And in a place like this, even the smallest kindness feels like rebellion.
36
Cam
The lights are brutal—searing through my eyelids like I’m lying under a sunlamp. Even with my eyes shut, I can feel the heat of them, pulsing against my skin.
Did we do it?
I can’t remember.
Everything after the gunshot is a void.
“He’s waking up,” Talia’s voice cuts through the fog—sharp, urgent, too loud for how fragile I feel.
I risk a glance, cracking one eye open just enough to let in a sliver of light. It’s blinding. My vision swims, the world a smear of white and shadow. I blink slowly, trying to force my eyes to adjust.
Talia comes into focus—just barely. Her face is tight, brows drawn together, lips pressed into a grim line. She looks like she hasn’t slept. But my left eye won’t focus, no matter how many times I blink.
“Did you get her?” My voice is barely a rasp. My throat feels like it’s been sandblasted, and my eyes—God, my eyes. It’s like someone packed them with grit and set it on fire.
Especially the left one. It burns. Not just the eye, but the skin around it feels raw and swollen, like it’s been torn open and stitched back together.
Talia hesitates. That pause says everything.
“No, Cam,” she says softly. “I had to get you out. You came off the bike hard—must’ve hit something sharp on the way down. You were bleeding badly. They had to stitch your face, and…”
She trails off and all I can do is wait.
“And your left eye took the worst of it,” Talia says, her voice tight. “The cornea’s torn, it’s lacerated and clouded over. They managed to stop the bleeding and stitch the tissue around it, but…” She hesitates, and that pause hits like a blade. “The doctor said there’s significant scarring. Deep into the stroma apparently. They don’t know if you’ll regain any vision in it at all.”
I close my eyes—not because of the pain, though it’s there, throbbing behind the bandages and stitches—but because I can’t bear what I already know.
Nell’s still out there.
And now I’m half-blind.
I was a sharp shot. Precise. Controlled. My left eye was my anchor—my depth, my balance. I try to focus now, blinking through the blur, but it’s like looking through frosted glass. Myright eye is clear, but without the left, everything feels off-kilter. My aim is gone, and my edge gone with it.
I’ll never shoot the same again.
“And Nell?” My voice cracks. I swallow hard, forcing the words out like they might change something. “Did you get her?”
Talia’s face tightens as she looks away.
“They took off. We couldn’t get to her in time.”
The finality in her voice hits harder than the crash. It echoes through me mercilessly.
I failed her.
I didn’t move fast enough. Didn’t fight hard enough. Didn’t protect her the way I swore I would.
Kyla slipped through my fingers, and now Nell has too. But this time, I’m not letting it end here. I don’t care if I’m blind in one eye. I don’t care if I can’t shoot straight. I’ll learn to fight differently. I’ll burn the world down if I have to.
Because if it’s the last thing I do—I’m bringing her back.
They took Kyla. They’re not taking Nell too.
