Chapter 38
Brooke
Afghanistan,2019
I was already on the floor when the fire hit.
Not flames. Not heat.
Something worse.
Wet and alive and digging. My left side lit up from collarbone to ribs, a hot animal burrowing under my skin. I jerked, and something heavy bit into me, locking the fire in place like a vise.
Get it off! Get it off!
I pulled at whatever was on top of me. But it was stuck.
“Doc! Hey! No! Stop!” Hands caught mine. Gloves. Rough. He pinned my wrists to the concrete. “You’re making it worse.”
“Get it off!” The words tore out of me in a scream. My helmet slid to the side, the chinstrap cutting into my jaw. The room tilted. Lights strobed. Somewhere behind me, metal clanged, and boots pounded, and a voice yelled for a bird.
A bird?
The chemical stung the back of my tongue, sweet and metallic and wrong. My brain threw labels at it—chlorinated something, arsenic, not what we’d been looking for—then shorted out under the pain.
I twisted. The weight on my chest didn’t budge.
My plate carrier!
Shit, get it off! Get it off!
“Hold her,” the same voice snapped. A blade flashed. A ripping sound at my shoulder. Cool air hit my neck where the strap had been. The fire flared, fatter, meaner, as if it could breathe now. I arched, a sound I didn’t recognize erupting from my mouth.
“Where’s she hit?”
“RSDL, RSDL!” another voice shouted. Boston accent. Dr. Norris? “It splashed her! It’s localized.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block everything out. But the pain didn’t go anywhere.
“She wasn’t shot.”
Plastic tore. Boots scuffed near my hip. A palm landed on my sternum, weight anchoring me to the floor. “Breathe, Doc. Look at me. In. Out. Good girl. Keep breathing.”
Rav.
I tried reaching for him, but my arms were pinned. “Hold my hand, Rav.”
He took one of my hands from whoever had grabbed them. Then the sound of Velcro tearing. The weight lifted off my chest. “We got you, Doc. Just breathe.”
It wasn’t Rav. His French accent was missing.
And he wouldn’t have called me Doc. Not now. That’s what the SEALs called me when we were working.
A new sound cut through my brain—metallic, steady, snipping. Shears. Someone was working on a different body. “Pressure here. Hold. Hold for fuck’s sake!”
The words faded in and out.
Another pulse of the fire through my body, and the scent of geraniums finally hit me. “Gloves! You need gloves! It’s not sarin, it’s Lewisite!”
