I press a kiss to his forehead. Taste salt and copper. Rise on legs that don't want to work.
Kira is watching, tears streaming down her face. She's so young. Twenty-two, barely old enough to have survived what she's survived. And now she's watching a man die, a man who was supposed to leave with us. The father-figure we never had.
"Stay with him," I tell her. "Until..."
"I know." Her voice cracks. "I'll stay."
I climb out of the ditch. One foot, then the other. Each step feels like dragging through concrete, like pulling myself away from a piece of my own body. Behind me, Dom's breathing rattles. Slows.
I don't look back.
I can't.
The shed is fifty meters ahead.
My legs burn. My lungs burn. Everything burns, and underneath the physical pain is a deeper agony, the knowledge of what I just did, what I just left behind.
Dom is dead by now. Or dying. Kira holding his hand in a drainage ditch while his blood mixes with sewage water and his last breaths fog in the cold air.
I chose Jinx over him.
I don't know if I'll ever forgive myself.
The shed door is open. Marlee is in the doorway, rifle raised, and she nearly shoots me before recognition kicks in.
"Jesus Christ." She lowers the weapon. "Where's Dom?"
"Gone."
The word hangs between us. Gone. Such a small word for such a massive loss. Marlee's face goes through a series of expressions, grief and fury and understanding, before settling into the blank mask of a soldier who's lost too many friends to let herself feel it.
"Kira?"
"Staying with him. Until."
She nods. Doesn't ask for details. Doesn't need to.
Inside the shed, Thiago is unconscious against the wall, his breathing shallow but steady. And Jinx—
Jinx is gray.
His skin has gone the color of old paper, sweat beading on his forehead, his hand still pressed to his side even though blood has soaked through the bandages Marlee applied. His eyes are closed, and for one terrible moment I think I'm too late, that I left Dom to die for nothing, that I've lost them both.
Then his eyes open.
Dark. Unfocused. But alive.
"You came back." His voice is a thread.
"I told you I would." I drop to my knees beside him, hands going to his face, his neck, checking for pulse, for warmth, for any sign that he's not about to slip away. "I told you I'd come back."
"Dom?"
I want to lie. Want to tell him everything's fine, that Dom's right behind me, that we all made it out alive.
But I don't lie. Not to him. Not anymore.
"He didn't make it."
