"Mari...Mari..."
Perez's voice floated to her from a great distance, meeting her ear with a strangely muffled urgency.
"Mari, Mari, you have to get the hell up. Something's happening. I think you might want to stop a massacre."
She startled awake. "Did I faint?" She could barely form the words, but she pushed on anyway, determined to get focused.
"Yes, you fainted."
"Seriously?" In her thirty years on earth, she never once, not a single time, fainted.
"There's a first time for everything, but that really shouldn't be your focus right now."
His severe tone finally penetrated the haze around her brain. "What's going on?" She pushed herself into a sitting position and looked over her shoulder. The barrel still obscured any onlookers' view of her, but she could still see the men in the yard. They were pointing their guns at each other, the tension from before was one-hundred times heavier, and because she'd passed out, she had no clue how the situation escalated.