Page 284 of Every Almost

But it had been there.

Charlie had spent the better part of the time since convincing herself that Reyna had reacted to thestory.That was all. I mean, anybody would. Of course a Kaelari captain's face would do something. Charlie convinced herself it had nothing to do with her telling it.

That held right up until she made the mistake of remembering that Reyna's face had changedbeforeCharlie even got to the part about the wall.

Now, Reyna was sending it back.

Charlie stared at the screen. Reyna had gone and found the song Charlie told her describes love on a library floor and put it directly in her hands.

"Oh," Charlie said, her heart beating frantically in her chest. "Youheardme."

"Charlie?"

The voice of one of the colonists came out from under the pile, somewhere left of the beam.

"Yeah." Charlie put the datapad down in the dirt, face up. "Yeah, I'm here. Sorry. Give me just a second."

"Who are you talking to?"

"My captain," Charlie said softly.

And then she put both her hands back on the beam.

She gotthe first colonist out in six minutes.

His name was Feodar and he'd been under a section of roof. But he was fine, he wasfine. He did have a broken arm, but the second Charlie got the weight off, he sat up and started trying to help her, which she had to yell at him about twice.

"Sitdown."

"There's two more?—"

"I know there's two more, that'smy job. Now sit down."

He sat down and watched her work.

The second colonist took nineteen minutes to extricate.

Her name was something Charlie's Voxlink turned intoWren. She was pinned at the hip, conscious the whole time. But she never made a single sound, which was somehow worse than screaming. Charlie went at that pile holding her like a surgeon. Two pieces at a time, testing them, taking the load onto her own shoulder and holding it while she cleared the seat underneath. The tremors came the whole time, and every one of them put another fraction of that building onto the woman under it.

When Wren came free, she grabbed Charlie's wrist and held on hard enough to leave marks.

"Yeah," Charlie said. "Don't worry, I've got you. Go sit with Feodar."

The third one, the one that fell first and below the others, was the one in bad shape.

She was under the last of the debris pile near a load-bearing corner, the whole northeast section of the structure had come down at an angle and stopped against a scaffolding still standing. It had been stopped there all day, and Charlie spent four minutes running the scanner over it before she even touched it. There was exactly one way to take this apart and about nine ways to kill everybody sitting around her, including herself, with one wrong move.

She found the seat. She braced it. Then she got her shoulder in and lifted, the whole thing shifting a quarter inch andholding. Charlie let out a sound close to an exasperated laugh.

"Okay," she said, looking down at the last colonist, whose eyes blinked open as Charlie stood above her. "Okay, hi. I'm going to go ahead and get you out now. Would that be alright?"

The colonist gave the slightest of nods.

"Sounds good to me."

As Charlie started to move down into the threshold, she caught sight of the datapad still lying in the dirt with the screen lit.

Charlie looked over at it for exactly one second.