I yelled in pain.
Helena finally released Agrippina’s wrists after she heard my cry of pain. When we finally hit the ground, we rolled together, Agrippina still lying where we left her. Once we stopped, we were separated, but all I cared about was the gaping wound in my side. I risked a glance at it.
I immediately wished I hadn’t.
I wasn’t sure if it looked worse than it felt or not. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to know. The laceration was at least six inches long, from my seratus muscles around to my shoulder blade. The thing had to have been splayed open an inch deep and I swore I could see my ribs.
Helena noticed it too and rushed to my side. She sat behind me and tried to hold me in an upright position in her arms. I felt her bare breasts push up against my back and a flood of warmth from her active body surged around my own. The comforting feeling help stave off the shock that was sure to come, but Helena didn’t have anything to put pressure on my wound with, so she simply slapped her hand on there and held tight.
Just like all the other times, her help hurt more than the actual wounding, and I yelled in pain for a second time.
My attacker ignored us, knowing Helena and I weren’t going anywhere. He moved over towards Agrippina to help her up, and I knew she was going to order him to kill us. I locked eyes with her for just a brief second and I saw something I’d never seen there before.
Fear, perhaps?
She flicked her eyes at Helena, who fumed back at her silently, refusing to leave me to die, even to kill Agrippina. The empress took a second to evaluate all her options before finally settling on that of the fleeing variety. Without another look, she and her Praetorian savior found an opening in the wall and got the hell out of dodge.
Helena shifted her hand on my wound and I groaned.
“Just hang on, Jacob,” she said. “Wang will be here in a second.”
“I’ll be fine, Helena. It’s just a scratch.”
She looked at it again, shifting her hand to do so.
Another yell.
“If it’s just a scratch, quit crying you big baby.”
I smiled around the pain. She wouldn’t joke if she truly thought it was serious.
More at ease than I’d been thirty seconds ago, I looked out over the fallen rubble, collapsed columns, and dead Praetorians, trying to glimmer an outline of my friends through the still settling dust from the explosion. I couldn’t hear the obvious sounds of a battle going on, but I did hear plenty of people moving around.
I blinked twice, but by the third one, two figures started moving in our direction through the debris. I tensed at first, wincing at the pain from my wound. I heard Helena breath in sharply as well, readying herself for anything.
I was reaching for Penelope, even though she was empty, when Wang and Santino came barreling through the debris, heading right for us. Both men rushed to our position, each still shirtless and sweating heavily. Wang moved towards my left side, already pulling off his medic bag which he must have found after the battle.
He hastily batted Helena’s hand aside and inspected the wound. He used his thumb and forefinger to gently part it before shaking his head after I yelled again
“Always have to be the hero, don’t you, Hunter?” He asked, pulling a syringe out of his bag.
“Of course he does,” Helena replied, resting her chin on my shoulder.
I winced. “Give it to me straight, doc. Am I going to make it?”
Wang flicked the syringe, glancing at me like I was a drama queen. “You’ll live, Hunter. It’s just a flesh wound.”
I sighed in relief and patted Helena’s arm, which she still had wrapped around my stomach.
I shifted my attention to Santino as Wang jabbed me with the needle.
I winced but kept my attention on my friend. “Sit-rep.”
He coughed up some dust as he turned to survey the room. The blown dirt and debris continued to swirl around him, caking his perspiring body in a thick coating. He looked more like a ghost than ever.
“We’re pretty fucked up,” he reported. “Titus is immobile. His left leg is pinned beneath a giant slab of ceiling. Gaius and Marcus are helping Vincent get him out.”
He hesitated for a moment as he glanced towards a blown out portion of the wall. I traced his look but could discern nothing of note, except that we had been moved down to the first floor of the villa.
“What?” I asked.
“Bordeaux is MIA. The first thing he did after the last Praetorian went down was to radio Madrina. When she didn’t answer, he checked the UAV feed.” He paused again with a shake of his head. “The GPS beacon we gave her indicated she’s just outside and not moving. She must have come to investigate during our little nap earlier. Bordeaux ran that way.” He raised a hand to indicate the direction he’d turned his attention to earlier.
Another loose end, but he’d be back after he found her. “What about everyone else?”
“Everyone else has cuts, scrapes, scratches, and a few knife wounds, but you’re the worst.” He paused once again. “Of course.”
I smiled. It did always seem like I managed to get myself hurt more often than naught.
“What about Agrippina?”
“She’s gone. Scurried her tight little butt out of here like a cockroach. I was able to find this though,” he said, holding up what I knew must have been the orb wrapped in a black cloth.
“At least this mission wasn’t a total wash,” Wang said sarcastically as he stitched me up. “But we should look for Varus. If he was here, he may have survived the explosion and be in need of medical attention.”
My chin dropped against my chest at the thought of poor Varus. I knew what the others did not; that he was already dead, probably buried somewhere here in the rubble. We owed it to him to find his body.
“What about the other orb?” I asked
“Unknown,” Santino said, before swiftly pulling back the orb as if something important finally dawned on him. “By the way, how did you know to reset the timer on Bordeaux’s bomb?”
I coughed. “Let’s just get everyone situated before we get into that.”
He nodded and I looked at Wang. He was completely focused on his procedure and was already finishing up the stitches on my side. I barely even noticed.
“Move him forward, Helena,” he ordered.
She did as she was told, pushing me away from her so that Wang could wrap my chest up with a few rolls of gauze. After a few wraps around my shoulder, he dug into Santino’s bag and pulled out a spare black T-shirt a size too small to add extra pressure. Once he and Helena managed to get it on me, they both helped me up, and Wang handed me a sling and Helena and Santino shirts of their own.
Santino took his immediately, but Helena looked at it stupidly before looking down at her naked upper body, perhaps realizing for the first time how exposed she was, and she sheepishly moved to cover herself with her arms. She readily accepted the shirt Wang held out in front of him, who had in turn looked away to offer her some privacy.
I ignored them both, my head swimming as I steadied myself on my own. I must have lost more blood than I’d thought.
But it looks like I’ll live.
It looks like we’ll all live.
Thank God.
Once Helena secured her shirt over her torso, she took the sling from me and pulled it over my head and maneuvered my arm into it. She then gripped me by my other arm and helped move me closer to the rest of the group. She led me to a slab of rock and sat me down. I winced as I sat, but I was glad to be off my feet. She brushed my cheek with a hand and leaned in to kiss me, a single happy tear sliding down her cheek. She wiped it away and moved to help Titus as well.
It was then that a shirtless Bordeaux came rushing into the room, an unconscious or dead, Madrina in his arms. He threw a disgusted look at me as he passed by, calling for Wang as he set his wife down gingerly on a large, flat piece of concrete. He knelt by her, uselessly mopping her hair from her face instead of helping Titus. Wang went to see what he could do for her while everyone else continued to extract Titus from the rubble.