Olivia lay on the ground frozen in panic. What the hell was happening? Her entire body was sore and a sharp pain in her foot began to radiate and feel like a burn. Slowly, Olivia’s eyes opened to see the solid floor under her. She could taste blood in her mouth and smell smoke and fire in the air. Her hearing; however, was nearly none existent. What the hell was happening? Slowly, she moved to her forearms and knees then she attempted to stand. She fell back to the floor quickly as she looked to see her ankle was actually horribly bruised, and possibly broken. “Fuck!” she swore out loud but not registering how loud she had yelled. She would need help to get out of here if there was any way to get out of here.
“Cate, please. I know I’m not making any sense, but take into account how serious I fucking sound.”
Honestly, she should have known. She should have known how bad it would be based on Bailey’s panicked insistence alone. But even without the details, there was simply no way that the brunette was leaving One Mayfair without at least trying to do something to save the people still inside.
Caitlyn McKenna was, by no means, a heroic person. She had never thought of herself as such, and given the path that her life had taken, and given the choices that she had made, she highly doubted that she ever would. She knew for a fact that she could be as self-involved as she was selfless, as deceptive as she was honest, as morally dubious as she was principled; and that in the grand scale of things, the little good she might have done in the world didn’t even come close to outweighing the bad.
But as she rushed back into the building, thanking her lucky stars that she had actually managed to stay sober as she formulated and then repeated a plan of action in her head---find Sophia, warn Devlin, start clearing people out, find Sophia, warn Devlin, start clearing people out---the only thing that mattered to her was that. Not that she wasn’t a hero, but that she had to at least try to do something.
She got as far as scanning the crowd for that familiar blonde head of hair when a loud bang, followed by a bright light, preceded her suddenly being thrown back against the wall.
By the time that Cate slowly blinked back in consciousness, chaos had already erupted in the locale; the majority of the commotion seemingly coming from an area that was too far away for her to see from her place on the ground. Her heart was beating frantically, fast enough that she swore she could hear it thumping in her ears, and through each broken beat she slowly picked up the discordant soundtrack of her surroundings. Screaming. Crying. Sirens blaring, wood and stone scraping against each other as debris was being shifted out of the way, highlighted by people’s frenzied clambering towards the exit.
At first, she didn’t even register that she’d been hurt.
Instinctively trying to get up to help, the brunette swore as she felt a sudden, sharp, stabbing sensation to her abdomen; arms buckling under the exertion and causing her to helplessly slump back down to the floor, visibly wincing when the rush of adrenaline eventually gave way to the reality of her injuries. Craning her head, she reached carefully for her side in order to gauge the extent of the damage, her fear escalating exponentially at the discovery of the warm, sticky substance seeping through her dress.
She lifted her hand to look at it, the blurry sight of bright crimson against bronze skin prompting a brand new wave of panic to rise within her, crashing down in waves that were only exacerbated by the realisation that there was nobody nearby. Her eyes welled with tears as she closed them, trying desperately to block out the pain; which was a feat that was a challenge to her on the best of days, but proved almost impossible when there was a distinctive absence of substances in her system.
And to think that just an hour ago, Cate’s biggest problem had been staring at her reflection in the bathroom, emergency stash of MDMA in hand, arguing with herself about whether or not to give in until she finally forced herself to flush the drugs down the toilet.
In an attempt to calm herself down, the brunette tried to inhale and exhale deeply, but the sharp pain was too much for more than short, shallow, rattling bursts of oxygen. More than anything, she wanted to scream out, wanted to cry for help, but something inside her stopped her from forming the words properly. Much like her thoughts, they came out only in a series of fragmented sounds, disjointed phrases and unfinished sentences that were barely spoken above a whisper.
As a chocked sob escaped her throat, one singular thought managed to make its way through the haze, looping over and over again like a broken record:
I’m going to die alone. I’m going to die alone. I’m going to die alone.
But it made sense, didn’t it? After all, only heroes died with an audience.
