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Stephanie noticed the screaming, first.
The Gotham Knights baseball stadium had been full of cheers the entire afternoon. After a full season of miserable losses, the team was winning the game against their rivals from Star City. The spectators were raucous with the turn in luck; it was the tenth inning, long past dark, and the stadium was still brimming with people and energy.
The noise had sounded different then, though. Now it was shrill, the kind of scream that sounded like it hurt. A child’s shriek. Fearful.
A blast rocked the building around her, and Stephanie remembered.
She sucked in a harsh breath.
“Damian!” she shouted. Or, tried to. Her voice came out weak. She coughed on dust, then continued to cough until she gagged. Bile landed on the rubble next to her head. She was on her side, at least. Something large and solid dug into her back.
She couldn’t feel her legs.
“Dami—” she tried again.
He’d been right next to her, when the first bomb went off. There was a sound like lightning as the bleachers on the far side of the stadium had cracked down the middle. The crowd had barely been able to react before at least a dozen rows of seats had collapsed downward, like they were being sucked into the cloud of debris instead of the other way around. Lights had flickered out.
Chaos.
Things were still, now. There was noise, but it felt distant. A layer of inky blackness hid the worst of the destruction.
Across from her, hidden in deep shadow, she could make out the shape of a hand. It was too big to be Damian’s, too light-skinned. A wedding band gleamed on the finger. The nails were painted in glossy Gotham Knights colors.
“It’s our thing,” the woman in the row in front of them had said. She held out her hand so Stephanie could admire her nails better. “We came to a Knights game for our first date, and now we’ve come to every game since we’ve been married.
“It’s our good luck charm.”
The next explosion lit the scene more clearly, and Stephanie was quick to close her eyes. Too late. The image was seared into her eyelids: the hand, wrist, elbow, and a large twisted sheet of metal embedded where the rest of the body should have been.
Damian’s T-shirt had slipped through her fingers when the second bomb went off.
She had to find him.
That proved to be harder than she expected. The arm under her was crooked in unnatural places and wouldn’t hold weight. Her free hand reached blindly behind her, feeling along the coarse texture of concrete. When she wrapped her fingers around rebar, it was still hot. She had to let it go.
Hard way, then. She pressed her palm into the gritty texture of settled rubble under her and levered herself up a few inches.
Her body screamed.
A shout ripped out of her dry throat. It wasn’t a sound she’d ever heard herself make before. She kept screeching after she fell back to the ground, wave after wave of agony pulsing through her. It had no beginning or ending, it didn’t belong to her body, it was her body.
The burning only increased, until, suddenly, everything was dark.
“Lift on three. One, two—”
Concrete grinding into concrete. Metal squealing as it scraped across surfaces.
A sharp breath, followed by a hiss.
“Hold on, kid.” The voices were several feet away. They weren’t talking to Stephanie. “This is going to hurt.”
A distinct curse. Arabic.
At the noise, she convinced herself to try to open her eyes. It was a slow process, like trying to wake up after a major surgery. Her body wanted to sleep.
“Take him to the front. I’ll keep tagging.”
A heavy sigh, hitched breath. A “yeah,” and “on it,” at the same time.
They sounded exhausted.
Stephanie’s eyelids parted, and she could make out the blurry dark shapes of three adults. Two of them carried a cot between them, a smaller figure perched on top of it.
One was kneeling in front of her, fingers clasped around her wrist.
She couldn’t feel it.
“Damian,” she tried to say, but though her lips made the right shapes, no sound came out beyond a gasp. Forcing air through her lips was a chore.
“What’s that, sweetheart?” The person at her wrist muttered, not unkindly. She abandoned her wrist, smoothed hair away from her neck to feel there instead. Her fingers were hot against Stephanie’s skin. When had it gotten so cold?
She flinched as a floodlight washed over her.
“Shit,” one of the other adults whispered. “Don’t look.” The light darted over to the side, illuminating a human-less patch of rubble.
“Brown!”
“Damian,” she tried again. It was just a wheeze. Something wet dribbled out the side of her mouth.
The child – it must have been Damian, and he would hate to be called that – was trying to writhe off the cot. It was ineffective; he must have been injured.
“Don’t look, kid,” the adult his head muttered, his struggle to hold him clear in his tone. “Trust me.”
Were they talking about her?
Stephanie tilted her chin down, intending to itemize the damage, but the woman taking her pulse nudged her chin back up. “Shh,” she soothed. “Don’t look.”
“Put me down!” Damian yelled. “I’ll have you arrested for kidnapping!”
“We’re helping you. You need to stay calm, or you’ll risk—”
“Brown!”
“Let’s go,” the other adult snapped. “We don’t have time for this.”
Stephanie hadn’t realized she’d let her eyes slip shut until she felt the warmth of the woman shifting away from her. She pried them open again in time for the flashlight to sweep over her.
Something black had been laid on the ground next to her head.
Stephanie went cold. (Or maybe she’d already been cold.)
“No!” Damian demanded. He must have seen. “No, you’re wrong! She’s not dead!”
“Did you know her?” The man by his head asked, in a tone meant for trauma victims and children.
“I know her. Put me down! You have to let me see her!”
Damian, Stephanie mouthed. She didn’t know if he could see it. She couldn’t tell if her eyes had shut or if her vision had just tunneled to black.
The voices were getting further away.
“Please,” Damian begged. She’d never heard him use that tone before. “Please, let me see her. She’s not dead.”
“Shh,” the man hushed.
It was the last sound she heard.