Fan Fic 100: After Shocks, Part 1
Title: Aftershocks
Author: kosmickway
Rated: R for language and sexuality
Pairing: None.
Summary: After the team is caught in the wake of a bombing, Grace must deal with the trauma of another bombing years before- one that took one of her closest friends.
A/N: In the season 1 episode “Unsoiled Sovereignty,” Grace references a piece of concrete that she keeps on her desk as being from the Murrah Federal building. She states that she had a friend who was a victim. I decided that I wanted to explore that aspect of her life and came up with the character of Zane Marshall.
(Please note that rather than reference a real case like Oklahoma City, I created the Amnesty Towers bombing in Miami instead.)
All aspects of Grace’s back story- life in Miami and a stint with Miami/Dade P.D. - are purely of my own devising.
=======
“You know you are truly a crazy person when you’re running into a burning building while everyone else is running out,” thought Grace Alvarez as she dodged between throngs of panicked Detroitians, all of whom were screaming and running in the opposite direction.
The Industrial Banking and Loan Building rose on the horizon, three blocks distant, belching smoke and flame. Squad cars and ambulances were already screaming to the scene and a small phalanx of news helicopters were buzzing over the needle thin tower at the top of the building to film the devastation.
Interrupted from their day of seminars at the FBI’s Investigative Techniques Conference by the news of a bombing at the IBL building, the members of the VCTF had been pressed into service to aid the rescue efforts of the under-funded and under-staffed Detroit Police Department. They were running down the sidewalk with a group of fellow conference attendees from other police departments and task forces from across the nation, all of whom were ready to give aid to their fellow comrades.
Leading the VCTF group was Rachel Burke, the lead profiler. She ran full out, even in high heeled black boots, her long legs eating up the pavement as she kept pace with John Grant, the devastatingly handsome detective. Grace wasn’t more than a few steps behind Rachel and John, her medical bag thumping against her hip. George Fraley, their computer guru, was at her side, rolling up the sleeves of his dress shirt as he ran. Bailey Malone, unit chief, was at the rear of the group, shouting into his cell phone.
As the burning building grew larger in front of Grace’s eyes, her thoughts drifted, unbidden, to another burning building on another city skyline. Fifteen years distant, the debris from that day’s bombing still pelted her dreams. She’d gone into a burning building with the desperation of someone who knows that she has the ability to save lives when seconds are precious. She’d been dragged out, hours later, screaming, to watch the rubble fall on the body of her best friend,.
=====
His name was Alexander Marshall but he insisted that everyone call him Zane. Alexander was too pretentious, Alex far too common. Even Xander (a name that would become popular years after his death by means of a quirky TV character) didn’t suit his personality. He wanted his name to be as unique as he was, as prominent as his bright green eyes and his sandy hair.
Zane had been the first person to call her Gracie, though most times he shortened it to Gray. They had been best friends since middle school, when Zane had moved onto her block and Grace had beat him up for stealing her bike. They were inseparable from that day forward, sharing the kind of friendship for which the titles of sisterhood and brotherhood are usually reserved. Each considered the other the sibling that he or she had never had and they bullied and teased and loved each other with the same sort of ferocity.
Grace was the more serious of the two of them- when it came to her grades, that is. She wasn’t the class clown that Zane was but she never hesitated to make her presence felt when she felt the situation warranted it. Her fresh mouth and dry sense of humor were constantly getting her in trouble, both in school and out of it.
Zane had started school with his only ambition in life to eventually be a stand-up comic or a pastry chef. Finally, tired of watching Grace do all of the work in their science labs, he started to get serious about his studies and found, much to his surprise, that he had an aptitude for lab sciences and a curiosity that was absolutely insatiable. His choice of career leanings took the same direction as Grace’s and he decided that what he really wanted was to go to med school outside of Florida.
They went off to Columbia together, vying for the top of the class through four years of caffeine binges and marathon study sessions. The Terrible Twosome- as their friends called them- graduated valedictorian and salutatorian, with Grace coming out a hairs-breadth ahead of Zane. They moved into a loft apartment with two other med students and scored internships in the same medical complex in downtown Manhattan, where they spent their breaks and off-hours reading aloud from the DSM-IV and the Merck Manual, desperate to move on to bigger and better things.
After two years post college in Manhattan and a year at the FBI Academy, they moved back to their hometown of Miami where they took a house with Morgan, Grace’s high school sweetheart, and Chase, Zane’s girlfriend from Columbia.
In 1991, Zane and Grace were both members of the EMT squad in Dade County, waiting out the state and federal hiring freeze. They were partners, making runs to the college parties for alcohol poisoning, onto the A1A for car accidents, and to the occasional house-fire, in-home medical emergency, or labor and delivery calls that cropped up during the 11-7 graveyard shift.
Chase and Morgan both dealt with the absences of their significant others with good humor. The two of them spent their evenings catching up on work from their respective jobs- Chase was a high school math teacher, and Morgan was the newest member of an accounting firm. Their common love of numbers lead them to start playing rounds of poker each night after dinner while Zane and Grace were just getting ready to go in for the 11 to 7 shift at the firehouse.
Life in their rented house worked out just fine, even with four conflicting schedules that had to be accommodated. Chase was up before all of them, getting ready to go to work at 5am. Morgan was up next and out of the house by 7:30, right around the time Zane and Grace were coming in the door. The two EMTs slept during the day or simply sacrificed sleep to run errands and study. Zane woke up when Chase came home and by the time Morgan arrived two hours later, Grace was starting to fix dinner. Then there was time for all of them to do something together, whether it was a round of poker, a movie, or just sitting around doing nothing. Morgan and Chase went to bed at 10:30pm, Grace and Zane went to work at 11 and the cycle continued the next day. It didn’t leave much time for any of them to be together as a couple, but they all made adjustments and life went on the way it always had.
That is, until one morning in February when everything changed.
======
The building was crumbling before their eyes. John plunged into the smoke and chaos, shouldering his way through the crowd, directing frantic people through the exits and into the street. Grace ran toward the front doors and then stopped, assessing the situation.
“You going in?”
A tall, good-looking man who reminded her very much of Nathan Brubaker in the face and eyes was standing next to her, rolling up the sleeves of his sky-blue dress shirt. Grace recalled that he was one of the featured speakers at the Investigative Techniques conference-- Lucas Fontaine, an expert in hair and fiber analysis.
Grace nodded. “I’m just trying to figure out what kind of bomb we’re dealing with here. If it’s a dirty bomb we’re going to need face masks.”
Fontaine nodded. “Good call. Hadn’t thought of that.” He sniffed the air, peered at the flame and smoke. “Can’t tell from here but it’s not setting off any of my internal alarm codes. Think we can go in?”
“We can’t waste any more time,” Grace said grimly. She scanned the smoky haze drifting from the building and saw several people stumbling out of it and into the outside air. “We’ll have to risk it. You coming?” Before she could lose her nerve, Grace ran into the burning building, Fontaine at her side.
Flames were licking at the walls in the lobby. Frantic employees were still stumbling out of the staircases, crying and screaming. Smoke poured out of the bank of elevator shafts and through the heating and cooling ducts, thick and greasy. The flames were eating up the good air, feeding off the oxygen, the smoke intensifying each second. Grace pulled in a breath of air, held it, looked around for her companion. She could see him making his way toward the elevators, both of which were jammed open.
Grace ran toward a woman who had fallen at the end of the stairwell, overcome by the smoke. Coughing out the breath she was holding, she grabbed the woman around the waist and hauled her to her feet, yanking her toward the shattered front doors.
Debris was raining down outside, glass, dust, stones, and bits of metal. The fresh air stung her lungs and she fought the urge to cough. The woman was nearly comatose in her arms, a dead weight that was pulling Grace down and keeping her from another rescue.
“George!” she shouted, spotting her friend through the smoke, pulling the woman with her. “George, help me!”
George came running, his shirt smudged with soot, ash dusting his hair. He dodged falling debris as he ran, making a half-hearted effort to cover his face and head from the bits of crumbling stone.
“Is she alive?”he asked, taking the woman into his arms.
“Barely.” Grace coughed, looked back at the building. “One of the men from our conference is still in there. I need to go back in.”
“They’re saying the building looks like it’s going to come down. You don’t have much time.” He met her eyes, his normally calm face lined with worry. “Be careful.”
“Don’t worry. I’ve done this before.”
The smoke was thickening. The chemical fumes in the air were making her eyes and throat burn Stumbling around the lobby, she scanned for bodies, though it didn’t do much good. She couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of her.
A tremor rent the air. A horrible roar accompanied the tremor, the sound of the supports in the building starting to give way to fatigue and damage. The floor shifted under her feet. Debris tumbled and a new shower of white dust filled the air. She knew that feeling- she’d felt it before the West tower of the Amnesty Building came down. Grace intensified her search, scanning the room with eyes practiced at spotting minute details.
The door to the stairwell was half open. She could make out a crumpled form lying just inside the hallway, a tall form wearing a sky-blue shirt. Fontaine.
She ran, feeling the floor shifting under her feet, mentally gauging the amount of time she had before the building collapsed altogether. Adrenaline made her heart pound and her blood scream as she shoved open the door and found her comrade from the conference lying at the foot of the stairway. Grace felt for his pulse, then heaved him up into a sitting position. He was unresponsive and too heavy to carry. She got a firm hold on his upper arms and started dragging him across the floor.
She was halfway across the lobby when the tremors intensified. The walls were crumbling around her, tile and stucco, marble and plaster falling in a shower of fine dust. Her muscles screamed as she lifted the man over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry. She was halfway across the lobby when a piercing pain shot across her head. She watched dazedly as a rock the size of a golf ball bounced across the floor in front of her. Blood trickled down her face and she had to fight the impulse to put a hand on her forehead.
The shattered front doors materialized in front of her. She stumbled toward them, arms and legs trembling from effort. She could make out firefighters swarming outside.
A metal girder came crashing down inches from her feet and she couldn’t slow her momentum. She fell in a tangle of limbs, Fontaine heavily on top of her, pinning her legs. Her head was pounding, her lungs burning. She pushed to her knees, tried to stand up, before her vision tunneled and blackness swept in from all sides.
End part 1.
Stay tuned for parts 2 and 3 ....
Author: kosmickway
Rated: R for language and sexuality
Pairing: None.
Summary: After the team is caught in the wake of a bombing, Grace must deal with the trauma of another bombing years before- one that took one of her closest friends.
A/N: In the season 1 episode “Unsoiled Sovereignty,” Grace references a piece of concrete that she keeps on her desk as being from the Murrah Federal building. She states that she had a friend who was a victim. I decided that I wanted to explore that aspect of her life and came up with the character of Zane Marshall.
(Please note that rather than reference a real case like Oklahoma City, I created the Amnesty Towers bombing in Miami instead.)
All aspects of Grace’s back story- life in Miami and a stint with Miami/Dade P.D. - are purely of my own devising.
=======
“You know you are truly a crazy person when you’re running into a burning building while everyone else is running out,” thought Grace Alvarez as she dodged between throngs of panicked Detroitians, all of whom were screaming and running in the opposite direction.
The Industrial Banking and Loan Building rose on the horizon, three blocks distant, belching smoke and flame. Squad cars and ambulances were already screaming to the scene and a small phalanx of news helicopters were buzzing over the needle thin tower at the top of the building to film the devastation.
Interrupted from their day of seminars at the FBI’s Investigative Techniques Conference by the news of a bombing at the IBL building, the members of the VCTF had been pressed into service to aid the rescue efforts of the under-funded and under-staffed Detroit Police Department. They were running down the sidewalk with a group of fellow conference attendees from other police departments and task forces from across the nation, all of whom were ready to give aid to their fellow comrades.
Leading the VCTF group was Rachel Burke, the lead profiler. She ran full out, even in high heeled black boots, her long legs eating up the pavement as she kept pace with John Grant, the devastatingly handsome detective. Grace wasn’t more than a few steps behind Rachel and John, her medical bag thumping against her hip. George Fraley, their computer guru, was at her side, rolling up the sleeves of his dress shirt as he ran. Bailey Malone, unit chief, was at the rear of the group, shouting into his cell phone.
As the burning building grew larger in front of Grace’s eyes, her thoughts drifted, unbidden, to another burning building on another city skyline. Fifteen years distant, the debris from that day’s bombing still pelted her dreams. She’d gone into a burning building with the desperation of someone who knows that she has the ability to save lives when seconds are precious. She’d been dragged out, hours later, screaming, to watch the rubble fall on the body of her best friend,.
=====
His name was Alexander Marshall but he insisted that everyone call him Zane. Alexander was too pretentious, Alex far too common. Even Xander (a name that would become popular years after his death by means of a quirky TV character) didn’t suit his personality. He wanted his name to be as unique as he was, as prominent as his bright green eyes and his sandy hair.
Zane had been the first person to call her Gracie, though most times he shortened it to Gray. They had been best friends since middle school, when Zane had moved onto her block and Grace had beat him up for stealing her bike. They were inseparable from that day forward, sharing the kind of friendship for which the titles of sisterhood and brotherhood are usually reserved. Each considered the other the sibling that he or she had never had and they bullied and teased and loved each other with the same sort of ferocity.
Grace was the more serious of the two of them- when it came to her grades, that is. She wasn’t the class clown that Zane was but she never hesitated to make her presence felt when she felt the situation warranted it. Her fresh mouth and dry sense of humor were constantly getting her in trouble, both in school and out of it.
Zane had started school with his only ambition in life to eventually be a stand-up comic or a pastry chef. Finally, tired of watching Grace do all of the work in their science labs, he started to get serious about his studies and found, much to his surprise, that he had an aptitude for lab sciences and a curiosity that was absolutely insatiable. His choice of career leanings took the same direction as Grace’s and he decided that what he really wanted was to go to med school outside of Florida.
They went off to Columbia together, vying for the top of the class through four years of caffeine binges and marathon study sessions. The Terrible Twosome- as their friends called them- graduated valedictorian and salutatorian, with Grace coming out a hairs-breadth ahead of Zane. They moved into a loft apartment with two other med students and scored internships in the same medical complex in downtown Manhattan, where they spent their breaks and off-hours reading aloud from the DSM-IV and the Merck Manual, desperate to move on to bigger and better things.
After two years post college in Manhattan and a year at the FBI Academy, they moved back to their hometown of Miami where they took a house with Morgan, Grace’s high school sweetheart, and Chase, Zane’s girlfriend from Columbia.
In 1991, Zane and Grace were both members of the EMT squad in Dade County, waiting out the state and federal hiring freeze. They were partners, making runs to the college parties for alcohol poisoning, onto the A1A for car accidents, and to the occasional house-fire, in-home medical emergency, or labor and delivery calls that cropped up during the 11-7 graveyard shift.
Chase and Morgan both dealt with the absences of their significant others with good humor. The two of them spent their evenings catching up on work from their respective jobs- Chase was a high school math teacher, and Morgan was the newest member of an accounting firm. Their common love of numbers lead them to start playing rounds of poker each night after dinner while Zane and Grace were just getting ready to go in for the 11 to 7 shift at the firehouse.
Life in their rented house worked out just fine, even with four conflicting schedules that had to be accommodated. Chase was up before all of them, getting ready to go to work at 5am. Morgan was up next and out of the house by 7:30, right around the time Zane and Grace were coming in the door. The two EMTs slept during the day or simply sacrificed sleep to run errands and study. Zane woke up when Chase came home and by the time Morgan arrived two hours later, Grace was starting to fix dinner. Then there was time for all of them to do something together, whether it was a round of poker, a movie, or just sitting around doing nothing. Morgan and Chase went to bed at 10:30pm, Grace and Zane went to work at 11 and the cycle continued the next day. It didn’t leave much time for any of them to be together as a couple, but they all made adjustments and life went on the way it always had.
That is, until one morning in February when everything changed.
======
The building was crumbling before their eyes. John plunged into the smoke and chaos, shouldering his way through the crowd, directing frantic people through the exits and into the street. Grace ran toward the front doors and then stopped, assessing the situation.
“You going in?”
A tall, good-looking man who reminded her very much of Nathan Brubaker in the face and eyes was standing next to her, rolling up the sleeves of his sky-blue dress shirt. Grace recalled that he was one of the featured speakers at the Investigative Techniques conference-- Lucas Fontaine, an expert in hair and fiber analysis.
Grace nodded. “I’m just trying to figure out what kind of bomb we’re dealing with here. If it’s a dirty bomb we’re going to need face masks.”
Fontaine nodded. “Good call. Hadn’t thought of that.” He sniffed the air, peered at the flame and smoke. “Can’t tell from here but it’s not setting off any of my internal alarm codes. Think we can go in?”
“We can’t waste any more time,” Grace said grimly. She scanned the smoky haze drifting from the building and saw several people stumbling out of it and into the outside air. “We’ll have to risk it. You coming?” Before she could lose her nerve, Grace ran into the burning building, Fontaine at her side.
Flames were licking at the walls in the lobby. Frantic employees were still stumbling out of the staircases, crying and screaming. Smoke poured out of the bank of elevator shafts and through the heating and cooling ducts, thick and greasy. The flames were eating up the good air, feeding off the oxygen, the smoke intensifying each second. Grace pulled in a breath of air, held it, looked around for her companion. She could see him making his way toward the elevators, both of which were jammed open.
Grace ran toward a woman who had fallen at the end of the stairwell, overcome by the smoke. Coughing out the breath she was holding, she grabbed the woman around the waist and hauled her to her feet, yanking her toward the shattered front doors.
Debris was raining down outside, glass, dust, stones, and bits of metal. The fresh air stung her lungs and she fought the urge to cough. The woman was nearly comatose in her arms, a dead weight that was pulling Grace down and keeping her from another rescue.
“George!” she shouted, spotting her friend through the smoke, pulling the woman with her. “George, help me!”
George came running, his shirt smudged with soot, ash dusting his hair. He dodged falling debris as he ran, making a half-hearted effort to cover his face and head from the bits of crumbling stone.
“Is she alive?”he asked, taking the woman into his arms.
“Barely.” Grace coughed, looked back at the building. “One of the men from our conference is still in there. I need to go back in.”
“They’re saying the building looks like it’s going to come down. You don’t have much time.” He met her eyes, his normally calm face lined with worry. “Be careful.”
“Don’t worry. I’ve done this before.”
The smoke was thickening. The chemical fumes in the air were making her eyes and throat burn Stumbling around the lobby, she scanned for bodies, though it didn’t do much good. She couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of her.
A tremor rent the air. A horrible roar accompanied the tremor, the sound of the supports in the building starting to give way to fatigue and damage. The floor shifted under her feet. Debris tumbled and a new shower of white dust filled the air. She knew that feeling- she’d felt it before the West tower of the Amnesty Building came down. Grace intensified her search, scanning the room with eyes practiced at spotting minute details.
The door to the stairwell was half open. She could make out a crumpled form lying just inside the hallway, a tall form wearing a sky-blue shirt. Fontaine.
She ran, feeling the floor shifting under her feet, mentally gauging the amount of time she had before the building collapsed altogether. Adrenaline made her heart pound and her blood scream as she shoved open the door and found her comrade from the conference lying at the foot of the stairway. Grace felt for his pulse, then heaved him up into a sitting position. He was unresponsive and too heavy to carry. She got a firm hold on his upper arms and started dragging him across the floor.
She was halfway across the lobby when the tremors intensified. The walls were crumbling around her, tile and stucco, marble and plaster falling in a shower of fine dust. Her muscles screamed as she lifted the man over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry. She was halfway across the lobby when a piercing pain shot across her head. She watched dazedly as a rock the size of a golf ball bounced across the floor in front of her. Blood trickled down her face and she had to fight the impulse to put a hand on her forehead.
The shattered front doors materialized in front of her. She stumbled toward them, arms and legs trembling from effort. She could make out firefighters swarming outside.
A metal girder came crashing down inches from her feet and she couldn’t slow her momentum. She fell in a tangle of limbs, Fontaine heavily on top of her, pinning her legs. Her head was pounding, her lungs burning. She pushed to her knees, tried to stand up, before her vision tunneled and blackness swept in from all sides.
End part 1.
Stay tuned for parts 2 and 3 ....