The pain was... worse, this time. So much worse. He couldn't help but curse himself- Of course it was worse- there were so many shards of glass digging into his back that it'd be weird if the pain wasn't at an extraordinary level.
The moment he recognized that the explosion of glass and other fragments had stopped, Clark sagged to the ground and almost took the girl and her mother down with him because of his large weight.
"Heua!" The woman gasped when she tried reaching around his back to support him and felt her hand come back slick with blood. "Ohh- fuck!"
'What? It's only a little blood, no need to get all panicky because of it,' he thought, his thoughts running abnormally slow, slow enough that he could actually feel his mind shutting off in an attempt to dull the pain crackling through him.
The air was heavy with the metallic smell of blood, with dust and rubble from the explosion floating in the air and blanketing everyone with the black-ish material. A portion of the hospital had collapsed because of the explosion, and everyone who was in that area was either screaming for help with raw voices or laying unnaturally still with steel bars piercing through their bodies.
The ceiling just next to where he'd fallen had collapsed onto a group of men that he'd weaved his way around just a few moments ago. If he focused his eyesight at the bottom, he thought he could see the ringed fingers of one of them. Hmm.
Bile rose in his throat, stopping midway when his disgust subsided to the pain.
'Where'd he go... where's Jay?' His thoughts received an answer after his friend popped around a corner of the rubble, struggling to not trip over the ruined floor while going as fast as he could while dodging the unmoving bodies of the unfortunate people who were also near the windows.
"Clark?!" He screamed. "Where are you?!"
The red-haired adult didn't care about whether he accidentally stepped on a few fingers in his search, nor did he care if he was making a scene. Hah, a scene... it'd probably take a lot of effort to make a scene in a bombing... Clark thought the event was funny.
"Oh my god! Oh- oh my god!!" When Jay finally found him, he couldn't stop himself from letting a small wave of despair from washing over him at the bloody state of his friend. The woman Clark had protected and her child kneeled at the side while Jay clutched the bleeding body of his friend, his lips trembling in a repeated question.
"W-what happened to him? Oh god, just hang on, you'll be okay..."
"What do you think happened?" She snapped, the anger in her voice completely absent from her gentle touch of Clark's back. "The bastard saved us from the window, and now he's hurt. Fuck..."
A bastard? Hehe, maybe I am a bastard... Sluggish from the pain, Clark could only register half of their words in his mind. Soon enough, his mind dipped into the darkness while his body relaxed, not caring as a spark of energy struck his center and started seeping into his muscles.
****
Seriously, what was he even thinking?! Sera couldn't wrap her head around it. In the face of such a dangerous, no, in such an unexpected disaster, the young man that coincidentally stood next to her and little Eliza used his own body to protect them. It was unthinkable- not just the self-sacrificing aspect of the action, but the quick reaction as well. It was like he knew it was going to happen- that was how quick he'd moved.
But there wasn't any time to think about stuff like that.
Moving quickly, she grabbed Jay by his shoulders after setting Clark gently on his side so as to not aggravate the wounds on his back. "You, you're his friend, right?" A quick nod was all she needed to continue. "Okay, you're going to listen very carefully, because if you don't do exactly as I say he's going to bleed out and die. Do you understand?"
Without waiting for an answer, she explained.
"You're going to go back to the medical station- the place where are all the nurses were at- and you're going to grab as many bandages as you can. They'll be in little plastic containers, or in paper packaging labeled as 'gauze'. Bring those, tape, and if you can find antibacterial shit, bring that too." She turned around and started ruffling through her bag, snapping back towards him when he didn't move to get up. "Get the fuck up and move!"
Jay was a little too stunned to hear everything she said, but he heard enough of the end that he could piece together what she wanted him to do. His legs shook when he got back up, probably from the shock of seeing the amount of blood covering Clark, and it took another yell from behind in order for him to actually get going.
"That's a lot of blood..." The woman turned back to Clark and swore at the sight of his bloody shirt and the wounds across his body. The thought of that being her and her daughter passed through her mind, but she shook the thought away. No use in thinking about 'what ifs,' when it wouldn't do anything but make her lose focus.
Hurriedly, she tore a piece of his already ruined shirt off and bundled it up, placing it as a pillow for the young man so she wouldn't accidentally damage his neck while she treated his cuts.
"Is he going to be okay...?" Her daughter, Eliza, finally spoke up from her spot next to her mother. Her eyes were glued to the blood- if she had an extra arm, no, if she had two extra arms then she might have an extra one to cover her daughter's eyes but right now she didn't even have enough to stop the boy's bleeding with what she had around her.
"If mommy can focus and that guy can run fast enough, then yes, of course, he will honey." She stretched a smile on her face but she didn't think it was convincing enough from the way Eliza's face fell. "I promise I'll try my very hardest, but until then I need you to sit still. Can you do that for me?"
The girl nodded, her brown curls dancing around as she did. "Yes!"
"Good, honey. Good."
As long as she didn't have to focus on her daughter's safety, Sera was confident that she'd be able to at least clean the wounds. Or at least, she was until she gently pulled his bloody shirt and saw the depth with which the glass had penetrated his skin.
"...fuck." The word came out with such force that her daughter gasped aloud, but Sera was too absorbed in examining the young man's back to notice.
She'd experienced enough trauma victims to be able to tell when a wound needed surgery or not, and right now it looked like even if she did manage to clean and bandage the cuts with glass shards that she could remove there were still so many deep wounds in his upper back that it was a miracle that his heart hadn't been reached in the explosion. And that wasn't even mentioning the damage to the rest of his body- his left leg had a chunk the size of a baseball sheered off in the explosion, but even that injury took less importance than his back.
She ignored the feeling of hopelessness in her heart and did her best. The feeling of gratitude for saving her and her daughter wasn't so shallow that she'd leave this college student to bleed out before at least trying her best to heal him with her skills.
"I-I'm here!" Just as she started wondering where he'd gone, the boy who ran off to get the supplies he was told to came back with a backpack full of all sorts of medical supplies. What, did he raid the entire nurse station? "Here's the gauze- I grabbed some saline packets too!"
She didn't bother to ask where he got the backpack from- he obviously didn't have it before, but with the rate at which people were stumbling out of the hospital while crying for help, she was sure that he found the backpack after someone left it and forgot about it.
"Perfect," she mumbled, taking one of the bottles of squeezable liquid and squeezing it into wounds with tiny glass shards still embedded in the skin. Just like she wanted, the shards were swept away with the constant flush of saline and dripped down his back.
Just when she was about to turn to the deeper wounds and worry about her inability to help, however, she blinked. And then blinked again.
"What...?" Her dazed look worried the boy next to her, who peeked over her shoulder to see the same thing she did.
Where before Clark's back was covered in scratches and cuts with the deepest being an inch into his shoulder with every single one of them profusely bleeding, now the cuts all showed signs of clotting! Some of the more shallow ones that Sera hadn't bothered to treat because of how insignificant they were in the face of much more dangerous cuts had even started to close!
She turned her eyes to his leg and saw the same thing- what used to a bloody mess was now a clotted, healing leg.
"What the fuck." Sera said lamely. It was all she could say- her brain was too overloaded to say anything else.
And it was in that moment of shock that a second explosion rocked the hospital building.
Boom!
Where before, the force of the explosion hit them with full force because of its proximity to the hospital, this explosion was much less powerful. From their position in the already-ruined section of the building, the worst thing was the violent trembling they had to endure from the shockwave.
"Liz!"
"Mommy!"
But even that much was enough to terrify everyone still in the building. Although she managed to hide it by focusing on the bleeding body of the student in front of her, Sera felt just as terrified as everyone else did- nobody could manage to stay calm immediately after an explosion like that. So, just like that, the two of them clung onto each other until the dust stopped falling from the collapsed ceiling above them and their bodies started to relax again.
Jay was the first to move, surprisingly. He pulled Clark's shirt back over his back just like that and didn't bother wasting the energy of worrying about it- it'd just be added to the list for later. After that, he tried to pick him up, grunting with effort. Wordlessly, Sera helped him and even little Eliza helped in the only way she could- by grabbing onto Clark's shirt and tugging with all her strength.
"...thank you." Jay said, not forgetting to carry the backpack full of medical supplies within him in case they might need it. "When I saw him on the ground, I just, I panicked and-"
"It's fine." She waved her hand. "If it wasn't for your friend, then it'd be me or my daughter lying on the ground instead. This is the least I can do."
Despite her casual words, Sera wasn't one to leave an action like saving her daughter just with that.
"I don't wanna bother you, but if it's alright with you I think it'd be for the best to stick together. That way, I can help you carry him." She was prepared to list off more reasons but was stopped when Jay sighed in relief.
"I was going to ask you guys the same thing. I don't know what the hell's going on, but I really don't want to be alone during all this." They finally reached the outside of the building when he finished talking. "I know a friend that lives nearby, it's a bit of a long walk but I think we can make it if we go fast now that Clark doesn't need... treatment..." Sera noted the name of the student who saved her before realizing that his words had trailed off.
"Mom, what're those sounds?"
"Look away honey, don't look." Sera pulled her daughter behind her and followed Jay into the sidestreet next to the hospital.
The street in front of the hospital was filled with cars- after the first explosion, they'd all either been abandoned or used to drive away as fast as they could, leaving a wake of broken taillights and fenders in their path. Those on foot, just like them, were weaving through the cars in their direction before a crisp 'Bang!' cut through the air and produced a mist of fine red next to one of the runners.
Gunshots. Bullets ripped through people before they could even recognize they were dead- it was a scene that no mother wanted their daughter to see.
"Just what the fuck is going on!" Jay muttered while staring in the direction the gunshot came from. "Everything's going crazy!"
"Where's the police? Shouldn't they be here by now?"
Nobody could answer either of their questions, but Sera had a sneaking suspicion as for the reason why there weren't any police nearby. "I... don't want to believe it, but what if the police aren't here because everywhere else, is exactly like this?"
It was a disastrous idea that nobody would guess unless the world had ended, but... if this scenario didn't call for it, then what did? The world changed the moment that the 'System' had appeared even if it hadn't done anything since then- how else could any of this be explained?! Why else would people devolve into murderers unless they were faced with the unknown?
"My car's parked just around the corner, I can drive us to your friend's place. Quick, go now that they've stopped shooting!" Despite the fact that they didn't even know each other's names, Sera and Jay silently agreed that no matter what, the most important thing was getting out of this situation alive! After all, you couldn't find answers if you were dead.