Zarek was right there.
He reached out, his hands trembling as they moved to pull her broken body entirely into his protective chest.
But Roxy never felt his embrace.
The surge of adrenaline that violently spiked through her veins was simply too much. Her physical body, which had been ruthlessly starved, electrocuted, and pushed to the absolute brink of death for the last twenty-eight days, completely collapsed under the monumental weight of her relief.
Before Zarek's calloused fingers could even brush the dirt from her pale cheek, Roxy's eyes rolled completely back into her skull, and she plunged headfirst into a heavy, silent, and absolute dark.
***
There was no biting cold in the void this time. There was no damp, suffocating smell of concrete and copper, and there was no mechanical whine of a terrestrial machine waiting to electrocute her.
Slowly, agonizingly, the dark began to lift, replaced by a warm, floating sensation.
