Alya
My body slammed into the floor, the air forced from my lungs as someone shouted over me in Italian this time. Sharp, fast, authoritative.
I turned, barely able to process. James Carrizo. He stood there, his arm still stretched out where he'd yanked me from the jaws of death. Face twisted in fury, not at me but at what I represented.
Collateral.
A liability.
He didn't look at me like a person. He looked at me like a problem that needed solving. The door slammed shut. And then the walls exploded.
A hail of bullets chewed through the wood and stone behind the door. It was like the air itself tore open, filled with gunpowder and heat and death. My blood felt thick, like molasses. My skin went cold. I tried to speak, but only a whisper of breath came out. Why had he saved me?
Why was anyone saving me?
I lay there, the room spinning around me, gunfire echoing like thunder. My heartbeat was a drumbeat in my throat, growing louder with every passing second. The light overhead flickered once, twice, before fading. Everything ached. Not just my body. My soul.
I could hear Carrizo shouting, distant and muffled now, like he was standing on the other side of a storm. Orders barked into his comm. None of it mattered. Because in that moment, the truth slammed into me harder than the bullets ever could.
I was nothing. I was no one.
The world didn't stop for me. No one did.
The numbness spread from my limbs to my chest. My heartbeat slowed, thudding dully in my ears like footsteps echoing down an empty hall. My vision narrowed to a pinprick of light. And when, before the darkness swallowed me whole, I felt it.
Relief.
Because if this was the end, at least the waiting was over. I let go. And the world went black.