It happens again. AJ is laying in bed with Alicia, lazily stroking her hair back out of her eyes as she sleeps, watching Raw on mute. She's quietly rooting Mike on, hoping that the steel cage and Ciampa will be enough to protect her husband from anything Lumis might try tonight.
For awhile, things are going ok. Mike is still nervous, but he's fighting- sometimes it even looks like he might win. He almost has it, just a few feet away from climbing down the cage- when the camera shifts and points down, showing Lumis under the ring, on his back, peering up at Mike. Mike freaks out, scrambles back into the ring, eats a spear and loses.
Which in any other situation would've been fine, Mike can always rebound, win some other time, some other way, but... Lashley won't let him go. Traps him back into the cage after Lumis climbed inside with him. AJ can do nothing but watch as Lumis blocks her husband's blood flow to his neck and knocks him unconscious. "No," she whispers, tears filling her eyes. "Mike- no-"
She casts a guilty look over at Alicia when the woman snuffles and stirs, grabbing her phone and scrambling out of the room. "Ciampa?" she calls, dialing his number desperately. No answer, and she switches to Mike's. Tamina gets the third call. No one is answering and she keeps going in circles with each cycle of calling them until her phone chimes with a notification.
A video about Mike has just been uploaded and she watches in no lack of horror as Lumis drags Mike out of the raising cage, and carries him up the ramp, out of the arena. "No!" she cries out, guttural, horrified. "Mike- no-"
She still doesn't have a full grasp of what Lumis did to Mike the first time, and now he has him again. She feels like she could throw up. "Please," she begs, dialing through the three numbers again. "Please oh god please- not Mike-"
Ciampa finally answers. "AJ," he says, sounding a little out of breath. "I'm looking. Alright? I'm not going to give up until I find him. But you need to ease up on calling me, I know you're scared, but I need to focus on what I"m doing. I will call you as soon as I know something. I promise."
He hangs back up before she can even answer and she stands there, frozen and gasping for air, eyes darting helplessly around Alicia and Ricardo's living room. "Please," she mumbles. "Please- please-"
She's still kneeling on the floor, rocking back and forth, staring desperately at her phone, waiting for it to ring, when Sofia finds her near daybreak and hugs her tightly, murmuring soothingly to her.