And Elliot.
Elliot is beside me, medical kit open, hands moving with practiced efficiency.
"I need to see the wound," he says. His voice is calm. Too calm. The calm of someone who has seen too much death to let it shake him anymore.
“Thought you were staying at the house.” I move my hand. Elliot peels back the blood-soaked bandages and examines the damage.
“Stowed away in the other truck. Couldn’t wait at home while you all were here.” His face doesn't change as he examines Jinx. But his eyes flicker to mine, and the truth is written there, plain as day.
It's bad. It's very bad.
"He needs a hospital," I say.
"He needs a surgeon." Elliot is already working, packing the wound with fresh gauze, applying pressure. "I can keep him stable for maybe an hour. After that..."
He doesn't finish. He doesn't have to.
Across the van, Marlee's eyes meet mine. Grief and exhaustion and the hollow weight of loss.
Dom is dead.
Jinx might be dying.
And all I can do is hold on and pray that for once, something works out in my favor.
Chapter Seven: Jinx
Idreamofblood.
Not the quick kind, the kind that comes from a clean kill. This is the slow kind. The kind that pools and spreads and stains everything it touches. In the dream, I'm lying in a field of red, and the sky above me is the same color, and somewhere in the distance, Asher is calling my name.
But I can't move. Can't speak. Can't do anything except lie there and bleed while the world turns crimson around me.
Then the dream shifts.
I'm eight years old.
The table is cold against my spine. They stripped me down to shorts and strapped me to stainless steel that leaches heat frommy body until my teeth chatter. The room smells like antiseptic and copper and fear. My fear. It's coming off me in waves, and I can see the technician's nostrils flare as he catches it. He likes the smell. They all do.
"Subject H3 is prepped for Protocol Seven," someone says. A woman's voice. Calm. Clinical. Like she's ordering coffee instead of my destruction.
I try to turn my head, try to see her face, but the strap across my forehead holds me in place. All I can see is the ceiling. White tiles. Fluorescent lights. A water stain in the corner that looks like a screaming mouth.
Electrodes press against my temples. My chest. The base of my skull. Each one is a cold circle of metal that promises pain.
"Heart rate elevated. Cortisol levels optimal." The technician's voice is closer now. I can smell his breath. Coffee and cigarettes. "Ready for stimulus injection."
The needle slides into my neck.
I've been injected before. Vaccines when I was small, but this isn't medicine. This is fire. Liquid fire that spreads through my veins, up into my brain, down into my spine. Every nerve ending lights up at once, screaming, and my body arches against the restraints hard enough to bruise.
I don't scream. Not yet. Screaming is weakness. They taught me that in the first week.
"Subject is responsive. Begin audio integration."
The voice floods through speakers I can't see. It's everywhere. Inside me.
You are not a person. You are a tool.
