A round of nausea swept over her, but it was fleeting. Then, a chill shook her. She tried to think through what had happened, recalling she had the flu. But how had she gotten on this plane?
She opened her eyes again, searching for answers when she found Kyle hovering over her.
“Hey, you,” he said with a grin. “There you are.”
“What happened?” Her voice, a hoarse whisper, barely carried over the drone of the engines on the private plane.
“We found the cure.” He bit his lower lip before he winced. “After you stabbed a needle into your arm and injected an unknown substance.”
He wagged a finger at her. “Which you should never do ever again, but I’m really glad you did it this time.”
“Okay, well…if we found the cure, it wasn’t what I injected because I still feel like crap.”
“But you’re doing better,” Kyle answered with a grin as he shifted a lock of her hair from her face. “You were fairly bad off.”
She pressed her trembling hands to her face, her vision blurring with tears. “If this is better, I can’t imagine how bad it must have been.”
“You passed out,” Kyle said. “And then, I had to carry you here along with the cure.”
She grabbed hold of his arm, squeezing it. “Aww, I’m sorry. And I ate all those snacks on the plane, too. Sorry.”
“Very funny, Ava. I was more concerned about your health than your weight while I was carrying you to the evac sightafteryou stabbed yourself.”
“With the cure,” she reminded him with a wag of her finger. “And how far as we from Hemlock Falls?”
“About an hour,” he said. “I’ve already spoken with Shadow. He’s going to be waiting for us at the airport, and he’s got a team waiting to assess the cure so we can get it mass produced.”
“Do we have time for that?” Her heart plummeted as she recalled Alex’s grave condition. “Alex was in a coma. Has there been any change?”
She held her breath, waiting for him to respond. Were they already too late? She’d been out for hours at this point. Anything could have happened.
“He’s still hanging in there. And don’t worry, Ava. I grabbed a few of the vials, so we have enough to test and copyandto give straight away to Alex, Shadow, me, and a few others.”
“Hanging in there,” she repeated. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“He’s still alive, Ava. That’s what’s important.”
She pushed herself up to her elbows, the plane swaying around her a little as she sat up. “We need to get there.”
“You want me to tell them to fly faster?” Kyle asked.
“Can they?” She shot him a pleading glance.
He offered her a reassuring smile. “We’ll make it in time, Ava. And all because you stabbed yourself with that needle.”
“How did that help?” She settled back into the leather couch with a sigh as she pressed herself hand against her still sweaty head. “You couldn’t have known it was the cure.”
“No, I didn’t when I grabbed all the vials after you took the nosedive into the floor.”
She snapped her gaze to him. “You let me fall?”
“Of course not,” he said with a shake of his head as he grabbed a bottle of water and uncapped it, offering it to her. “I caught you. Then eased you to the floor and grabbed both sets of vials. I found someone’s backpack, dumped its contents, stowed everything in there, slung it on my back, then lifted you into my arms, and fled into the jungle.”
“Woooow,” she said with a coy grin, accepting the bottle. “Like a superhero.”
He lifted his chin. “Exactly.”
She shook her head, her lips curling into a smile. “You’re a good guy, Doc. You really are a superhero. Now, we just need to get this to Hemlock Falls.”
