[United States, Florida, Miami, Jackson Memorial Hospital, Thirteenth Day of Navigation, 10:00 AM]
The pungent smell of disinfectant and the subdued murmur of surrounding conversations pulled Lin Yu'an and Riven completely from the raw and wild dreamscape of the Caribbean Sea back to the modern civilized world.
It had been exactly twenty-eight hours since they escaped from the temple cave in Dominica.
These twenty-eight hours felt as long as a century to them.
From the dawn jungle sprint to the death-defying drive on Samana's rugged mountain roads; from the emergency boarding at Santo Domingo Airport to the two-hour flight across the deep blue strait...
Their bodies and minds were taut on a string named "fear."
It wasn't until they rushed into Jackson Memorial Hospital, one of All of America's top comprehensive hospitals, undergoing top-level emergency isolation and detection processes, that the string finally relaxed slightly in endless exhaustion.
