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Charon hated high-rises. Anything still standing at two stories was dangerous and anything above that was a death-trap. Worse, his employer gravitated toward the innards of every building -- where it was dark, closed in, cut off. A cave-in waiting to happen.
Except this one was done waiting.
Maybe a bomb or a behemoth had gone off nearby, but Charon didn't hear a thing until the building was bellowing under their feet. Half of the floor they were on sheared away in the space of a breath, a solid current of concrete and steel lifting him up and carrying him down, down, down.
He didn't even have time to grab Truth.
As soon as the deluge of stone ended, Charon was moving. He pushed on every hard surface around him until something moved enough for him to dig himself out of the debris, knowing he would have a fit if Truth was doing the same. Self-preservation be damned, he had an imperative.
He'd gotten lucky. There wasn't far for him to dig before he was stumbling to his feet under the midday sun. The dust from the collapse colored the sky dark orange. It had been almost blue. It didn't matter.
"Truth!"
The dust choked him as soon as he opened his mouth and the coughing doubled him over. But he couldn't see her in the rubble so he called out again, his voice more panicked the second time. His heart pounded in his throat.
"Up here!"
Charon pivoted sharply toward her voice. He saw her hand first -- the pale pink palm waving at him from almost thirty feet up. She was coated in dirt but he made out the rest of her with a little effort.
"I'm okay!" she added before he could ask. "A few bruises, that's all!"
In most situations that would have been a relief to hear. And it was, but it barely put a dent in Charon's anxiety.
The slab of concrete she was on hung lower than the rest of the floor, cradled precariously by a sling of bent steel and rebar. There wasn't any way for her to climb back up to surer footing and no way for Charon to reach her. And she was far, far too high up to jump.
They agreed on those three points pretty quickly. Every second they spent trying to find a solution after that felt like bleeding out, just waiting to see if the rest of the building would come down while Charon was too far away to protect her.
Truth still had her gear and in it a coil of strong rope. When she secured it to a cross-section of rebar and threw down the other end it fell short. Even if she shimmied all the way to the end, she'd have a twelve foot drop to look forward to. A nervous pit formed in Charon's stomach as he sized up the situation.
"Truth," he called, making his voice deliberately even. He couldn't see her shaking from this far away but he could see her slack-jawed grimace and the extra jerk in her normally mechanical motions. Comfort was decidedly not part of his contract but the last thing he needed from her was panic. "I need you to trust me."
The head peering down at him might have nodded. A moment later she found her voice and called back, "I do trust you!" Charon thought she sounded a bit incredulous. Then again, he wouldn't know what was in her head.
It was enough to move forward. He had her unload her gun and talked her through wrapping the rope around her legs as a sort of harness she could lower herself with. Charon held his breath as she came down, his eyes fixed on her, unwavering. When she ran out of length she dropped her rifle and then her pack down into his waiting arms.
Catching a backpack was kid stuff, catching an entire teenager would be different. Charon breathed out slowly to steady his nerves and opened his arms beneath her.
"Whenever you're ready," he told her.
Time slowed when she dropped and his stomach plummeted as if he were the one falling. His arms caught her and folded her to his chest as the force of her landing knocked him on his back. He laid there stunned with the wind knocked out of him, holding her until they both remembered how to breathe. She was shaking for sure now and Charon pretended not to notice how tightly she clung to him. It didn't matter as long as he knew she was safe.