Jamie smiled thinly at his team before jerking his head at the flight deck. “Agent Delaney, the director is on the lineforyou.”
Sean grimaced as he stood up. “Debriefing?”
“Since you’ll be ensconced in Medical once we land, yes, consider it a shortdebrief.”
They all knew better than to ignore an order given by their captain, much less the director. Even if Sean wanted to stay by Alexei’s side—and Alexei would’ve preferred that—they both knew their duty. Sean didn’t look back as he disappeared into theflightdeck.
Alexei let his head fall back against the fuselage of the jet. He closed his eyes, swallowing a little against the queasiness in his stomach as Trevor finished bandaging hiswound.
“It’ll hold until we get dirtside and get you into Gracie’s care,”Trevorsaid.
“>” Kyle asked, the humor gone from his voice, replaced withworry.
“>” Alexei confessed. “>”
Kyle brushed back his hair with steady fingers and Alexei couldn’t help but lean into the touch. The silent support was exactly what Alexei needed right then. He dozed fitfully off and on for the two hours it took to return to D.C., Kyle remaining by his side. By the time they began their descent, he was more than ready to get his feet on solidground.
“For y’all who’ve never flown with us before, stay seated until we’re wheels down and have lowered the ramp. We got medical personnel who need to come up,” Annabelle said over the publiccomms.
Alexei rubbed hard at his eyes, making a grumpy, wordless sound of protest as Kyle got him into his seat harness, careful of the wound. Alexei let him, knowing that it would keep Kyle calm to have something to do. Neither of them handled the other being woundedverywell.
He blinked blearily at everyone in the belly of the jet, not seeing the one person he wanted close by. Jamie and Katie were talking to Sean’s family on either side of the jet, reinforcing Annabelle’s earlierorder.
He felt the descent in his stomach, in his ears, as Annabelle deftly guided the combat jet to the MDF’s airfield in a vertical landing. The moment the wheels touched the ground, jolting everyone, the red warning light flashed on. Alexei winced at the sound of the siren, the noise piercing right through his head in a painful way. The ramp was quickly lowered, allowing Gracie and her medical crew access tothejet.
Gracie approached Alexei first, white coat swinging around her hips as she bent over him and placed one dark hand on his forehead. “You’re a mess,Dvorkin.”
Her power was like a cool flash through his body. The sudden absence of pain left him lightheaded, almost reeling in his seat, as Gracie used her healing power to manipulate how his body processed pain, blocking him fromfeelingit.
“Da,” was the only thing he could thinktosay.
With Gracie calling out orders, Alexei was guided out of the jet under the watchful eyes and steady hands of two nurses. A third nurse waited at the bottom of the ramp with a hovering field stretcher within arm’s reach. Alexei knew better than to argue that he could walk, thank you very much, because Gracie always knew better than the patient and never hesitated to tell them. So Alexei got settled on the stretcher without argument, getting whisked away to Medical while the rest of his team handled Sean’s family and the fallout from theirmission.
Annabelle had landed closer to Medical than the main building for purposes of treatment. The landing pad that air traffic control had directed her to wasn’t very far away from the emergency room doors they hurriedthrough.
They brought him to a private room where they transferred him into a biobed and started to divest him of his clothes using heavy-duty scissors. After so many years in the military, Alexei wasn’t body shy, so he just lay back and let Gracie’s nurses do their job. He didn’t know how much time passed before Gracie showed up, but Alexei knew it had been long enough that the nurses had run him through a good dozen testsalready.
“Minor operation to get the bullet fragments out of your body and then a low-level regen regime,” Gracie said as she studied the scan results hovering in the air above the biobed. “Your brain scans aren’t matching up with your baseline, but that’s par for the course when you’ve been hit with a neuro-jammer gun. Observation and some painkillers are the only things we can do for youthere.”
“Was small hit,”Alexeisaid.
“Small enough to knock you on your ass. You’re going intosurgery.”
Alexei let out a quiet sigh, bowing to the doctor’sorders.
He remembered being wheeled into the OR, but thankfully nothing after that. When he woke up hours later with the taste of chemicals on his tongue, Kyle was sitting beside him with a quiet stillness that Alexei had long ago foundcomforting.
“>” he croaked out in Russian, his tongue too weak to makeEnglishwork.
“>”Kylesaid.
An ice chip was placed against Alexei’s lips, which he sucked on greedily to ease his parched mouth. Kyle fed them to him until the cup was empty, finally setting it aside. Alexei took a moment to assess himself through a lackofpain.
He touched his side, fingers stroking over healed flesh, the wound there completely gone through a mixture of Gracie’s power and the regen regime she’d put him through. The strange tingling sensation that always made him think something was moving beneath his skin was a fading reminder of the microscopic nanites that had helpedhealhim.
“>”Kylesaid.
Alexei lifted his left arm over his face, squinting up at the bright numbers of the chrono shining through the skin of his forearm. “>”
