Page 151 of Javier

“We’re through.” Dash accelerated away from the fray. “Activate the drones again.”

Micah thumbed his tablet. “Activated.”

“Thena?” Dash shouted.

“I don’t see anyone chasing us,” she yelled back.

“Missy?”

“We’re clear on my side.” I engaged my safety.

“Bozeman?”

“Verifying.” The man pulled up a different screen. “We’ve got no bogeys on the radar.”

“Guzman?”

Silence.

I spun around. Javier slumped over his carbine. My stomach jumped to my throat.

“Javi!” I stuffed my gun in the back of my jeans and reached for him. “Talk to me.”

“I hope we gave those fuckers hell,” he slurred between heaving breaths.

“Is he hit?” Dash demanded.

“I don’t know,” I said, desperately looking for wounds.

“I don’t see any blood on him.” Thena was there, helping me look.

“It’s the venom.” I glanced at the clock on the van’s console. “It’s been over thirty minutes. We’re running out of time. Please, Javi, hang on,” I begged. “Don’t go. Stay with me.”

Too late did I recognize the desperate voice from my dream. It was mine. It’d been me crying out in anguish all along.

***

Javier

The angst in Missy’s pleas recalled me from the void. Her voiced ached and throbbed like my arm. “I’m here, Angel,” I mumbled. “Still here.”

It took everything I had just to drag out the words. I’d used the last of my strength to shoot at the bastards. I’d persevered even as the weakness grew until I could barely feel my limbs. The pain, on the other hand, I could feel. Flames licked through me, scalding everything in their path, melting me from the inside out, leaving behind a thick, sticky blackness that wrapped around me, smothering my senses.

Was this the same cold darkness that Missy faced every time she fainted?

Fuck no, I wasn’t gonna faint.

Was I?

“Can you go any faster?” Missy’s voice came from some distant place.

“ETA,” Bozeman’s voice boomed in the distance. “Three minutes to the hospital.”

“Three minutes.” Missy’s breath blew over my ear. “Almost there.”

“Hang on, Guzman,” Dash’s voice registered faintly as if reaching out from outer space.

“Javi, we’re so close.” Missy’s arms came around me, held on to me, wrestling me back from the edge, from the oppressive blackness gobbling my consciousness. “Please, don’t give up on us. On me.”

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