A/N: Again, I apologize for the long delay in between chapters. I'm on vacation from school next week, so I will be able to update more frequently, in between work and... more work. Hope you enjoy!
The next thing I knew, someone was leaning over me with a knife. The guard came into focus as he lowered the knife onto my cheek, and he said something in Ukrainian, which of course, I didn't understand. When I didn't reply, he pressed the knife into my left cheek, just enough to begin a cut. I lay completely still, unsure of how I would get out of this, since words were useless, and I was pretty much helpless physically. The guard said something else, and pushed the knife ever so slightly more into my skin. My cheek burned, and as blood ran into my mouth, I felt the blackout coming.
I don't know what happened after that, until I opened my eyes to rough hands lifting me off the ground. Placed on my feet, I blinked a few times, and looked around, trying to clear the dizziness and fog from my head. I registered the bodies, bodies everywhere, and Sarah, Chuck and Flemming, all looking worse for the wear, holding the elevator.
"Let's go," Casey said, and the sound of running footsteps and shouting added enough adrenaline to my system to get me moving, as fast as I could, for the elevator, with Casey right behind me.
A gun was put into my hand, and when the doors opened in the corridor we first entered, my gun was raised with the others, ready to fire upon anyone who stood in our way. There were several guards, and the bodies of the first ones had been removed. Point, aim, pull. A few stray bullets made their way toward us, but the guards all fell. Casey and Sarah cleared the corridor, and we ran for the exit.
The run down that hallway was the longest sprint of my life. Sarah, Chuck, Flemming and I left the compound immediately, and found that our snowmobiles and snow gear had disappeared. That shouldn't have been surprising. I heard more shots, and knew that we needed to find a way out soon, because Casey was still holding the door, shooting down terrorists who were coming after us.
We were stuck. It was night time, it was cold, Flemming and I were essentially dead weight, and we had nothing except guns and the radio. I turned mine back on, all the while still holding my gun, ready to aim and fire if necessary. I registered Chuck and Sarah's discussion on splitting up to look for a way out of the exclusion zone. I registered Flemming leaning against the entrance to the compound. The radio crackled to life.
"Things went bad," I said over the radio to Phil. "We need out now. Flemming is in rough shape, and we're not doing so well either. The snowmobiles and our clothes are all gone."
"Sit tight. I'm on it," Phil said, and I could tell he was as stuck as we were. How to get us out? There weren't any direct roads out here, and we didn't have time to get to one. The only way to get to the compound was by snowmobile, and ours were gone, so unless Sarah and Chuck found them…
The adrenaline from the escape was wearing off, and I started to feel both the cold and the dizzying exhaustion. Focus. Focus. This is saving people. This is doing my job. I kept repeating that to myself as I joined Casey at the entrance, firing off shots at nameless terrorists.
At the sound of engines, I spun around, fighting the dizziness that the action caused, and preparing to fire. But it was Sarah. And Chuck. And they had snowmobiles. They weren't ours, I realized, as Flemming and I stumbled toward them. Once we were on, Sarah shouted to Casey.
"Let's go." He fired another shot, and climbed on the snowmobile with Chuck and Flemming. Casey radioed Phil to tell him about the development, and before long we were speeding past the borders of the exclusion zone.
Then we were out, and it was over. Phil met us with the van, and I don't recall much about the trip back to Kiev, except that there were blankets, and beside me was a warm body. I must have fallen asleep, because I woke up to Sarah shaking me awake, saying that we were back at the hotel and we needed to sneak up to our rooms before anyone noticed how awful we looked. Her words, not mine.
Phil arranged for a cot to be delivered to Chuck and Sarah's room while we crept through the halls, avoiding hotel staff and other guests. The journey made, we gathered in our room, and Casey and Sarah patched Flemming up with the limited medical supplies we had.
Chuck left to take a shower, and after the third time I didn't respond when I was asked to pass something, Sarah and Casey shooed me off too, and I headed straight for the bathroom.
Avoiding the mirror, I pulled off the filthy wet clothes, and stepped into the hot shower. The water stung my cheek as it hit, and I kept a hand firmly planted against the wall of the shower until I had turned away from the spray so it no longer hit the cut.
When I got out of the shower, I examined my body for injuries I hadn't noticed before. Bruises were forming everywhere I had been hit, and my muscles were stiff and sore from sitting for so long in the ceiling. I couldn't see my face, but if the pain was any indication, I guessed that it was pretty bad.
My eye seemed pretty swollen, since it was hard to see, and the cut on my cheek, which had started bleeding again, still hurt like hell. I held tissues onto the cut for a minute or two, and then managed to brush my hair up into a ponytail. The tissues went right back to my face, to stop the dripping blood, and I grabbed a towel to wrap around myself, since all my clothes were still in my suitcase.
Satisfied with my towel dress, I grabbed another handful of tissues and returned to the room. Flemming and Sarah were gone, and Casey was putting things back into the first aid kit. He looked up, startled, when I bumped into the desk trying to get clothes out of my suitcase, hold tissues onto my bloody cheek and prevent my towel from falling off all at the same time.
"That needs to get looked at," he said.
"Yeah… uh… let me," I reached out for the desk to steady myself. "Let me get dressed first." He grunted, and headed for the bathroom.
I barely had time to put on underwear and a sports bra before he was back, dressed in clean clothes, after what had to be the world's fastest shower. He picked up the first aid kit and settled on the bed.
"Come," he said, when I didn't move. It was so hard to keep my eyes open, to focus, through the pain and the exhaustion. Focus. This is your… Focus. It's almost over. When I reached the bed, perfectly aware of his concern and absolutely nothing else, he said,
"Lay down." There was no more focusing. There was no more doing my job. There was no more fighting what my body wanted so badly. Rest. Sleep. Comfort.
I stretched out on the bed, and put my head in his lap. I was somewhat aware that he put a cool washcloth in my hand and told me to hold it over my swollen eye, and I was somewhat aware that when I made no move to do so, he took my hand and did it for me. The entire world was foggy, and I closed my eyes and welcomed the black. I felt his fingers on my cheek, and a cool paper towel.
"This is going to sting," he warned, and the warning was completely lost on me. The antiseptic did sting, and I tried to push his hand away. He pushed my hand back, and I felt it land on my stomach. Black and empty, and pain. As if he read my mind, his next words were,
"We gave all the painkillers to Flemming." And even in my mindless state, I was surprised by the words that followed.
"I'm sorry," he said, very quietly. I felt him apply the bandage, and take the washcloth from my hand. He replaced it with something much colder. Ice, I realized as I felt the water melting through the cloth. I felt myself shivering as the bruise around my eye numbed with cold. After a little while, he took the ice away, brushed his fingers over the cold skin beneath my swollen eye. Then he moved my head, and got up. I was at least half asleep, but my exhausted brain noticed the loss. I reached out, after opening my mouth to say "come back" and finding that no words came out.
He moved me under the covers, and it was then that I found my voice again, although my brain was having a hard time figuring out words.
"Stay…" I slurred. "Don't leave me alone." I opened my eyes to the fog again, and grabbed his arm, begging now. "Please?" Because to my childish brain at that point, please was the magic word. And it was, because Casey got into bed beside me, and I held on and didn't let go.