Jack stumbled along the hard desert terrain hoping for some sign of shelter to appear. It was difficult to keep on moving though the cold darkness, and he regretted not stopping earlier when the earth had been rocky, offering suitable grounds to hide. But that had been an hour since his escape and he knew that he could be found there. Now, hours later the air was lightening, the darkness no longer thick and imposing, you could almost see through it.
After covering another mile Jack began to feel worse. Emotions were swirling around in his mind. Ramon was free with the virus, as Jack had fled after Nina and away from the gunfire he was certain he saw Ramon doing the same in the opposite direction, the case in his arms as he had ran. At least that lowered the chances of Ramon coming after them, but not by much. If Ramon wanted the pair dead he could probably find them as easily as CTU would.
Ramon finding them would be bad, but it would increase his chances of finding the virus and maybe clean mess he had made. What about CTU? He found new energy filter through his body to help him move faster when he thought about CTU. He wanted to stay hidden until he recovered the virus, despite the fact that that this was no seemingly impossible. He had Nina. She wouldn't deal with CTU. So he had to keep moving, and once they were far enough away, hopefully she would deal with him.
One of Ramon's wild shots had hit Jack in the hand, the pain was intense. After scrambling away he'd ripped off shreds of his shirt to bandage the wound up, but each time he felt it painfully throb he was rewarded with another stab of guilt as Chase filtered into his mind. He hoped Claudia had been able to help the man, and he had survived.
He couldn't afford to think about Chase, the guilt slowed him down and he hoped to cover further ground before daylight where they would be at their most vulnerable. Day hadn't broke yet, and Jack was exhausted, he doubted his ability to make it to sunrise alone.
Carrying Nina was slowing him down. After tying his hand up and looking around he had seen her shadow, running for her life. Knowing he couldn't let her escape, he'd followed her and captured her as she had eventually passed out from the blood loss. A bullet had caught her in the shoulder and although it hadn't been fatal it had bled badly.
Jack had gritted his teeth for a moment, trying to convince himself why he needed to fix the wound. He wanted nothing more to watch her bleed to death on the floor, but she had information relating to the virus. As the rest of his shirt had been used to dress Nina wound, Jack had held the image of the virus in his mind to help him through it.
Hours had passed and Nina was still unconscious, slung over his shoulder he was aware that despite his work both of their gun shot wounds were bleeding. The air was cold, he tried to wrap his jacket around himself but he couldn't manage it, his hand was too sensitive and painful to move.
Trying to fight his exhaustion Jack pushed on to a jog, but his foot hit a rock and he tripped, falling forwards hitting the ground face first. For a moment all he felt was the blinding agony rip through his hand as he landed on it, then the darkness as it started to cloud his vision.
He could see Nina a few feet spread sprawled out on her side, still out of it. Using his last ounce of strength he crawled over to her on his stomach, panting from the effort and fighting the pain which was surging from his hand to his elbow.
He reached behind himself and pulled the cuffs he had taken from her earlier out of the waistband of his trousers. He closed his eyes as he tried to catch his breath, telling himself again that she had information he needed. Knowing he was going to regret it later, Jack cuffed Nina's wrist to his own, before tossing the key behind them into the darkness. Only then did he allow the darkness to take him too, knowing he couldn't fight it off any longer.