Page 126 of Rescuing Ally: Part 2
Not a beep. Not a warning. Just a single, piercing note that cuts through the chaos like a blade—cold, mechanical, final.
My breath hitches.
Hank’s chest—where the medic’s hands press rhythmically—stops moving.
Still. Too still.
Like the air has been sucked out of the room. Like time stutters.
No rise. No fall. No fight left in his body.
That sound—the flatline—it drills into my bones, fills my skull, drowns everything else. It’s not just sound. It’s a scream I can’t make. A truth I can’t hold.
I mourned him once. I can’t do it again.
The thought shatters something inside me that I’d carefully rebuilt during our brief hours together on this boat. When I believed he was dead—when Malfor showed us that helicopter exploding—I’d already grieved him. Already said goodbye. Already accepted a future without his steady presence, his quiet strength, his love that made me braver than I had any right to be.
And then he came back. Alive. Real. Bleeding but breathing, joking through pain, promising we’d figure out how to heal together.
We just got you back. We just…
The medic steps back, defeat written across his sweat-streaked face. Blood soaks through layers of gauze, stains the metal table beneath Hank’s body. Dark pools that catch the harsh overhead lighting, reflecting it back like broken mirrors.
Too much blood. Too much time.
“Time of death, twenty-two forty-seven.” His voice carries professional detachment that makes me want to scream.
“No.” The word explodes from my chest, louder now, desperate. “Check again. Check again!”
But Hank’s hand lies slack between mine. There’s no pulse beneath my fingertips when I press them to his wrist, his throat, or the hollow of his chest where his heart beat moments before. His skin is already cooling, that vital warmth that made him Hank beginning to fade.
The silence where his heartbeat should be echoes louder than any explosion.
Gone.
“No,” I whisper. The word breaks apart in my mouth. “No—no, please—this isn’t fair. This isn’t fucking fair!”
The rage hits me like a physical blow. He survived the helicopter crash. Survived hours in the ocean. Survived Malfor’s compound and guards and bullets and everything designed to kill him. He made it to the boat. Made it to safety. Made it back to me.
And then he dies anyway.
Dies saving me. Again.
The cruelty of it steals my breath. I drop to my knees beside him, grabbing his hand, fingers slick with blood and seawater. Still warm. Still here. He has to be.
“We were supposed to have time,” I sob, the words tearing from my throat like shrapnel. “You promised we’d have time to figure this out. You promised?—”
But the line doesn’t change. The medic doesn’t move.
Only the silence pulses louder than the tone. Deafening. Paralyzing.
Gabe’s voice cuts through it, ragged and unrecognizable. “Hank—don’t you fucking dare—don’t you dare leave us again!”
But the machine says otherwise.
The medical bay fractures into individual tableaux of grief, each person processing loss in their own devastating way.
Carter stands motionless by the far bulkhead, tears tracking down his cheeks. Silent, steady streams that he doesn’t bother to wipe away. His hands hang loose at his sides, the eternal soldier suddenly looking every one of his years.
