Two hours later, the patient stabilized enough to open his eyes again. Natalie lowered the lights and kept everyone except the physician and Reeves behind the curtain. She leaned close enough that he would not have to force his voice.
“My name is Natalie,” she said. “You asked for me.”
His gaze fixed on her.
“Eli,” he whispered.
“I saw his tag. Tell me why you have it.”
Pain tightened his face. “He gave.”
“Why?”
The man swallowed. “So you believe I tried.”
Natalie felt Reeves shift behind her.
“Tried what?”
“To stop.”
He closed his eyes and breathed through the pain.
The physician warned that they had minutes, not an interrogation session.
Natalie kept her voice quiet. “What is your name?”
“Samir.”
“Samir, what did you try to stop?”
His eyes opened again. “Attack.”
Reeves stepped closer.
Samir flinched.
Natalie raised one hand without turning around. Reeves stopped.
Piece by piece, with long pauses, the story came out.
Samir had been part of the armed group that planned the morning attack. He did not deny it. He did not ask Natalie to call him innocent. He had carried weapons with the group for more than a year. He had believed their promises, then watched those promises turn into orders that targeted anyone who resisted them—including families from his own village.
Three days earlier, he learned the group planned to strike a military patrol near a market and then move explosives to a second location after responders arrived.
He tried to warn someone.
He did not know whom to trust.
At dawn, he approached the patrol from a drainage ditch with his weapon thrown ahead of him. The first explosion happened before he reached them.
Chaos erased every distinction.
Soldiers fired toward the attackers. Civilians ran. Smoke filled the road. Samir found Eli wounded behind a low wall.
“He point gun,” Samir whispered. “I say no. No fight. I say second place.”
“Second location?” Reeves asked.
