Sugar Coated (23 page)

The second she was free from the wind catcher Brynn had a new concern as she crawled as far away from Ty as she could, ignoring her numb limbs.
Her right arm wouldn’t let her crawl normally and so she face planted into the sand before awkwardly reaching her destination.

She stuck her head in an unpleasant looking spiky bush and threw up, wishing Ty wasn’t there to witness her sweating face and arched back as she stayed poised on
her hands and knees, her right arm dangling limply in front of her.

After a moment the retching stopped and she fell back into the sand, breathing heavily. Just as she had predicted, Ty was kneeling over her only a moment later, his eyes flying over her body anxiously.

“Oh Brynn, your arms,” he said, placing a finger on her shoulder and wincing at what he saw there.

“I think I hurt my legs,” she managed to say between ragged breaths as beads of sweat ran down her temples and pooled in her ears.

Ty ran his hands tentatively down her stomach to her hips where he made a similar face.

“It looks like the harness cut through your clothes and into your skin,” he told her, opening her backpack, which he had worn on their little trip through the air. “Did you pack first aid supplies?” he asked, searching frantically through the bag.

“I think so,” she said, feeling even fuzzier than she had when they were lying on the ground together only moments before. All she really wanted to do was curl up and go to sleep after drinking a cold glass of sugar water. “I wish Charlie was here,” she said sadly.

“Found it,” he remarked, grabbing the collar of her shirt and pulling it down so that her shoulder and part of her arm were exposed.

“Ty, this hardly seems like the time or place,” Brynn said with a giggle, making Ty blush slightly as he rolled his eyes at her.

“I might be enjoying this if I wasn’t worried about you suddenly dying from blood loss
and heat exhaustion,” he replied, trying to hide his grin as he poured water from her water bottle onto her shoulder.

Brynn breathed in sharply, surprised at the pain that shot through her where seconds before all she felt was numbness.

“I’m sorry,” he said, grabbing a length of white gauze sprinkled with rubbing alcohol and wrapping it tightly under her arm and over her shoulder.

“What happened? I landed pretty far away from you guys,” Jonah said from behind Ty, looking considerably happier than he had right before their jump.

“The harness cut into her skin,” Ty said simply, not looking at Jonah. “And I think it might have dislocated her shoulder.”

“Ouch, that’s a lot of blood,” he replied, kneeling down beside Ty and surveying the wound. “Smart to apply that pres
sure with the gauze,” he said.

“Thanks,” he answered shortly as he pulled Brynn’s shirt back into place and lowered the other side to begin working on her left arm.

She ignored the tense exchange between the two boys and looked up into the sky that appeared almost white. She wondered if everything in the desert looked de-saturated and dead and decided she never wanted to visit such depressing terrain again.

“If the city really is out here, these people are crazy. It’s so ugly,” she said, causing both boys to look at her.

Jonah looked amused by her statement while Ty just looked concerned. That about summed up their personalities to Brynn: serious Ty and funny Jonah. She winced again as Ty wrapped the gauze tightly around her left arm before replacing her shirt once more. She could see his eyes roam down the length of her body to where the harness had cut into her legs and stop.

He looked hesitant about how to proceed.

“I need to wrap her legs as well,” he said to Jonah.

“And?” Jonah asked, not quite understanding Ty’s dilemma.

“Well, I’m not going to pull her pants off,” he said in annoyance.

“Why not?” Jonah asked, still puzzled. Ty just looked over at him like it was the dumbest question he could possibly ask. “I’m sure she’s wearing underwear. It’s not like she’ll be naked,” he explained.

“It’s not like she’s lying right here listening to every word we’re saying,” Ty said stiffly.

“I have to do everything,” Jonah sighed, sounding as if he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Without a second thought he grabbed the waistband of Brynn’s stretchy black pants and pulled them down, making her giggle yet again at the awkward situation that she was sure she’d find much more horrifying if she hadn’t lost quite so much blood and hit her head against Ty’s chin.

“See? She’s fine. She’s laughing even,” Jonah said in a voice that sounded far away to Brynn.

Ty kept his eyes trained on her face, obviously embarrassed by the entire predicament. She was vaguely aware of the large purple spot that had already made an appearance on his chin.

“Wow, that harness really did a number on you didn’t it?” Jonah asked Brynn.

She simply shrugged her left shoulder and continued to lie in the hot white sand, wondering when she’d be able to feel her arms and legs again.

“I think my limbs are asleep,” she informed the two boys, feeling that this information was very important.

“They are,” Jonah told her while he cleaned out her wounds and wrapped even more gauze around her legs. “And you’ve used up pretty much all of our medical supplies so I hope you don’t plan on getting injured again,” he told her. “Let this be a lesson to you.”

“You’re so funny,” she told him with a yawn. “Hey guys, I hit my head. I don’t know if that’s important,” she added as an afterthought.

“Take this before you fall asleep,” Jonah said, pushing a small hard pill past her lips and into her mouth and completely ignoring her statement about her head.

“Only if you put my pants back on, you creep,” she said with a grin, not sure why she found everything funny and not completely mortifying.

“Strong words for a girl who can’t even jump off of a train without getting hurt,” he said to her while he pulled her black pants back into place. “Now swallow the pill before I force it down your throat,” he threatened.

Brynn did as she was told and closed her eyes against the glaring sun.

“It’s hot out here,” she said, letting the fuzzy feelings take over while her breathing slowed down.

“I think we should try to find some shade and make camp until nightfall,” she heard Jonah say to Ty somewhere far away.

“We’ll be hard-pressed to find shade here,” Ty answered, shuffling something around next to Brynn’s head.

“We might just need to make our own. She’ll be out for a good few hours anyway,” Jonah replied, though he seemed to be getting further and further away from Brynn.

She wondered vaguely where they were going and hoped no wild animals would eat her while they were gone. Even with the threat of animals in her mind, she couldn’t seem to stop herself from drifting off into a state of completely numb happiness.

As her mind made one last attempt to stay awake she heard Jonah say, “I’ll wait until she’s asleep to pop her shoulder back into place. It’s not going to be pretty.”

Chapter 23: Unbalanced

Brynn felt almost exasperated at finding herself trapped in the confines of the white room once more. There were so many things she needed to do now that they had successfully escaped the train. She wanted to jump up from the hot sand and start sprinting toward Aywon, but instead she was trapped in a nightmare with the Angel who wanted her dead—unless the Angel had actually found her lying alone in the desert after her friends deserted her there.

Something about the white facility seemed to suggest that she wasn’t in a dream. For one thing, the white walls seemed to be shifting from side to side, just as they did on the train.

“That’s weird,” she said, then instantly slapped a hand over her mouth.

She could talk. She had never been able to talk in her dreams before, which suggested even more strongly than the shifting walls that this was, in fact, reality.

Taking advantage of this newfound power, she sat up in her white bed, surprised that she wasn’t strapped down or drugged like she usually was. Perhaps she was in another hospital that looked like the Angel’s headquarters.

“Hello?” she called out, letting her bare feet hit the soft, plush ground.

She glanced down, taking in the padded floor that she had always assumed was tile in her previous dreams, and then noticed the white dress she wore. Not a paper hospital dress, but a knee length dress with a full tulle skirt.

“That’s a dumb choice for a hospital gown,” she said, even as she twirled around on the padded floor to see how the layers of tulle floated out around her, light as a feather.

After she had made herself dizzy with the twirling, she decided to locate an exit, unable to get the room to stop spinning after her few turns. She had a difficult time getting her eyes to focus on one thing and wondered if it was the pill Jonah had given her or whatever they had injected her with in the hospital that was making her so dizzy.

“We must have found Aywon if they found a hospital for me,” she thought aloud, slightly sad that she hadn’t gotten to discover the city with Ty and Jonah.

Locating a white button on the far wall, she pressed it. No sound was emitted
, but she saw a small red light blink into life high above her head near the ceiling. Satisfied that she had successfully called the nurse to her room, she set about figuring out just what was going on with her. She sat silently on the bed trying to bring to light the last thing she remembered.

“The harness,” she confirmed, looking at her shoulders and underarms, which seemed to be completely healed.

She lifted up the endless layers of tulle on her white skirt to examine her legs and found them in a similar condition, perfectly healed without so much as a scar to show for her trouble. Brynn ran her fingertips lightly across the smooth white skin on her legs, wondering how advanced this medicine really was. Had they just grown new skin for her somehow?

“I wouldn’t say your legs are one of your more admirable features, but at least they distract from that grotesque mouth of yours,” she heard an all-too-familiar voice say.

She looked up unwillingly to see the Angel standing before her, her paper white skin and hair looking crisp and in focus compared to the rest of the world that shifted around her like looking at an image under water.

“Nice dress by the way. Where are you going? One of your little parties in Seaside with your vapid friends?”

Brynn stared at the star of her nightmares for a moment, wondering how she had managed to find her in real life. The woman stood almost a foot taller than Brynn and her tall, slender figure looked like something you’d cut yourself on if you tried to hug her.

“What are you doing here, Brynn?” the Angel asked, using her name rather than Rachel’s.

“Looking for you,” she said honestly to the woman, finding that her bravery was much more intact when she had a voice and control over her own body.

“You think you can just walk right in
to my facility? I run the place. What did you think you’d find?” the Angel said, her perfect smile never once faltering as she stared intently at Brynn.

“The truth, I guess,” she replied.

“You need to get up and move or your limbs will be stiff from the medicine,” the Angel told her in a strange, muffled voice that sent Brynn’s head spinning for some reason.

She grabbed onto the bed for support as the world dipped in and out of focus.

“What did you do to me?” Brynn asked the Angel, looking up into her unforgiving features in alarm.

The woman simply smiled at her as another voice spoke from somewhere far away.

“We’re trying to help,” the other voice said.

A male voice that she couldn’t quite place.

“Hello?” Brynn called, hoping the other voice would hear and get her away from the Angel before she could start torturing her for answers she didn’t have.

“Brynn?” the voice said again while the Angel smiled, unblinking and unmoving in the constantly shifting room.

“Get her away from me. Please!” Brynn called, pushing herself onto the bed to get farther away from the woman.

It seemed that no matter where she moved, the woman stayed perfectly in step in front of her, never blinking and never letting her sinister smile leave her perfect face.

“Brynn,” the voice said again.

“She’s going to kill me!” Brynn screamed, feeling the white walls melt away around her as a new and unfamiliar world came into view.

The only consolation to Brynn was the fact that the faces in this unfamiliar world were people she knew.

“Ty?” she asked, seeing her friend’s worried expression. “Jonah?”

“What’s wrong with her? Her pupils are huge,” Ty said, looking over at Jonah in frustration while he stroked Brynn’s hair.

“That is an unfortunate side effect of the medicine,” Jonah said, wincing guiltily. “Also, she may be experiencing some mild hallucinations. But it's nothing to worry about.”

“Nothing to worry about? She’s terrified! Look at her,” Ty practically shouted in the small confines of this new location that Brynn couldn’t quite understand.

She did note with some dismay that Ty still had the bruise on his chin from where her head had rammed into it.

“Where are we? Why are the walls so funny looking?” she asked, looking around at the walls that seemed to be made of cloth.

“We pitched a tent to get out of the sun,” Ty explained, still stroking her hair with one hand and grasping her arm with the other. “Are you okay?”

“I think so. Everything’s just…fuzzy,” Brynn admitted, bringing a hand up to her forehead and closing her eyes for a moment. “I was just having a nightmare, I think.”

“About that woman?” Ty asked.

“The Angel,” Jonah corrected, bringing out an odd look from Ty that Brynn couldn’t quite place.

“As usual,” Brynn said, looking at the two boys. “How long have I been asleep?”

“Most of the day. It’s almost dark, so we need to start walking soon,” Jonah explained. “I gave you a pill to help with the healing process.”

Brynn slipped her hand under her shirt to feel the place where the harness had bitten into her skin, only to find that—like in her dream—the skin was completely smooth.

“How on earth did you manage to get medicine like that? Charlie only gave me painkillers and gauze,” Brynn said in annoyance.

“I may or may not have checked myself into the hospital under false pretenses before our trip to get it,” Jonah said with a wicked grin. “It’s pretty amazing stuff. It’s full of these living organisms that target the injured part of your body and repair it from the inside out.”

“Wait, so I’ve got a million little microscopic things living inside of me right now?” Brynn asked, suddenly squeamish with that idea.

“No, they dissolve in your system after a few hours,” Jonah assured her.

“How did you even get them to give you medicine like that?” Ty asked, looking skeptical.

“Let’s just say I said some things to the doctor
that I’m not proud of,” he answered elusively, never losing the sly grin on his face.

“I’m glad you managed to get t
he medicine,” Brynn said fervently. “Thank you.”

“I think Ty’s gauze is what actually helped the most. If he hadn’t taken care of things so quickly you would have lost way too much blood,” Jonah said, causing Ty to look over at him even more suspiciously.

She would probably never understand boys. Even when Jonah was trying to be nice, Ty thought he had some sort of hidden agenda.

“Although the pill definitely helped the head wound,” Jonah said.

Brynn instantly brought her hand to the back of her head, where the bump had almost completely disappeared.

“I thought I might have hit my head,” Brynn said, as if trying to recollect the memory.

“Yeah, I saw you slam your head into Ty when the wind catcher first pulled you guys out of the train. It was pretty brutal,” Jonah replied.

“I do have a gift for getting myself hurt and or killed,” Brynn admitted, slowly sitting up in the confines of the tent that fit two people on a good day. There was no way all three of them would be able to sleep in there if it took too long to find Aywon. “Sorry about your chin Ty
,” she added, to which he shrugged.

“Now, the medicine will probably make you really thirsty, but we can’t really give you too much water,” Jonah said slowly.

“Why not?” Brynn asked, realizing how thirsty she was at Jonah’s suggestion.

He didn’t answer, but stole a furtive glance at Ty, who sighed deeply.

“You guys only brought enough food and water for the two of you and I didn’t plan ahead enough to bring my own supplies, so we’re pretty limited on rations at the moment,” he said, looking very ashamed of himself for overlooking such an important detail in his hasty attempt to save Brynn.

“It’s fine Ty. Don’t beat yourself up over it. I’m sure we’ll find Aywon tonight and it won’t even matter how many supplies we brought,” Brynn said reassuringly, even as she puzzled over how painful death by starvation would be in the dry, hot desert.

“I’m sure we won’t even make a dent in the food we brought,” Jonah agreed, sounding like he was trying to convince himself more than anything. “The water is the main thing we’ll need to ration. I thought we’d be landing in a forest with rivers and springs, so I figured water would be easy to find. It would be food we’d struggle with.”

“So this is all your fault because you jinxed us, is what you’re saying,” Brynn joked.

“Pretty much,” Jonah answered.

“We should probably take advantage of the darkness and start walking now,” Ty interjected.

As the three took down the tent and packed their supplies, Jonah explained what had happened while Brynn was sleeping off her injuries.

“Ty and I agree that we probably passed Aywon on the train, so we should backtrack rather than our original plan of moving forward."

“What if we didn’t pass it?” Brynn asked, thinking of their limited water supply and the burning sun in the desert.

“Then we’d better hope we find water pretty soon,” Ty said grimly as he strapped the tent to Brynn’s backpack, which he insisted on carrying as they started their trek.

They hadn’t strayed too far from the train tracks, so it was easy to locate them in the distance of the flat horizon. The tracks acted as a guide for the group, leading the way to the city they hoped existed. The moon shone brightly in the sky, illuminating everything on the ground with a soft blue glow.

As they walked, Brynn thought of the walls around the cities, and of Ty’s explanation that they kept wild animals out. She looked around the sandy landscape, wondering what watched them from behind the scruffy shrubs and tumbleweeds. Every once in a while Brynn could swear she heard a rustle in the bushes or
saw a flash of yellow eyes watching them. Each time she heard a noise, goose bumps rose all over her body and she tried to ignore the sensation, telling herself the wild animals were just another lie she was trying to discover the truth about.

Brynn could tell Ty’s train of thought matched hers quite closely. Every once in a while his head would jerk to the side, his attention caught by the sand blowing in the breeze or the moonlight playing tricks with shadows. When this happened
, he would give a little shudder and then bring his focus back in front of him, probably telling himself that what he had learned wasn’t true.

They traveled in relative silence, somehow having come to an unspoken agreement that whether there were wild animals or not, they didn’t want to give their position away. The only sound was the occasional breeze or their silent footfalls in the soft sand. Even at night, the desert was too warm for Brynn’s taste. She could feel herself sweating in the long sleeves and black pants and she began to wonder why she had picked this particular outfit. Pulling uncomfortably at the stretchy material, she speculated over what it would feel like when the sun rose and beat down on her black clad group.

Their journey lasted all through the night and continued as the sun came up the next morning. They had only exchanged a few words throughout the entire night, warning of a hole in the ground or asking for a little water, and now, as the sun rose, Brynn swore she could hear a collective exhale from the group; relieved that nothing bad had happened in the darkness of an unfamiliar place.