Alex’s lips parted, his brain racing. “Okay, so, you got the cure? Where is Ava? Why will no one tell me where she is?”
His stomach turned over as worry shot through him. Had she not made it through the jungle? Had she fallen victim to the deadly flu.
“I’m right here, Ace,” Ava’s voice said as she slid her phone into her pocket and strode into the room.
With her rosy cheeks and sparkling green eyes, shelooked like a normal version of Ava, not one who had just had the flu.
“There she is,” Kyle said with a grin as he wrapped an arm around her.
She reached for Alex’s hand, squeezing it. “You’re looking better.”
He struggled to sit up, still a little weak from fighting the infection. “Avs, what happened?”
“We found the cure. And we saved a bunch of people’s lives,” she said with a smile.
“Ava found the cure…by deciding to jab a needle into her arm right then and there,” Kyle said, his voice catching as he recalled the moment. He shook his head. “She didn’t hesitate, just said it was our only option. I thought she was going to die right there in front of me. She collapsed almost immediately, and for a moment…” He swallowed hard, his eyes flickering to Ava. “I thought I’d lost her.”
Ava gave a small shrug, her lips curving in a faint smile. “But I didn’t die. And it worked. We identified the cure, and I started feeling better before we even made it out of the facility.”
Kyle let out a shaky breath. “Still, please don’t ever do something like that again. It was reckless, even if it saved lives.”
“Sorry, Doc. Desperate times and all of that.”
“You…stabbed yourself with a needle full of…something?” Alex asked, his eyebrows furrowing.
“I was in pretty bad shape, and I knew I wasn’t going to make it much further. I figured it couldn’t hurt, and maybe we’d be lucky enough to identify the cure,” she answered with a shrug.
Kyle winced. “Yeah, well, we were, except I wasn’t lucky enough to escape carrying you to the evac location.”
“Sorry,” she said. “But you would have been doing thateither way, Doc. I wasn’t going to be able to walk, cure or not.”
Alex shifted on the uncomfortable mattress again. “So…I’m cured, too?”
Ava nodded. “We got a few vials of the stuff and Doc had it analyzed as soon as we got back here. I was already feeling better. We isolated what made it work and produced as much of it as we could. Of course, those first few doses we had went to Doc, Shadow, and you.”
She smiled at him as she rubbed the back of his hand with her thumb.
“Ava…” His voice broke, tears prickling in his eyes as he reached for her. She leaned closer, her lips pressing gently against his cheek, her hand brushing away a tear that had escaped down his face.
“I’m here, Ace. I’m fine,” she whispered, her voice trembling for just a second. “And now you are, too.”
“And so are a large percentage of people who would have otherwise died from this,” Sebastian said.
Alex tried to process everything, his mind still hazy from the coma. “Then…”
“We did it,” Ava said as she perched on the edge of the bed next to him.
He offered her a tentative smile as he wrapped an arm around her, shifting over to give her room as he pulled her closer. They’d rode out the worst of it, it seemed. Both he and Ava had survived the deadly flu, likely because of Ava’s bravery to use herself as a test subject for the cure.
He snuggled next to her, everything still surreal.
“Well,” Kyle said, “I have a few other patients to check on, but I’ll be back for a celebratory jello cup later on.”
“Sounds good, Doc,” Ava said with a pat on his arm. “See you soon.”
The man offered her a grin as he backed from the room.
Sebastian followed him. “I have a few calls to make.”
