I came to, lying face down on the wet concrete of the walkway. Slowly I prepped myself up just as much as my painfully throbbing head allowed me to. The intense ringing noise in my ears that drowned out all other sounds subsided only slowly, but I could hear somebody call my name. I turned my head, and found myself looking at a face, pale as death and with widened golden eyes. Between the wet strands of his hair that stuck to his face, a trickle of blood had added another crimson line.

"Sky!" Blaze's voice sounded muffled and distant, as if my ears were filled with cotton, and that cotton was screaming very loudly. "Sky, are you alright? Are you hurt?"

It took me a few seconds to process what he had said. He helped me up into a sitting position.

"No. But you are," I remarked.

My own voice was barely audible to me over a cacophony of chaos that caused my head to spin. I realized that the ringing in my ears had stopped, and what I was hearing was the sound of alarms.

What the hell just happened? Is this an Anshar attack?

It was as good a guess as any. Around us, the street was filled with panicked people, some of them shouting, others screaming, others crying. A metallic tang was upon the air, tearing through the scent of petrichor like a knife. I slowly turned around, and as my gaze fell to the end of the street - the direction we had been headed to – I froze up in shock.

The concrete had been torn open, it looked as if a gigantic clawed hand had torn through a thin sheet of paper. Frayed shreds of the conductive material below the streets were pointing up into the sky like rows of demonic teeth. A roaring, bluish fire raged in the chasms left by the explosion. Firefighter drones were already hovering above, doing their best to quench the flames.

Not an Anshar attack. An accident. I realized. And if that man hadn't stopped us to talk to us, we-

"Sky, are you certain you're not hurt?"

Blaze's voice sounded clearer now, and so did the screams and cries. My every heartbeat was pounding heavily through my head, and I had to fight down the urge to throw up. The remaining puddles of rain water on the ground were tinted red with blood, but none of it was mine.

"I'm fine," I said as I scrambled to my feet. "We... we have to help."

I took a step towards the site of the catastrophe, but Blaze kept a firm grip on my hand and pulled me back.

"Are you insane? You can't go near there!"

"I have to," I explained. "It could have been us..."

I staggered away a few uneasy steps, but I could feel my sense of balance returning slowly. My own discomfort began to pale in the light of my own conviction. I had made up my mind, and once I set my mind on something, I would get it done.

Blaze quickly caught up to me and gave me a worried look.

"You should find a medic to have them look at that," I said and pointed to his head wound.

"It's just a scratch. But really, I don't think we..."

I stopped in my tracks and grabbed his collar, and yanked on it to force him down to eye level with me.

"No one gets left behind. If not in a fucking simulation, than sure as hell not in real life," I snapped at him. "Understood?"

My words made their desired impact, and a look of understanding spread across his face.

"Yes ma'am," he whispered, "Of course."

We had to move against throngs of people fleeing from the accident and made slow progress. More and more debris littered the street the closer we got, and soon we found the first people who had been seriously injured. While the blast had just knocked us off our feet, the people who were closer to the center of the explosion had been less lucky. Many had been hit by debris that came down from the surrounding buildings. We helped those who could still move to climb out of the trenches that had been torn into the street as the power lines had erupted, and handed them over to arriving medics.

I came across a woman, sprawled out on the ground, face down in a pool of blood. It was as black as ink. It took me a moment to realize that she was not dead. Technically, she had never been alive. She was Artificial. Her biomechanical heart continued to pump the black fluid out of the countless wounds the shrapnel of the explosion had torn through her skin. They were durable, but this had proven too much even for a body such as hers.

I bent down to turn her over and see if the unit could be saved, when I heard someone call out for help near me.

I guess this is triage... I am sorry, I thought as I left the Artificial behind and moved in the direction of the call. Blaze followed somewhere behind me. The fire had been extinguished by now, but the air here was still hot and reeked of this strange metallic scent.

"Someone help, please!"

The man who had called in desperation had been so close to an explosion that he had lost his hand and a part of his forearm. He held the remaining stump close to his chest. His legs were trapped under a large metal bar. I would have expected the sight of a wound like his would make me sick, but at that moment, I felt so strangely detached from the reality of the situation around me that I didn't seem to feel anything at all. I didn't hesitate one second to bend down next to him to lift the bar. I quickly realized that it was way too heavy, but if Blaze helped me, we might have a chance to get him out.

I looked at the man, and put on my best impression of a reassuring smile.

"It will be alright," I said, "We will get you out of here."

"Not me!" he cried out, "Don't save ME!"

I froze mid motion, and stared at him in confusion. His face carried a wide eyed look of utter terror and despair as he looked back at me, but I realized that there was no pain. No physical pain, at least. And in his eyes, for a moment I saw a flicker of something else. He was terrified, but he was not afraid for his life, because this man, too, was not really alive, and a force much stronger than a will to survive compelled his actions. His wound was oozing black blood, and with his remaining hand he pointed to a spot a couple of meters beyond.

"Her!" he said. "Help her! Please! I cannot get up with just one hand. You have to-"

I slowly rose on my feet again, in a trance-like state, and walked into the direction he had indicated.

A different kind of triage, I told myself. The first law, the primary circuit came to my mind. A robot may not harm a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. So even if he could be saved, he would rush off to save somebody else, even if it meant that he would bleed out and expire in the process. And if I saved him instead of the human he tried to save, how would his electronic brain be able to compute that?

I stopped dead in my tracks when I spotted a lifeless body before me. The realization that any kind of help was probably too late for her came first, but that was not what sent a convulsing shiver through my body that made me retch. It was the uniform. I fell to my knees beside her and cried out for Blaze to help me.

He came stumbling over junk and debris, and the moment he saw the expression on my face, and the body before me, all remaining color drained from his face, and the world.

I was far, far gone, completely detached from this reality, when I heard my own voice speak to him.

"That's Rose."