The days seemed to blur. Skye began writing in a notepad. She began with jotting down the little details that seemed irrelevant to her before and soon evolved to a full-on timetable/memory board. One night? No, two nights. Or was it three nights she had been there? Skye kept track of all the little things that still bothered her about the entire situation. Like how, in that one, or two, or three nights that she remembers being with Madeline who calls herself her mother and Adam, the man that she's supposedly been in love with all her life, she has not once met Jake, the brother she is supposedly inseparable from. Or how, no matter how deep she dug, she could not grasp any piece of information that she firmly, and wholeheartedly believed to be true.
Light streamed in through her bedroom window. The illuminated room glistened like a mountain of fresh, untouched snow. Skye turned her attention away from her notepad and watched the light create familiar patterns on the carpeted floor. Slowly, her eyes traced the path created by sunlight to the window above her nightstand. She pulled the curtain open, letting the light take over her. It felt like an instant exposure to heat, a familiar heat. The light gleamed in her eyes as she squinted toward the sun.
Skye stood like a deer caught in headlights staring out the window.
The light and heat washed over her. Something about the feeling made her feel safe. A passing car backfired, causing her to shudder and step back from the window. She brought her right hand to her stomach and held her breath. A sting coursed its way through her abdomen and before she knew it she was falling backward.
Her lifeless body hit the carpeted floor at full force.
She lay there motionless. Unconscious.
She sat up slowly and began to analyse the room. The walls reeked of infestation. Its cracked ceiling creaked under pressure of the stomping feet above. Drops echoed in the shallow room, a leak that created a puddle on the cement floor of the basement.
A figure, long and broad, lay on the floor just beside the hyperbaric chamber.
"Ward? Ward!" She rushed to his side and got to her knees. Her hands fumbled over his body, looking for a sign of injury. She slowly turned him over; there were no visible physical injuries.
"Grant," she shook him lightly until she felt a response, the flex of his abs beneath her palm. "Grant, look at me. Open your eyes. Come on."
His head turned, the slightest amount, to the side. She brought her right hand beneath his head and held it in her lap. Her left arm lay rested on his chest. Skye closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against his. A light-blue tinted glow appeared between her palm and across his chest. It grew in size until it covered his torso and faded through his body.
The two of them snuck out of the building. Tall buildings enclosed them in a maze of back alleys.
"So, why exactly are we in France?" Skye asked as she watched cars pass between buildings.
"After you got shot Simmons put you in the hyperbaric chamber to stabilize your temperature until we could get you to a hospital. Whoever's working with Ian Quinn sent a team to extract you."
"Extract me," Skye repeated breathlessly. "Why?"
"We don't know. All I know is that they wanted you." Ward stopped in his tracks. He turned to her, "hey," he reassured, "we're going to get to the bottom of this. I promise."
"Careful what you wish for." Skye warned.
They crept out of the alley and crossed an unfamiliar street in silence.
"Why France?" she muttered to herself.
"I'm a little bit more focused on the 'how's' and 'why's' of the fact that you no longer have two bullet wounds in your stomach." Ward suggested.
She looked at him "I had a dream," she paused, "a very long one actually," Skye looked down at her sore hands and rubbed her knuckles, "that you did it."
"Did what?"
"Healed me. Out of everything that happened today, that's the only thing that felt real."