The rain had turned into a steady, freezing drizzle by nightfall.
Inside Pier 54, the air felt like ice water. Finn Cooley hadn't moved in four hours. He lay on his stomach near the solvent tank, his breathing reduced to a dry, clicking rattle that happened once every twenty seconds.
Jack sat against the rusted oil drum, his body shivering uncontrollably.
He wasn't standing up. He couldn't. His left arm was completely useless, a mass of crushed muscle and purple bruising underneath his shredded thermal shirt. Every breath felt like a dull knife scraping his ribs. Blood had dried dark and stiff along his left side, gluing his trousers to his hip.
The blue numbers in his vision didn't vanish this time. They flickered constantly in the corner of his left eye, jumpy and erratic: [6.2%... STABILITY CRITICAL... PAIN OVERRIDE ACTIVE].
Jack’s head rolled to the right. His cheek pressed against the cold iron of the drum.
"Dare..." he whispered into the dark.
His voice was thin, raspy, like dry paper tearing.
"...dare... dare... dare..."
He dragged his right boot across the floorboards, pulling his leg up an inch, then stopped. Pain flared up his shoulder, so sharp it made his vision go white for three seconds. He didn't scream. He just bit down on his lower lip until he tasted iron, his face twitching into a tight, grotesque grin.
"...dare to jump..." he hummed softly, his teeth clicking together to the rhythm. "...dare to fall... dare... dare..."
He needed to clean the wound. He needed a needle, thread, and alcohol. But the medical kit was in the back room, twenty feet away across the open concrete floor. Twenty feet felt like two miles.
Jack gritted his teeth and shoved his good right elbow against the floor, forcing his torso up.
Nnn-gh.
He collapsed immediately, his forehead slamming against the wet concrete. Blood dripped from his nose, making a tiny pat-pat sound in the quiet space.
He didn't cry out. He lay there in the dark, staring at a dead cockroach two inches from his eyes, and started laughing. It wasn't a loud, theatrical villain laugh; it was a quiet, wet, bubbling giggle that shook his cracked ribs until he choked.
"Hehe... cough... dare... dare..."
He began to crawl.
Using only his right arm and his right knee, Jack dragged his dead body across the slick concrete. He left a dark, jagged trail behind him. His left arm dragged dead like a heavy bag of wet sand, catching on iron bolts and wooden splinters along the way. Every time his crushed shoulder jerked, a fresh spike of agony hit his brain, and every time the pain hit, his lips moved back into that broken hum.
"...dare to jump... dare, dare, dare... touch the sky... touch it all..."
It took him forty minutes to cross the twenty feet.
By the time his right hand reached the wooden frame of the back room doorway, the skin on his knees was shredded, and his right elbow was raw and bleeding.
He pulled himself over the threshold, his breathing ragged and shallow.
On the shelf above him sat a clear bottle of 90% isopropyl alcohol and a needle wrapped in fishing line.
Jack reached up with his trembling right hand, knocked the bottle down, and watched it shatter on the wooden table. He didn't care about the glass. He grabbed a jagged green shard soaked in alcohol, brought his shredded left sleeve up, and jammed the soaked cloth directly into the gaping gunshot wound above his elbow.
The chemical burn hit his raw nerves like a live power line.
Jack's eyes rolled back. His chest heaved in a silent, suffocating spasm. His spine arched off the floorboards as his body went rigid.
"...DARE!" he shrieked, his voice cracking violently in the empty room. "DARE, DARE, DARE!"
He laughed through his teeth, tears and sweat pouring down his face as he shoved the cloth deeper into the torn muscle, wiping away the dirt and lead residue with manic, unhinged energy.
When the worst of the shock passed, he lay flat on his back among the broken glass, his right hand twitching against his stomach, his eyes wide and unblinking as he stared up at the water dripping from the roof joists.
Drop. Drop. Drop.
He matched the beat with his heels, tapping his right boot against the floorboards.
"...dare... dare... dare..." he sang softly, his voice echoing into the lonely, freezing night. "...Wilson... oh Wilson... dare... dare..."
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