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Everything happened so fast. One minute they're training, but the next…
Christina groans. Everything hurts. She opens her eyes slowly… the world is blurry. She coughs, and then whines when the slight exertion sends pain flaring through her ribcage. She can't remember what happened.
She's in one of her NASA jumpsuits; she can tell by the familiar, light blue fabric. Christina tries to look around. There are distant alarms blaring, but other than that it's eerily silent. And dim, almost hazy, like it would be on an overcast day in a room lit only by windows.
There are some lights flashing behind her. They're slow, not strobing. "Ugh." She tries to push herself up. She's laying on her stomach, so tries to push herself upright, extracting her arms from where they're pinned beneath her torso.
"Ah." One of her wrists is broken. The left one, she's pretty sure. It's still kind of hard to tell where the pain is coming from. She rolls onto her side.
She pants. That position shift has taken a lot out of her. There's blood on the floor; it's not much, but definitely hers. She finally manages to sit up, surveying her surroundings. It's one of their training labs— or rather, what's left of it. Clearly, something has gone horribly wrong.
It's then that the realization dawns on her. She is alone. Completely alone.
"No…no, no." She stands, only swaying lightly. She finds the door. It's bolted shut and she knows it can't be opened from the inside… She tries anyway, throwing her entire body weight at it. Unsurprisingly, it doesn't move, she just bruises her shoulder.
"Damn it!" She leans against the door, looking for another way out. There's an emergency switch… it should be near the door. She locates it near the floor, kneeling down. It says break glass in case of emergency. If this isn't an emergency, she doesn't know what is. But when she smashes it, nothing happens.
That means one of three things: either all emergency protocols have already been activated (impossible, there are way more alarms that could be going off), the power is out (there are lights on, just not many), or… the one she dreads most. That it just doesn't work. Now, that she's looking at it, she instinctively recognises that it's the latter. It looks like it hasn't been replaced since she was born.
She sighs. Sitting back against the wall, she lets herself cry for a minute. She has no idea what happened, she's alone and there's nothing she can do except agonise over her pain. All her least favorite things, really.
Get up, Koch.
Christina's not actually sure who the voice in her head is supposed to belong to, but it does the trick. She pulls herself to her feet and starts to walk around the area. Part of the room is completely blocked off by debris; it's the part of the room with the mock capsule.
She walks to the other side, she almost goes to turn back because she doesn't see anything. "Christina…" The word is so quiet she wouldn't have heard it had the alarms been any louder.
She pauses, turning around, "Hello?" she calls out, scanning the room. "Christina." The voice is a little louder this time, but no less strained.
It sounds like it's below her. She ducks under a piece of debris that had created a little cave-like area, one that looks like its less than three and a half feet tall. It's dark, but she can make out Reid… pinned beneath a large slab of steel.
"Reid?" She knows she sounds far happier to see him than she probably should. He's stuck under something that she definitely cannot lift, probably dying, for all she knows. But she's not alone, and that's enough to almost bring her to tears of joy.
"Yeah," he wheezes. "Can you breathe okay?" It feels like an important thing to ask first. "It could be better… could also be worse…" he seethes.
"And it hurts? You're not numb or anything?" She's not a doctor, but she'd like to know if he's paralyzed. "I can definitely feel it- ah." He tries to shift… it doesn't go well.
"Well, don't move…" she warns. What can she even do? "Can you please get it off… my back hurts." he pleads.
Christina sighs, "My wrist is uh… pretty broken," she admits, feeling her throat tighten from a mixture of guilt and shock. "Oh… but the other arm is fine?" he asks and she makes a sound of affirmation in response.
"Would you try to lift it with that hand, and I'll try to help you?" he suggests, but she shakes her head. "That's really not a good idea." He groans, "Tina, please…" She feels terrible; he's clearly in pain, but she really doubts that even their combined efforts will be enough to even shift such a heavy obstruction.
"Just… hold on a second." She sits down next to him, panting again. "You okay?" he asks, looking her over with concern.
"Yeah, I just… I can't remember what happened." She's pretty frustrated about it. She doesn't even remember waking up this morning… or going to bed last night… or what day it is. She's pretty sure it's 2025, but even that she can't be certain of.
Trying to remember makes her head hurt. "Well, I think it's kind of obvious… we were training and… boom. I couldn't tell you what exploded, but that's the gist of it." That makes sense, he's probably right, but her brain still won't let her access any recent memories.
"I…" she can't decide whether or not to tell him that. "So Victor and Jeremy should be here too?" She asks instead. "Yes, you haven't seen them?" She shakes her head.
"A whole section of the room is blocked off on the other side." She explains, cradling her broken wrist. "Did you pull the emergency switch?" He asks.
"Yes. It didn't do anything and obviously the door won't open." She groans. "So, what? We just wait for rescue…?" She tips her head back, that's the last thing she wants to do, but it seems like it's their only option.
"Yeah," he replies. Silence fills the air.
"No." She moves to get up. "What are you going to do?" he asks, following her with his eyes. "I'm going to find Jeremy and Victor," she says with determination.
"Keep me updated…" Reid sighs, fixing his eyes on the ceiling and exhaling sharply. He's clearly in pain, and Christina's reluctant to leave him, but at the same time she needs to find her bearings. And that starts with finding her other crewmates.
"Will do…"
"Jeremy? Ike?" she yells, wandering back over to the blocked off part of the room. "If you can hear me call back!" she shouts as loud as she can.
She's about to turn back to Reid. Maybe she'll try getting him unstuck and going from there: but then she hears it.
"Christina?" It's Jeremy's voice, he's yelling too, but it's still muffled. "Yes!" She feels like crying out of happiness again. "Are you and Reid on the other side?" he calls.
"Yeah! He's pinned under something, but we're both okay! Do you have Victor?" Yelling hurts her ribs. They're probably broken too, she realizes.
"Yeah! Although… he's not looking so good." She pales; she needs to know what that means. "How so?"
"Um… kind of hard to explain." She groans. "Jeremy!" A pit forms in her stomach as she thinks of all the worst possible scenarios. "He's kind of been impaled?" Her heart skips a beat. "Kind of?"
"Okay, he has definitely been impaled!" Jeremy corrects and Christina feels her breath catch. "Yes, there is a piece of debris in my abdomen, can we stop screaming about it?" She feels so relieved to hear Victor's voice.
"Kind of our only form of communication right now, Ike!" she calls back, trying to lighten the mood a little. "Then talk about Jeremy's extremely broken arm!" Christina frowns, "Jeremy?"
"It's not that bad!" She can tell he's lying. "Which part?" she asks.
"I don't know, my forearm and elbow are bent at a weird angle…" Christina looks at the ceiling and whispers, "Jesus Christ…"
"What about you?" Jeremy asks when she doesn't respond. "My wrist is broken pretty bad…" She doesn't mention her rib, or the amnesia.
"That's it?" God, he knows her so well. "As far as I know!" Lying about this kind of thing has always been easier than telling the truth. Which is weird, considering Christina has always hated lying; it usually makes her skin crawl, and her heart beat faster… but not when it's about her health.
And not when there are other people's lives at stake.
"What are we gonna do?" She sighs at his question. She has no idea. "Well, don't pull it out!" she warns.
"Great, I can… not do that, what else?" She doesn't know. Why does everyone seem to think she knows everything? She doesn't even know what day it is! She feels herself start to cry. "I… I don't know." She doesn't say it loud enough for Jeremy to hear.
"Christina?" he asks after she's quiet for a while. "I'm open to suggestions." She hopes he can't hear that she's crying.
"Maybe we just keep each other alive? Seems like that's all we can do." His voice is steady, calming, grounding, even.
"Okay," she agrees, wiping her eyes as she chokes back a sob. "Go back to Reid, come back every few minutes, tell us you're both okay and we'll do the same." That sounds incredibly logical.
"Yeah, let's do that."
—
"Did you find them?" Reid asks when she sits back down beside him. "Yeah, well… we're separated, but I talked to them," she explains with a sigh.
"Are they alright?" She cringes… she doesn't know how to say this. "Jeremy's okay, just a broken arm, I think…" Reid nods thoughtfully, but furrows his brow when she doesn't continue. "Ike?"
She frowns and takes a deep breath, "Jeremy said he's been impaled in the stomach…" Reid's eyes widen.
"Holy shit." She nods in agreement. "Is he alive?" She nods again. "Awake and orientated?"
"Seems like it, all three of us talked." She informs him and he groans. "I feel so left out…" She laughs a little bit. "I think we have bigger problems…"
He holds back a laugh, knowing it'll hurt if he fails. They're both quiet for a few minutes before Christina starts to try and size up the piece of debris that has Reid pinned. Because of the angle of everything else, it would be extremely hard for her to just lift it like Reid suggested… especially with a broken wrist…
"Could you get out through a window?" Reid asks and Christina takes a careful note of the way he says you. Like he's already accepted that he may not get out of here. "All the windows are on Jeremy and Victor's side…" she sighs, experimentally shifting a few things around. Reid groans, his hand coming up to grab the side of the steel slab.
"Sorry…" she apologizes, relinquishing her grip on the steel. "That's okay… Were you getting anywhere?" She shrugs, doing her best to muffle labored breaths.
"Are you okay?" Of course Reid picks up on it… he always does. "Yeah… just…" She laughs, unsure of how to summarize all her feelings at this moment.
She feels panicked suddenly at the prospect of having to admit that she may be injured more than she previously stated. "Tina-" Reid starts to say.
"I'm gonna go check on Jeremy and Victor… I told them I'd be back soon." She says, crawling out of the small space. He sighs, but lets her go without protesting.
Standing makes her dizzy, but thankfully there's no one around to see her sway unsteadily as she makes her way back to the spot by the wall where she can talk to Jeremy and Victor.
"Jere?" she calls, sitting down before she topples over. "Hey." His voice is quieter than before, but she can still hear. "You guys alright?"
"There's just a lot of blood…" She winces. "Is Ike still conscious?"
"Barely." Well, fuck. They have no way out; they have to wait for someone to rescue them… but it's possible that's hours out. And it doesn't seem like Victor has hours…
"Try to keep him awake…" She knows Jeremy knows this, but she doesn't know what else there is to say. "I'm doing my best… I just wish we weren't separated… I need help." She can hear his voice breaking slightly.
She tilts her head back and looks around, trying one last time to find a way over to them. "Well… I can't physically help you. But I'm here if you want to talk through something?" she offers, feeling completely and utterly useless.
"I know what to do. I just could really use an extra set of hands…" he responds with a sigh, and she nods in agreement even though he can't see her.
The ground starts to shake and Christina grabs onto the wall, trying to figure out what's going on. "You guys okay?" she calls when the shaking stops. "Same as before…"
She nods, getting to her feet quickly. "I'm gonna go back to Reid…" Jeremy gives her a quick confirmation and she hurries back to their little cave.
"Are you okay?" She asks immediately. He nods, "What was that?" She shakes her head. "I don't know…" The shaking starts up again and she whimpers, trying to plant herself down so she can survey him properly.
Reid groans and she looks up to see that the piece of debris is shifting with every quake. It stops again after a few seconds. She opens her mouth to ask if he's alright again, but he beats her to it.
"Christina… I know your wrist is broken… but I really think if you just try and lift it with your shoulder or something…" he says, breathing heavily. "I…" She bites her lip.
The building shakes again and this time, the only word Christina has to describe the sound Reid makes is a scream: a scream of pure agony. "Okay." That's all she needs to hear. Clearly, every time the building shakes it's hurting him, and the idea of anything worstening his condition is unbearable.
She gets up onto her knees as soon as the shaking ceases, and tries her best to lift the slab with her non-broken arm and other shoulder. With a little bit of Reid's help, she finally gets somewhere. "Please… try not to drop it…" Reid says with a wince when she manages to lift it off his body.
"Mhmm… just crawl… out… please…?" She grunts, pushing it further upwards until Reid is finally able to slide free. She drops it as soon as he's clear and the steel hits the ground with a loud boom and a plume of dust. They both shuffle out of the crawl space into the larger area.
Reid positions himself against a wall and cradles his abdomen with one hand while coughing into his elbow with the other. Christina's coughing too, but not as harshly. Even so, it hurts. She has to use all of her willpower to avoid mirroring Reid.
Instead, she kneels next to him, catching her breath. She rubs Reid's shoulder as he continues to cough violently, watching with concern as his lips start to turn purple. "Hey, please don't pass out on me…"
He finally takes a relatively steady— but still wheezing— breath. Reid pants, leaning into Christina and letting his head rest against her stomach. "We're okay…" he breathes. "I feel like I should be the one telling you that…" She chuckles a little and he reciprocates exhaustedly.
"You're injured…" It's kind of obvious, but she's failing at meaningful conversations right now. "Yeah, it's not so bad…" Just as he says that, a visible grimace spreads across his face when he shifts just incrementally. "Care to rephrase?" She raises an eyebrow.
"No…" She doesn't call him out on it any further, because she's doing the exact same thing… "You're breathing kinda shallow…" Christina swears internally. The only way he knows that is because his head is still pressed against her stomach.
"It's fine…" she dismisses. "Christina…"
"I may have broken a rib or two…" Usually it would take a lot more for her to fold, but ironically, she doesn't have the energy to keep lying right now. "Well, that makes two of us… Why didn't you tell me?" He looks up at her with an expression of simultaneous despair, guilt, and concern.
"I… it didn't seem important." She quickly looks away. She can't bear to see that look on his face. "Your health is always important." She sighs… she knows that he's right, it just seemed as though Reid's problems were a whole lot bigger than hers.
The building shakes again, with much greater intensity than it had previously. They instinctively curl together, both trying to protect the other from further harm.
"What is that?" Reid asks when it stops, looking around dazedly for a source. "I have no idea…" She slowly lets him go, sitting back hesitantly. "Can you move? We should probably go talk to Jeremy and Victor." He winces, considering it.
"With help…" he concedes, starting to slowly shift away from the wall. Christina helps him to stand, and then supports him the entire way to the other side of the room. She swears she's swaying more than he is, but if he notices he mercifully doesn't say anything. The walk, which they could ordinarily complete in under a minute, takes what feels like hours.
She sets Reid down gently against a wall and then sits down next to him with an exhausted exhale. "Jeremy!" He shouts experimentally before she can. "Reid? Oh, thank God…"
"Yeah, I'm here… How's Ike?" There's a substantial pause between Reid's question and Jeremy's answer. "He's in hypovolemic shock for sure…" If Jeremy's using medical terminology, it means he's reverting back to all of their training.
"Not conscious anymore?" Christina asks solemnly. "No… but he's breathing and his heart is beating… which is great because I cannot perform CPR right now…"
Once again, the building shakes. "Any idea what that is?" Reid asks Jeremy once it stops. "I think they're trying to break through the walls, but that could just be wishful thinking…"
Christina feels a glimmer of hope ignite inside her at that thought; but she immediately reprimands herself. She really shouldn't get her hopes up. But she can't help it. She needs to hang on to that possibility right now. The possibility that this nightmare could soon be over.
It doesn't take much longer before they realize that Jeremy is right! The building tremors again, but this time she can see and hear a group of people trying (and succeeding) to break down the door. They're firefighters. They're finally being rescued.
"How badly are you both hurt?" One of them asks, approaching Reid and Christina as soon as the firefighters spot them, crouched on the far side of the room. "Minor injuries for me… I think he sustained some crush injuries," Christina responds quickly.
"But you need to get through to the other side of this wall of debris… Our friends are over there and one of them is losing a lot of blood," Reid interjects, pointing to the offending wall.
"How many people on the other side?" The first firefighter asks, knocking on the wall experimentally. "Two!" Jeremy responds. "Make sure you're not up against this wall, we'll get you out. Just hang in there."
"You two need to come with me though… can you walk?" The second firefighter asks them. "I can," Christina responds confidently, but Reid just shakes his head. The adrenaline that must have been propelling him earlier now seems to be rapidly receding. "Okay, that's alright…" She says something into the radio attached to her chest-piece, and a third firefighter enters shortly after with a backboard.
"What are your names?" The second asks them as she helps Reid onto the backboard. "Christina and Reid," Christina answers, watching Reid anxiously. "I'm Gabby, and this is Eddie," she says with a reassuring smile. Eddie waves before kneeling down to help Gabby carry Reid out.
"Just follow us if you can?" It's a pretty treacherous route." Gabby warns and Christina nods, focusing on watching her footing as she follows them through the rubble of the building. She really hopes no one died… she thinks as she sees the rest of the building. The room with their capsule seems to have been hit the worst, so surely everyone else is okay?
When they finally escape the building she's a little overwhelmed by the amount of first responders in their parking lot. She stays by Reid's side, unsure of what else to do with herself.
"Will you let me check you out?" Eddie asks her as they climb into the back of an ambulance. "I'm fine, just help him…" she snaps. Reid gives her an unimpressed look. "If you'd like a different paramedic, we have plenty on scene…" Eddie says with a chuckle, gesturing towards a few other ambulances.
She looks around and her eye catches something she hadn't picked up on before. "Oh my God…" She lets go of Reid's hand— which she'd been unconsciously gripping since they got outside— and climbs out of the ambulance with no further explanation to him or the paramedics.
"Jenni?" She walks over to the ambulance across from theirs as quickly as she can force her body to move. "Hey…" Jenni says when she sees her, briefly lifting her head from the stretcher. "Are you alright?"
"Just a slight head injury… and a slightly broken leg…" She says slightly twice, Christina notices. "Did you want to ride with her?" The paramedic tending to her asks.
"I…" she looks back over to Reid. "I'll be okay if you don't…" Jenni assures, but Christina ignores her. She's not sure who needs her more… Besides, she's also worried about Ike.
"I'm going to stay here," she decides with a nod, slowly backing out of the ambulance. She sways slightly, looking around for any sign of Victor and Jeremy.
Both Reid and Jenni's ambulances have left by the time they emerge from the building. They're both covered in blood and Jeremy's arm looks like hell, but they're alive. Christina can't help but wrap Jeremy in a tight hug the second she's able to.
"I'm covered in blood…" he points out with a laugh, hesitating to return the hug. "I don't care…" she says into his chest, standing on her tiptoes to wrap her arms around his neck. That's all he needs to hear before allowing himself melt into her. She never wants to leave that embrace, but Jeremy breaks away after a few seconds to follow Victor to the next ambulance.
Christina's not sure what to do with herself after that. She could find someone else to hitch a ride with? But she feels so lost in this maze of a parking lot that she usually knows like the back of her hand… The world buckles around her and she swallows thickly, feeling anxiety start to rise again.
Okay, maybe she wasn't as fine as she thought… She really should sit down, but there's nowhere to sit. "Hey, are you alright?" someone asks, but she's too dizzy to respond.
"I—" Her knees buckle. "Shit—Nancy!" She's vaguely aware of someone catching her before she hits the ground, but after that it's complete darkness.
—
Christina wakes with a start to the sound of a heart monitor, and an ache that she can't quite pinpoint in her body. "It's okay," Bobby immediately soothes. She relaxes almost completely at the sound of his voice. "Hmmm… what happened?" She remembers fragments: the sound of Reid's scream as the building shakes around them, the metallic scent of blood mingling with smoke, a parking lot filled with ambulances and firetrucks…
"There was an explosion while you were at work… but everyone survived." She opens her eyes and is immediately blinded by the fluorescent hospital light above her. She cringes and squints against it. "Victor's alright?" She remembers vaguely that he had the worst injuries.
"Yeah, last I heard he was just out of surgery and doing pretty well, all things considered." She sighs in relief, feeling a lot of subconscious stress leave her body.
"Thank fuck," she says out loud without meaning to, then immediately makes a noise of surprise at herself.
She finally looks over at her husband and gives him a lopsided smile. He laughs, and she frowns back at him. "I'm very injured… and you're laughing at me?" The hoarseness of her voice when she says it seems to make him even more amused.
"I'm laughing at how high you are right now…" She rolls her eyes at him. "I earned it."
He nods concededly, "Yes, you did…"
"You know what I also earned?" she asks, grinning at him despite herself— despite everything. "Oh, let me guess-" she cuts him off, "A kiss!"
"Oh, I never could've seen that coming…" he laughs, leaning forward slowly. "Oh, you're killing me, just kiss me already!" She says after a few seconds pass. "I don't know… you're high, can you really consent?"
"It's just a kiss and you're my husband!" she yells and he laughs, glancing towards the door. "Shhh…" He connects their lips and she tries to draw him closer, but he pulls away after a few seconds. "Idiot," she huffs and he leans back in his chair.
"Is that how you feel about me?" She shakes her head. "No… well, maybe… but you're my idiot…" She bats her eyelashes. "I love it when you're on morphine…" She fidgets with her blanket, her train of thought once again returning to concern for her friends. "Reid?"
"He's alright, the crush injuries were mild." Christina nods, taking that in as best she can. "Jenni?"
"She's fine, minor concussion and she'll be in a cast for a few weeks. Already discharged, I think," he explains, watching amusedly as she tries (and mostly) fails to file that information away in her mind. "Jeremy?" she asks immediately, almost as though she's quizzing him. "All good, just a clean break in his forearm."
"And literally everyone else?" she asks, giving up on asking after specific people having checked the four people she'd seen after the explosion off her list. "Everyone is alive with various injuries… but they're all okay. Your crew got the worst of it, but still, you're all expected to recover fully," he confirms confidently.
Christina still has one more question. "Do you know what caused the explosion?"
"They're trying to figure that out; I'm sure they'll know soon. It seems like half of all government employees have descended on the Kennedy Center…" he laughs awkwardly.
"Okay…" She feels relieved again… but she also feels incredibly tired. "You can sleep now… it's okay…" Bobby says, pushing a curl behind her ear. "Hmmm…" she reaches for his hand and he takes it instantly. "I've got you…" She's pretty sure he says something else after that, but she's already half-asleep.