Marked

Chapter Thirty-Seven

She was wasting precious time. 

Closing her eyes, she drew in a deep breath, held it and let it out. And another. And another. Eventually, the images didn't leave but she was able to push them to the side.

Her eyes, black specks in her vision and all, focused on a keyboard in front of her. 

The letter P. She focused on the letter P, willing her eyes to see that and only that. Vomit rose in throat but she shoved it down. The taste of bile burned her throat. Dry heaving, she focused on that single letter until the images were cleared from her vision.

"Stop. Cease fire." She croaked. 

Corina did nothing. The images on the screens, now the only images she could see, did not suddenly come to a halt as she'd expected. Grey Aircraft still exploded mid-air. Poachers continued to catch bullets in their chests and stomachs. At any moment she expected to see a familiar face shot dead. Juan. Or Yalina. Or maybe even Debra.

The outsiders continued to storm through the city. 

Hector. Was Hector dead?

"Dr. Everest tell me he's alive!" She cried. Her fists slammed into the control panel. One screen went dark while fat drops of blood dropped onto it from her nose.

"He's breathing." The doctor announced. 

Her knees nearly gave out from under her. It was only the prospect of Hector being alive that fueled her.

"Stop. Cease fire." What had Nicolas called it? "War protocol." She moaned through the pain in her head. "Deactivate. War. Protocol."

Her body slipped to her knees, her hands gripping the cutting edge of the counter, unwilling to lose consciousness just yet. 

Nicolas moaned garbled nonsense beside her. 

"Deactivating war protocol." Corina announced. 

Rachel cried out in relief. With a new burst of energy, she lifted herself so that she was draped over the screens and used her finger to sift through each of them.

Gray aircraft ceased their fire and slowly began their decent back to earth. Poachers in the street dropped their weapons.The bullets from their weapons ceased to explode.

And something peculiar happened too...

The outsiders stopped shooting. The world froze for a moment, as the sounds of bullets and screaming departed it. 

A silence, a moment of peace remained. 

"Flags of surrender." Rachel whispered. She remembered seeing them in a textbook once. 

White. 

White flags had meant surrender in the old world. "Corina. Play...play white flags. On the screens."

"Playing white flags on jumbotrons." The device announced. 

Someone groaned and it wasn't Nicolas.

"Hector?" She called. He groaned again. Unintelligible sound came from his mouth but it didn't matter because at least he was making some sound and that meant he could still make sound. That meant he was still alive.

"He's coming to, Rachel, but you need to stay where you are, you're too weak to walk. I've got him." Dr. Everest ordered.

Rachel obliged, unsure she could actually move even if she'd wanted to. Her eyes stared at Hector, at his handsome face, now grimacing in pain. His head lifting from his chest to look around the room. Dr. Everest had ripped his shirt open to reveal a red and raw burn on his chest.