“There was no one else there,” Kemi said, restarting the argument we’d been having since we returned to base.

I was resting uncomfortably in a hard, scratchy bed in the infirmary. My injuries posed no danger of being fatal, but they sure hurt like hell. The doctors were surprised I could move around at all, considering one of my shoulders was broken, six of my ribs, I had a skull fracture, broken pelvis, and several damaged vertebra. Currently, I was trapped in a strangling support collar that was there to keep my neck in place while everything fixed itself. After the super healing I had experienced, this was annoying and painfully slow. Literally.

“I’m telling you, Kemi, he was there,” I insisted. “He stood right over me.”

“You mean while you were on the stage, or some other time?” she asked, arms crossed. She had made it out of the encounter much better than most of us. Though wounded several times by shrapnel and debris, her wounds had healed long before the angel left.

“Yes,” I said with a sigh, “While I was on the stage.”

Kemi shook her head. “I could see you on the stage. I was firing the .50 cal at the angel until I ran out of ammo. There was no one up there but you, Claire, and it.”

“Maybe you just didn’t see him. Maybe you were preoccupied staying out of the real fight,” I said, immediately regretting it.

Her arms dropped to her side. “Excuse me? Just because I didn’t fly off the handle and engage the enemy in hand to hand does not mean I wasn’t there. I pulled three wounded out of danger while you and Claire were acting like idiots, thank you very much. And another thing…”

I held up my hand for peace. Her rant was killing my head and she was right, it was a low blow. “Look, Kemi, I’m sorry. That was out of line. I’m just tired of everyone second-guessing me.”

Her face softened and she came and sat by my bed. “I get it. I mean, no one knows what the extra exposure to the angels did to us. You and Claire were closest for the longest. There could be all kinds of... side-effects.”

Shaking my head, I said, “No, I saw him before the fight. In the nose bleeds, across from my position.”

She cocked her head to the side. “Honey, no one else saw anything out there.”

This was so frustrating. “What about the music?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No. No one heard anything else either.”

“I know what I saw and what I heard. Someone else was there. They helped me take the angel’s field down.”

Kemi did not say anything else, just looked away. This was not going to go anywhere, I could tell.

“How’s Claire?” I asked.

That brought Kemi back around. “She’s in pretty rough shape. You are looking quite good compared to her. The angel nearly beat her to death and then when it left, her healing slowed back down.”

“Yeah, but she’ll get better right? That’s what we do; survive?”

Kemi shrugged her shoulders a little. “Nobody knows. Claire is stable and her body is trying to fix itself, but…” her voice trailed off. I could imagine what she did not want to say. Let’s face it, nobody knew how good our recuperative abilities were, or if they had any limits.

“Is she still in a coma?” I asked.

Kemi nodded. “She started breathing on her own, but it’s like her brain has shut down.”

Fuck. I sighed. We were lucky to be alive. Not everyone else was. “The rest of the squad?”

“Half of them are gone, Peri. Sergeant Lorenzo was killed when the angel sliced through the balcony. Ramirez… his skull was crushed. Martins died trying to run away. He was cut clean in half. Then there was Williams, he...”

Listening to the list of former colleagues, my head swam and my emotions disconnected. It was too much. “Kemi, not now, please. I can’t handle it.”

“Oh. Right. Sorry.” I guessed it was easier for her; she’d been conscious the whole time since the battle and had already dealt with the horror of this to a degree. To me, it was a fresh wound to pick at.

“Who made it out?” I remembered a few faces when I was carried to the chopper, but it was all disjointed and confusing. And now they had me second-guessing the things I thought I saw and heard.

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“Stone made it out. And he was a champ,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“He managed to pull Johnson and Winston out after being wounded in the leg. I helped them reach the door, but Stone got them out of the fight. I grabbed Carter and Smith and pulled them clear. They’d both been under the balcony when part of it collapsed, but neither was too seriously hurt. Just some bruises and a few broken bones.”

“Well that’s good at least,” I said, staring off into the distance. “What are they calling this? A success or a failure?”

“Hey, we drove an angel off. I don’t think there is any way that you can slice this that doesn’t come out a win in our favor,” she said, the ghost of a smile touching her lips. “We lost some good people, but just think how many would have died without us?”

“Yeah, I guess,” I said nodding. It still felt empty though. Driven off or not, the angel was not dead. We still did not know if we could kill them, though it did appear to not want to get shot. Then again, maybe it’s time just ran out. No angel stayed very long after manifesting and the supposition was that there was some sort of limitation on their ability to remain in our world.

“How are you doing?” I asked her.

“What, oh, me? Pretty good I guess. I mean, after it was all over and the adrenaline stopped pumping, I went and threw up for what felt like a good 24 hours. I still feel a bit shaky and my legs are sore from all the running. Honestly? I’m surprised I can walk at all.”

“Yeah, you were amazing. Well, the little bit of you I managed to see. Which wasn’t much, to be fair. I’m sure your recovery kicked in just as much as ours did, but I’m not surprised you are still sore.”

“Well,” she said with a grin, “When you put it like that, I guess you have a point.”

Kemi became quiet, and she gazed intently at the wall beyond me. The leg that was off the bed and still on the floor tapped rapidly and she wrung her hands.

“What is it?” I asked.

She flinched away from me. After a moment, she turned and looked down at me. “Peri, I need to tell you something.”

My stomach dropped. What could be worse than what she’d already told me?

“Go on,” I said, not really wanting her to.

She took a deep breath. “I just want to say I’m sorry ahead of time.”

“Okay.”

Pinching her eyes shut, she said in a rush, “I threw the grenade.”

“The grenade?”

“Yeah, you know? The grenade that blew you into the staircase?”

It took me a moment to catch up, but then I remembered. The fucking grenade.

“You threw a grenade at me? You threw a fucking grenade at me?” Heat surged through me and icy pinpricks raced up my back. I was back in the stadium all over again.

Her eyes widened. “No, no, not at you! I was throwing it at the angel. You just got too close to it too soon.”

“You could have killed me!”

“I know, I know! I wasn’t trying to. I didn’t think he would get so close to you so quickly! It was moving so fast, and my reactions were so fast I had a hard time gauging my throw. I didn’t even see how close you were until after I threw it.”

Slumping back in the bed, I covered my eyes with my arm. “Fuck sake. It’s bad enough fighting an angel...now I have to avoid getting fragged by a teammate.”

“It. Was. An. Accident!”

We didn’t say anything for several minutes. My heart was beating so loud I was certain she could hear it. The adrenaline shot was receding, but I was amped up and angry. “If I wasn’t Changed, I’d be dead now,” I said in a quiet voice.

“If we weren’t Changed, we wouldn’t even be here.”

I snorted. I couldn’t argue with her there.

“Look, we don’t always get along, but I feel awful about this. I wouldn’t want to hurt you, or anyone else on the team. I didn’t know what to expect any more than you did, and now that we know, I promise, nothing like this will happen again. I don’t know what else to say.”

And what else could she say? We didn’t know our powers were going to get super-charged and god knows that fight was insane. This whole situation was insane. I mean, we fought a fucking angel. We were both lucky to be alive.

Lowering my arm, I rolled over and looked at her. Kemi’s eyes met mine then looked away. The purple shadows under her eyes, the haunted look she couldn’t quite give me, she almost looked as bad at the moment as I did.

“I don’t know either. Normally I’d probably beat the shit out of you for something like this, but that’s not really appropriate anymore, is it?” She looked back at me, brow furrowed. “I got in a lot of fights in high school,” I said as a way of explanation.

“Oh,” she said. “I didn’t know that.”

“Well, why would you? It’s not like we talk that much.”

“Yeah, that’s true.” She fidgeted with her hands some more, then asked, “What do we do now?”

Before I answered, the door to my room opened, and General Castle walked in. Kemi leapt to her feet and saluted. My condition prevented more than a half-hearted attempt with my working arm.

“At ease, soldiers,” he said, sparing me the indignity of my half-assed salute. “Private Kemi, I’d like a word with Private Delaney.”

“Yes Sir,” she said and left, leaving me alone with the old man. She gave me one more haunted look before disappearing from view.