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My ears are ringing. My brain is shaking around in my head and making that noise against the inside of my skull. I need to sit still. For a solid 30 seconds I'm convinced I have gone blind because my eyes can't make sense of anything, before I realize that above me is the sky in a white-ish gray. No, I am still, I'm not moving at all. I'm lying on my back and can't even lift my head.
Ringing in my ears. The face of a young Russian soldier pops into my field of view and I'm shocked at how much effort I have to put into recognizing eyes, nose and mouth. The mouth moves with no sound. I don't understand Russian anyway. I don't even know how I know that this man is Russian before I remember that they all talk to me in English.
Suddenly, I hear myself groan as the Russian soldier helps—or maybe just makes me—sit up. What happened? I get the words out, must have, because he replies. Explosion. I'm looking at the collapsed, melted remnants of the science building. Oh my God.
From sitting, I fall forward and catch myself on my flat open palms. I'm maybe 300 yards away from the building and there's debris not 6 feet in front of me, bits that got flung so far.
The soldier shouts, now in Russian. The ground trembles. Is that some sort of aftershock, I wonder briefly, before I see several big, heavy cars race past us. Then I crumple on my hands and knees. "Ugh..." I think, I'm hurt.
Doesn't matter that this took me a while to realize, after the big cars have gone past another one stops and out jump two medics. They make me sit back again. "Ow," I manage this time. It's my arm I'm leaning back on. It's my brain that has stopped jerking around, but evidently it did smack against the inside of my skull. It's the look on Stratt's face—
Wait, Stratt is here. I don't know when she got here but my brain, despite getting badly bumped, wants to try logic. She probably got out of that car too, but I've never seen her make that face before and don't know where to put it.
Before I can puzzle it out, she disappears from my view as I'm being blinded by a penlight. The ringing in my ears is dying down and replaced with a cacophony of voices right next to me and commotion in the near distance. DuBois and Shapiro were in that building. Are they...?
My chest feels tight. I suck in a breath, I think that's what I need, but through clenched teeth I don't get very much air in at all. Color draining from my face is something for others to see, but I actually feel the blood rush away from my head and myself go visibly pale. I vomit. Whatever I had for lunch comes up, and after that's all in a disgusting, wet puddle next to me, I dry-heave.
My arms are being held away from me. I've got fingers against my wrist, taking my pulse which I myself can feel racing from the puking and the headache and the confusion. Then I'm being helped to my feet by my upper arms. The step into the military vehicle is tall and difficult to take and I think the soldier and the medics sort of end up hoisting me up without much of my own help, and buckle me in.
I sit across from Stratt, who's face is the same as moments ago. The car jerks to speed. She starts talking while I think I'm going to throw up again. When I want to let my head fall back and tightly shut my eyes, when I still feel like I've got something stuffed in my ears, Stratt tells me that our friends are dead.