Accidental Avenger

Chapter 2

Nothing had ever hurt so much and nothing could ever hurt worse. Every molecule in my being, every fiber of my body, was ripped apart, piece by piece, and then stitched back together. I couldn't see anything except flashes of color, sometimes people, other times places. Nothing held still long enough for me to see it properly. Not that I was in a state of mind to take any of it in. The pain was unbearable.

And then, just as suddenly as it had started, it stopped. My feet hit the ground hard and I stumbled down to my hands and knees. My vision was blurry, my heart was pounding in my chest, and my ears were ringing. But I was myself again.

Slowly my senses cam back to me. First, the pain started to dissipate. Already it was much more manageable. There was a hard cement floor under my hands and knees. I heard strange tinkering noises in the background, distant at first, and then more clearly as the ringing in my ears went away. My vision came back to me last.

I looked around and saw that I was in a sparsely lit room filled with machinery and tools on a various tables. The room was tall and long, as I looked up, I gasped.

Hanging in the middle of the room was a giant, snake-like creature with razor sharp teeth longer than a spear. There as a tingle at the back of my mind as I realized I recognized it, but I couldn't remember where. My senses had all come back, but it was like my mind was still lost in whatever place I'd just left.

"I don't know, Rogers, give me a sec," A voice said. "There's a kid here. I think she might be a third enhanced."

I searched for the source of the voice and saw a man standing a few feet away from me. He looked familiar, too, but I couldn't place him.

"Was that you?" The man asked. His chest was glowing. "Did you do that?"

I got to my feet and brushed myself off. And then it hit me. It all hit me all at once.

"Oh, this can't be happening," I said. I practically screamed it.

"Hey," The man said. "Hey, calm down." His eyes flickered to another corner of the room. "Well if you'd give me two seconds." He turned back to me. "Hey, how did you get down here?"

But he already sounded far away. Darkness flickered on the edge of my vision as all the blood rushed to my head.

Then everything went black.

***

When I was little I thought I was weird because I never dreamed. When I got older, I learned more about sleep patterns, dreams, and REM sleep. You actually have a lot of different dreams when you sleep; it was just a matter of remembering those dreams when you woke up.

Over time I started to remember my dreams, except they were almost always nightmares. Towns full of monsters and strange creatures chasing me through a flood. Some of them were so awful that I would wake up terrified it was real. Mami and Papi would have to come rescue me. And even after they made me some food and tucked me back into bed, I still wasn't convinced my nightmares weren't real. They clung to me like cobwebs I couldn't shake.

But I knew that, eventually, the nightmares did end, no matter how stubborn they were. The sun would rise in the morning and my alarm would go off. I would get up and get ready for school, secure in the fact that, at the very least, Mami, Papi, and Miguel were real because they were always there when I woke up.

Except this time.

This time, when I woke up, the nightmare just kept going.

***

"And you're sure there's nothing wrong with her?" A man's voice asked. It wasn't the same man as before.

I was aware I wasn't laying on a dirty cement floor, but that begged the question: Where was I? Because I couldn't possibly be where I thought I was. That was crazy. Right?