Page 129 of Thorne

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Come on. Come on. Lily needs you. I need you.

Twenty-nine. Thirty.

I start again. One. Two. Three. Four.

The counting is getting harder. The numbers are slipping.

Nine. Ten. Eleven.

I can't feel my hands anymore.

Fifteen. Sixteen.

The gray is spreading.

Twenty. Twenty.

My arms give out.

I slump forward, my hands still on his chest, my face pressed against his shoulder. The mask is secure on his face. The filtered air is feeding his lungs.

But I'm not breathing. I haven't been breathing since I ripped the mask off. And the gray isn't spreading anymore: it's swallowing me whole.

The last thing I see is his chest.

Still.

Unmoving.

Dead.

The gray takes me.

35

Resurrection

THORNE

Darkness.

Weight on my chest. Pressure. Something rhythmic, something steady.

Then nothing.

Darkness again.

Sound first.

A hum. Low. Constant. Familiar in a way I can't place.

I try to open my eyes. The lids don't cooperate. Heavy. Wrong.

Air in my lungs. Filtered. Clean. A mask on my face. The seal tight against my skin, straps digging into the back of my skull.

Memory comes back in pieces.

The halon dump. White vapor. Julianna's mask cracking. My hands on the straps, ripping my own mask off, forcing it onto her face.

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