[Jake's POV]
The Gulfstream touched down at a private airfield in New Jersey just as the sun began to set, casting long, bloody shadows across the tarmac.
I didn't walk off the plane. I was carried.
The pain suppression protocols that had kept me moving in Switzerland had completely burned out somewhere over the Atlantic. Without Oracle to regulate my nervous system, and with my regenerative skills locked behind the System's silent firewall, I was forced to experience the raw, unfiltered agony of a high-caliber sniper round tearing through my obliques.
Every breath felt like a serrated knife twisting in my side. The cold air of the tarmac hit my sweat-drenched skin, making me shiver violently, which only sent fresh waves of blinding pain radiating from the wound.
