For a second, everyone was just shocked. But Lola quickly recovered, her eyes scanning the people inside. All she could see were the men standing while unconscious, their bodies tilted at odd angles.
Then, there, in the corner, also unconscious, was...
"Atlas," she breathed out, only to pause when she saw the two elders with him, and another with a quite familiar face. "That... silver-eyed trash."
"What are you doing?!" Penny yelled. "Pull them up — medic! Where the hell are you?!"
With her voice erupting into the air, everyone snapped out of their shock and quickly went to work. But then again, everyone couldn’t help but wonder what in the world had happened inside the building.
*****
[What happened]
"Son, I’m... sorry. It’s Dad’s fault."
Just as Charles expressed those words, knowing they could’ve been his last words, someone suddenly shouted.
"This way!"
The voice was clearly exhausted, but somehow, it sounded like... an angel.
When they turned their heads, there they saw a pair of silver eyes shining so brightly in the darkness.
"This way! NOW!"
Everyone didn’t even think or have a moment of doubt. They had around thirty seconds left; there wasn’t any time for anything else. So even if they didn’t know the man who was shouting at them, they followed. Whether they followed or not, they were dead either way.
Fifteen seconds left, and they saw a door that was already wide open.
"Inside!" shouted the man as he stood by the door, pulling everyone and pushing them inside. As he did so, everyone was making a countdown in their head.
"Ah!" The elder tripped right at the entrance.
"Move!" the silver-eyed man shouted, pushing everyone else forward.
Hugo lifted the elder and quickly jumped in. Then the man reached out to Marceline and the other elder with them. "Fast!"
Five...
Four...
"Reach out!" The same man reached out, taking the elder’s fingers and pulling him in.
Three...
Marceline managed to reach the door.
But before the silver-eyed man, Roth, jumped in, he saw two other figures approaching this way with great difficulty.
It was Iris, carrying the cardinal’s arm over her shoulder.
Roth huffed and jumped in, slamming the door shut.
One.
BOOM!
Without a word, the weight on Draken and Baby’s back eased a little.
When both of them turned their heads, there they saw the rest of them — Charles, Zoren, Hugo, Atlas, Mark, and Roth — doing the same thing as them.
They weren’t as gigantic as Baby and Draken, but they still had energy to spare.
No words were said between them as they all just tried to stop this massive thing from collapsing on them. But the wall against their backs kept pressing down on them with every deafening boom, feeling like more debris was falling on the other side and adding weight to it.
"Ugh...!" they all groaned, the veins on their faces and bodies protruding.
Even Marceline tried to help. At this rate, even when she knew her help was little, every bit of strength — strong or weak — still counted. The elders also tried to help, though they didn’t think they were doing much either.
And for who knows how long, all they did was stop the wall from falling on them. Even when the large roars of the explosives stopped shaking the walls, and the dust had filled the room — almost suffocating them — they didn’t lower their guards.
It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that they kept drifting in and out of consciousness, but their willpower kept them going. Even when they completely lost consciousness, they kept standing, using their bodies as wedges; their expressions hardened.
So when the wall they stopped together was finally lifted by the rescue team, what they saw was a picture of how they had all desperately fought for their survival — for their families, for their lives.
And with the dust covering them from head to toe, they almost looked like statues of heroes.
But at the end of the day, the leaders of the founding families survived, all because they chose to work together so desperately.
Something that had never happened before.
But for sure, this was something that would change the dynamic of the secret society.

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