The Altered.

Chapter XLIX

Miles woke with a pounding head. His entire body was aching.

It took him a while to adjust to the disappearance of the numbness in all of his limbs and to slowly make out the figures standing around him through his swimming vision.

Then, in an untimely rush, everything returned to him, and he shot upright with a mumbled, "Shit," that sounded more like a pained groan than a comprehensible word.

Aaron pat Miles' cheek as if to check he could feel it, and Miles immediately swatted the blond's hands away, trying to slow down all of the confusing thoughts leaking into his head.

When Miles could finally grit out something coherent all he said was, "Are they gone?"

He was referring to the Altered, of course, and he already knew the answer. They had to be gone, else his group wouldn't all be hovering nervously around him. Where he'd just sat up from was the place he'd hit the ground previously beneath the Altered person. Every bone in his body was aching from the fall.

"Well," Percy started, glancing over his shoulder at the four bodies sprawled on the concrete not too far away. "Yeah."

"Did you kill them all?"

"No!" Lia jumped in. "Only one of them is dead. The rest are unconscious. For now. And the one that's dead, we didn't -"

"You didn't kill him," Miles muttered, closing his eyes and pressing the cool back of his hands against them. "Got it. Angelina did."

"Look, I know you just woke up," Aaron said, "but can you walk? We really can't hang around."

"Yeah. Just - help me up, would you?" The last thing Miles felt like doing was getting up and trudging back to the library. Though the distance was short, when everything hurt, no distance was ideal. "But when we get back to the library, I'm going to sleep."

Aaron took Miles' hand and tugged him to his feet with as much care as he could manage. "You just slept for fifteen minutes."

"On the fucking concrete, Aaron. Would you like to sleep on the concrete for fifteen minutes and see how you feel afterwards?" He dropped Aaron's hand and lifted his own hand to the back of his head, where the most pain was coming from. He wasn't bleeding there, thankfully, but there was still a stinging gash on his cheek that was deep enough to be still bleeding and hurting.

"Do you need help walking?" Aaron asked.

"Does it look like I need help walking?" Miles was giving it his all to stay upright and keep his knees from wobbling.

"Honestly? Yes."

"You're fucking blind, Aaron. 'Cause I don't. Get your eyes checked."

"You two," Lia said, tone sharp, "need to stop carrying on like an old married couple."

"And you, shut up."

"Hey," snapped Percy, attention only having just been caught. "Don't speak to her like that." When Miles shot him a furious glare he added, "Don't speak to anyone like that. Can you watch your language?"

"Can you -" Miles started mimicking Percy, but was interrupted.

"Oh, very funny, Miles," said Aaron, sounding incredibly bored. "Ha ha. Why don't you just lay down and go to sleep right now? I'd rather drag you back to the library than have to deal with your big mouth for the rest of the way."

"You don't want to deal with my mouth?" Miles flashed a big grin, wrapping both of his arms around one of Aaron's arms and resting his sore head sleepily on the boy's shoulder. "How 'bout I sleep right here?"