"John? John?" Clarice's voice gets more insistent as she shakes John's shoulder to try to wake him up.
The plane exploding as it crashed threw them all to the ground, and it took her and Marcos a while to get their bearings back, shaking off the rubble and cataloging new bruises. It took them longer to realize that Lorna is gone and John isn't getting up. Both things are wrong on so many levels that they barely bear thinking about.
The explosion was nowhere near bad enough to hurt John, for one. He should have shrugged it off, barely phased, while the two of them came out with shrapnel cuts and ringing ears. But he's lying there, unresponsive, and Clarice can't wake him up.
Marcos is still looking at where Lorna stood just minutes ago, lost.
"Marcos!" Clarice shouts, trying to snap him out of it. He looks down at her, slowly. "He's not waking up."
Marcos kneels beside them, shaking his head to get back to the present. "John!"
It takes another minute of them shaking him, trying not to look at the stains of blood coming through his bandages and his shirt, before John gasps in pain. He starts coughing roughly, each movement of his body looking like agony.
"John? John, calm down, don't try to move," Clarice tries to soothe him.
"What−" John asks weakly, once the coughing lets up enough. He hasn't tried to sit up, or even to turn around, still on his front with his face in the dirt.
"You passed out," Marcos says with a worried frown. "How−"
"That can wait," Clarice interrupts him. "Can you sit up?" she asks John instead.
John doesn't answer for a while, breathing laboriously. "John?"
"Can't move," he says slowly. "I can't… I can't feel my legs."
"What?" Clarice chokes out. Her hands hover over John, wanting to...do something, but there's nothing she can do that won't risk hurting him.
Marcos comes back from his shock a little earlier than she does. "John, what do we−"
"We need to get out of here," John says weakly. He tries to support himself on his arms to sit up, but he falls back down with a suppressed groan.
Clarice and Marcos exchange a glance. Marcos's eyes are wide with fear.
"We can't move you," Clarice says, hating the tremor in her voice.
She doesn't remember learning about it, but it's something she's always known, that you shouldn't move someone with a back or neck injury.
"I don't think we have a choice," Marcos says. "The police will be here within a few minutes, and they'll sweep the area. We can't be here when they do."
"Clarice," John murmurs. Clarice bends down closer to his mouth to hear his too weak voice. "If they get here, make a portal and go. Don't bother with me."
"I'm not leaving you behind," Clarice shakes her head.
"You might have to. Promise me you won't get caught again."
Clarice looks away rather than answering, tears in her eyes. With a grunt of pain, John catches her wrist in his hand, too strongly. Their eyes meet, and she can see he's as lost as she is. He's just too used to think of protecting them as his job.
"We have to move him," Marcos says.
Putting aside her thoughts as to how dangerous that is, knowing they don't have the luxury to wait, Clarice eyes the distance between them and the car. There's no way they can carry John even a few feet, and this is far more than that.
"I can make a portal," she says. "But it's gonna hurt."
"Don't worry about that," John mutters.
Even here, lying with his face in the dirt, John is still trying to be the strong one.
"We need to get him onto his side," Clarice tells Marcos. "He won't fit into the car otherwise. I can portal him to the back seat, but he needs to be in the right position."
Marcos winces, but nods.
"Okay, buddy," he says, kneeling closer to John. "I'm gonna help you turn, alright?"
John nods weakly, releasing Clarice's wrist to hold his arm out to Marcos. Moving him as minimally as possible, Marcos manages to get him onto his side, though John has to repress yet another cry of pain, his face scrunched up in agony.
Marcos slowly, inch by inch, brings John's legs up to get him in a fetal position, struggling against the weight of them.
"Can you feel that at all?" he asks.
"No," John breathes out. "Only in my back."
Marcos bites his lips, and Clarice feels a tear escape down her cheek. She shakes her head, refusing to let herself get overwhelmed by the situation.
"Marcos, can you bring the car around and open the back door? It's gonna be a tight fit, I really need to see where I'm going."
Marcos nods and stands up. Clarice takes John's hand in hers and gently removes his hair from his face with the other. "It's gonna be okay," she murmurs almost against her will, just for something to say.
John gives her a brief disbelieving look before he tenses against another wave of pain, but he doesn't say anything.
"Clarice!" Marcos calls.
"Hurry," John murmurs in her hand. "They'll be here in a minute."
Clarice looks up to see Marcos parked to give her a clear view of the back seat. She lets go of John's hand and concentrates, perhaps more than she's even concentrated in her life. It's completely different from opening a portal to a location far away, like the one that made her sick. This time she's trying for precision.
The portal opens right under both John and her, and a moment later they're in the car. Clarice didn't account too much for where she ended up, so she finds herself scrambling not to fall down into the space between the front and back seats, but John is perfectly aligned across the back seats. He still bites back a scream as the short fall jostles his back.
"You okay?" Clarice whispers to him, gently lifting his head so she can sit and put it in her lap.
John just nods, teeth still gritted in pain. Marcos appears by the open door, a questioning look on her face.
"We're good," Clarice says. "Get us out of here."
Thirty minutes into their trip back, Marcos doesn't think things could get any worse. His best friend is lying on the back seat of the car, barely conscious, moaning in pain at every bump in the road, andhe can't feel his legs. Lorna is gone, and Marcos can't stop thinking about what's going to happen now, with the baby, with John, with everything that's suddenly gone wrong in their lives.
When he finally manages to get a hold of Sage on his burn phone, it turns out it can get worse.
"Don't come back to Atlanta," she says. "Headquarters's fallen."
"What?" Marcos exclaims, startling Clarice who is still looking after John in the back. "What happened?"
"Sentinel Services found us. We got everyone out, but we have to move."
"Dammit!" Marcos gives in to his impulse to punch the wheel, only to regret it when it makes the car swerve wildly and John cries out in pain. "Sorry," he says with a look behind him. Clarice meets his eyes grimly.
"Where are you going?" he asks Sage.
"The meet point is the Nashville station, I'll text you the address. They're already over maximal capacity, but it's our only station left in the area. We can spend the night there, maybe a couple of days, but then we'll have to move again."
"We'll meet you there," Marcos says. "And Sage? We've had some troubles on our end too. John's hurt."
"What? How?"
"I'll explain later, but can you do me a favor? Tell Caitlin we're going to need her, and as many medical supplies as possible. And could you tell me if you hear anything about Lorna?"
"Isn't she with you?" Sage asks.
"She left. It's complicated."
"Alright. I'll keep an ear open."
"Thanks, Sage. We've got a seven-hour drive in front of us, and we'll probably have to take breaks along the way, so don't expect us until the middle of the night, alright?"
"Okay," Sage says. "Drive safe."
"You too. Tell me when you get there."
"I will."
Marcos hangs up and tosses the phone onto the passenger seat.
"How is he doing?" he asks Clarice, catching her eye in the rear-view mirror.
"Not great," Clarice says.
Marcos sighs. Contrary to Clarice, he's seen John injured before, he knows his friend isn't as invincible as he'd like everyone to believe, but this still seems...impossible.
But then everything that's happened today seems impossible.
"We're not going back to headquarters," he says. "It's gone. We're going to Nashville."
"What happened?" Clarice asks.
"Sentinel Services," Marcos says. "I don't know, she didn't give me details."
"Damn. This just keeps getting worse, doesn't it?"
Marcos nods tensely. Hearing an incoming text, he opens his phone with one hand to find the address Sage promised him, with directions.
"Marcos?" Clarice calls quietly from the back seat.
"Yes?"
"I don't know if John's gonna make it to Nashville."
Marcos feels the blood draining from his face. He can't lose John. The Underground can't afford it, especially not after today's events, but more than that, Marcos can't.
"I don't think we have a choice," he answers anyway. "We can't go to a hospital, they'll see he's a mutant right away."
"I know," Clarice chokes out. Marcos sees the tears running down her face in the rear-view mirror. She's holding John's head on her lap, taking care that his back doesn't hit the seats. John is barely moving, but he winces at every bump in the road.
"We'll take as many breaks as we need, but I think Caitlin's the only one who can help him now," Marcos says. "If she even can," he adds to himself.
John is too out of it to keep track of time, but the trip feels like an eternity, lying there across the back seats, feeling every movement of the car in his body like knives tearing through his flesh. It's not even a good analogy, because few people could stab him violently enough to break his skin, but he imagines it's what it would feel like.
At some point, Clarice tells him that their Headquarters are blown−maybe several times, he's not coherent enough to remember. Things keep replaying in his head, the plane going down over their head, the bullets tearing through his skin, Clarice kissing him, Lorna's rage and his helplessness. Then it goes back further, to Sonya's memorial and the last time she kissed him. To kneeling over Gus and watching him die. To driving a Jeep through the desert and seeing the bomb too late, just before it explodes, to the horror and fear on his Marine brothers' faces blown away by the blast.
At this point, he makes an involuntary movement to shield himself, and the fire exploding down his back brings him back to the present. His body arches in a silent scream, still, almost despite himself, trying to hold it in.
"John! John, it's okay, calm down." Clarice's voice is soothing, but he can barely hear it over the pain. "Marcos, we need to take a break. It's too much."
"I can't stop right now, but there's an exit coming up in five miles," Marcos says.
They stop in the middle of nowhere, because they can't risk being spotted in a gas station. Thankfully the tank was full when they left and it's large enough to take them to Nashville.
Marcos and Clarice don't try to move John, and he's grateful for that. He feels like moving his pinky right now would hurt. He's tired. Too tired.
Yet his body won't give him the respite of unconsciousness. There's a kind of instinctive fear that if he falls asleep now he won't wake up. He doesn't know if it comes from his tracking ability, if his senses are turning inward to warn him about his own body, or if it's pure survival instinct, but he's somehow holding on.
"He's losing too much blood," Clarice says. "He's really pale and his skin is clammy."
"'m okay," John murmurs, for what feels like the hundredth time, and it's less true every time.
Clarice strokes his face gently, so lightly that it's just on the edge of what he can perceive. He doesn't dare take her hand, too afraid to hurt her. He knows he can't control his strength, can't control his body properly right now, and even as weak as he feels, he could break her bones.
Marcos has come over to the back of the car at some point. "John...is there anything we can do?" he asks.
"...no," John mumbles. "Just...drive."
"Okay," Marcos says in a conciliatory tone. "We'll do that, but we're taking a short rest first, alright? Can you feel that?"
John lowers his head minutely to see Marcos's hand on his knee. He concentrates as hard as he can, but there's nothing.
"No," he answers.
Marcos sighs. John looks away. It hasn't had time to sink in, what this means. He knows he should be afraid, terrified even, but he's too tired and hurting for that.
It's a bizarre sensation, or rather lack thereof. John has always had trouble with feeling his own body properly, a side effect of his mutation, but this is different. He tries to move his legs, and there's...nothing. He can see Marcos's hand on his leg, but he doesn't even get the dull touch he's used to.
When Marcos shifts his legs so they fit more securely onto the seat, though, John gasps at the pain in his back. It sets another crisis in motion, sending him into a round of agonizing coughing while Clarice tries to hold his head up. He can't breathe, and lying on his side is not helping, but Marcos and Clarice's efforts to sit him up just make it worse.
The coughing fit relents after what feels like an hour, and John lies his head back down onto Clarice's lap, exhausted.
"It's getting worse. The bandages will be soaked through soon," Clarice remarks, looking at his back. "We don't have more."
"I can stop at a pharmacy somewhere," Marcos answers. "It will be a risk, but they might not have put our faces out yet. I have a little cash left over, should be enough to get supplies."
Clarice sighs. John wants to tell Marcos not to put himself in danger for him, but he's too wiped out to speak. And the truth is that he doesn't see how he's going to make it through another six hours of this.
And that's not even counting the fact that Caitlin probably won't be able to do anything for him when they get there.
