Chapter 37
Zayne
The taste in my mouth is off.
The sharp, coppery tang coating my tongue is in direct opposition to the euphoria coating every inch of my skin.
I float, the weightlessness of my body allowing me to picture my world as if I were a witness rather than a participant.
Angels flap their wings around me, the gentle thump of sound they create is disjointed from the things my eyes are witnessing.
My vision is blurry, and the connection between what I feel like I should be able to see and what my brain is attempting to process feels severed.
Soldiers file into the room, their grumble of voices and commands drawing my brows together. I open my mouth to tell them that they're ruining everything, but no sound comes out.
My mind struggles to remember what put me in this situation in the first place, a hint of fear and pain trying to take hold, but the rapture inside of me wins out.
"What was in the fucking needle?" a voice growls.
I twist my head, my entire body attempting to shift with the motion. Something prevents me from fully turning in that direction, but I manage enough to see.
One soldier is clutching the shirt of a bleeding man, the redness swelling on his white shirt having a life of its own.
I lift my arm, a sudden need to run my fingers through the growing pool.
"Heaven," I answer when the man refuses to answer, confusion once again threatening to take hold when I find my arm too heavy to raise.
The edges of what I'm seeing soften, and the sounds around me distort to the point that I can't distinguish one sound from another, until they all just fade away completely.
I give in to the urge to close my eyes. Letting go seems like the thing I've always been missing.
Pain laces my body, my eyes snapping open.
Confusion warps everything as I jerk my body, failing to get any forward movement.
Death.
Destruction.
Restraints.
Cuts.
Blood.
Pain.
All of it hits me in the chest at once, a sputtering cough making me bend forward. Sickness spews from me, but the release doesn't give me a single answer to the millions of questions swarming in my head.
"Fucking quit," a woman growls.
She looks familiar, but my brain refuses to pinpoint where I might know her from.
My head dips, the weight of it too much for my neck muscles to control.
"Get a second dose of Narcan ready," she growls.
Narcan.
I've been drugged.
The day floods back.
Bobby and his discovery.
The options he gave me.
The pain that ensued when I didn't give him an answer.
The three goons.
The pain.
The torture.
The pain.
The drugs when I begged for death.
The pain leaving.
Flying.
Angel wings.
"What did they give me?" I manage.
"We don't know," she says. "The Narcan seems to be working, so opioids. Probably a mix of heroin and fentanyl from the information we have."
"Zeus?" I manage, trying to choke back the second wave of nausea.
"I'm right here."
The sight of him makes a sob rack my body. I couldn't care less how many badass commandos are in this fucking room. I was certain he was dead.
I'm not too keen on the look of concern on his face, but at least he's around to give it to me.
I reach for him, fighting against the restraints limiting my movements.
"Fuck," he mutters, pulling a knife from his tactical vest and cutting at the zip ties holding me to the chair.
I feel too weak to attempt reaching for him a second time, and that's probably for the best. I don't know that I could survive another rejection.
"You look worried," I manage, my throat on fire.
I cough, hating the way the concern in his eyes increases.
"He needs to get to the hospital," someone snaps. "Like fucking now."
"No," I say, pain radiating right from the middle of me and extending out to every inch of my body.
"Yes," Zeus growls. "Narcan only lasts for thirty to ninety minutes, and it's very fucking possible that it's going to wear off before the dope does."
"Get him up," someone demands, and I scream through the pain as I'm assisted out of the chair.
I'm carried from the room and up the stairs quickly, but in a more respectful way than I entered the fucking place.
Lights, sirens, and a blur of activity greet us outside.
A paramedic walks forward, a look of distaste on his young face, reluctance to help in his eyes.
I know how it has to look to him. He's here, getting bits and pieces of information from many different sources, and he doesn't know what to believe.
What he has figured out is that the men who look like I look, camo shirt, ripped jeans, and combat boots, aren't the ones he wants to help.
"He's fucking one of us," Zeus growls, the vibration of his voice right beside my ear.
The man shifts gears immediately, reaching out for me.
"Let's get him on the stretcher," the guy says, stepping out of the way when Zeus and the other man helping me refuse to hand me over.
"Drugged," Zeus snaps. "A dose of Narcan in the field. They think heroine and fent."
"Not good," the paramedic responds. "We've lost a lot of folks lately around here. Fent is dropping them like flies."
My head rolls to one side, my eyes seeking Zeus, only to find him with his fists wrapped in the man's uniform shirt.
"You won't lose this one," he growls. "Understand?"
The man nods quickly.
"I'm going with you," Zeus demands.
He isn't met with an argument about rules and regulations.
I wince as they load the stretcher into the back of the ambulance, the action jostling me back and forth.
I have no clue what parts of my body have been hurt, what can be fixed, what might've happened to me that I won't recover from.
But when a haziness surrounds me, the pain losing its edge once again, I don't fight it.
Even though my mind is working well enough to know what it may mean, the relief is greater than any other outcome I can think of.