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Searing pain ripped through him, and his eyes jerked open. He stared up at a white tile ceiling, and he frowned.
Hold on a second…this isn't right. No. I was falling.
"You're awake," a nurse spoke gently as she adjusted his IV. "Sorry if I woke you. You've been moving around, and you knocked your IV out. I’m reattaching it."
He blinked, taking in the room. He was in a bed, hooked up to a machine. He heard beeping around him and someone talking in another room. He was in a hospital.
I'm alive. But…how…I should be dead.
"I'll let the general know you're awake. She has been waiting patiently for you to come to. We were worried you might not. You were really hanging on by a thread there."
He looked away, his eyes going to the door. The general was here? Why? And how long had he been out? Where was he?
"Where am I?" he asked, clearing his throat. He felt like he'd drunk nothing but salt.
"You're at Walter Reed Military Hospital in Washington, DC. How are you feeling?" she asked, tilting her head and giving him a concerned expression. "You were pretty badly beaten up."
"I'm okay." It wasn't the entire truth. He wanted to rip his heart out and throw it at the wall.
The door flung open, and General Nydia Anderson walked in with Cannon at her side. Strap swallowed.
"You're awake. How are you feeling?" she asked in a calm tone. She stopped just a few feet from his bed.
He just stared at her. Why wasn’t she having a hissy fit over his failure? He didn't understand. He had been falling.
I had Mickey in my grasp, and then I didn't. The bullet hit me, and I know I hit the ocean. I was gone. I couldn't be alive. Yet, here I am. I'm breathing and sitting in a hospital bed. How?
"I don’t understand. I don't know how I'm here. Shouldn't I be dead?"
Anderson looked at him, and then she shook her head. "Hardly. You still have the ability to heal quickly. While, yes, you were seriously hurt, you weren't anywhere near death."
He didn't feel like that. He felt he was knocking on death's door, and he wanted to. There was no way Mickey survived.
Mickey…He couldn't get the look of her face out of his head. He wouldn't ever be able to forgive himself.
"I called in a favor to the Spanish military, and theyhappenedto be just off the coast of Valencia. They found you in the ocean and plucked you out. They patched you up enough to send you back to the States."
He didn't remember that. He remembered darkness and being cold. Maybe that was better.
"You've been unconscious since you arrived, which was a few days ago now."
He rubbed his eyes and then looked back at her. "How did you know I just woke up?"
She stared at him, which told him she hadn't. "I didn't know. I just happened to have good timing. I came here to grab the bag with the balls."
He frowned. The balls.
His eyes skated over to a chair with his bag, and he suddenly grew nervous. His stomach dropped, and he felt the urge to throw up.
He only had three of the six balls. Which meant he'd failed. He would go back to the Supermax.
"Are those your bags?" she asked, looking at them.
He turned his gaze toward the floor, where there was another bag. Mickey's.
How did I land with her bag? I don't remember grabbing it, nor her giving it to me.
He closed his eyes, and he recalled her falling. She slipped through his claws. He didn't remember taking her bag, but he also didn't remember seeing it on her back either. Everything happened so fast that he didn't even know how it all had gone down anymore.
