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"Gee thanks," I grumbled, taking the Maglite and waving him away.
"You sure you..."
"I'm fine!" I snapped, my voice echoing across the empty night.
I wasn't exactly fun when I was sick. It wasn't that I liked to wallow in it, but I damn sure never forced myself to go into work when I felt like I was going to pass out at any moment. I always would just hole up in bed with orange juice and a heating pad and wait it out.
"Alright," Renny said, holding up his hands and nodding. "I get it. You're as capable as all of us. But don't forget, Maze, you don't have to make yourself sick to prove a point either." With that, he walked away and left me to drown in my misery as I walked the grounds.
I was pretty sure I finished my first round. See, I say pretty sure because at one point, I sat down to give my screaming leg muscles five minutes of rest... and then I must have either fallen asleep or passed out.
Because the next thing I knew, I felt a cool hand touching the side of my face and a annoyingly smooth voice calling my name over and over. My eyelids felt weighted and I had to struggle to force them open. It was still dark out. I noticed that first. All around, it was still pitch black out. There was a hand underneath my head and another rested at the side of my face. And those hands belonged to Repo. He was kneeling down beside me on the ground, his brows drawn together and his mouth in a firm line. "Hey honey," he said when he noticed I was awake. "Scared the shit out of me," he admitted.
"Shit," I gasped, trying to push myself up, realizing what had happened. I had fallen asleep while on duty. Fuck. There was no way...
"Easy," Repo demanded in a soft voice, his hand landing in the center of my chest and pushing me back down on the ground. "It's alright."
"How long..." I started to ask, my heart slamming in my chest so hard that I felt nauseated.
"Not long. Duke told me you were sick. Then Renny came in and said you looked dead on your feet. Figured I should check on you. Good thing I did. You were out fucking cold. What were you thinking?"
"I had a job to do," I objected, moving to push myself to a sitting position, my arms shaking under the pressure.
"If you can't take care of yourself, you can't take care of the compound. Part of being a good member is knowing when you should lean on one of your brothers, Maze."
I noticed movement from behind Repo and reached for the Maglite beside my body, lifting it by the light end to strike with the heavy side if need be. But then Duke came into view, holding up his hands palms-out. I felt my eyes lowering at him in accusation and he shrugged a shoulder. "Sorry, Ace. There's no way you should be out here when you couldn't even get out of your bunk. It's not a chick thing. If it was any of the guys, I'd have gone to Repo too." Somehow I doubted that and I felt my eyes rolling at him. "So fucking stubborn," Duke said, shaking his head, but smiling like he approved as he reached down, snagged the Maglite, and moved off to do his rounds.
"Come on, honey," Repo said, slipping an arm across my back and moving to bring us both to our feet. To my absolute horror, I had to give him almost all of my weight, my own body completely giving up on me.
Now, I was pretty sure I made it to the back door to the compound.
I say 'pretty sure' because I remember seeing the back door. And then all I saw was the back of my eyelids.
The next time I woke up, I was in a bed.
There wasn't much I noticed aside from the fact that my ears were so clogged that I could barely hear anything, my sinuses were painful they were so full, my throat felt like I swallowed acid, everything hurt from the neck down, and I was both a ball of sweat and so cold that my teeth were chattering.
But I did notice this one other thing. The bed I was in, it wasn't my own.
The room itself was not mine.
I knew this because my room was a cold, damp, dark basement that always smelled like laundry detergent and men's feet. This room, while windowless like the rest of the compound, wasn't cold, damp, or dark. The walls had black and white wallpaper of a foggy forest, making it seem cozy and relaxing. There was a white dresser with a giant television across from the bed I was in and a door to the side where I could make out a shower stall. The bed itself was huge and covered in white sheets and a fluffy white comforter which I was tucked tightly into... and had dampened with my sweat.
