It had only taken the virus a few minutes to spread after the infection and Liz had very quickly felt all of its power. The last time she had had the flu, she was nine-years-old. Sam had taken three days off so he could look after her. They spent those days on the couch watching cartoons or playing card games. He would only leave to bring her her medicine or to make her that curry and chicken soup she loved so much. When she was not strong enough to keep her eyes open, he would hold her tightly in his arms, kiss her on the forehead and tell her everything was going to be fine. Twenty years later, Liz would have given anything so he could be at her side but she knew Sam would never find her. Not anymore. And thinking about it was making her sicker than anything else. Maybe she would end up finding him ? Considering her state of health, she considered it would not be surprising. She had no way of checking her temperature but it had to exceed easily 40°C (104F). Her forehead and her arms were so hot that she could have burnt herself just by touching them. However, she was shivering and the two blankets she had upon her were not able to calm her shivers. Every time she blinked, she had to provide a superhuman effort to lift back her eyelids. Many times she had wanted to give up and surrender to the drowsiness that was engulfing her. However, she forced herself to struggle, driven by the fear she had of not waking up. Blood was pounding in her temples, as if a small army of boxers had seeped in her head and had made an effort to punch her skull repeatedly. The fight was also going down inside her chest, where every breath in and out was tearing her apart from the inside. She would not have been that much surprised if her chest had opened and her lungs had unleashed torrents of lava. All that fatigue and all that pain were paralyzing her. The slightest movement multiplying her suffering by ten, she had given up on moving. All she could do was wait. The only question was to know who of Death or help would find her first.
In order to try and forget about the pain, Liz started thinking about her team. Had they find out anything about her ? She knew that the first idea they would have had would have been to track down the Bureau's cell phone she had taken with her before going to National Mall but, unfortunately, she also knew that it was a dead end. The men that had abducted her had taken it from her and put it in a tray filled with acid. Perhaps the team had been able to identify these men ? Though her memories from the events were not the most reliable, Liz tried to remember what had happened. She was waiting on the bench, she was grabbed from behind then lifted and dragged into a black van. She could remember the phone, the sting in her arm, then nothing. Complete darkness until the bedroom with purple wallpapers and the bed with white sheets. She felt a surge of rage impulsively rising inside of her. She hated that room, with its ugly wallpaper and stupid trinkets. She could not stand being locked up in such a room. Even its smell was intolerable. It was a mix of dust, cheap detergent and L'Arlésienne's perfume. Thinking about that woman only increased visceral fury. She had abducted her, drugged her, locked her up and probably killed her. Liz was then seized with an irrational desire. That the team would find nothing. What other choice would they have than turning to Reddington ? If the FBI was finding Moira Blackthorne first, she would be arrested straight away. However, if it was Reddington, she would suffer a long and painful death, and it was all she deserved.
That fit of anger disappeared as quickly as it had come and made room for a new feeling. Fear. Liz realized in terror that the fever was starting to make her rave. She had found herself in trickier situations, she had been closer to death than she was at the moment. However, never she had dreamt of her attackers being killed in agonizing pain. That was not how Sam had raised her, nor how her teachers had taught her the sense of justice in Quantico. The talion law was not relevant in the ranks of the FBI. Nevertheless, she knew that those thoughts did not only come from her high temperature. As Ressler had pointed out to her a few weeks earlier, she was starting to think like Reddington. And she was often wondering if it was a good or a bad thing. In spite of her, her mind began drifting towards Reddington. When he would find out about what Moira had done to her, no doubt that he would come running right away. But could he find her in time ? It was less than sure. A bout of coughing more violent than the others flattened her against the sheets covered in sweat. Her throat was so irritated by her suffocations that blood was mixing to her saliva. Her aches and migraine were making her feel nauseous. Liz felt her mind wander again. It was as she was trying to hold her consciousness back but that it was slipping through her fingers. She felt like a tightrope walker above the void, walking on a string thinner and thinner and more unstable with every step. She could topple any time and falling into this abyss could imply never surfacing again. Gathering her last strengths, her courage and her will to live, she managed to promise herself that that narrow bedroom would not be her grave.
Her last conscious thoughts went to Reddington. He did not only need to find her. She was still conscious enough to trust him with that, also because she knew that Moira wanted him to find her. But he needed to find her in time. In time so she could be cured and saved. In time so she could at least tell him for the first and for the last time how much he meant to her. Liz was terrified. She was feeling herself leaving and she was not strong enough to resist anymore. She had the impression that she was swimming against the tide in a raging sea. The sweat she was bathing in felt like salted water. She could hear the wind howling and the giant waves striking against the shore. They were striking, striking, striking. Suddenly, in a ray of lucidity, Liz understood that the muffled knocks she was hearing were not coming from her hallucination. Someone was smashing the apartment's door open.
