He fell back against the wall that had just spit him out and continued to gasp for breath. His body still quaked with shock and exhaustion, so he gave himself the luxury of a minute to pull himself together. He had to admit…he had no idea what to think or what to feel. He’d run through every extreme emotion there was in the past hour or so, not to mention being on a nonstop high of hatred and wrath whenever he’d been given the luxury of consciousness these past months. His body felt as though it had been pushed through every military endurance test of his lifetime, except it was as though he’d tackled them back to back to back. He looked down at his wrists first. Oddly enough, he hadn’t seen them bare in months, so there was something extremely surreal about the absence of the imprisoning cuffs. He also hadn’t realized he’d developed both scars and callouses on both of them. Probably his ankles as well. The thigh, chest, and biceps restraints had been used much less frequently once he’d been submerged in stasis, so the damage from them was minimal.
