Shaine turned and ran into a busted up building with Knight Alexis right behind him in her power armor yelling at him to move faster. The supermutant suicider was a little more quick than the knight in her suit, however. He let out a loud rumbling bellow as he closed in on them from outside. Shaine could hear the beast’s feet thumping into the room as he turned to look behind him in a panic. He stumbled and fell hard on the wooden floor, immediately curling into a ball as Alexis covered him with her metal frame. 

Just as the Knight hit her knees over Shaine, the mini-nuke the mutie carried exploded around them, filling the room with a heated burst that knocked down a wall, blew a hole in the ceiling and cracked the floor beneath them. Alexis was pressed against Shaine and she strained to hold herself up enough to keep from crushing the kid. 

The squire’s ears rung loudly through the muffled sounds of the structure cracking and falling apart around them. A choking cloud of dust swirled around the dilapidated building and made Shaine cough. He frantically scrambled out from under Alexis, who immediately let herself drop to the floor with a loud metallic thud. 

He gasped at the sight around him. Blood and gore from the exploded mutie had painted nearly every surface and said surfaces were crushed or broken. A chunk of brick from the busted wall fell nearby, followed by a cascade of rubble. 

The boy coughed again and pulled the scarf around his neck up over his nose and mouth as he moved to the Knight sprawled on the ground. 

The back of her armor was a wreck. 

Shaine’s eyes widened as he remembered seeing Proctor Ingram brought back to the compound after she had been crushed under the landslide of the cliff. She had to be cut out of her suit and she was a mess inside, her legs crushed beyond saving. 

The Kight’s suit looked just as bad as Ingram’s had. His hands trembled as he touched the ruined release valve. No way he would be able to get her out. He heard her cough wetly as his hearing started to return. He knelt beside her head and grabbed her dented helmet. He pulled it off with some difficulty, falling back onto his rump as it dislodged. Shaine tossed the helm aside and looked down at Alexis. 

A stream of blood fell from her mouth as she struggled to breathe. She turned her head slightly and looked up at the kid kneeling over her. 

The squire stared at her with an expression of shocked fear, “I don’t know what to do! What do I do?!” 

His medical training definitely didn’t cover this. That suicider shouldn’t have even been out here. This was supposed to be a safe trip. Shaine tried to breathe and think through the panic. The Knight was starting to go into shock. Her body had been crushed inside the suit and Shaine knew that no stimpack would help her now. 

Alexis held a wild look of fear in her eyes for a moment as she spluttered and tried to talk. Shaine moved close and held her head against his lap, pulling her hair back from her face, “It’s okay...It’s going to be okay.” His words were just as much for himself as they were for the Knight. Her head lolled against him and her eyes glassed over as she let out a shallow breath and stilled. 

A chunk of wood from the ceiling above shifted and fell next to Shaine with a loud crash, startling the boy out of his stupor. He reached down and pulled off the Knight’s holotags, putting them around his neck as he stood up. 

Another chunk of wood fell and the entire building moaned and creaked around him as the remaining walls started to buckle. 

The squire gasped and ran through the doorway out into the street. He scrambled up over a cement barricade as the large two story building crashed down in an enormous dust cloud and splintering wood. Bits of rubble pelted his cover, spraying across the streets in a loud hailstorm of brick and wood. 

Shaine clutched the holotags against his chest and huddled in fear.