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Nile had gotten used to this whole dying-then-coming-back thing pretty quickly. It wasn't like she'd ever known what it was like to die and stay dead, so really, there wasn't much to adjust to.
She hadn't, however, gotten used to the waking-up part. It was always different. Sometimes she had to come up fighting- in Merrick's lab she'd had to start shooting, three shots and three kills. After she'd thrown herself off of the skyscraper she'd been able to move a little more slowly, because, for starters, all of her bones had been broken, and then the others had been there to help her up.
The others weren't here this time, though.
Nile woke with a dust-induced cough that scraped at her throat. Her attempt to breathe in was aborted halfway through as she inhaled the dust around her, and she coughed again as her body desperately tried to expel it.
It was pitch-black, wherever she was. Nile tried to feel around, to get an idea of what was going on, when she realized that she could barely move at all. Something large and heavy was resting on- crushing- her hips. She lifted her head and her forehead came in contact with a warm, hard surface.
Nile rubbed at her face. Her hand came away damp, and she smelled copper. Okay. Cool.
Nile didn't have any memory of being in an explosion or any other event that would have resulted in a building collapsing around her. She had been searching for hostages on the tenth floor of an abandoned office building as Joe and Nicky kept the perimeter clear and as Andy bossed them around through comms, and then... nothing.
Explosions hadn't been on the agenda for today. Her head sort of hurt.
Nile had no way of knowing how long it had been since she had died. Not long, most likely, since the air and rubble felt very, very warm around her.
Whatever was pressing against her hips shifted, and she felt something crack. She hissed out a curse and tried to shift to the side, like she had anywhere to go, and her broken hip shifted with her. She flinched and cried out as a sharp pain radiated through her leg and back.
"Okay," she said to the air, ignoring how raspy her voice was, "no more moving. Got it."
The others would be looking for her. They had before, like that time she'd been kidnapped and driven halfway through Missouri in the trunk of a Subaru when Nicky had stopped it by slamming a morotcycle- and himself- into the front of it. He said that he hadn't really thought about how he was going to stop it until then. Nile privately thought that he just thought it'd be fun to do.
Nile took a deep, wheezing breath, and resolutely didn't cough again. Her hip ached. It probably wasn't going to heal until the beam was off of it and it would be able to snap back into place correctly.
"I'm gonna be fine," she said aloud. She would be. The others were gonna find her, and if not, the rubble had to be cleared anyway. It was gonna be fine. She was gonna be fine.
Something above and to the left of Nile rumbled dangerously, and the wreckage above her shifted all at once. The beam on her hips lifted and the wall-floor-ceiling-whatever above her jolted down and came to rest against her forehead, not squeezing her head, but not letting her move it either. She wasn't going to struggle against it and test her already waning luck.
Nile's hip snapped back into place, and she yelped. It hurt for a moment longer before it stopped hurting entirely, which was more than a little relieving, and she tried to relax.
Then, she heard a faint, clear series of knocks- one, a pause, two fast, another pause, and then another one. She had no idea which way they were coming from, but that was Joe's knock. They were looking for her. She breathed in, then out. There wasn't enough space for her to knock back, but that was okay. They would find her. She was gonna be fine.
It took another hour for them to locate her. During that time, the rubble had shifted twice- once onto her neck, which had cut off her air supply and killed her, then killed her again, and once away from her. She was starting to get a little impatient.
Then Andy knocked onto the rubble from right above her- three fast, two slow- and shouted, barely audible, "how's it going down there?"
Nile coughed. "Could be better," she called back, probably too quietly for them to hear. That was okay. "Thanks for showing up."
"We're moving as quickly as we can," Nicky shouted. "Don't go anywhere."
There was a thump, followed by Italian cursing and Andy's laughter, and Nile grinned.