Page 28 of Crash Landed with My Weredragon

"Not optional," Marina finished. She pulled her arm free gently but firmly. "Athena, Peter, and Patel are in there. If the structure is compromised, they need to get out, and they can't do that through a collapsed corridor."

Toren looked at Melessra. The scientist's amber eyes held the calculation of someone weighing lives against probabilities and not liking the math. "How long before the aftershocks stop?" he asked.

"I don't know. The fault line is shallow and active. Could be minutes, could be hours."

"Then we go now." He turned to Marina. "Stay behind me. I'm serious about this. My scales can take impacts that your body can't, and if the ceiling comes down, I can shield you. But only if you're behind me."

Marina looked like she wanted to argue, but she didn't. She nodded once and fell in behind him.

They ran.

* * *

The guest wing corridor was worse than Toren had feared. The ceiling had partially collapsed at the main junction, blocking the entrance with ten feet of rubble made up of stone, shattered bioluminescent panels and twisted metal from the ventilation system, all piled in a jagged wall that sealed the corridor as effectively as a door. Dust hung in the air so thick that Marina was coughing before they reached the blockage, pulling her jacket collar over her mouth to filter the worst of it.

"Athena!" Marina shouted through the gaps in the rubble. "Can you hear me?"

Nothing for three seconds, then five. Marina's hands clenched at her sides. Toren could see the fear in the rigid line of her shoulders, but not for herself, never for herself. For her people.

Then, a faint, muffled, but unmistakable, Athena's voice. "We're here! The corridor's blocked on our side too. Peter's hurt. A ceiling beam caught his shoulder. He's conscious but bleeding badly. Patel's fine. She was under a table."

"Of course she was under a table," Marina muttered. Even in a crisis, Patel's survival instinct was to protect herself and the data in equal measure.

"How bad is Peter's bleeding?" Marina called through the rubble.

"Bad enough that I'd like him in a medical bay sooner rather than later. The wound's deep, shoulder to bicep. I've got pressure on it, but he needs stitching or whatever the alien equivalent is."

Toren assessed the rubble. Collapsed stone, some pieces weighing hundreds of pounds. A human team with tools could clear it in an hour. They didn't have an hour. Peter was bleeding through whatever pressure Athena was applying, and every minute counted.

"Stand back from the wall," he told Marina. "As far as you can get."

"What are you going to do?"

"What I'm built for."

He shifted. Not fully because the corridor was too narrow for full dragon form. But enough that his wings spread against the walls, his tail extended for balance, and the denser musculature of his partial shift gave him the raw strength needed for what came next. His scales thickened along his forearms and shoulders which was the natural armor that Weredragons developed in combat shift. It was harder than stone, capable of deflecting Drog mandibles and falling rubble alike.

He breathed fire at the rubble. Not a sustained blast, just targeted bursts that superheated the stone at its fracture points, making it crack along natural fault lines. The heat was intense enough that Marina retreated further down the corridor, her arm over her face, watching him through the shimmer of superheated air. The stone glowed orange, then red, then cracked with sharp reports that echoed through the corridor like gunshots.

Between the fire bursts, he tore chunks away with his claws. His tail braced against the corridor wall for leverage, the spiked tip digging into the stone. Each piece he removed revealed more rubble behind it. The collapse was deep and layered, the ceiling having come down in stages. But it was thinning. He could feel air moving through the gaps, carrying the scent of dust and blood from the other side.

"Toren!" Athena's voice, closer now. "I can see light through the rubble. You're almost through."

He redoubled his efforts. A slab of stone, which was easily three hundred pounds, blocked the final section. He got his claws under the edge, set his feet, and heaved. The muscles in his back screamed. His wing membranes strained against the corridor walls. The slab shifted, scraped, and then toppled sideways with a crash that shook the floor.

The gap opened. Not wide, just barely enough for a person to squeeze through, but open. Bioluminescent light flickered on the other side, dim and unsteady.

Athena appeared immediately. Dust-covered, blonde hair and blood on her hands that wasn't hers. She was pulling Peter through the gap with one arm under his good shoulder, her other hand pressing a wadded jacket against the wound on his left side. Her face was focused, set, the expression of a woman operating at maximum capacity on nothing but adrenaline and stubbornness.

Peter looked worse. His face was gray beneath the dust, his breathing shallow and rapid. The blood had soaked through Athena's improvised bandage and was dripping onto the stone floor. His eyes found Toren and focused with the deliberate effort of someone fighting to stay conscious.

"You're on fire," Peter observed. His voice was thin but present.

Toren looked down. His left forearm was smoldering where a superheated stone fragment had lodged between two scales. He knocked it away and patted out the ember. "Minor occupational hazard."

"You literally set yourself on fire to rescue us."

"The stone needed to be heated to fracture properly. The self-immolation was a side effect."