Mateo #3
It wasn’t the question he meant, but at this point, he was running out of time.
Mateo shifted against the floor, the movement sending a fresh wave of agony radiating from the wound—deep, structural pain, the kind that bore into the spaces between bones and lived there.
He thought of Gabriella in the safe house.
He thought of her pressed fingers against the door he’d walked out of.
Regardless of how much he had wished for it, he was tied to this operation. Whatever route he had tried taking, all led back to him finishing what he started.
I couldn’t walk away from the operation for her. The thought arrived clearly, beneath the pain, beneath everything. But I can do this. I can do this and get her out and finish what I started. So long as she is safe, away from this hell.
Although that all seemed rather moot. Gil didn’t realize just how bad the gunshot was.
Mateo knew he wasn’t getting up from the floor again, let alone finding and killing José.
He struggled to let loose a weak laugh. Gil doesn’t realize I’m already dead.
Might as well promise him the world if it means he’ll help Gabriella.
“Deal,” he managed. “Get her out. Keep her safe. Promise me you’ll … do that? And I’m yours.”
Gil’s face broke into a grin of genuine, warm satisfaction—a grin that said he’d predicted this outcome with complete confidence.
“There’s a good boy,” he praised. His hands began moving with a calm efficiency that suggested the conversation was already concluded and they were simply working through the formalities.
He pulled a backpack off, reached in, and produced a first aid kit that looked, at first assessment, entirely inadequate to the task at hand.
It was a flat, sealed package roughly the dimensions of a legal pad, its packaging unmarked except for a small symbol in the corner that Mateo didn’t recognize.
Gil worked quickly but calmly. He ripped Mateo’s shirt open with one clean pull, examining the entry and exit points with a clinical focus. “Went straight through,” he said with the same nonchalance of a mechanic diagnosing a mild oil leak.
“Lucky me,” Mateo managed to grumble.
Gil ignored him as he reached into the first aid kit and withdrew two long, thin, sheets of translucent material. “Take a deep breath. This might sting a bit.”
He didn’t wait before pressing one sheet against Mateo’s wound.
There was an immediate shock of pain from Gil’s massive hands pressing against Mateo’s wound, but it passed quickly. Far too quickly. Must be some heavy-duty anaesthetic in this thing.
The sheet was made of some sticky and malleable material that adhered to Mateo’s skin despite the abundance of blood.
The sensation that followed was jarring and total, as a warmth spread outward from the point of contact in concentric rings, not the warmth of heat but the warmth of absence, the warmth of pain suddenly vacating a space it had just occupied so thoroughly.
The ragged, burning pressure in his chest eased by degrees, each breath coming fractionally easier than the last, the mechanical impossibility of breathing becoming, with each passing second, merely difficult rather than catastrophic.
What is happening? How is this … possible?
Sucking a breath in through his teeth, Mateo asked, “What the fuck is this?”
Gil hummed to himself as he moved around to apply the second sheet to the entrance wound at Mateo’s shoulder blade.
The second application brought another wave of impossible, spreading relief, the pain receding like a tide going out, leaving behind a deep soreness in place of the all-consuming agony from moments ago.
“Advanced military contraband,” Gil said, with a satisfied air. “Not even the US knows about these, yet. You should be fully healed within the week.”
Mateo grimaced and shook his head. “That’s impossible.”
“Science has a funny way of surprising us with its advances.” Gil stood, walked over to where Mateo’s pistol was on the floor, and picked it up.
“This tech isn’t sanctioned in the US yet.
But it’s coming. It was one of the items Nox was moving that we wanted back.
Bet you didn’t even know what you were moving.
” He held the pistol out with a smile on his face despite the classified information he had nonchalantly dropped.
Mateo stood and took the gun, ignoring the jab. “Thanks for saving me, but you’re still a dick.”
The soreness all throughout his chest was deep and present, but the catastrophic wrongness of two minutes ago had already receded into something he could work with, something he could move through. His shirt hung open, the fabric dark and ruined.
Gil looked at him with those flat, icy eyes and the ghost of that almost-smile, the cigarette still burning at the corner of his mouth, the chaos of the compound sounding in the background behind him.
The huge man took a long drag on his cigarette and pointed into the darkness where José had disappeared. “I protect my assets. Now go hunt, dog. I’ll save your girl.”