I Can See Evolution Paths

Chapter 67: One More Trip

The timer read 3:38.

Arthur pointed at three locations without looking at anyone.

"Hospital. Market. Last crossing."

No discussion. No check for disagreement. He’d already trusted them.

"We’ll meet at the gate," he said.

Sun grinned. "We always do," he said.

The team split.

...

Arthur, Mithra, Vedas, and Melo reached the crossing point where the husband said his wife had let him go ahead. She was alive under the collapsed section of the second floor. Conscious. Her hands showed through the gap in the rubble, pressed flat against the stone. She wasn’t speaking, because speaking cost more than she had left.

"Stand back," Vedas said.

He planted his spear against the largest rubble piece, and Arthur found his spot on the opposite side, and they pushed. The rubble shifted enough to prove it could move, then a deeper sound came from the structure above them, and dust started sifting down in a fine, steady curtain.

Mithra said, "Don’t."

They stopped.

Athena wasn’t here, but months of disaster training had left the same instincts in everyone. Arthur looked at the structure above the rubble, at how the load was distributed, at the pieces now carrying what the collapsed ones used to hold.

"If we push further," Arthur said.

Vedas finished it. "The building comes down completely."

The woman’s fingers trembled against the rubble. "N-No..."

Arthur looked at the narrow gap.

"...Please." Her voice was weak. "My husband. He made it out, didn’t he?"

"He did."

A small smile crossed her face. "Then leave me. You still have time. Please, don’t waste it on me."

Arthur looked at her for a long moment, then smiled. "...Sorry. I’ve never been very good at giving up."

...

At the marketplace, Sun found the husband beneath two overturned wagons and a stone pillar that had punched through the roof. He and Kong pushed together with everything they had, and the pillar shifted just enough to show them how much still wasn’t working.

A support beam overhead shifted its relationship with the load above it, the way things shift right before that relationship ends.

Sun stopped. "Same problem," he said, mostly to himself.

Kong scratched his head.

Sun groaned. "Arthur," he said, to no one there. "Please think of something."

...

The burning district had no visible gap. From the street it looked like a complete ring of fire. Athy had been scanning nonstop since Athena arrived, pass after pass, and every pass came back the same.

"There has to be one," Athena said quietly.

The timer in her awareness read 2:45.

The elderly woman inside the ring had stopped searching for the exit herself.

...

Arthur sat down on the stone next to the rubble, hands on his knees, and thought.

The building’s structure meant they couldn’t push harder. They couldn’t clear material from above without speeding up the collapse. They couldn’t create a new opening in the time left. The woman couldn’t move herself because whatever held her in place was the same thing making the building unstable.

He looked at Melo.

"Mithra," he said.

She looked at him.

"Can Melo block pain?"

Mithra blinked. "She can’t block it," she said. "But she can heal while it’s happening." She watched his face. "Why?"

Arthur looked at the rubble a moment. "We don’t need to stop ourselves from getting hurt," he said. "We just need to survive long enough for it not to matter."

Silence.

Mithra understood first. Then Vedas. It hit them both at once and showed up differently on each face.

"We lift," Arthur said. "Melo heals whatever breaks as it breaks, and we hold as long as we can hold, and the second there’s enough space, Melo pulls her out."

"Arthur," Vedas said. "What you’re describing is—"

"I know."

"The pain will be considerable."

"Probably." Arthur looked at the woman’s hands. "She’ll live though."

Mithra was quiet a moment. Then she said, "Then we do it."

Arthur looked at her.

"Hey," he started.

She flicked his forehead. Quick, precise. "We’re friends," she said. "Did you actually think I’d let you do something this stupid without me?" A pause. "Also, I don’t like watching you get hurt, and this will absolutely hurt you. But you’ve decided, and you’re right, so."

Arthur rubbed his forehead. "Fair," he said.

...

Melo heard the plan and backed away.

Her body language made it clear: she’d been asked to help with something and had already decided this wasn’t a request she’d honor. Her tails dropped low. Her three eyes went wide.

"Kyu," she said. "Kyu. Kyuuuu."

Vedas listened and translated without comment. "She refuses. She says she won’t help hurt you."

Arthur crouched to her level.

He didn’t argue. He put one hand gently on her head and stayed there.

"I’m sorry," he said. "I couldn’t find another way. I really looked." He kept his hand where it was. "It’s okay if you don’t want to."

Mithra knelt beside him. "We know you hate this," she said. "We know. But we need you."

Melo looked at Arthur.

Then Mithra.

Then the rubble, the woman’s hands against the stone, the gap between what was happening and what should be.

She trembled once.

Then she sighed.

She grew, shifting from her small, comfortable form into the full three-tailed fox, the form she used when something needed her real strength instead of her usual presence. Her eyes were set. Healing light was already gathering around her before the transformation finished.

Arthur, Mithra, and Vedas took their positions at the rubble.

They lifted.

The building answered immediately, a deep structural groan from a load system suddenly asked to redistribute without warning. Arthur’s left arm registered the start of an injury before Melo’s healing caught up. The injury kept going through the healing, stopped, started again, and Melo’s healing came back around, and somewhere in that cycle he lost track of whether he was hurt or not. It stopped mattering. Only the force mattered.

Mithra made a sound once, briefly, then stayed silent.

Vedas stayed silent the whole time.

The rubble moved.

Not enough, then more, then the gap that had been too small opened wide enough, and Arthur shouted.

"Melo!"

She was already moving. The enormous fox slipped beneath the lifted rubble with impossible care. The trapped woman looked up and met three golden eyes.

For a brief moment, Melo lowered her head, almost asking permission.

The woman smiled weakly. "...Thank you."

Melo lifted her gently onto her back and rushed clear of the collapsing structure. Once both were out, Arthur and the others finally let go. The building came down, the ground shaking, and all three of them fell.

When the dust settled, they lay there, panting, exhausted.

Melo stumbled once, shrinking back to her small form. Arthur caught her before she fell. He smiled at her, but she looked away with a huff, still upset.

Arthur scratched gently behind one ear. "...Thank you."

Melo huffed, then leaned into his hand anyway. He smiled and looked up at the sky, trying to steady himself.

Mithra flexed both hands slowly. "They’re still attached."

Arthur looked over. "Barely."

Vedas stared at both of them. "...You’re both insane."

Arthur laughed weakly. "So are you."

"Because of you!"

"Sorry, Vedas, you were already crazy when you started following him," Mithra said with a giggle.

Melo nodded.

Vedas slumped, resigned.

"Come on now, don’t tell me you think it wasn’t worth it?"

Vedas looked at the spear, then tightened his grip quietly. "It was."

Arthur chuckled. "We have to go."

"I knew you’d say that."

"But he’s right, the timer isn’t looking good."

...

At the marketplace, Sun studied the problem for another six seconds. Then he looked at Kong.

"I’ve got it," he said. "Same idea. Different direction."

Kong understood before he finished the sentence. He braced against the pillar, and when Sun gave the signal, Kong launched him upward through the weakened roof instead of pushing against the blocked side path. Sun broke through the roof from below, which isn’t usually how people move through roofs, but it opened a way through that had nothing to do with the wagon and pillar.

He pulled the husband out through the gap.

Kong caught them both on the way down.

Sun lay across Kong’s arms for a second. "...Never do that again."

Kong proudly beat his chest.

Sun sighed. "...He’s definitely doing it again. I think you’re learning too much from Arthur."

...

Athena stopped trying to solve the fire perimeter through analysis. She looked at Athy. "You’ve found it," she said. "Show me."

Athy flew.

Athena followed, left when the fire looked even on both sides, then right, then ducking under a section where the heat came from above instead of below, then through a gap that looked like a solid wall from the outside but wasn’t from the angle Athy had found.

It was a maze. The fire had built one without meaning to.

Athy had solved it from above while Athena had been trying to solve it from the ground.

The elderly woman was there. Athena helped her up, and they retraced the maze, following Athy’s lead, and came out on the street on the far side of the fire.

Athena finally slowed and looked down at Athy. "Good job."

Athy chirped happily and puffed out her feathers.

Athena smiled. "...You really are amazing."

The elderly woman smiled. "You really are, thank you."

Athy puffed her chest and rubbed her face against the woman, making her laugh.

...

Arthur heard the footsteps before he saw anyone.

Sun arrived first, with the husband, Kong, on his shoulder, looking satisfied. Then Athena, with the elderly woman, Athy, landing on her shoulder as she’d just contributed something meaningful.

Everyone had done it.

A grin spread across Arthur’s face. "I knew you guys would pull it off! Amazing as always!"

Sun laughed. "We couldn’t let you show us up, now could we?"

"Did you teach them to be this crazy too?" the elderly woman asked softly.

"Oh? They came up with a crazy plan too? Hahaha!"

"Don’t remind me," Athena sighed, while Mithra laughed.

Soon the civilians at the gate saw them coming.

They cheered.

The timer read twenty-four seconds when the city made a new sound, several disasters reaching their conclusions at once.

Fire walls across two streets.

The eastern market’s roof finished collapsing.

Stone failures cascading through the northern district.

"Everyone into the gate," Arthur said. "Now."

The civilians hesitated for exactly one second.

The Captain didn’t hesitate. He looked at Arthur for a moment, then gave one short nod. "...Well led."

Then he started physically moving people through, his body a guide and his voice a push. "Move. Move. You. Move."

He’d built his career on efficient decisions, and this was one of them.

The gate swallowed the civilians.

The fire behind them moved faster now.

20 seconds.

15 seconds.

Smoke swallowed half the street.

10 seconds.

The fire reached the marketplace.

5 seconds.

Arthur shouted, "Jump!"

Everyone threw themselves forward.

The fire hit the space they’d occupied a heartbeat earlier. White light swallowed them first. Flames and light briefly collided at the gate’s edge. Then only white remained, and silence.

For one impossible moment, everyone had made it.