Page 57 of Blue Arrow Island
Nova speaks for the first time. “We need your decision.”
Her voice is deep and warm, like dark honey. It’s soothing and authoritative at the same time.
“Come with us,” Amira urges. “They lied to you. You can’t survive out here alone.”
I survey my leg and my shoulders sink. Virginia buried her spear in my thigh, leaving a gaping hole. My pants are covered in blood.
There’s no way I can clean and treat this wound myself. I don’t think I could even walk right now. It didn’t seem like things could get any worse than they were in the bottom of that hole, but this...yeah, it’s worse.
“How far is it?” I ask. “I don’t know if I can walk.”
“Make your choice.” Marcus’s bark is laced with anger.
There is no choice. Virginia isn’t putting me back in that hole if she catches me. She’s going to kill me. She almost did—it was only those thick vines shooting out of the jungle that stopped her.
“I’ll go with you.” I put a palm on the ground, leaning on it when a wave of dizziness hits.
Marcus exhales heavily through his nose, scowling at me. He takes a black device from a holster strapped around his shoulder and chest. It’s not much bigger than a deck of cards.
He shoots a glare at Nova. “When shit goes south, remember I tried to stop this.”
“Deactivating aromium is never a bad thing,” she says smoothly.
“Not that.” His eyes lock onto hers. “Bringing her into our camp.”
He looks at me, disgust and frustration swirling in his moss-green eyes. “Get on your left side.”
Ellison glares at him. “She’ll get dirt in her wound. Pick her up.”
Marcus passes the device to her, inclining his chin at Nova. “Get her right side.”
Marcus and Nova put their arms around me and lift. I’m as limp as a rag doll, too weak to help at all. My leg wound hurts like hell, but I press my lips together, refusing to let it show.
“This will just take a second,” Ellison says. “It won’t hurt, but you’re going to feel weaker once the aromium is inactive.”
She puts the device over my right hip and after a couple of seconds, I hear a beep.
“Done,” she says.
Weaker? My life force pours out of me in an invisible flood. My head throbs and my leg feels like it’s on actual fire. What hurt before hurts a hundred times more now. I can barely keep my eyes open.
I droop, letting out a pained moan, and Marcus puts his free arm behind my knees to scoop me up.
“This is a mistake.” His voice is clipped.
My head is cradled against his broad, hard shoulder. Even though he’s helping me, I want to argue with him. To not be reliant on someone who would rather leave me here to die.
But I’m powerless. I give up the fight to stay awake and let myself sink into unconsciousness.
“You don’t have to watch her, you know. She’s hardly a threat in her condition.”
“You don’t know that.”
I recognize the voices. Ellison and Marcus. My eyelids are heavy, but I force them open.
I’m in a dimly lit room. Lying on a bed. There are machines behind me and cabinets along the walls, medical supplies lined neatly on the countertops. It feels like a hospital room.
Ellison is standing at the foot of the bed, a clipboard in hand, and Marcus is sitting on a chair along the wall, his elbows on his knees and something in his hands I can’t make out in the darkness of the room.
