Page 25 (1/2)

The sound hit her a second later, rippling in a physical wave that shattered eardrulow still shimmered in the air, Bryn Davis’s shredded body died

Her last thought was incoherent and strange

I miss you

She saw Patrick’s face, just a flash, and then it was all gone

Again

Chapter 7

Coone into this on instinct, and instinct had a fatalistic sort of acceptance to the pain that she’d earned At first, it was all instinct--whi sense of the world rushing over her, sweeping her back into a bloody swirl of agony and fury, and it took tiht its way to the front and be able to begin to analyze the inputs

There were a lot And they weren’t good news

Sight ca to her, but she couldn’t lip-read; it was simply too much effort Instead, she watched Joe’s face for clues about how bad this was going to be

He was pale, and his face was set into a hard ood at all Riley was on her other side She beca, slowly Usually they snapped together like Legos, but this wasthat felt torturously deliberate Her lungs were full of blood that was being pushed up, out through her mouth Muscles twitched and convulsed as they repaired themselves

The nanites had a lot to do But, incredibly, they were doing it She’d given herself only about a twenty percent chance, tops, of surviving the blast, but da it off She could alhed out ahorrified looks, but Riley toweled her face and hair clean The water on her burning skin felt as good as paradise Running a fever, she thought, and alhed, because a little cold was the least of her probleed to drag in soratulations When Bryn concentrated on the , Good, Bryn, just breathe One thing was for sure: if Riley Block looked shaken, Bryn had truly been on the edge of perht to find it quite as oddly funny as she did, that deep concern on Riley’s face But hysteria was probably about as good a way to deal with this horror as screaht, and was instantly sobered up Dying over and over was bound to have a cost--mental, if not physical What had Patrick said about Jane? She hadn’t been the cruel bitch she was now, not at first It took tiainst the hard rocks of immortality

Her eardrums healed, finally, and sound crashed in raw and hard, and she al sounded wrong, and too loud, and vertigo hit her, hard, even though she was flat on her back on the ground She gulped in tearful breaths, heard the uneven, too-fast beat of her heart, and felt the last iers and toes left now They’d heal up in a bit

"Do you have it?" she said Her voice sounded raw and garbled, and she tried again, and again, until finally Riley got thebloody, wrapped in duct tape

"This?" she asked Bryn nodded It probably looked like a convulsion Felt a little like one, too "It survived, Bryn You did it"

Bryn shook free of Joe’s hand and rolled over on her side, then shakily pushed herself up to a sitting position That was hard It was only then that she realized she was lying on the hard shoulder of the road, surrounded by blood like one of those old-time tape outlines from old cop shows Blood dripped from her hair, fro of it everywhere

Then she smelled the sed poles and collapsed wreckage--was burning with furnace-level intensity It looked ghastly She didn’t see any sign of Calvin Thorpe, but she expected that if she searched around, she’d find pieces of hiht It had probably been very quick

Riley said soed back to the truck, which was idling nearby; he ca of water Bryn, with Riley’s help, stripped off the tattered rags of her clothes and stood in her burned and shredded panties and bra to pour the water over herself, washing off the worst of the blood and grit before she threw on the loose jeans and blue work shirt Her shoes were mostly intact

There were a lot of sun pellets Ball bearings There were also nails, bent and broken and scorched, littering the road as well They’d built a first-class dirty IED, all right