Ebon was at his townhouse, getting in a morning workout in the basement gym, when he felt Phen's touch through their bond. There's a report on the radio. You'd better get up here. Dropping from the bars to the mat, he grabbed a shirt and headed upstairs.

"....surrounding the building.

Anyone with medical or emergency experience or with access to excavation equipment is urged to contact the Eastgate Emergency Volunteers, who are coordinating rescue efforts with the WestEnd Watch. Once again, the WestEnd headquarters of Sentinel Private Investigators has collapsed following an apparent attack by unknown assailants. Keep listening for more information as it becomes available."

Turning look at his wife, he smiled as she nodded and jerked her head towards the door. Get dressed and go help.

----------

Arriving at the scene, Ebon checked in with the Watch onsite, and then began carefully lifting rubble away via telekinesis. Now and then he would be called in to hold off further collapse until other workers could clear an area. All the while, he reached out with his mind like a submarine's sonar, trying to contact anyone trapped and alive within the downed building.

?It?s been thirty-six hours since the collapse--?

Sir Luca Bertand schooled his tone to an even level, erasing all the levels of frustration before responding to the Watchman. ?I understand that, Captain. But you must realize--?

?All you have been pulling out for the last twenty-four hours are corpses.? The color of Captain Dunhammer?s uniform enhanced the peachiness of his skin, giving it a pink haze and serving as evidence of his non-human status. The uniform was completely clean revealing the fact that he had not been on the scene very long for with all the dirt and debris stirred up in the air at what used to be the SPI building, nothing stayed clean for very long. Captain Dunhammer rose his deceptively deep voice over the noise of the construction vehicles working carefully on the site and only allowed a brief glance at the young man in the surprisingly effective exo suit. ?We are under specific orders from the Governor herself that if this abyssal pile of rock becomes a threat to the city--?

?I am aware of your orders, Captain, and we are taking precautions. If you would just--?

Bright lights lit up the disaster zone now that darkness had fallen for the second night in a row. Here, there was no difference between night and day. Work continued throughout both. The volunteers had to be forced to rest and eat. Hope, though, was growing thin. Sixteen bodies now had been recovered. No survivors had been found after the first twelve hours and none from any of the subterranean levels.

?Sir Luca!? The breathless call stole both Luca and Captain Dunhammer from their impassioned debate. Luca?s eyes lingered on the dirty face of the man interrupting. The young lines of his features were drawn tight with exhaustion. Very soon, this one too would have to be forced off the pile of debris and into a tent to rest for a few hours. ?We think we?ve found one, sir.?

The argument was forgotten. The Captain?s violet eyes widened as he followed Luca and the young man through the pile of debris to a far corner where the building?s cafe had once sat. Luca had grabbed coffee there more than once when meeting with various agents. Now there wasn't a recognizable landmark in sight. A growing group of volunteers and Watchman were gathering, heatedly debating which precarious piece of debris they should pick out next to avoid the collapse of the little protected pocket of space in which a single being had remained huddled in for the last thirty-six hours.

A medic sat poised at the mouth of the opening. Sir Luca took a crouch beside him and Captain Dunhammer followed suit. ?She?s been in and out of consciousness. They?re about thirty minutes from having her out. RhyDin General?s been alerted and is awaiting her arrival,? the medic provided as he thumbed through the pack at his side for supplies.

Captain Dunhammer stuck his thick scaly forearm through the opening to clutch a feminine hand poking out pinned in place by metal beams and rock. Luca's eyes caught on the pink polish on her fingernails -- chipped but still visible beneath the layers of dirt. Hope swelled in Luca?s chest as he remembered the pink polish on Annie-Love?s nails the day he gave her the news of her parents' deaths. Two days ago? Three?

?What?s your name, my dear?? The Captain asked, clutching her hand tightly.

?Michelle,? a thin voice answered back down below. ?Michelle Ross.?

Disappointment suck Luca?s hope straight out of his chest, leaving a deeply hollow feeling in its stead, but it was followed soon with guilt. While this wasn?t his friend alive and minutes from retrieval, Michelle certainly had friends and family members anxious for her retrieval.

?Well, I am Captain Dunhammer and these good men and women are quite close to having you out.? Emotion choked the old Captain?s voice.

?Please... please don?t let go of my hand?? The young woman begged softly through a sob.

Luca watched the display of emotions cross the cynical Watchman?s face. Pain, sadness, determination. After the hesitation to gather back his emotions, Captain Dunhammer gave a firm nod. ?I will not let go of your hand, Michelle. You have my word.?

The Captain?s eyes lifted to Luca, softened by the weight of the duty he felt to the trapped young woman. ?I?ll try to buy you another twenty-four hours, Sergeant Bertand.?

Would it be enough? And did it even matter? This very well could be the last person alive in this pile of rubble. Luca didn't let his doubt touch his features. Instead, he gave a grave nod. ?Thank you, Captain.?

When Aly had decided to rejoin the Avengers and actually get off her ass and do something, she didn?t think that a tragedy like this would be her first calling.

Aside from her traditional vampire traits like super speed and strength, Aly had a mist form and could teleport between rooms and walk through walls and even bring one person at a time with her; so long as she stayed well fed. In addition to those abilities, her blood could also heal grave injuries and if someone was beyond all hope, there was always the option of turning them. Aly wasn?t a fan of making vampires, but during a tragedy like this when all hope seemed lost, she would offer up her talent, for lack of better words.

Walking down to the site of the collapsed SPI building, Aly flashed her Avengers badge and explained some of the things she could do to assist. She was not granted immediate access, but for now was asked to remain on site should they decide to use her talents.

?F*ck that.? After downing a blood pack or four, Aly disappeared into her mist form and moved for the collapsed building.

?How did word get out to the press?? Beneath the command tent on the outskirts of the disaster site Sir Luca Bertand?s sharp eyes looked around those gathered for the evening?s pre-press conference meeting. His clasped hands rested over tonight?s list of the names of those bodies recovered. He couldn?t look at it.

SPI Agent Melanie Boykins shook her head firmly in response to the question. ?It wasn?t on our end.?

Captain Dunhammer?s violet eyes jumped up from the list to narrow at the redhead across the table. ?You certainly can?t be saying that the Watch is responsible for the leak.?

Agent Boykins tilted her head at the Captain, her lips thinning into an unattractive smirk. ?Of course not, Captain, because what the Watch is known for is for running a tight effective ship.?

Luca jumped back into the conversation before the meeting could further stumble into an unproductive argument. ?Please someone start from the beginning. I understand that we recovered a body and we believe it to be Colt Daniels. But we cannot confirm it, correct??

?We?re getting deeper into the building,? the somber faced Watch press secretary stated from his position beside the Captain. ?The deeper we dig--?

?The harder the victims are going to be to identify,? Agent Boykins finished briskly. She pushed a manilla envelope down the table towards Luca as she began. ?The last we know Agent Daniels was on his way to locate Agent Harper. We have located some remains. This was nearby.?

Luca dumped out the contents of the envelope. A chipped, dirty identification card fell onto the table in front of him. The envelope was set aside so he could lift the security badge still connected to a broken retractable clip. Sentinel Private Intelligence. Luca?s thumb ran over the name beneath the picture. Colton Daniels.

?Remains that we can?t positively identify as Agent Daniels,? Luca reminded, trying to decide if it was false hope that was causing him to be cautious of declaring his friend dead.

?The evidence is pretty clear, Sir Luca. We should add him to the list,? Agent Boykins responded sternly.

Luca?s kept his eyes diverted downward at the badge in his hand and, in particular, the face of the man staring back up at him. ?Agent Daniels has a lot of family who are worried about him. It doesn?t seem fair if we don?t have conf--?

?We don?t have time, Sir Luca. The longer this goes on the worse it is on the family. They need closure,? Agent Boykins cut in sternly. ?And might I remind you that you are here as the Baron?s representative. This is purely an SPI operation.?

Captain Dunhammer cleared his throat and gave a weighty chuckle. ?Is it now? I would think it to be an SPI disaster and a Watch rescue operation myself. We do have jurisdiction over this area. SPI is not the law, Ms. Boykins.?

The woman?s lips thinned once more but the look was not nearly as smug. Captain Dunhammer smiled benignly at her before continuing, ?We will state that thirteen bodies have been recovered and so far ten of those identified. I will acknowledge the rumors suggesting that Agent Daniels is among the dead that have been found but state that identification and notification of the family has not yet been completed. Understood??

It was a poor compromise but Luca nodded slowly and somberly, drawing his thumb along the base of the badge.

Captain Dunhammer took their silence as consent and rose to his feet. ?Excellent. Then let?s get this show on the road.?

So much destruction...

The rumors had been flying, whispers finding their way from one end of the city to the other and beyond, until reaching as far the cowboy's farm far into the woods. Between the information being bandied about and Jackie's frantic calls, it was enough to draw him from his drunken search for solace and force a trip towards civilization.

How could anyone survive that?

The reality didn't do the rumors justice. And somewhere, in all that, his friends were buried. Colton. Harper. Who could survive all of that? The minutes ticked by. The hours. It was hard to say how long Cooper had lingered at the scene of all that carnage, watching as the various rescue crews tried to get at whatever was left beneath, alive or dead. Survivors or salvage.

He was pensive. Worried. Heavy brows were knitting together in continual consternation. Jackie called once, then twice, asking a hundred questions and wanting five hundred answers. There were none to give.

Succor is the greatest of all things, Tall Oak had once said. And it is our purpose to give it wherever we are able.

His nostril's flared, deep brown eyes narrowing on the scene ahead and it continued to play out. Harper and Colt, dead or alive, were in there somewhere. One way or another, they needed whatever help could be given. As important, there might have been other survivors...

As teams of diggers came and went, it was fortuitous when Cooper found one of the badges on the ground, a small but needed item that was pocketed. Moments later that little treasure, clipped on to his lapel, got him as close to the rubble as he needed to be. With a look to either side and a lift of his chin to the other rescuers, he focused inward...

Bone crackled and shifted as it expanded. Flesh tore and stretched to accommodate, course brown fur sprouting free and covering the hulking behemoth he soon became...

Where Cooper Gallows had stood previously, an enormous grizzly bear had taken the man's place, fully the size of a cargo fan and lurching forward towards the task so many others had bent their wills to so far. Oversized claws tore carefully into the debris, picking through construction material and detritus for any signs of life. He was large, tireless, and determined, focusing his efforts where directed by Sergei and the others in charge.

Come Hell or High Water, he was going to find his friends.

Captain Dunhammer tapped his long pointed iridescent fingernails against the podium, his pinkish skin glowing in the morning light, and for what certainly wasn?t the first time Luca found himself wondering exactly what sort of creature the Captain was. There was one thing that was certainly not in doubt. The Captain enjoyed seeing his name in print and his face on the evening news.

Framed by the disaster scene behind him, the Captain cleared his throat and the crowd of media and onlookers fell silent. ?First and foremost, the Watch would like to extend its sympathies to the families of the three additional victims that were found overnight and the three victims that were identified overnight. Donia Arevan, Nith Galienes, Patricia Nielsen, Ana Christensen, Donald Mooney, and Kathryn Williams.?

And even though Luca knew that Harper's name would not be on the list, he found himself breathing another sigh of relief. He continued to refuse to think of her buried beneath the rubble. No, she was still on the couch where he'd left her asleep the night after telling her that her parents were killed. She had told him not to be sad. He had told her it was okay to be sad. It was okay to be sad.

?In addition, we would like to thank the volunteers who have donated supplies, given of their time, and assisted in so many different ways. This is a city of citizens eager to help their fellow man and I am very grateful for this city?s display of its large heart.?

As the speech seemed to be coming to a close, a hand from the front row waggled demanding attention. Captain Dunhammer?s eyes found the woman and immediately she launched a question at him. ?We?re hearing word that you are officially ending the search and rescue operation. Can you comment on this??

A look of sadness settled on Dunhammer?s face so rehearsed that Luca was left wondering if he had practiced it in the mirror this morning. ?Yes, I will,? the Captain started slowly. ?It has now been seventy-two hours since the collapse of the SPI headquarters here in WestEnd and based on the evidence we?ve collected we do not believe that there is any way that there could be survivors in the subterranean levels of the building. Therefore, going forward we will be considering this a recovery operation, not a search and rescue mission.?

?And how will that differ, Captain??

The members of the media were leaning forward, hanging on to Dunhammer?s every word and Dunhammer somberly continued. ?It means that we will no longer be allowing members of the Watch, the search and rescue teams, or volunteers to put their lives on the line as we proceed. While it is our goal to recover the five remaining bodies, we will not do so at a risk to--?

Luca stepped further away from the press conference as his communicator buzzed. He pressed the button to accept the call and lifted the device to his ear. Without a greeting, he launched into the heart of the discussion, the information the man on the other end needed. "Dunhammer called it. It's over, sir."

"How many?" The Baron asked in a brisk, even tone.

?Thirty-two dead, four survivors."

"I mean the missing.?

"There are five, milord."

"Then you return to the site and you keep digging until you find the missing five!"

And without another word, Alain DeMuer disconnected the call.

Two days ago she was turned away from the site by a group of men saying that a 'little girl' like her should be in the kitchen not trying to dig through rubble. The f*cking nerve. As much as she did for the city..for them?! As much as it infuriated her..there she was, bringing sandwiches and drinks to the workers and those who where waiting for news.

She had Diana tuned to any news that came to the public and for the past few days the earbuds had either been in ear or tucked to the collar of her shirt in case any news came up. Even when she was sleeping. This was also in case, though she didn't expect it, got texts or messages.

For Sergei she brought a couple of cots for him and his team. The guy looked as if he was going to break down at any moment. He needed food..sleep. No..what he needed was to hear that the people he cared about was okay.

They all needed that...to hear that Colt and Harper were alive..

She had thought about contacting Ben again but his one-word distant respond with no backup sort of made her feel..well it didn't matter how she felt. She had thought about contacting Jackie...Dylan..Ten.. but in the end she didn't. Her heart went out to them. It did. She told them if they needed her...

No...Instead of bothering them she was at the site throughout the day as a shadow, slipping in and out with food and when nobody was looking she was searching for survivors through the debris. She had her ways of being sneaky and quite frankly she refused ...simply refused to believe that Harper or Colt would go down like this.

Not like this.

Nope...

There are few sounds I know as well and loathe as much as the beeps produced by medical monitors. Maybe it?s because I always manage to hear them first, before any of the noises made by people shuffling around my bed. It?s a real gift.

I heard them then, and I couldn?t open my eyes to confirm the actual machine?s presence because I wasn?t quite awake enough. Just past the beeps, there was the crackling voice of a woman on a loud-speaker and sneakers up and down a tile floor. A lot of sneakers. I couldn?t yet smell the potent mix of disinfecting agents and lingering disease, but I could feel the padded bed under my body. I remembered having woken up earlier, when there?d been a guy nice enough to hold up a container for me to throw up all over. S**t. S**t, s**t. How long had I been asleep?

I must have groaned the obscenity or made some sort of noise, because someone responded: ?Well, good morning, sunshine.? And I recognized it. It was a male?s voice, not terribly deep, and with the vague notion of an accent; it was the sort of accent that hides when you go looking for it, and then sneaks out to pepper a few words when you turn away. I could mimic that voice almost precisely. I?ve known it forever. I turned towards it and forced my eyes to start opening.

I found him first as a darkish, long splotch near my bed, and I started to get enough focus to make more sense of him, but not enough sense to keep me from staring at him. I was bleary-eyed, I?m sure, but I was unblinking. I was making him uncomfortable, too, because he squirmed and pulled himself out of his sprawling lean.

?I was already off-world,? he explained. ?I was off-world and I got your message. Listen. You may be a lot of things?pig-headed amongst them?but you aren?t generally dramatic.? He shrugged and I saw him tilt his head to look down. ?I knew you meant it.?

I must not have been on so many drugs, because all his lines fell into place and I swallowed, false-started, then actually spoke. ?How?d you???

?Called you. Guess they?d been having trouble getting other contacts for you. Someone called back and told me you were here. ?Since when are you driving?? He sounded sort of amused at the end.

I felt like I might be yet again be sick. Of course they?d had trouble getting my other contacts. My other contacts were ?unidentified remains?. I almost didn?t hear him past that, and since I was quiet and looking down, he continued. He was still uncomfortable.

?Guess you passed out and rolled into a ditch. Just banged yourself and the ride up, a little. You?re fine.?

I?m wasn?t fine. I made a strangled noise, a sob dying in my throat, and he sat up bolt straight. ?Tenacity,? he said and his voice got soft, ?I?ve?heard. All the stuff. ?Bout that place and about Co??

I snapped instantly. ?You didn?t even like him. Don?t say his na??

?It wasn?t him!? He put his hands up and moved in to lean on the edge of my bed. ?They said he?s still one of the missing just this morning. It wasn?t him.? He sighed and there was a note of relief in his words that I hadn?t expected.

?It?wasn--? I must have looked like a zombie when my words broke-down. He sat on my bed and he put his hands on my shoulders.

?No.? It seemed like he might have said more, but he shut his mouth and held me there, instead. We were both quiet for a while.

Until I said: ?I can?t believe you?re here.? When I gazed up, I forgot that I was supposed to be a hard-ass. ?I?ve really missed you, idiot.?

He kissed my forehead and the gesture surprised both of us. He sat back almost immediately and folded his hands in his lap. We weren?t that sentimental, generally. But the mess and the moment had shown me the necessity of that kind of affection. It was the kind that could nurture hope, once hope had been brought back from the dead.

He glanced to the door. ?Food in this place sucks. Want me to sneak in some Thai??

?Do me one better, Dane.? I sat up and assessed my soreness. He looked back over with both eyebrows raised expectantly. ?Sneak in some clothes? A pair of yours will do.?

?You?re ready for that?? My brother?s concern was a slight thing. He asked for my own benefit, so I could review my decision before either of us made a move.

I was sure. With the chaos of the catastrophe still pulsing out in the other wards, I could slip out. Being able to morph into someone new just made it easier. ?Go. I?ll pay my bill, later.? I even smiled as I reached to curl my hand over his.

He smiled, too. Our dust had finally settled. It was the rest of the world's that I was still waiting on.

?Surprising news coming out from the SPI Headquarters Collapse in WestEnd tonight where three survivors have been pulled from the rubble. I?m Mira Bradley--?

?And I?m Stephen Douglas. Welcome to Channel 36's Eleven O?Clock News. ?

?We?re going to take you straight to the scene tonight of the horrific SPI building collapse where our own Yolanda Miller is there on site. Yolanda??

?Yes, Mira. I am here reporting live in WestEnd tonight where only a half an hour ago three SPI agents were pulled from the rubble two and a half days after the building's collapse. They were reportedly buried five stories underground within a vault without water and only a limited supply of oxygen.?

"Our sources tell us that one of the survivors rigged their cell phones to make continuous calls to the SPI switchboard in the hopes that as the crews cleared the debris, there would be a cell signal. The phones were programmed to transmit a code that assisted in narrowing down their whereabouts. The switchboard reported receiving the call at 5:14 this evening and renewed digging efforts began in the area where the survivors were believed to be shortly after 6 pm."

?What a remarkable story! Any word on the condition and identities of the survivors??

?Colton Daniels, Peter Oliend, and Annie-Love Harper were the names that have been given to us by search and rescue officials but Sentinel Private Investigation has refused to give us any details as to their ages and job titles citing privacy reasons. All three have been transported to RhyDin General where hospital sources are saying that all three are in serious condition.?

?Thank you, Yolanda. We will come back to you at the end of the broadcast to discuss this late breaking story in more detail....?