Chapter 11 - Resuscitation

Two months. Eight weeks. Sixty days. 1440 hours. That's how long Cala has been pregnant.

Regardless of the life she's carrying, she's still contributing to missions, since she hadn't told the rest of her team about her pregnancy yet. She wanted to, although she didn't exactly know when would be a good time to do so.

Now that Sequi was exterminated for good, the CIA had found another organization like them, close to Denver. These guys were worse than Sequi, using weapons that only insane people could think of.

Charging at the man in front of her, Cala struck him with her knife, stabbing him in his dominant arm. He tried punching her in the gut, but she had learned how to fight while her unborn child was just starting to develop. She turned her body sideways, so that his arm merely whisked her side, and embedded a blade in his other arm.

But the man had a dirty trick up his sleeve, and was ready to use it.

Meanwhile, Daeus was just finishing off with his last opponent, and was ready to go find Cala, since she had wandered off, taking on a small group by herself. He shot the man and ran in the direction she had left.

He didn't know where she had gone, but when he heard a bloodcurdling scream, he knew exactly where she was. He started sprinting, terrified of losing her.

He turned a corner and saw the outlines of two figures. One with its arm against the other's chest, the other spazzing uncontrollably. He kept going to make out what was going on. When he was close enough, his heart was ripped to shreds.

He had gotten there just in time to see that the one taken over by paroxysm, was Cala, and that the one who had his arm pressed to her chest, was in fact pressing a powerful taser against her sternum. The man seemed to have had enough of torturing her, so what he did next was even worse.

Bringing up his leg, he kicked her in the upper section of her gut, sending her backwards, into a pool of sorts. Her tremors hadn't ceased, meaning that she wouldn't be able to regain control of her body in time to save herself from drowning or choking on water.

Daeus shot the man square in the forehead before running up to the pool and diving in, pulling his fiancé to the surface and getting her out of the cold water. He didn't care if it was February. He didn't care if he was freezing. All he cared about was Cala.

Running while holding her in a bridal, he quickly made his way to a safe area. Laying her down, he knelt beside her, checking to see if she was breathing.

When he didn't feel air on his cheek, when he didn't see her chest rise, his heart, which was already broken, was crushed to bits. He checked for a pulse, but found none.

It was too late. Cala was gone, and wasn't coming back.

"Hell!" he shot at the lifeless body next to him. "You can't go!" He started crying, and didn't bother holding back the tears. Losing people close to him seemed to be his specialty. He cried over the one girl he had loved, and over the child that they will never have.

"F*****g hell Cala!" He took her by the shoulders and shook her, hoping that she would magically wake up. "F*****g hell!" Nothing. This shouldn't be happening. He knew that she was too strong of a being to die such a death.

He didn't know what he was anymore. He took her head with his hands and placed a desperate kiss on her cold lips, his tears rolling down his cheeks and landing onto hers. He was already longing to breathe her air-

It hit him. CPR. Mouth to mouth. Force her heart to start beating again. He pulled back and got to work, stuffing his jacket under her right hip, for her fetus, and starting some compressions.

He got to thirty and switched to breaths. One. Wait. Two. Back to compressions.

"Come on," he panted. Twenty eight. Twenty nine. Thirty. Breath one. Wait. Breath two. He repeated this over and over again until he heard something crack. One of her ribs had just snapped, making space for her heart to start beating again.

He kept on going, over and over, not daring to take a break. Daeus was just about to start his 13th round of compressions when her eyes flew open and she started gasping for air, colour slowly returning to her face. He pulled back and let her lungs settle.

After a while, she had enough strength to talk. "That was scary..."

"Says the one who I had to do some CPR on you," he said, relieved beyond words.

She smiled faintly. "People ask themselves what it's like to die..."

"Shhh..."

"Well, at first, you don't know what's going on. You're cold. It's dark. You can hear everything around you. You want to react, you want to see, but you can't. You can barely feel, your thoughts aren't making sense, light above, darkness below..."

"Please Cala..."

She kept on ignoring him. "I wanted to talk to you and tell you that I was fine. I wanted to hug you. I could hear you crying, and I wanted to comfort you, but I didn't see why I should... My brain seemed to accept the fact that I was dead before my conscience did..."

He stuck his face right above hers, an inch separating them. "Shut up, will you..." And he leaned in to kiss her. The kiss was mostly from his part, since she was still weak, so he decided to pull back and bring her back home.

HALF AN HOUR LATER

After having taken care of her, after having tucked her in, Daeus marched down to the lobby, not surprised to find everyone waiting for him.

After all, he had shoved everyone over, with a barely conscious Cala in his arms, so everyone had questions.

He didn't want to answer them. All he wanted was to get a few things off his back. He sat down in a chair and stared at everyone solemnly.

"Cala's pregnant by the way..." he said after a while.

"What?" Arc said.

"When?" Arsenic asked.

"Since when?" Franz asked.

"When she came to pick me up from Mongolia... Either that or the island..." Daeus said slowly.

"So that's two months either way," Franz said.

"Yes..." He looked up.

"Good job cowboy..." Arsenic told him with a smile that the group saw for the first time.

"Since when do you smile?" Arc asked her, making her smile some more.

Daeus didn't seem to be aware of those two getting along. He stood up slowly and started walking to the exit.

"Where are you going?" Franz asked him.

"I've got a few things to catch up on..." he said without looking back.

"You can't just leave like that!" Arc said, walking up to him, but was stopped by Arsenic's hand on his shoulder. This simple action, by such a closed person, got Arc to freeze.

"He knows what he's doing," she said calmly. Arc kept watching his best friend walk away from his life.

TWO DAYS LATER

Cala was still hopeful that Daeus would come back, putting aside what everyone else had told her about how he walked away from everything.

She still didn't believe them. They said everything, but was it really everything. The only way for her to know was to check.

She stepped into his apartment and started digging. She emptied every drawer, every cabinet, every closet, every space she could find. She finally found what she was looking for.

Her knees gave way and she sank to the ground, sobs taking over. They weren't lying. He had left everything behind. Including his end of the deal.

In her hands were two things. A paper with a note on it. A wedding ring to match hers.

She read the note over and over, although there wasn't much to read.

Please forgive me. I love you baby.

She broke down even more, throwing the ring across the room. After a while of crying, she felt a presence next to her, rubbing her shoulder for comfort.

"He'll be back..." Franz said. She crumpled the paper up in her hand and rubbed her stomach.