my hands on the wound to staunch the blood flow. It coated my hands with its warmth, the metallic scent filling the air. My heart thudded, dread filling me. My heart was squeezing tightly, making it difficult to breathe as her eyes fluttered closed and opened.
“The release but-ton. The b-blue one,” Jada gasped out.
I looked up and saw the huge blue button by the door. I got up and hit it before rushing back to her side and returning my hands to the wound. By the time the door opened fully, I was covered in her blood, and Jada’s eyes were shutting again.
Dawson was the first to enter with his gun directed at the darkness above me. My tightly wound heart constricted further. Seeing him was a relief, but sorrow was welling up inside my chest. Jada…
Once his eyes fell on us, he dropped to my side and shouted into his earpiece for an ambulance. He took in the blood covering me and her, and his face filled with a host of emotions.
“Vi. Are you hurt?” His voice wavered.
I shook my head. “It’s all Jada’s blood. He shot her.”
He frowned. “Ken’Ichi? He was here?”
I nodded. Jada moaned, and a sob burst out of me. I needed her to live. I needed her to be okay. To be strong and vivacious and pushing me out of my protective bubble.
“Where is he?” he asked me.
I turned, expecting to see Ken’Ichi with his hands hovering over his eyes.
“I don’t—” We saw it at the same time, behind the shelving, a small doorway that was now letting in the mist and the dark. Outside, the rain that had stayed at bay all day was falling in a steady sheen, hiding the stars and the moon.
Dawson spoke into his earpiece again. “Number two on the move. Repeat, number two on the move.”
The men with Dawson headed out the door Ken’Ichi had escaped through, and I turned my attention back to Jada.
“You better not die on me, Jada,” Dawson said, brushing at her hair. “I will kick your ass to France and back. Dax will never let me live it down.”
Jada’s eyes struggled open, and she tried to talk, but all that emerged was a strangled cry.
I had blood trailing down my hands like a river. Atoms and molecules and DNA she’d never get back. Pieces of her disappearing. I forced my brain away from the science I used as an escape, back to what I knew about the human body.
“We need towels,” I said.
Dawson left the room and came back with kitchen towels. I shoved them at the wound and Jada groaned, eyes rolling back.
“Jada. Do not go to sleep,” I demanded again through a throat closing with emotions. When she didn’t respond, I tapped her face with my hand, leaving a bloody mark that made me go cold.
More sirens filled the air, and then there were EMTs in the room, pushing me away from Jada, cutting at the dress littered with diamonds and lace, opening to see the wound caused by the bullet. Their voices were a rush of statuses. Heart rate and blood loss.
The sounds were going dimmer around me, and suddenly, Dawson’s arms were surrounding me, holding me up. The tears that had started came faster as they put my friend on a stretcher and wheeled her out.
Dawson and I trailed after them.
The rain hit me as we exited the house, the thin fabric of my costume soaking through in the two steps it took to go from the door to the back of the ambulance.
“Go with her,” Dawson said, squeezing me tight, kissing my cheek. He shoved his phone into my hands, and his voice clogged with emotions as he continued. “I’ll be there as soon as we find him. Use the number in my contacts to call M1, and he’ll pass anything on to me. The password is your birthday.”
I stared at him, overwhelmed and scared and determined to be strong but feeling so terribly weak. The salty taste of tears mingled with the rain on my cheeks, and he brushed at them.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he said. His voice was tortured with regret. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“You coming or not?” the EMT in the ambulance asked me. We were delaying their departure, delaying the care Jada needed.
I tore myself away from Dawson, feeling the loss of him like never before, walking away from the thing that was holding me up. I crawled in beside