Page 10 of How You See Me
“Kidding.” Her giggle puts air back in my lungs, if only for a moment. “But it’s your mission, okay?”
“Why?”
“Because.” She pauses. “I’d want to do them . . . if I could go with you.”
“Okay,” I whisper. “If—when—I go, I promise to doevery single one.”
“With no grumbling.”
I groan for dramatic effect. “No grumbling.”
After we hang up, I grab a notepad to sketch out a route. East Coast to West. Days, distances, stops I’ll check off because she can’t. Her list is a mission brief now.
I don’t know what she’ll have me do along the way, but I’ll get it all done somehow.
Even if if it takes bending the whole damn universe.
_____
I file the leave request anyway, knowing exactly how it’ll end. But maybe—just maybe—if Major reads my reason, a spark of decency will flicker in his hollow chest, and he’ll remember what it’s like to be human.
The denial hits my screen before I can even close the app. Instant. Automatic. Heartless.
Something ugly and rabid roars through me, and I hurl my phone at the cinderblock wall. I need something to break other than me. It ricochets off the concrete with a satisfying crack, raining down to the floor in pieces.
How will I tell Ava? She’ll be devastated.
Needing air, I bolt from the room, fists clenched, breath ragged. My boots pound the pavement, and I run until my lungs give out. Until the edges of my vision blur and I can’t remember where I started or why I can’t stop.
When my legs fail, I collapse in a heap outside the galley, forehead pressed to the cool ground.
Voices and approaching footsteps muffle around me like I’m underwater. Sweating and breathless, my headthrobs with the flashing lights going off in every direction.There's distant shouting.
Then—nothing.
Chapter 3
Hayes
Iwake with a jolt. Beeping machines. Tubes of all kinds. Wires stuck to my skin. I rip out the IV before I realize what it is.
A nurse rushes over. “You’re in the infirmary, Staff Sergeant. You collapsed.”
The machine next to me sounds like an alarm.
“I need to stop the bleeding,” he says quickly. “Please lie still.”
“I don’t need an IV.”
“You do.” He grabs my arm and presses it into the mattress. “You’re severely dehydrated. When was your last meal?”
I can’t answer. I honestly don’t remember.
“Figured as much.” He glares at me until he’s sure I’ll comply before reinserting the needle in my arm with what feels like a dull ice pick. “Sorry. Thick skin.”
“You have no idea.”
He raises an eyebrow and gets back to working on my arm.
