Grounded | The Trapped Trilogy

Ten (Part 2)

Ten (Part 2)

"Peratt," I say, my breathing getting shallower. "Peratt, I think something's wrong with me."

He looks at me, concerned.

I slurp down another yellow tablet, and I can breathe a little better, only to have the air swept from my lungs again.

"Peratt, what do I do?"

"What's happening?" He asks me.

My vision starts to blur.

"I don't-I don't know!"

I'm breathing fast.

I need to calm down.

I suck air in through my nose and let it out through my mouth.

I do it again.

And again.

My vision starts to return, but my breathing is still awful.

I close my eyes and focus on it.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

The in is hard now.

I can't breathe in.

I can't do it.

Then, suddenly, I can breathe and I can see again.

No problems.

"What happened, Sier?" Peratt asks, placing a hand on my shoulder.

"I don't know," I say.

I feel my face grow hot. I've never freaked out like that in front of anyone before.

I didn't like it.

"No more yellow tablets," He says to me, and takes the sweaty jacket from my hands. "We need you for this war."

I laugh a little.

"Yeah, okay."

"No, really," He says, eyeing me. He looks back to the humans. "You're going to be really important in it. Fight."

"Well, of course. I am the Second in Command."

"Stop," He writes something down in his tablet. "And I'm the First."

His grin spreads across his face and reveals his teeth.

I only have two sharp teeth while he as a mouthful of them.

Do you know how much meat I could tear and chew with those chompers?

Which is actually a good point. They don't need the sharp teeth like I would-someone who eats meat.

I wonder if my host likes meat.

"Fight."

I walk around a part of the Dome, looking at all of the faces. A bunch of them were in my dream.

"Stop."

I see the humans I handed off to Mer in the mix, and the dream comes back to me, sending chills throughout my body.

"Fight."

I look over them to see if they have any purple spots on them. From what I see, there's nothing, and they seem human to me.

"Stop."

"Duh," I say aloud to myself. If they weren't human, they wouldn't be able to be controlled right now. Unless they have the changing serum inside of them and they just haven't started changing yet. That's a possibility.