Page 41 of Redline Baby

Kit doesn't answer immediately. Ni looks down at the screen.

"Fourteen minutes."

Fourteen minutes since Kit pressed the button. Not since he crashed. Since he made the decision to ask for help. I look at him. He looks away. Something changes inside me. He pressed it. He sat alone beside a ruined motorcycle in the dark and pressed a button that meant: Come get me.

Poor thing.

"Did you lose consciousness?" Ni asks.

"No."

"You sure?"

"Yes."

"Throw up?"

"No."

"Vision weird?"

"No."

"Dizzy?"

Kit hesitates.

Dex looks up immediately.

"Kit."

"A little when I stood up."

Every head turns toward him.

"You stood up?" I ask.

His eyes flick to mine.

"For like three seconds."

"Why?"

He gives me a look suggesting this is an unreasonable question.

"Because I was lying in the road."

The anger that rises in me is sharp enough to surprise me. Not at him. At the image. Kit flat on dark asphalt. No traffic. No lights. No one there. He dragged himself off the road because nobody else was there to do it for him.

"Anything else?"

"My shoulder hurts."

"Your shoulder looks like it hurts." Dex says.

"Insightful."

"And your hip?" I ask. That gets his attention. His gaze drops.