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whump-captain · 11 months

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- Day 24 -

Prompt: Earth (Environmental Whump)

@whumpmasinjuly-archive

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so! it took me a looooong time to come with an idea for this bc i really wanted to keep it in an urban setting and i. just could Not for the life of me think of anything lmao. it ended with explosions in the end and a side dish of blood loss but that's par for the course in my writing lol

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CN: caught in an explosion, fire, smoke inhalation, impaled by debris, blood loss

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It's a race. Against time for now, but the air grows thicker with every second and Cutter can smell the ozone gathering. His breath comes heavy and his bad leg is killing him but he keeps running. There are more than fifty air vents in the building. Each of them houses danger.

The thing in the vents, the wispy, half-alive being of air that sings in hisses, is angry. Elaine was halfway done banishing it when it noticed her presence and turned its swirling fury against the building it haunts. Every window Cutter passes is broken. The remains of glass shatter spontaneously, turning themselves into dust. The walls shudder. Something inside them is trying to get out.

Two more vents on this floor. In Cutter's hand there are five more cards, each bearing a hand-drawn expulsion circle: tight sigils and crossing lines around a downwards-pointing star. Most of Elaine's explanation of how they work has been beyond his knowledge but as long as it's her, he believes it.

The rest of the cards are with Joy, on the second floor. Elaine has tried to keep her out of this, pleading with her to stay in the lobby, where the expulsion is centered and where it's safe. Of course, there is no force on Earth that could keep Joy from helping. And time is short.

Cutter finds one of the vents in the boiler room. Heat crashes into him the second he opens the door and he staggers back. The air feels like wet cotton. The noise of machinery hums in his ears as he squeezes past the pipes to the square grate on the far wall. He slips a card through the slats. He can swear the smell of ozone gets worse.

He can tell the air-being is still occupied, locked in a battle of wills in the lobby. The awareness is almost physical, as if its attention was a persistent ache in the base of his neck, ready to flare up into burning if he's noticed. But there's only one more vent left. There won't be time for anything to go wrong.

It's just ahead, in a tight maintenance corridor outside the boiler room. Pipes enclose on it, disappearing around a corner, and a fuse box clings to the wall, rattling metallically with the walls' trembling. The vent is behind it, at waist height, obscured by a pile of collapsed plastic containers.

Cutter pushes away the first one when he hears a crack. Metal bending. He looks at the fuse box.

The boiler room explodes. The force rips the door off of its hinges and the walls erupt out. Cutter feels heat, then something slams into his chest. Then he's weightless. The shockwave throws him five metres back, the impact is like a flash of light. Then like darkness.

For what feels like forever, he can't move. He wants to cry out but he can't breathe, something white hot binds his ribcage. He's conscious, he sees the ceiling swaying and blackening above him, but it's like all thought has been knocked out of him along with the air from his lungs. The ringing in his ears is so loud it hurts. Everything else is impossibly distant.

His body reacts on its own. He convulses with the force of the first, involuntary gasp and reality snaps back around him. The air burns, the deafening roar of flames drowns out the shrill noise of breaking metal tanks. He barely hears his radio crack to life.

"Joy to Cutter, what the hell was that?!" Joy yells among the distortion. "Where-"

Elaine's voice cuts her off, pitched down by an electronic drone:

“It saw you. Hurry!”

"Shit," Cutter breathes, trying to get his splayed limbs together. The cards are gone. Panic lurches through him, he pushes up but his arm gives straight away. The floor burns his hands when he feels around it blindly, desperately.

The cards lay scattered only a few feet away. With a pained noise of effort, Cutter rolls onto his side and grabs for them. The paper has begun to curl. The air is so thick now he can barely breathe. It's like a thunderstorm contained within a single room.

There's no time to try and stand. He manages to get his elbows under him and, grabbing at the pipes for balance, he crawls towards the vent. Something stings his side with every motion but adrenaline burns the thought away. Smoke scratches his throat. He coughs, almost collapses again. It's right there. Arm's length.

The plastic boxes warp under his weight when he clambers up them, reaching. The vent's grate bends in his grip. He tears it off with a desperate yell and throws the cards inside.

There's a sound like a razor on glass and then the air pops. The ozone evaporates in an instant. It's replaced by the stench of smoke.

Cutter collapses, heaving painful breaths against the floor. His head reels from the noise, from the sudden change, and from whatever damage the explosion has done. He feels the heat now, hears the cracking of flames encroaching. He still needs to get out of there. The adrenaline has dissipated too, leaving his limbs heavy. He pushes himself up.

A stab of searing pain stops him and forces a short scream out of him. It spreads in waves, in time with his shivering, from a line of living fire in his side.

When he sees it, his stomach turns. A shard of bent metal, as big as his hand, is buried in his flesh, just below the last rib. His shirt is soaked through with blood and ripped to shreds where smaller pieces of debris have cut and stabbed it and opened more wounds. In a daze, Cutter sees the trail of blood smeared across the floor, where he has crawled. His own blood.

"Oh," he says shakily.

It's on his hands, on the boxes, everywhere. With the adrenaline gone, the pain is horrifying, it tears through him with every tiny motion. He can't help a raspy whimper as he curls around the injury, trembling fingers hovering over the metal shard. Instinct begs him to pull it out, to rid his body of this intrusion. Instead, he presses his hand tightly around it, onto the wound. The noise of the fire drowns out his long, shuddering groan.

He has to get out. Has to keep moving. There's no way he can stand up, it hurts too much. He grits his teeth and turns onto his back, gasping as the shard in his side shifts and cuts into muscle. With one hand, he heaves himself up to half-sitting. His head spins. He has to pause, shivering, as the pain builds, seizing his lungs until he's fighting to breathe. The smoke is suffocating.

He pushes with his legs, crawling backwards. His arm barely holds his weight. The fire has spilled from the boiler room now; deadly golden ribbons lick the walls, curling paint and scorching plastic. There's a door just around the corner, where the pipes lead. Cutter just has to make it there. Quiet, ragged sounds of pain keep escaping him on every exhale, every monstrous effort of gaining a foot away from the blaze. He feels the blood trickling between his fingers.

"We almost have it!" Joy's voice cracks through the radio. "Cutter, where are you?"

It takes him two tries to get a proper grip on the device. His hands are too slick with blood, sweat, and melted ink. He's let go of the wound, leaving the metal to jolt and twist through his flesh. He can't let himself collapse. He has to keep moving.

"Boiler room," he rasps into the microphone. "There's, ah- there's a fire."

His voice falters. A small impact shakes him, only a bump against a wall but enough to stoke the pain into an inferno again. He's at the corner. Only a few more meters.

"Shit, what happened?" Joy answers, as if from miles away. "Are you okay? Cutter?"

He can't respond. The radio hangs from his belt loop, scraping on the floor as he drags himself back. Everything is swaying now. The heat is like pressure on his skin, constricting.

When his arm buckles, he doesn't feel the fall. Just the blinding pain again that he has no more strength left to voice.

The corridor seems to darken. His vision goes next.

Then his consciousness.

The fire advances.

#wij23day24 #whumpmasinjuly2023 #whump #whump writing #whump ocs #oc whump #whump blog #whump community #caught in an explosion #fire #blood loss #captain's stuff #captain's ocs #ghost ambulance #i had more ideas w/ a boiler room but decided on this one #it's kinda rushed again but. im mad busy recently djdhdkfbd im just really happy i finished it

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