Deep End

Chapter six

My first though was cool, first reaction, "how?"

Then the panic set in.

This was real. This was reality. I was not in my house on my dumb early bird street that was completely dim by ten at night. I was not in my amber-lit room, not in the silent space between me and my mother, not in my Arminese city at all. I had been kidnapped. I was in some kind of trunk or glove compartment, and now there was some doctor standing over telling me I was a walking bomb. A walking bomb.

She was talking, but the panic that had swept in completely blocked out the crisp sound of her voice. All I heard was static. All I saw was darkness and a blurry outline of a face.

I lunged.

In an instant, I was dangling out of my compartment, the lady was sprawled on the floor with a shriek barely out of her throat, and I half slid, half fell the rest of the way out of my dark prison. I landed on her, and heard limb meet floor. She screamed in pain.

I scrambled to my feet, mind spinning, fingers curling, lashes moving from one thing to the next faster than my eyes could follow.

Emergency exit. Airplane chairs. Curtain. Bathroom door. Luggage compartments, like the one I'd just fallen out of. And Eric. He was sitting on one of the few chairs, looking out of the window. The window. We were on a plane, I was on a plane, had woken up on a plane- the back of my knees suddenly lost their steel solidity, and I fell.

My back made contact with the glove compartment behind me, slamming the door closed for one second before Eric made it to me, gripping my waist and hauling me up.

"Hey, you good?"

I stumbled back, flinging my fists out in front of me. One connected with his chin, and Eric grunted. At some point the doctor had stood up, and now she backed away from me warily. I flung myself at the emergency exit, no thought in my brain other than to get away. The door didn't open. Eric was coming toward me. I let out a feral scream, reaching around me for anything I could use as a weapon. I think he told me to calm down. Or maybe he was talking to someone else. I don't know. I grabbed again at the latch, and that's when my body began to burn.

I stopped screaming. Stopped moving. It was like I was the wick of a flame, inside a fire. But there was no fire besides me. I was the fire.

"Pull yourself together," said a man.

Was he made of flame? Or maybe he was ice, immune to the furious heat I had become. I couldn't tell. I could barely think. The carpet pressed into my knees, and seemed to be fizzling at their touch. What was happening to me?

"I don't want to see that kind of behavior again, do you hear me?"

I couldn't respond.

"Now if you would have let Dr. Nimble finish explaining your condition, you would know that your body is now a bomb, and I have just set off that bomb. I would say you have five moments before you detonate."

If he wasn't made of ice, his words were. They see hail and snow and ice and everything cold, and I was burning the very air around me into coal. I shivered from it all, wanting to hide my face but not daring to put flesh on flesh.

Wasn't this the same man who had first seen me? He hadn't seemed like ice then...maybe I was just so furiously hot everything else seemed...cold...so cold...

"Bro, you won't actually, right?" That was Eric's voice, I think.

"Of course not," Ice Man responded. "I don't have a death wish. This is just for her to learn her lesson."

Just like that, the heat faded. My body heat went from burning the carpet beneath my knees and palms to uncomfortably warm within seconds. I was shaking. My clothes were either charred or sticking to my wet skin. Streams ran down my forehead and brow.

Panting, I looked up to see Eric, Ice Man, and Dr. Nimble standing over me. None were smiling.

I was a bomb. I was in their control. I was trapped.