Crash and Burn

Ch2: Me

There's a pounding somewhere. A horrible rhythm smashing against her skull, like a toddler with a mallet, over and over again. Cracking and crashing at every frame of her shaking being. Jolting through her sleeping bones and burning nerves... it takes far too long to realise the pounding was inside Carmen's head. It was her brain thumping inside of her skull, still rattling from whatever impact had sent her consciousness away from what would surely petrify it.

Her throat feels hot. Uncomfortably dry and hot. There's an exterior sound quaking around her shuddering body. A booming, a snarling of nature— it causes sweat to roll thick over her body in constant failure of cooling it down. It sends a burning down her nostrils, one that hurts— forcing Carmen's chest to seize and lurch forward, heaving with a splutter of coughs. Her mind ablaze with a subconscious desperation— get it out, get rid of it, please, water-

Carmen's eyes shriek open as her body hurls against the dryness of her throat, spluttering and hacking against the sudden pain shrieking through her entire body. A pain worse than the gnawing of rope against her limbs— bumps and bruises cry like children against her exposed skin.

When the thief finally looks up, squinting against the surroundings she had been thrown into— thick, black smoke chokes her eyes. She can feel it... something hot, something burning, something coming for her. It's loud and vengeful. Toxic and driven. It's right where she ended up.

Fire...

A hideous body of whites and yellows, snarling upward into feverish oranges and reds, purging every ounce of air it could, until Carmen's lungs are black and fading fast. Fire curses her horrified and shuddering eyes. It was fire that followed her always— fire that ached after her legacy and left her ancestors, her father, in its wake. The suddenness of her father's memory chokes hot tears through Carmen's eyes. The thief's back slams into the car seat far too quickly, sending a new array of black spores about her vision. Meaning she had no room left— it was here. The fire was finally here to take her, for good this time.

Carmen's hand goes to her forehead in a weak attempt to wipe from it just a fraction of the agony clogging through her heart. It felt like her blood was made of shattered glass, and it was slowly tearing her apart from the inside out. What she finds however, burning with the sweat and smouldering in the heat... is something slick. When she pulls her hand back, her eyes meet flushes of crimson. Blood. Blood dripping over her eye and down her face. Blood coating her fingers and slowly growing victim to the fire burning where Brunt once was.

Carmen couldn't tell you what had changed since she blacked out— when she went from her life being threatened to it about to be taken, without a word to say that may preserve it. Snuffed out by a merciless fire. Carmen's eyes widen like tennis balls at the sight— as a ravenous monster burns the seats in front of her, and she registers the fact that gravity is pulling her forward— down. That the car is no longer on the even road but in fact on the very edge of a cliff, and the world is dragging her towards the dashboard. She can't see what the car is using to hang on for dear life amongst all the smoke— but she did know that the pounding in her head was no longer as much a problem as the heart thrashing in her rib cage. Pounding through her every vein and limb, crying at her to just survive. She was Carmen Sandiego, she could do that if anything, right?

Right!?

Carmen did know in the back of her mind that she was going to die, today. Maybe ever since she woke up with a sick taste on her tongue, or when she saw Shadowsan's rare laugh at the gathering hours ago, such a sight could only mean finality... or was it when she woke up in a van with Coach Brunt did she knew the air she had left was that of dwindling hours. So she knew it, she was expecting this.