When bullets began flying at Sydney's Bondi Beach on Sunday, strangers Wayne and Jessica found themselves in the same nightmare scenario. They couldn't find their three-year-olds.
In the chaos, separately, they desperately scanned the green. People who'd gathered to celebrate the first day of Hanukkah screamed and ducked. Others ran. Some didn't make it far.
The 10-odd minutes that followed were the longest of their lives.
Wayne's body was acting as a human shield for his eldest daughter, but his mind was elsewhere: with his missing daughter Gigi.
We had to wait all that time for the gunshots to stop. It felt like eternity, he tells the BBC.
Unbeknown to him, Jessica's gaze had caught on a little girl in a rainbow skirt, confused, scared and alone - calling out for her mummy and daddy.
She couldn't protect her own child, so she'd protect this one, she decided. She smothered Gigi's body with her own, and uttered I've got you, over and over again. They could feel the moment a woman about a metre away was shot and killed.
By the time the air finally fell silent, Wayne had become convinced Gigi was dead.
I was looking amongst the blood and the bodies, he says, growing emotional.
What I saw - no human should ever see that.
Eventually, he caught a glimpse of a familiar colourful skirt and found his daughter, stained in red - but okay, still shrouded under Jessica. Her son too would soon be found, unharmed.
She said she's just a mother and she acted with mother instincts, Wayne says.
[But] she's a superhero. We'll be indebted to her for the rest of our lives.
It is one of the incredible accounts of selflessness and courage that have emerged from one of Australia's darkest days. Declared a terror attack by police, it is the deadliest in Australian history. Dozens were injured and 15 people - including a 10-year-old girl - were killed by the two gunmen, who police say were inspired by the jihadist group Islamic State (IS).
More people undoubtedly would have been harmed if it weren't for Ahmed al Ahmed. A Syrian-Australian shop owner, he'd been having coffee nearby when the massacre began. His father told BBC Arabic Ahmed saw the victims, the blood, women and children lying on the street, and then acted.
Footage of the moment he sprung out from behind a car and wrestled a gun off one of the attackers immediately went viral. He was shot multiple times, and may lose his arm.
Another man, Reuven Morrison, was also seen on the video hurling objects at the same attacker in the moments after Ahmed disarmed him.
Chaya, only 14 years old, was shot in the leg while shielding two young children from gunfire. Jack Hibbert - a beat cop just four months into the job - was hit in both the head and the shoulder but continued to help festival attendees until he physically couldn't.
Lifeguard Jackson Doolan was photographed sprinting over from a neighbouring beach during the attack, armed with critical medical supplies. He didn't even pause to put on shoes.
Thousands of Australians flocked to donate blood, dwarfing the previous record, as authorities say many off-duty first responders travelled to Bondi on Sunday just because they knew there was a need.
Wayne says he shudders to think what would have happened without people like Jessica and Ahmed.
There could have been so much more devastation without the bravery of [these] people... someone who could run just comes in. Someone who could worry about their own child looks after another child. That's what the world needs more of.
