While he screamed.
I could see everything.
I could hear him screaming, blaming me.
Doto, pinned to the driver’s seat. Blood pouring from his mouth. He screamed too. Cursed me for letting him die.
More explosions, more screaming, more gunfire, more of everything. And I still couldn’t move.
Someone was screaming my name.
Leo.
“Eoin! C’mon, man.”
Not Leo.
Cain.
“Wake up, you fucking bastard! I can’t yank your huge ass out on my own!”
Cain.
I opened my eyes to find Cain leaning over me. He looked like hell. Scratches on his face. Blood.
I blinked, wondering if I was seeing things. I had to be. There was no reason for Cain to be here, and no reason for him to be bloody.
Here.
Wait. Where was here?
I blinked again, and nothing changed.
Except I now realized that he was upside down.
“What…” I cleared my throat and tried again. “What happened?”
Cain ignored my question and asked one of his own. “Can you move?”
“Yes.” Even as I said it, I frowned as I realized something important. I didn’t actually know if that was the truth. Something was wrong, although I couldn’t figure out what it might be. I couldn’t understand what was going on or where I was.
“Eoin!” Cain snapped his fingers in front of my face.
I blinked again and started doing what I should have been doing already. Thinking. I wiggled my toes, then moved my legs. Some pain, but I didn’t think anything was broken. Arms were the same.
As if providing evidence, I wiggled my fingers. “I can move.”
“Great.” Cain moved out of my field of vision before a pair of hands latched onto mine. “Use your legs.”
I did it without really thinking, and between Cain pulling on my arms and me pushing with my legs, I moved. It wasn’t until I saw the sky above me that I realized I was outside and that there was something wrong with why I was out here. Why I was on my back, staring up at the clouds.
As I sat up, I realized that the ringing in my ears was partly sirens. Dazed, I looked around, trying to separate what had actually happened from the flashback Cain’s voice had pulled me out of.
One thing was very obvious. No one was shooting.
That helped me separate my flashback from real life, but it didn’t tell me what was going on right now.
The agency’s SUV was almost completely upside-down, and a moving truck was on its side.