"Mari...Mari..."
Perez's voice floated to her from a great distance, meeting her ear with a strangely muffled urgency.
"Mari, Mari, you have to get the hell up. Something's happening. I think you might want to stop a massacre."
She startled awake. "Did I faint?" She could barely form the words, but she pushed on anyway, determined to get focused.
"Yes, you fainted."
"Seriously?" In her thirty years on earth, she never once, not a single time, fainted.
"There's a first time for everything, but that really shouldn't be your focus right now."
His severe tone finally penetrated the haze around her brain. "What's going on?" She pushed herself into a sitting position and looked over her shoulder. The barrel still obscured any onlookers' view of her, but she could still see the men in the
