BUILT ON BONES

Chapter four

Marcus woke up to sirens and dust.

He was buried. Not completely—there was air, somehow, a pocket of space created by the way the debris had fallen. But he couldn't move. Concrete pinned his legs. Rebar pressed against his chest. His left arm—already dislocated—was trapped under something heavy that he couldn't see in the darkness.

He tried to breathe and tasted blood and concrete dust.

His right hand still clutched his phone. The screen was shattered worse now, spiderwebbed with cracks, but it glowed faintly. Battery at 12%. The recording had stopped at some point during the collapse. Forty-three minutes of audio evidence.

If he survived this, that recording would destroy Hutchinson.

If he survived.

"Help," Marcus tried to shout, but it came out as a wheeze. His ribs hurt. Something was broken, probably several somethings. "Help!"

Nothing. Just the distant wail of sirens and the groan of stressed metal somewhere above him.

He lay there in the darkness, trapped under tons of debris, and felt panic rising in his chest like floodwater. This was it. This was how he died. Buried alive in the grave of a man murdered fifteen years ago, killed trying to expose a truth that no one would believe anyway.

His phone buzzed.

Marcus blinked at it. Signal. Somehow, impossibly, he had cell signal down here.

With agonizing slowness, he managed to angle the phone toward his face. Three messages, all from the same unknown number:

Stay calm. Rescue teams are on site.

Do NOT talk to police without legal representation.

I'm sending help. - VP

VP. Vivian Park. The lawyer for the Hutchinson Family Trust.

How did she even know he was here? How did she—

Another message: Your recording uploaded to the cloud. I have it. You did good, Mr. Chen. Now survive.

Marcus felt tears mixing with the blood and dust on his face. Someone believed him. Finally, after years of being dismissed as crazy, someone actually believed him.

He heard voices above. Distant. Muffled by layers of concrete.

"—structural collapse, multiple casualties—"

"—evacuation was mostly complete, but we've got at least three people unaccounted for—"

"—Hutchinson's people are saying it was sabotage—"

Marcus tried to shout again, but his voice was too weak. He looked at his phone. 10% battery. He opened the emergency app with shaking fingers and activated the alert beacon. His location would ping to every rescue service in range.

Then he lay back and waited, listening to his own ragged breathing, feeling the weight of the building pressing down on him.

Time became elastic. Seconds felt like hours. Hours might have been minutes. Marcus drifted in and out of consciousness. The pain in his shoulder had become a constant scream. His legs were completely numb—he couldn't tell if they were still there or if the concrete had crushed them entirely.

He thought about his mother. The car accident that killed her but gave him his gift. He'd been twelve, seat-belted in the back seat, and he'd watched her die while he was helpless to do anything. Just like now. Helpless while the world collapsed around him.

The hospital afterward had been the first time he'd experienced a vision. He'd touched the wall beside his bed and suddenly he was drowning in other people's deaths—every patient who'd ever died in that room, their final moments crashing through his mind like a highlight reel of human suffering.

The doctors had called it trauma. His father had called it insanity.

But his mother—in those last moments before she died, trapped in the crushed driver's seat—had looked at him through the rearview mirror and said: It's okay, baby. You're going to be okay. You're going to be special.

She'd known. Somehow, she'd known the accident would change him.

Marcus's phone buzzed again. 6% battery.

Rescue team has your location. Thermal imaging shows you're alive. Hold on.

He held on.

They found him two hours later.

The rescue team cut through the debris with hydraulic tools that screamed like dying animals. Light flooded into Marcus's tomb—blinding after so long in darkness. Hands reached for him, gentle despite the urgency. A paramedic's face appeared above him, young and determined.

"We've got you, sir. Can you tell me your name?"

"Marcus," he managed. "Marcus Chen. Building inspector. There's evidence—my phone—"

"We'll get your phone, sir. Right now we need to get you out."

They stabilized his shoulder with an inflatable splint that hurt worse than the injury itself. Cut away the rebar pressing against his chest. Used airbags to lift the concrete off his legs. Marcus screamed when circulation returned to his lower body—the pins-and-needles sensation amplified a thousand times.

But his legs were there. Crushed, bleeding, possibly broken, but there.

They strapped him to a backboard and carried him up through the ruins of Celestial Heights Tower. Marcus caught glimpses as they moved—entire floors pancaked on top of each other, support columns snapped like twigs, walls that had simply ceased to exist. The building had eaten itself from the inside out.

And at the northeast corner, where the crack had started, there was now a crater. Twenty feet deep. The foundation had failed completely, collapsing inward, creating a sinkhole that had pulled the rest of the structure down with it.

They emerged into chaos.

The street outside was packed with emergency vehicles—fire trucks, ambulances, police cars, news vans. Barricades held back crowds of onlookers and press. Spotlights illuminated the scene like a disaster movie set. The sun had set while Marcus was buried; it was full dark now, the destroyed building a jagged silhouette against the city lights.

The paramedics loaded him into an ambulance. One of them—a woman in her forties with kind eyes—started an IV while her partner checked his vitals.

"You're a lucky man, Mr. Chen," she said. "We don't usually find survivors after that long."

"I need—" Marcus's voice cracked. His throat was raw from dust and screaming. "I need to talk to Detective Sarah Reeves. Homicide. There's evidence—"

"Sir, you need medical treatment—"

"There's a body in the foundation!" Marcus grabbed her arm with his good hand, ignoring the pain. "Victor Hutchinson Senior. Murdered fifteen years ago. And there are twelve others, buried in buildings across the city. I have proof. I recorded everything—"

The ambulance doors opened.

Detective Reeves climbed in, her face grim. Behind her, two uniformed officers stood at attention.

"Mr. Chen," she said quietly. "You're under arrest for murder, destruction of property, and criminal conspiracy. You have the right to remain silent—"

"What?" Marcus stared at her. "I'm the victim here! I nearly died—"

"We found the body, Mr. Chen. Just like you said we would." Reeves pulled out a tablet, showed him a photo. Victor Hutchinson Sr.'s skeleton, excavated from the rubble. "We also found evidence that the concrete around the remains was poured recently. Within the past three months."

Marcus felt the world tilting. "No. That's not—the vision showed me—"

"What it shows me is that either you planted this body recently, or someone else did and you knew about it because you were involved." Reeves's expression was stone. "And then you destroyed a two-hundred-million-dollar building to cover your tracks."

"That's insane! Hutchinson killed his father fifteen years ago! He admitted it! I have a recording—"

"We'll examine your phone as evidence. In the meantime, you're under arrest." She nodded to the officers. "Take him to the hospital under guard. Once he's medically cleared, transport him to holding."

One of the officers produced handcuffs. Started to attach them to Marcus's uninjured wrist.

"Wait!" Marcus struggled against the backboard restraints. "The recording! Listen to the recording! Hutchinson confesses everything—the murder, the twelve other victims, all of it!"

"We will examine all evidence thoroughly," Reeves said, but her tone was skeptical. "But right now, Mr. Chen, the physical evidence suggests you're either a murderer or an accomplice. And your history of erratic behavior and false structural claims doesn't help your case."

The ambulance doors closed. The siren started up. They pulled away from the scene, leaving the destroyed tower and the crowds and the truth buried in rubble behind them.

Marcus lay on the gurney, handcuffed to the railing, staring at the ambulance ceiling.

He'd found the body. Recorded the confession. Survived a building collapse.

And he was going to jail for murder.

The hospital was a blur of sterile rooms and brusque efficiency.

X-rays showed his left shoulder was dislocated but not broken—they reset it with a procedure that made him pass out from pain. His ribs were bruised but intact. His legs had severe contusions and lacerations but no fractures. Concussion, moderate. Dehydration, severe. Overall prognosis: lucky to be alive.

They kept him overnight for observation. The two uniformed officers stationed outside his room took shifts, never leaving him unguarded for a moment.

Marcus lay in the hospital bed, staring at the ceiling, feeling the building's memories pressing against his consciousness. This hospital was old—sixty years at least. How many people had died here? How many tragedies had soaked into these walls?

He pushed the thoughts away. He couldn't afford to use his gift right now. Every vision left him weaker, more fragmented. And he needed to be sharp for whatever came next.

His door opened at 3 AM.

Vivian Park swept in like she owned the place, designer suit somehow still crisp despite the hour. She carried a leather briefcase and an expression that could cut glass. The officers tried to stop her, but she produced credentials that made them step aside immediately.

"Twenty minutes," she told them. "Attorney-client privilege."

She closed the door and sat in the visitor's chair beside Marcus's bed.

"Mr. Chen," she said without preamble. "I represent the Hutchinson Family Trust. I've listened to your recording. All forty-three minutes. And I believe you."