Rage and Ruin | 2

3 | 5

A R L O

      I was pulled from sleep in the middle of the night. Opening my eyes, I searched the darkness of my room for what had awoken me so suddenly. Nothing was out of place and no one but me was in my room, so why was my heart pounding so fast?

      When I sat up in my bed, I knew what it was. I hardly had enough time to rush to the bathroom and open the toilet seat before I was vomiting up the entire contents of my stomach. After retching a few unfortunate times, I finally sat back and rested my sweaty face in my hands.

      Now that I'd thought about it, I hadn't been feeling very well lately, but I'd just thought that it was because of the copious amounts of junk food I ate on the daily.

      With a cool towel, I wiped my hot forehead. It seemed that my body temperature couldn't decide between being hot or cold so it settled for both at the same time.

      Leaning over the toilet bowl, I began to hurl again. I held my abdomen as my stomach emptied.

      When I was done, I focused on my breathing, refusing to vomit any more. My lungs filled with air over and over again and I closed my eyes. A string of unintelligible thoughts went through my brain.

      What was wrong with me? Well, other than the obvious things.

      The sickly exhaustion I'd been feeling slowly went away as I sat on the tile bathroom floor, my arms wrapped around my knees.

      Finally, when the energy returned to my limbs, I got to my feet. Hunching over the sink, I splashed cold water over my face. It both woke me up and brought me further out of the hazy confusion that always came with being ill.

I looked up at myself in the mirror, water rivulets running down my face. All my life, I'd always been pale but now, my face was pure white. The only coloring I had at the moment were the dark circles under my eyes. Weariness laid in my gray eyes as they drooped from my unintentional lack of sleep.

Running a hand through my hair, I made the wet strands stand up, away from my forehead. Needless to say, I looked awful. Hurling out your innards didn't do wonders for your general appearance.

I was about to make my way back out into my room when the pain in my stomach struck. My abdominal muscles ached from the work they'd just done. I wrapped my arms around my skinny body, noting how my ribs jutted out against my chest. It was yet another side effect of being kept in the laboratory for my entire life.

I closed my eyes for a moment, not wanting to remember those times. I was beyond grateful to be free here, where small luxuries like warm showers, the sounds of birds chirping and food other than tasteless sludge existed and were readily available to me. It was still strange that those things were considered normal and basic necessities by other people when I'd been denied them my entire life. I'd hardly even known that the outside world existed until the ONNT had saved me. In fact, I was still discovering things about the world that even most small children knew.

Feeling much better, I went back into my room. I slid back into the cold bed. Sitting there for a moment, I listened to the others' breathing for a moment. Delphinium, Jaxon and Jake were gone on some ruinous mission so there were less than usual, but it still comforted me to know that my teammates were here and that I wasn't alone.

Laying back in my bed, I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.