Not the explosion.
Not the screaming over the headset.
Not the feeling of heat punching through steel and flesh and air all at once.
Just Eli Vance’s hand, shaking and slick with blood, jamming something into my chest rig while the desert burned around us.
“Don’t let them take it,” he rasped.
Then the world tore open.
When I woke up, I was under white lights in Bethesda, Maryland, with a tube in my arm, a brace on my leg, and a pounding in my skull like somebody had buried an engine behind my eyes.
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