CHAPTER 38
I stood in the center of the sterile white hallway, watching Damian's retreating back until the elevator doors swallowed him whole.
The silence that rushed back in was immediate and deafening, felt like it was trying to crush the very air out of my lungs.
One hour. It felt less like a reprieve and more like a stay of execution. My internal clock began to tick.
My movements stiff as I turned toward the elevator that had led us to this wing. Every nerve ending in my body was screaming with a high-pitched symphony of "fight or flight" that hadn't let up for a single second since the blast.
My skin felt tight, brittle even, caked in a layer of fine grey soot that had settled into my pores and a thinner, darker crust of blood from the various bruises blooming across my ribs and shoulders.
When I finally reached the room I was occupying, I didn't bother turning on the lights.
