She Will Persist

17

Adira

As soon as the brown-haired girl unlocked her apartment door, Cal and Zach burst in with Owen almost passed out between them.

"Put him on that couch!" Cal directed, stumbling towards a long brown couch that sat in the middle of the room. A coffee table about the same length sat in front of it, which Blitz quickly shoved across the rug and out of the way so Cal and Zach could drape Owen on the couch.

James and Cal got down on their knees in front of him and started to rip their backpacks off.

Owen kept his head thrust back and tried to steady his gasping but it kept giving way to torrential groans.

"He's lost so much blood, shouldn't he have passed out by now?" Lautaro asked anxiously.

"Why hasn't he then?" Lucky also asked.

Cal started to shake off his sweater. "It must be the gas."

"If it was a corrosive gas bomb then it can cause chemical burns to the skin," Blitz offered.

"Good to know," Quinn looked queasy.

"They knew just how it worked, that's why they cut him and then set the bomb on him," Cal hurried to say, "if gases are absorbed from the inside of the body it can cause burns on the lungs, which can cause them to fill up with liquid."

James breathed in deeply and rolled up his sleeves. "What do we do?"

"About the poison, I don't know yet," Cal said, "for now, stop the bleeding. Later we might have to old-school it and burn it shut. The cut I can stitch up, since it's not too wide. But it is deep, and if it punctured one of his internal organs I don't care if Flagg doesn't allow it, we are taking him to a hospital."

"The hospital just blew up," Harrison muttered.

Zach swung his elbow back and hit the younger agent in the ribs.

Cal rolled up his sleeves and pulled latex gloves from his bag. "And with no extreme antibiotics, we'll have to sacrifice the fever and maybe even burn the stitches later."

"Du wirst mich verbrennen?!" Owen's blue eyes went wide.

Cal tossed a pair of the gloves to James as well. "This is a manufactured gas. I have no idea what its chemical makeup is yet. Maybe we can figure it out if he quits squirming but it's obviously a mixture. I really don't know. Maybe make him throw it up. Either way if we don't stop the bleeding soon it won't matter and he'll die anyways."

"Өө, миний," Lucky scrunched up his nose as Cal and James ripped the rest of Owen's dark and blood-soaked shirt and peeled it off of his chest.

"Oh hell nah," Quinn looked away.

"Tie him down," Cal directed next. "He's aggressive on his own even without what the gas is doing to him. Someone get a bandana, the ankle locks and the handcuffs."

None of us moved.

"Now damnit!" Cal yelled.

Lautaro sprung forward to grab what he requested from the only other backpack we'd brought with us from the hotel. Cal had his medical one thank god, James had all his tech shoved in another one, and then Lautaro had the third with his tools for disabling bombs and a couple other nifty devices.

The Honduran tugged the supplies out his bag as quick as he could and gave the bandana and cuffs to James.

Owen's eyes started to roll back. "Jay..." he groaned.