, fear starting to creep onto his face.

Harrison and I glanced at each other.

"He..."

"Where is he?!" Cal demanded. I jumped. Cal never yelled.

"The bomb's wireless interface broke," Adira said from behind him with a shaky voice. Her face was wet and her eyes red, but not just from running out of the burning building. "He set it off manually," she said quietly, looking down at her feet.

Cal collapsed to the ground, shocked. His mouth opened a crack and he just stared in front of him. "That bastard," he whispered after a few moments.

Adira sniffed.

We all sat in silence.

"Why didn't he say something?" Cal yelled in anger.

Adira flinched. "The radio broke."

"Why didn't you talk him out of it?" Cal stood up. Adira's wide blue eyes followed his as he rose to his full height of 6'2 and towered over her. His typical softness had gone out in remorse.

"I—I tried to," she stammered. "I punched him and pulled at him but he wouldn't change his mind. I tried to say I would do it, since I obviously deserved it way more than him, but there wasn't time and he—he wouldn't back out of it...I tried..." She wiped at the tears trailing down her cheek.

Cal rubbed his own face with one hand, then dropped it and stalked off towards the van.

Adira looked like she wanted to call out after him but she didn't. Zach followed the Irishman, leaving Harrison standing over me and Adira a couple feet away.

"Think you can stand?" Harrison offered down the hand that was less burnt than the other.

I didn't think I could, but I couldn't continue lying out here in the open while the warehouse and the factory continued to burn a few yards away, and with dozens of sirens in the distance.

I took Harrison's hand, both of us ignoring his obvious grimace and very slowly got me to stand up.

Harrison glanced over at Adira. "He won't bite unless you ask him too."

She hesitated but eventually came over and draped my other arm around her shoulders and helped me limp/stagger/trip over to the white van where the rest of our group was. They set me down so my back was propped up against one of the wheels.

"I should get some ointment. For my hands. Because they're burned. Yeah," Harrison said very quickly and very smoothly and practically bolted to where Cal and James were organizing the medical supplies out the back of the van, leaving Adira and I alone.

"I'll get you some things," she said quietly. She followed Harrison's trail and brought some bandages, cloths, pills and a water bottle over to me.

She sat down cross-legged near my right hip and started to dab away at the cut that sliced a thick line through my eyebrow. One of the guards had given to me when he got a hold of my own knife. Right now that was the least of my pain, but at this point, I didn't even care. The physical pain, which holy shit there was a lot of, simmered beneath my skin for the moment, giving way for the wave of emotional pain, which made my head feel like it was underwater and my chest feel like it was constricting with every breath. She made me feel like I was drowning.

"I'm sorry," I said to her.

"There's a lot of things you could be sorry for right now."

"I'm sorry," I repeated.

"For what? When you said I only felt pity towards myself?"

"Yes."

"And when you called me an attention whore?"

"Yes."

"And when you called me a bitch?"

"Clearly you're never going to drop any of those."

"Nope."

"I'm sorry about Blitz."

Her hands wavered for just a second before going back to wiping the blood out of my face from the cut. "There was nothing we could do," she said.

"I know he was one of your closest friends. He was mine too."

She dropped her hands and handed me an ice pack. I pasted it over my eyebrow as she began to take my shoe on my mutilated ankle.

"Fucking hell," I gasped as she peeled it off. I drew my uninjured leg to my chest so I had something to squeeze while she cut the last six inches of my pants off from around my ankle. "You didn't deserve it more than him Deera, you know that, right? None of us deserve to die."

She chuckled under her breath. "All of you are so goddamn stubborn."

"So Blitz said something too?"

"Of course he did," she replied, pooling six antibiotics into her hand then transferring them to me. I dry swallowed them all at once. "He was annoying like that." I saw her clench her teeth at the change to past tense.

"You know he was right."

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Did you not hear yourself earlier about how stubborn we are?"

"Axel, Blitz is dead," she shook the bandage in her hand at me. Her eyes were glossed over, and her hair was half down and half up and charcoal and red scratches were clustered around her hairline and cheeks. "He sacrificed himself for us and hundreds of innocent lives without thinking twice. I've only known him for two months. And now he's gone, and I feel like a part of me just went out. He's... gone. Forever."

"But you're not mourning. You're feeling sorry for yourself."

"Shut up."

"No!" I suddenly screamed at her.

To our right the other boys lifted their heads up from addressing their own injuries. In front of me Adira tossed the bandage down. "Fuck off."

"No!" I repeated with the same force. "I'm done with letting you think like this! Having no self value, not caring whether you live or die!"

"I didn't ask you to care about me in the first place!" She yelled back.

We glared at each other for a while, then she stood up and turned to go back towards the flaming warehouse.

"Where the hell are you going?" I called after her.

"I'm gonna toss a fucking coin!" She yelled over her shoulder. "Heads I go running in, tails I stay here for the feds to find me and take me back to that cage Flagg sent me to in Texas!"

I scratched at the rubber of the tire behind me trying to claw myself back to my feet to limp after her. "Adira wait!"

She whirled around and smirked as I basically fell my way over to her. "Are you serious?" She asked me.

"Yeah," I arrived in front of her out of breath. "Yeah I'm fucking serious. I'm not letting you do either of those." I almost doubled over from the combined pain in my shoulder and my ankle.

"You don't control me," she said, folding her arms across her chest.

"And you don't get to make stupid ass decisions without me."

"But I'm not with you." She turned her lip up and I fought the urge to kiss it right off her.

"So you're just gonna waltz right in there?" I gestured behind her to the billowing smoke.

"Sure."

"What about me and the rest of the guys? You don't care about what will happen to us if you do that?"

"You mean what Flagg will do?"

I snorted. "He's destroyed what's left of my life. He can torture me all he wants."

Adira turned back around and headed for the factory again.

"I meant how we're gonna feel Adira!" I started after her again. "All of us have lost people we've loved, and all of us have had a moment where we couldn't see an end to it! But we are not fucking cowards!"

Her blond hair snapped through the wind as she whipped around once more. Her bright blue eyes sparked white fire as she fixed a glare of pure hatred at me."I am not a coward," she said lowly.

My legs were about to give out from the pain in my ankle. "What would Blitz say to that? He told you that you deserve to live, didn't he? But you are gonna disobey the request of a man not 15 minutes dead?"

Her fist came out of nowhere and she socked me hard in the jaw. I fell to the ground and hot pain sprouted from where she had hit me. "Men," she shook her head down at me. "Can never take a fucking hint." She turned on her heel and stalked back to the burning building.

I scrambled forwards on the ground and grabbed her by the ankle and yanked her down. She hit the pavement on her back and I quickly crawled forward so I was suspended above her on my hands. "You said you can't live without me," I murmured.

She sighed deeply beneath me. "You said you loved me."

"Adira—"

"Do you mean it?"

Her dirty blond hair was scattered out around her head against the concrete. Small light brown freckles peppered her nose, smudged over with black charcoal in some parts. Her black t-shirt was ripped around her collar bone and there were burnt holes around her sides. I could still see small thin scars snaking down beneath her shirt, and the more prominent red ones circling her left eye where the stitches had been.

There was no "and yet she was beautiful," with Adira. She just was. I didn't love her despite her flaws —internal or external. I loved her because of them. Care and respect and love for herself had been tortured out of her. She couldn't find it within herself to forgive herself, which is why it had taken me almost to my death to convince her that she is is worth forgiving.

And she is worth it. So worth it.

"Axel Lawrence, do you mean it?" She repeated.

"Yeah," I whispered. "'Course I mean it. I don't lie to you."

"You can't save everyone."

"You're right. But I don't give up on them."

She lifted a hand up and quietly smoothed away some light blond strands of hair out my eyes.

"Let me up," she whispered. I didn't move. She shoved at my chest above hers. "Axel."

I slowly pushed myself off of her and strained onto two feet again.

"You're a hero," she told me, "and one day you'll find someone who deserves that natural instinct. But that person isn't me."

"Adira—"

"I am doing this," she said, pointing to the warehouse still in flames. "And there is nothing you can do about it."

I sighed for the last time and took a hobble backwards. "Fine," I said quietly. "You just don't care anymore. I get it."

"No," she shook her head. Her eyes turned sad and she shook her head faster. "God no Axel, of course I care. I care about you, all of you guys, but just...not myself."

I snorted. "If you really cared," I said, "if you honestly and truly cared, then you'd stay." I shook my head at her and glared. "But you don't. Do not let your last words to me be a fucking lie Adira."

She looked hurt. I'd hurt her. With the truth. I love how her main problem with me is that she thought I was a liar, when it was really her all along.

"I really do care about you Axel." She stepped into me, so close our chests touched and my senses did that thing they did in the bathroom at Jinx's apartment in New York when she showed me the scars on her back. Damn that felt like a lifetime ago. She slowly brought her hand up to gently grasp my chin and tilt it down to meet her ocean-blue eyes that I knew I would never see again. "Thank you for trying," was all she said.

She turned around again and started walking towards the fiery entrance once more. Thick black smoke curled out of every inch, one side was already collapsed in a charred mess and was still engulfed in flames.

Despite all the fire and the burning in my ankle I felt cold.

"You're just gonna let her do that?!" Harrison shoved me in my broken shoulder. I barely felt it. He yanked me around to face him and not Adira walking to her death. "Dude!" His dark brown eyes were wild and scared. "What the fuck man?! You love her —she loves you too!— and you're letting her walk in there to die!"

I walked around him and started limping back towards where Jinx and the rest of the agents were staring in shock and confusion.