49 Blur

The maniacal laughter that accompanied the cracking ceiling curdled Felix's blood. Debris rained from above, and the structure gave a mammoth rumble as the building was being torn apart from the inside. Johnathan was the first among them to recover his senses.

He began immediately flying hostages out of the building… by ramming straight through the window. For a man with a fear of heights, he didn't show any as he worked to rescue as many people as possible.

Harper, meanwhile, struggled to come to her senses form her place beside Blast. Felix knew she was running out of time, but she had plenty remaining to beat Blast to a pulp. Blast was well and truly unconscious by the time Harper was done with him, her anger palpable.

Felix moved to help calm the people. His powers were useless in a situation like this, not that he could use them in the first place. It was all he could do to stumble around, directing Johnathan like an air traffic controller.

Harper, finished with her gruesome task, sat down next to the wall. Her powers had sapped a lot from her physically – the equivalent of the migraine Felix had to deal with. Johnathan carried her out next, dodging a large block as it came crashing down.

Sergeant Welters stormed up the stairs, her eyes becoming saucers when she took in the scene in front of her. "What in the world did you do?" she screamed, shaking Felix violently.

"Blast took the ceiling with him when Ironwill was about to knock his lights out," Felix explained, tempering his annoyance at being shaken like a shake weight. The sergeant looked at him with baleful eyes.

"I knew your kind were no good," she spat. "Go and help evacuate these people!" The police officers following her jumped to the task, leading groups of people down the stairs. Sergeant Welters left him, leading by example. It was fortunate that the rest of the building had evacuated on its own when Blast first took control of it.

Felix felt a hand on his shoulders. Prepared to shout down the next person who bothered him, Felix relaxed when he recognized their face. "Beth! It's good to see you!" he all but shouted, giving her a hug.

Beth was disheveled, as would be expected from anyone who was forced to huddle in the corner of a room while being held at a metaphorical gunpoint. "Thank goodness you came," she whispered, clutching onto him. Kyle nodded from behind her, gratitude written all over his face.

"You two need to get down. I'll let Lift know when he makes his next trip," but as Felix said those words, he caught sight of the aforementioned hero. "Speak of the devil."

Johnathan, as Lift, appeared before them. With a simple nod, Johnathan scooped the pair up, one in each arm, as he shot back out through the hole he had custom-made. And just like that, Felix was alone again, directing as many people as he could to follow the police.

A group of six people had just walked past him when the ceiling rumbled. A huge chunk fell to the ground, and screams accompanied the crash. Two people had been caught under the thing, their legs trapped under the massive weight.

Felix was fairly buff for a regular person, but without superpowers like Harper's, he wasn't going to be able to lift that piece of debris. Calling for help, a couple of officers begrudgingly lent him their aid. Together, they strained against the section of ceiling, getting just barely enough off the ground for other people to grab the two that were stuck.

There was zero chance that those people would be able to walk on their own after that. They were carried away by their friends and family, and they soon disappeared into the stairwell. Felix glanced at the roof with growing worry; they were running out of time.

The majority of the former hostages had been able to clear the room already, but there were still a few that, in their confusion or terror, had frozen up. Felix convinced a couple to follow the rest down, while Johnathan drug a few more out of the building by force after their minds proved to be stuck in a haze.

When it finally came time for Felix to leave through the staircase, none remained on the fifteenth floor of the Eastman Tower except for him and Johnathan. Johnathan tried to walk over to Felix's side of the room, but the moan of the building stopped him in his tracks.

Felix watched his teammate's expression go wide. Johnathan pointed above Felix urgently, but when Felix looked upwards, he knew that there was nothing he could do. Still, he tried desperately to throw himself out of the way. Surprisingly, he went flying across the room.

Looking back, Felix saw an image that would haunt him forever. Johnathan had flown in, shoving Felix out of the way of yet another collapsing part of the building. His face was frozen in a smile, though his eyes were filled with a resigned sadness. He'd replaced himself for Felix. Felix's eyes started to tear up. Why had he done it? There was so much more Lift could do! So much more Lift needed to do!

Why was the world so unfair? Everyone who tried to do some good inevitably wound up paying a price beyond their means. Johnathan was paying Felix's price for him. No matter what Felix did, he couldn't make it to Johnathan in time.

Still, he sprinted. He needed to save Johnathan: couldn't let him sacrifice himself. So he ran faster. And faster. And faster. And when it looked like the light in Johnathan's eyes would go out forever…

Felix blurred.