The elevator doors slide open.
Sub-level four is an aggressive, blindingly white medical bunker. Four heavily armed tactical agents stand guard outside a heavy, reinforced steel door with a small, reinforced glass window.
Campbell steps forward. "Stand down. Open the door."
The agents exchange confused glances, looking at Dante’s battered face and my pristine suit. But they do not question the Director. One of the men swipes a keycard and punches a code into the keypad.
The heavy steel door unlocks with a loud, metallicclack.
"Wait here," I order Dante.
I step past the agents. I push the heavy door open and walk into the cell.
The room is completely sterile, freezing, and illuminated by harsh, surgical-grade fluorescent lights. The rhythmic, slow, agonizingly steadybeepof a heart monitor echoes loudly off the concrete walls.
In the center of the room is a heavy steel medical bed.
My heart completely stops. The air entirely evacuates my lungs, leaving me entirely paralyzed by the sheer, devastating reality of his physical destruction.
Thayer is lying flat on his back.
He is completely bare-chested. The entire right side of his torso, from his ribs to his hip, is wrapped in thick, sterile burn bandages, the stark white gauze stained with the yellowish seep of burn ointment. His left shoulder is heavily packed with thick surgical dressings, tubes running from his veins to a massive IV stand pumping heavy, dark antibiotics into his system.
But it is the chains that completely shatter my composure.
Heavy, industrial steel cuffs are locked tightly around his thick wrists, the thick chains bolted directly to the reinforced frame of the bed. They have him pinned, completely immobilized, entirely stripped of his power.
His eyes are closed, his head lolling heavily to the side. A clear oxygen cannula rests beneath his nose. The dark shadow of stubble on his jaw is a stark contrast to the terrifying, ashen pallor of his skin. He looks like a fallen god, completely broken by the mortal world.
A ragged, fractured sob tears its way up my throat, entirely betraying my cold facade.
I run to the side of the bed.
"Thayer," I whisper, my hands hovering over his ruined body, terrified to touch him, terrified to cause him any more agony.
I press my trembling fingertips gently against his uninjured cheek. His skin is clammy, the fever still fighting a brutal war inside his veins.
The microscopic contact is a violent electrical shock to his system.
Thayer’s heavy, dark lashes flutter. A low, guttural groan vibrates deep in his chest, his jaw locking tight as he fights his way out of the heavy narcotic fog.
His pale gray eyes slowly drag open.
They are hazy, clouded with pain and exhaustion. He looks at the sterile ceiling, then slowly, agonizingly turns his head toward the source of the touch.
His eyes lock onto my face.
For a terrifying second, he doesn't recognize me. He thinks I am a hallucination. A phantom conjured by his dying brain.
Then, his pupils dilate, completely swallowing the gray. The chemical fog shatters instantly, entirely replaced by a dark, feral, obsessive intensity that makes the heart monitor spike into a frantic, rapid rhythm.
"Sybil," he rasps. The sound is completely wrecked, a hollow, grating whisper that tears at my soul.
"I'm here," I choke out, the tears finally spilling over my lashes, dropping onto the pristine white sheets. I lean over him, pressing my forehead gently against his, entirely uncaring of the blood or the sweat. "I'm right here."
Thayer’s chained right hand violently jerks upward, the heavy steel cuffs clanging brutally against the metal bed frame. He desperately tries to reach for me, completely ignoring the agonizing pain of the restraints biting into his wrists.
"You..." he breathes, his chest heaving, his eyes frantically scanning my pristine suit, my pulled-back hair, the absolute lack of physical trauma on my body. "You're safe. You got out."
