Origins: The Fire (MILA 2.0, #0.5)(20)

The wind caught my gasping laugh and yanked it away as I slowly released my hand. Maybe this is what happened when you moved from big towns to tiny rural hole-in-the-walls…maybe it turned you into an adrenaline junkie. It was like my body was preparing for something it was meant to be doing. This really was fun. Great, even. I hadn’t had this much fun since—

The slide to the left was sudden. So was the hard jerk to the right that followed. My arm scraped metal…just before I felt a surge of nothingness as my body went airborne.

One second I was flying, and the next, the scream tearing through my throat was silenced by the crushing impact.

I landed arm first on something sharp, felt a strange tearing sensation. Then I was tumbling. The world careened in a crazy spin as I bounced once, hit the ground again, and continued to roll. Tiny visual details repeated themselves—leaves, grass, blue sky—while I flipped around and around.

I landed at the bottom of the hill, staring up at a low patch of white clouds. Clouds of the stratocumulus type, if I wasn’t mistaken.

My lips moved, but no sound came out, my voice strangled by the same shock that glued me to the ground. Shock, that had to be it. What else could explain the fact that I was lying here, analyzing types of clouds instead of massively freaking out?

Other concerns ripped through my head. Like, what on earth had just happened? Why wasn’t I even the tiniest bit out of breath? Or—oh, god—why was I barely feeling any pain? Had I damaged my spine? What if I couldn’t walk?

Relief washed over me when I confirmed I could still wiggle my fingers and toes. So far, so good. I climbed to my feet, stunned to discover my dignity felt more damaged than anything else. I’d been unbelievably lucky.

“Mila!” Hunter’s sure strides quickened his descent down the hill, Kaylee tripping after him as fast as her black platform boots would allow. That’s when the anger started to flare. “Kaylee Daniels, what is wrong with you? When your mom finds out, you are going to be grounded for life! You could have killed me!” I brushed at the grass clinging to my sweatshirt. Grass stains, I was going to have grass stains, I thought, somewhat clinically.

“Oh my god, Mila! Are you okay? I’m so, so sorry!” Kaylee sobbed, still several yards away. “Lie back down! You could have a back injury or something!”

Hunter raced to my side first. “She’s right, you need to sit down. Are you hurt anywhere?”

“I … I don’t think so,” I said. Which really didn’t make any sense, but I wasn’t about to complain. “But my left arm feels kind of weird. On the outside, above my elbow.”

“Here, let me see.” Hunter cradled my wrist and lifted the flap of shredded material that used to be my sleeve. Since I was watching his face, I saw when his expression morphed from concern to shock, saw his eyes widen. “What the…? Mila?”

This couldn’t be good.

“Is it really that bad? Or are you just the type of guy who gets all squeamish at the tiniest drop of blood?” I twisted to get a better look at whatever had turned Hunter into a frozen, gaping statue, just as Kaylee stumbled up.

“I was so scared—I was sure you’d landed on that rusted hunk of metal and killed yourself!” she said, pointing at the mangled remains of a car door near the top of the hill. “Thank—” Her shriek accompanied the hiss of my inhalation.

“Mila? Oh my god, Mila!” she said. “What—what is that? Because it isn’t—”

“—blood,” I breathed at the same time.

All three of us stared at my arm. And stared. And stared. It was like none of us could believe what we were seeing.

My arm wasn’t bleeding at all. There was a huge, gaping tear in my skin, but no blood. No blood. No blood because instead of blood, a thin film of red had ruptured, allowing some disgusting milky-white liquid to leach from the wound and trickle down to my elbow.

And it got worse. Inside the cut, inside me, was this transparent tube with a minuscule jagged fissure shaped like a row of clamped teeth. And inside that? Something that looked like wires. Tiny silver wires, twisted like the double helixes we studied in biology.

No. No, no. I was hallucinating. I’d hit my head, after all, and I was hallucinating. That was the only explanation that made sense.

I snatched my arm away and glanced from Kaylee’s horrified face to Hunter’s shocked one. Of course, if I was hallucinating, so were they.

My hair whipped the air as my head shook side to side. I didn’t understand any of this. “I can’t… I don’t…this is— Kaylee?” I lifted my hand, the one attached to my good arm, toward her. Only to watch her flinch away.

“Shhh, Mila, it’s okay. Let’s get you back in the truck,” Hunter said, wrapping a tentative arm around my waist. “Can you walk if you lean on me a little?”

“Hospital,” Kaylee blurted. “She needs to go to the hospital.”

My head shook faster. “No, no hospital! How can I go to the hospital, when…” We all looked at my arm again, and we could all fill in the rest. How could I go to the hospital when I was such a freak? When they’d ask me questions, and I’d have no answers? “No hospital,” I repeated grimly. “No, no, NO!”

“It’s okay, calm down. Kaylee? Kaylee! Could you help us out here a little? Come make sure she’s steady on her feet.”