He trudged for Arrivals. It should have been a short walk, but he moved with the speed and grace of someone six times his age. Every inch of him felt like it'd gone through a meat grinder. He made it as far as baggage claim before he realized he had nowhere to go and no way of getting there. Neil stared stupidly at the conveyer belts, then limped to the wall. He followed it around until he found an outlet. His hands screamed in pain as he rummaged through his duffel, but he finally found his phone. It was dead, of course. It probably died two—three?—weeks ago. Neil plugged it in and waited.

When it had enough juice to turn on, it immediately started loading every missed message from his vacation. Neil tried thumbing through his contacts, but the alerts kept popping up to interrupt his progress. He gave up and watched names flash by. Unsurprisingly most of the texts were from Nicky. Even Aaron and Allison's names came up. The only name missing was Andrew's.

At last his phone had downloaded everything from the server, and Neil could get into his contacts list. Neil saw Andrew's name first, then Kevin's, and finally hit the third speed dial Andrew programmed into his phone.

Wymack answered on the fourth ring. "You have a good reason to be bothering me on a holiday?"

"I didn't know who else to call," Neil said. He barely recognized his own voice. The last time he'd spoken he'd been screaming; apparently his vocal cords still hadn't recovered. Neil pressed his forehead to the wall and tried to breathe. He couldn't remember when breathing wasn't a chore.

"Neil?" All the gruff posturing left Wymack's voice; that sharp edge was all alarm. "Are you all right?"

Neil smiled. It felt like it tore his face open. "No. No, I'm not. I know it's kind of sudden, but can you come get me? I'm at the airport."

"Wait right there," Wymack said. "I'm on my way."

Neil nodded, knowing Wymack couldn't see it, and hung up. He didn't have the strength to stay standing, so he knelt and set a timer on his phone for fifteen minutes. When it went off, he yanked the charger from the wall and carried his bag outside. He sat on the curb with his feet in the gutter, ignoring the way irate drivers honked warnings at him. Neil was so out of it he didn't realize Wymack had pulled up to the curb a short ways down until a heavy hand wrapped around his arm.

"Up," Wymack said. "We're getting out of here."