Page 229 of The Wicked

“I can’t go back in there without setting off the bomb, my Zahra.”His lips brushed my bare shoulder. “You just have to do it the way I taught you. Focus on the sound, where exactly is it coming from?”

I stopped to listen. “The middle.”

“What angle in the middle?”

“Uh… I don’t know. Left? Or—or maybe—maybe right?”

“Focus.”

“I-I’m trying.”

“Then try harder!”The voice roared in my head, and I flinched with a gasp, my hand jumping with the dark red wire still in my grip, pulling it from the control panel.

The beeping increased immediately, and the time started going down faster, the same way my panic went from a five to a fucking hundred.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.”

“What! What is it?” Dog asked, his footsteps rushing back until he was crouching beside me.

“What happened?” Devil’s voice urged from the front.

“I pulled a time wire… I pulled a time wire by mistake. I didn’t mean to; I was still studying it. I don’t—how—fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“Zahra.” Dog’s hands were on my shoulders. “Hey, hey, you need to breathe and focus—”

I pushed him aside, getting to my feet and shaking my head like the thought of focusing was burning my lungs to crisps.

Dog was up too, trying to catch whatever mumbling I was doing…

I knew many people were in attendance that day; anyone could have told Chika how that training ended, how I had failed.

“Zahra, what is going on?”

I shook my head frantically. “I can’t—I can’t do it. I don’t know how… I’m sorry, I can’t, I fucked up, I didn’t think he would know to pull this shit—I can’t—I can’t—”

“Of course you can. You can do fucking anything; it’s just a moment of mild failure. I’m sure if you—”

“No, no, not this… I can’t—I’m serious. I can’t do this—”

“Dog, come over, handle the wheel.”

I felt Dog leave my front towards the driver’s side. My heart was hammering, the walls were closing in, and a second later, Devil was in front of me. “Hey, Z, look at me.”

My throat felt like it was about to jump out of my mouth, alongside my heart and everything in my chest; it was so tight. I was hyperventilating and, at the same time, trying to stop myself from hyperventilating. Trying to take control. It was chaos. I was chaos.

“Zahra—”

“No, I’m sorry—I just can’t—I tried, I tried to focus, but I fucked it up.”

“No, no, you didn’t. Not yet, because we are alive.”

“I can’t—”

“Fuck, Zahra, I need you to breathe; you’re not breathing.”

“I should—I should have listened to you, we—we should have planned—I’m such a fucking idiot—under—underestimating people—fuck—I can’t—I can’t believe—”

I felt him manage to hold my face in his hand, his cuff brushing my chin as he tried to make me look at him, worried eyes searching mine. “It’s not your fault—”