THIRTY-FIVE

ARE we dead? Riley thought. His skull was pounding, his mind murky and confused. He felt as though he’d been trampled by a bull or two, only without the benefit of the painkillers the medics would’ve pumped into him had he wrecked. He fought for consciousness, felt his eyes slide open, but the dizziness didn’t go away and he didn’t actually see much of anything.

The world was swaying around him in swirls of black and gray, which was actually a lot worse than any other kind of “not fully there yet” blindness he knew. Either he had the mother of all concussions, or this was the first step into the afterlife.

We’re not dead yet. We just got smacked in the head by an exploding countertop. Wake up, we’re in trouble, a much-too-familiar voice piped up loudly, and then Riley’s body was moving on its own, propelled into action by a hot flood of… something. Forward and up—hello there, nausea!—and Riley didn’t know what was happening, but he hoped like hell McClane wasn’t about to slaughter an innocent bystander. Or throw up on them. They came to an abrupt stop then, perfectly balanced and ready to move. No upchucking was happening, and neither did there seem to be blood.

Note how I’m not killing him, McClane declared proudly.

Riley might’ve been more appreciative had he had any idea what was going on. He tried to rouse himself, find out specifics, but his head was throbbing—or maybe that was his brain; he could’ve sworn it was about to go pop like an overripe berry under a truck tire—and his stomach was climbing up his throat. It was all very distracting. Beneath the god-awful headache and the sickness, he became aware of a weak scrabbling along his bones, an itch in his guts, an electric tingling in his muscles. It appeared that McClane wasn’t back to one hundred percent either at this point.

I’m working on it, McClane informed him tightly. Gimme a break, that fucking thing hit us before I had all shields up. I’m rebooting both of us here.

Reboot faster, Riley thought, mostly blind, feeling like shit, and completely disoriented. He was just awake enough to be really damn scared. He could tell that McClane was wrapped around him protectively, shielding him, and it made him feel safer, but also even more disconnected from the world outside his metal cocoon. He thought he heard somebody talking somewhere beyond the barrier. The timbre of the voice was unexpectedly soothing, but try as he might, Riley was too woozy to identify it or make out more than a fuzzy shape in front of them. The shape came closer, arms spread wide, talking gently and moving slowly as if Riley were a cornered animal ready to bolt or attack at the slightest provocation. He couldn’t deny that his heart was going a mile a minute, banging against his ribcage like a frantic rabbit desperate to escape from a cage.