The air above ground tasted wrong.
Not clean. Not free. Burnt metal, smoke, blood soaked into concrete. Sirens screamed from every direction, red and blue lights slicing through the night like knives. The hospital behind us looked less like a place of healing now and more like a crime scene stitched together with panic.
I stumbled as we burst through the emergency exit, my legs screaming in protest, my body finally cashing the checks adrenaline had been writing. Adrian caught me before I hit the pavement, his arm locking around my waist like muscle memory.
“I’ve got you,” he said, breath rough, voice shaking harder than he wanted me to hear.
I clung to him, fingers digging into his jacket, grounding myself in the fact that he was real. Warm. Alive. Not bleeding out on a cold floor unde
