Page 42 of Pulse Zero
Someone throws a blanket around me.
Someone says, “You’re safe now.”
Safe.
Safe.
Safe.
A sound cuts through everything. High-pitched, constant. Flat.
It doesn’t belong here. It doesn’t belong anywhere. But it’s suddenly everywhere, drilling into my skull, replacing the gunshot, replacing the shouting.
The tone stretches and stretches and stretches.
I don’t know if it’s real or just in my head.
All I know is that it means something is over.
Pain is loud atfirst. Then it isn’t.
The world flickers. I taste iron. My lungs burn. My chest feels tight, thick, wrong. Breathing becomes something distant, something I have to remember how to do.
Cason is here. Covered in my blood. Screaming. Tears track down his cheeks, and I want to make them disappear.
I want to tell him it’s okay. I want to tell him I’m sorry.
He’s taken away, and the world starts fading around the edges. Voices drift over me, no longer with any sense of urgency. They’re detached, bored.
“Let him flatline.”
It’s a man’s voice. Calm, cold, emotionless.
“Let him die.”
I try to fight it. I try to hold on. My body won’t listen. The dark closes in, swallowing the light, the pain, the sound.
It pulls me under.
And I can’t stop it.
There are moments wheneverything stops.
There is no time. Only pieces. Fragments of painful existence and the void of lost seconds. Cold air hits my skin as they drag me out of the house. I don’t look at it. I don’t want to see the truth and have it shatter the illusion I built myself—that the basement wasn’t that bad, that it wasnormal.
That it won’t be a place I’ll look back on with nightmares.
That’s definitely no longer true.
Blue and red lights flash so bright they burn my eyes. My hands are still covered in blood. I keep staring at them like they belong to someone else.
“Mr. Bellrose, can you hear me?”
“Are you hurt?”
“Stay with us.”
I don’t respond.
