I blinked. The bulb overhead flickered, then steadied.
“Hey,” I said, voice gravel-thin.
Nitro nodded. “Hey, yourself.”
The distance in his voice hurt more than the wounds.
I wrapped the blanket tighter and tried to stand, but my knees buckled. Nitro was on his feet before I hit the ground, arms catching under my shoulders. He set me back on the cot, gentle as a field medic, and knelt to eye level.
“You’re safe,” he said.
“Doesn’t feel like it,” I said, and immediately regretted it. My throat closed, and I started to shake—not just the hands, but everywhere. My teeth clacked once, involuntary, and I tasted iron on my tongue.
Nitro saw it coming, long before I did. He put his hand on my back, solid and unmoving, and waited for me to crater.
The first sob hit like a dry heave. I tried to swallow it, but another came, and another, and soon my whole body convulsed with the force of it. I curled forward, elbows on knees, and hid my face in my palms. I couldn’t breathe. My lungs locked up, every inhale a struggle, every exhale a whimper. It was the noise I hated most—a child’s animal noise, pathetic and open.
Nitro didn’t move. He stayed beside me, hand on my spine, thumb working slow circles between my shoulder blades. He didn’t say it was okay, or that I’d be fine, or that I should pull myself together. He just stayed, the way a dog stays next to a body until someone tells it the owner isn’t coming back.
The bulb overhead hummed. The world shrank to the echo of my own panic. The room stank of diesel, of leather, of something raw and unfiltered.
I cried until the skin under my eyes burned, until the tears dried out and left me hollow. I rocked on the edge of the bed, a hunched animal, waiting for the next shock to land.
When the storm finally passed, I felt spent, a dry leaf shuddering in the wind. I sat up, wiped my nose on the blanket, and tried to reclaim some piece of dignity.
“Sorry,” I managed.
“Don’t be.” Nitro’s voice was softer now. He reached for the edge of the blanket, tucked it around my shoulders like a makeshift shield, then sat back on the folding chair.
I looked at my hands. The nails were dirty, split. Blood still caked under some of them. There was a cut on my knuckle, thekind that doesn’t start to hurt until the adrenaline runs out. I picked at it, just to feel something real.
He watched me, waiting for the next move.
I took a breath, slow and deliberate, let the cold air shock my lungs.
“How long was I out?”
He checked his phone. “Three hours, give or take. Doc says you should’ve had a concussion. But you’re too stubborn for that.”
I tried to laugh, but it came out a croak. “Did you get everyone out?”
He nodded. “Seneca patched up the boys. Damron’s on cleanup. They won’t come back tonight. Maybe not ever. Despite what the local or federal authorities say, Los Alamos belongs to us.”
I didn’t ask about the Russians. I already knew the answer.
I stared at the bulb, watched the afterimage dance behind my eyelids. My skin crawled with the urge to move, to run, to do anything except sit here and feel the shape of my own brokenness.
Nitro seemed to know. He got up, crossed to the corner, and returned with a cup of water. He held it out. I took it, hands shaking, and drank half before I could breathe.
He didn’t ask if I wanted more. He just waited.
After a minute, I found the edge of my voice. “I don’t know how to do this.”
“Do what?”
I shook my head. “Survive. I was never supposed to be the target. I was always supposed to be the one watching.”
He sat back down, closer this time, elbows on his knees. “You don’t have to do anything. Just breathe.”
