Page 24 of Sparks Fly

“Kaia! You have to trust me! I won’t leave you here.”

The smallest sigh of relief escapes Hallie’s lips when Kaia finally gives her a timid nod. She barrels back through the door she came through and leaps down a flight of stairs, 3 steps at a time.

When she bursts through the service door on the floor below, Hallie can only just make out Kaia’s figure through the steadily rising smoke. She sprints towards the mattress and yanks it towards her, desperate to find an area of floor that might bear the weight of Kaia’s descent.

Ready in her position, she radios Kaia, terribly aware that they may soon run out of seconds before they can kiss their shot at escaping goodbye.

“Now, Kaia! Jump now! I’ve got you.”

Kaia hesitates for another agonizing moment until a flaming beam crashes down behind her, forcing her to lurch forward.

If she doesn’t move now, it’ll be too late.

“Come on, baby,” Hallie pleads under her breath.

Then Kaia jumps, hurtling through the air as ash and debris flutter around her.

She lands on her hands and knees in the center of the sagging mattress. Hallie immediately reaches out to grab her arm, hoisting her across the trembling floor and towards the relative safety of the service exit.

When they both collapse in front of the door, they pant for a few seconds in tense silence.

Suddenly, a deafening creak pierces Hallie’s eardrums and her stinging eyes widen in pure terror as more of the ceiling starts to give way. She doesn’t stop to think as she throws her body over Kaia’s, just as huge chunks of plaster rain down from above.

The impact knocks the wind from Hallie completely, clanging through her teeth and battering her spine and legs with brutal force.

Kaia starts to crawl backwards, dragging her lieutenant with her until they make it through the door to stairs. Without a word, she pulls Hallie to her feet and throws her arm over her shoulders, supporting her trembling weight as they begin their hurried descent to the exit.

Each floor passes with a dizzying blur. It’s all Hallie can do to keep moving, keep breathing through the acrid, soot-laden air that gets sightly clearer the closer they make it to the ground.

At last, they tear through the exit, neither of them daring to slow their pace until they make it to the engines a hundred yards from the building.

They both collapse forward and heave, hands braced on their knees as they try to choke down air. The pure adrenaline coursing through Hallie’s veins seems to collect like a swirling vice around her stomach. But there’s nothing in there for her to throw up.

She removes her helmet tossing it to the ground as she struggles to right herself. Looking up, she catches sight of Kaia’s soot-smeared face, her dark eyes boring into Hallie’s with unrestrained rage.

Before Hallie can cough up the words to ask why Kaia looks so angry, they’re each whisked away by paramedics for check ups and fitted with oxygen masks at different ambulances.

Once she’s cleared by the medics, the lieutenant makes it back to her rig, shocked to find Kaia furiously pacing with her arms crossed tightly across her chest. The absence of her jacket reveals Kaia’s sweat-slicked arms are marred by various scrapes and bruises. Hallie’s heart clenches at the sight of the bandages encasing one of her hands as well as her bicep.

Kaia glances up at Hallie’s approaching, instantly storming over to her and wrapping her fingers around her shoulders in a bruising grip.

“What the fuck was that? Why did you come up there?” she hisses, shaking Hallie slightly in her grasp.

“What do you mean? I had to get you out,” Hallie answers, bewildered by Kaia’s demeanor.

“You should have left me, dammit! Christ, Hallie, what about protocol? You could have died trying to reach me!”

“Protocol?” the lieutenant spits back. “You want to talk to me about protocol? The only reason I had to come and save you in the first place is because you abandoned your fucking squad!”

Their hushed argument is beginning to draw an audience as more of their crewmates return to the engines, the remainder of the evac teams relieved of their duties.

“Drop whatever this is and get your ass on the rig, Kaia. I won’t be snapped at by a rookie in the middle of a live operation.”

Kaia chews her cheek, the ticking muscle in her jaw indicating to Hallie that she’s biting back a retort. But she eventually strides away, hauling herself into their engine without a second glance at her perplexed lieutenant.

Hallie stays on sight to oversee the containment squads until the inferno is completely extinguished and the relevant city departments have arrived to determine how they’re going to safely bring down the teetering, burnt out structure.

By the time she makes it back to the station, she has almost completely forgotten Kaia’s outburst. That is, until she enters their locker room and finds her pacing again, glaring at the ground as if it’s personally offended her.

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