Piece By Piece

"Get up!" Someone pulls me up by my arm. 

"What?" I open my eyes to blearily take in my surroundings. Everything is fuzzy; something burns my eyes. 

"Get up!" The tug comes again. I try to gather my strength to push up from the rough ground I'm sprawled over. Looking up, I can vaguely make out the shape of a boy pulling me to my feet. I stumble into him and he catches me. "Come on," he yells. "We have to go!" I nod sluggishly as I try to regain my senses. He holds onto me as we start to run. 

I try to take in my surroundings, try to piece together what's happening. Most of my attention is needed elsewhere though, just to keep from tripping over the rubble everywhere. It seems like there was some explosion behind us. Even now the flames of the fire dimly light our way. That must be why we're running. We're running away from whatever destroyed the street behind us. 

My eyes start to clear as we move further from the smoke, though it feels like I'm still breathing in fire. "Stop," I choke out. "I need, to stop." Abruptly, I quit running. Breathing heavily with my charcoal lungs, I bend over with my hands against my trembling legs to hold me upright. 

"Hey, are you okay?" The young man comes over to me and puts a hand on my shoulder. 

"Yeah," I start to answer breathlessly, but I pause to think. "I don't know." 

He straightens and runs a hand through his ash filled brown hair. "Yeah, me either." He looks back towards where we came from, and I follow his gaze. "What was that?" The street behind us has been overtaken by a giant smoldering crater. Even the buildings nearest to us are in ruin, and rubble has been spewed farther than we've traveled. 

"How did we survive?" I wonder. 

Another girl runs towards us from the devastating scene. "Oh, hey." She stops a few feet away, as out of breath as we are. Her huge blonde fluffy hair obscures her dark face for a moment as she leans over like I was. She looks back up at us. "I guess you guys ran away from the explosion too." 

"Uhh..." I grasp at words, still trying to remember what happened. 

"Yes, we did." The boy answers more quickly. 

Her eyes widen. "Do you know how that happened? I can't remember a thing before I woke up." She scratches her head, shaking the huge curly mass. 

"No," the boy says, fixing his glasses. "I don't." 

"You two are having memory issues?" I ask, and they both nod. "I am too. Could it be a result of the blast?" 

The girl shrugs. "I don't know. That's the problem with not being able to remember anything I suppose." She smiles, and I have to smile back in response. She reaches out a hand. "I'm, uh... Oh, I'm Elise!" 

"Aiden." The boy reaches out and takes her hand. 

My brow furrows. "That was fast." 

Elise turns to me with her hand outstretched. "How about you, hun?" 

I take her hand. My small pale hand is engulfed by the warmth of her larger, darker one. "Umm..." Suddenly it hits me. "Savannah. I'm Savannah Jenson." 

Elise laughs. "Well, you're doing better than the rest of us. You have a first and a last name." 

I smirk and tuck a piece of red hair behind my ear. "I suppose I do."

"You guys having memory problems too?" A new voice startles us from behind me. I turn to see a kid approaching, younger than us. I'm not sure if they're male or female. "The name's Viren. Judging from the sight of you guys, you were a lot closer to the blast than I was." They point at us, before gesturing back towards themself with a thumb. 

I look down at my torn and soot covered t-shirt and jeans. Aiden is dressed similarly with the addition of an open hoodie, though in a more masculine fashion. His clothes are equally distressed. Even his glasses are a bit crooked. Elise is clothed a bit more loosely, in a hoodie and sweatpants, but her clothes are singed too. 

"I guess you're right." I admit. "I thought our memory issues had something to do with that explosion, but you've been affected, and you weren't nearly as close." 

They shrug and flip their black hair out of their eyes. "I was still knocked out by it, if that's what you were wondering." 

"You think this boils down to amnesia?" Elise asks, unconsciously shifting her weight to one side. 

Viren shrugs again. "Maybe. I mean, why couldn't it be?" 

"But why would we lose so much of our memory though?" Aiden asks. "I thought, well, I think, that amnesia affects short term memory."

"How can we know for certain?" Elise asks. "We can barely remember our own names."

"Help!" We all turn when we hear a woman's cry. "Help!" As a group we run towards the source of the noise. "Please, help..." We arrive at the woman as her voice fades into a fit of coughing. She's trapped by a fallen beam. 

"Hi," I start. "We're here to help." 

"Oh, thank God." Her narrow eyes are brimming with watery gratitude. "I'm trapped here." 

"Do you remember your name?" I ask. 

She nods. "I'm Lana." 

"Okay, Lana, we'll get you out of there." I reach for the end of the beam and try to pull up on it. "Come on guys, move!" Quickly the others grab ahold of the beam and together we lift. With a lot of grunting and huffing, we manage to move the beam. As we do, something else starts to shift. "Wait, stop!" I yell. Another beam is moving towards Lana's head. Her eyes move over and widen; she sees it too. As sweat rolls down my forehead I watch it slide closer. My sweaty palms grasp the beam we're already holding. We can't drop it back onto Lana. 

Suddenly a tall man runs in and he grabs onto the slipping beam. "Hurry up," he yells. "Lift that beam off of her!" We all push up, pulling the beam off of the trapped woman. "Move!" The man yells at Lana as he holds the other beam away from her. She rolls out of the way with tears streaming down her face. "Drop it!" We let go of the beam and it slams to the ground. He releases his beam only a moment later. 

I look to Lana and smile, chest still heaving with the exertion. We got her out. Then I look back to the newcomer. He stomps over to me. "You were going to get that woman killed!" 

My eyes narrow and my back straightens as I glare up into the dark eyes hidden behind darker shaggy bangs. "We were trying to save her life!" 

"So was I, and if I hadn't gotten here, she would have been killed by your haste!" There's obvious rage in his eyes about how we handled the situation. 

"Well we tried," I yell back. "We didn't know you were coming and we didn't know what we were doing, but we had to try something!" I point to the rubble. "We couldn't just leave her there!" 

"If you had then she would have been safe," he shouts back. "If you had, you could have assessed the situation better! You," 

Lana tackles him in a hug. "Thank you for saving me!" His eyes widen and he seems shocked. He holds his arms awkwardly out to the sides, clearly not sure what to do with them. 

"She does realize we saved her too, right?" Aiden asks. Viren shrugs in response. 

"You can hug her back." I smile at the man I'd been fighting with only moments ago, who clearly doesn't know how to handle Lana's affections. 

"Umm..." He awkwardly pats her back with his much longer arms. 

She seems content enough and backs away, slightly. "What's your name?" 

"Danger," he replies. 

"Well Danger, you saved me from danger. How poetic." Lana's eyes are dreamy, but Danger's seem to be more concerned. "Oh my gosh, my journal! I almost forgot!" She reaches over some of the beams, clearly looking for something. "Wuah!" She starts to fall in, but Danger grabs her waist and pulls her back. She blushes. He simply sighs and reaches into the crevice, pulling out a bag easily. 

Lana grabs the bag and clutches it to herself. "You're welcome," Danger murmurs. 

Viren uses their elbow to nudge Aiden. "Feel better now? She's hugging that bag even more tightly than she hugged Danger." 

Aiden shrugs. "I guess you're right." 

"Lana, what's so special about that bag?" Elise asks the question on all of our minds. 

Lana reaches in and grabs out a notebook with attached pen. "It's this, my notebook. I use this to keep organized, to draw, to write," She starts to flip through it. "I don't recognize any of these. Why can't I remember any of them?" She starts to visibly panic. "Not the lists, not the doodles, none of it!" 

"Hey," I put my hands on her shoulders. "It's alright. We'll figure it out." I look towards the rest of our posse. "We all have missing memories. I think we should stick together until we can figure out what happened to us." Everyone nods except for Danger, who's already walking away. His long dark ponytail trails after him. "Danger. Danger, wait." I jog a few paces to catch up to his longer strides. "Hey!" I stop in front of him. "Aren't you missing memories too?" 

He exhales. "If I say no, will you leave me alone?" 

I cross my arms over my chest. "No." 

"Fine, so I'm missing my memories. Big deal." He brushes past me. I'm so much shorter I can't do much to stop him, but my jaw clenches. "I doubt they'd be much help anyway. This is a whole new situation, but I think I can figure it out on my own." 

"Well, we can't." I tell him. "Look at us. We need you." 

"Why do you need me?" He stops. "To keep you from making foolish mistakes?" 

"Yes." I admit. "We don't know what we're doing. Clearly you have more practical knowledge than us." 

"How would we know even if I did?" Danger turns. "I don't have any memories, you don't have any memories. Maybe we're all equally clueless." 

"Equally clueless people don't carry hunting knives like that." I tell him. He reaches around and touches the handle of the sheathed blade tucked into the waistband of his jeans. "Come on, you must have some knowledge tucked away in that hard head of yours. We could really use your help, and maybe we could even be a help to you. Don't you think we have a better chance of getting our memories back, and surviving, as a group?" I reach a hand out to him. 

Danger sighs, but reaches out and takes my hand. "I guess you guys do need me." 

- Hi, there! I'm so excited to share the first snippet of this new story with all of you. I hope you enjoyed this first installment. Piece by Piece will continue next week. Please feel free to leave feedback or tell your fiction loving friends! 

Also a big shout out to my sister for helping me create the title design up above. Just a reminder that my writings and art are my property, so please help me protect them and always be wary of copyright regulation. 

I'll see you all next week as the adventure continues!