AN - Okay, so. This is the first fan fiction I've written, EVER. So, I'm welcome to feedback. Please review so that I know people are reading this and I need to post more. Thanks! -xBITEmark
Preface
I should not have come walking. I was not up for a charade. Doing my best to look calm and peaceful, I turned my collar up against the wind pelting my back. I shoved my hands in my pockets and put my head down, hoping it looked like the wind was bothering me.
"Oops, I'm sorry," I after I bumped into a man carrying a grocery bag. He dropped the bag and I bent down immediately to help pick his items up. "I wasn't watching, the winds so cold! I hope I didn't squish anything."
"Oh, no. It was my fault. I was walking on the wrong side of the sidewalk," He said. We got everything put back in the bag, and departed with a smile. I continued down the sidewalk, trying to get home as fast as I could walking the pace the rest of the centipedes did.
"Leeann Jones?" I turned around.
"Yes?" I asked, searching for the face that had called my name, trying to look as friendly as possible. My heart was thumping in my chest. There was no one left on this Earth that would know my full name besides Russell, and if he was talking then it really was the end of the world.
"Gotcha!" A white cylinder was thrust in my face and a mist was sprayed. I inhaled to ask what was going on, but my thoughts were muddled. Black was tugging at the corner of my thoughts, and I just didn't have to strength to fight it.
"What?" I mumbled weakly. Blackness took over my vision, and I fell into a set of arms.
Chapter 1 - Waking
I shouldn't have gone walking. I can feel it. Oh, I just hit that man, act natural. Ha, not natural. Act like a centipede. Who called my name? What's that. Oh no! Not the centipedes!
Rustle, rustle, rustle. I heard the healer rustling around the room. I took a deep breath, filling my new body's lungs with air. I kept my eyes closed, assessing the other senses for a moment. I heard the rustling, and felt sheets under my hands.
My nose tickled, a smell, my new memory told me. I breathed it, and my nose tickled again. A good smell. This was a new sense. It didn't seem bad to me.
I opened my eyes, and was blinded. I started and shut them again, opening them slowly.
"Good, let them adjust, Sings Like the Wind," a woman's voice said. I opened them and looked at the overly-white room. I looked at the kind woman's face and smiled.
"Hello," I said. This world's natural language felt awkward on my tongue, but flowed freely.
"Hello. I'm your healer, Snowflakes Fall on Ice," she said.
"Ah, a bear?" I asked. She smiled sweetly and nodded.
"I see you were a bear too, what city?" she was looking at a chart, my files, I assumed.
"Crystal Ice Gates," I answered.
"Oh, that was a beautiful city. I visited there once," she said, then the corners of her mouth suddenly pulled down. A frown. "A seeker will be in to see you in a moment."
My eyes widened, "A seeker?"
"We believe your body was part of a small human resistance," the healer said and patted my hand soothingly. "You're not in trouble dear."
I sighed and laid back, flipping through memories. There were a lot of friends, some family, some broken bones, just, normal stuff I supposed. Then I found a memory of a friend long after the invasion, was the human word for it. But it sounded to harsh for what we were really doing, we were helping. They were talking about us though.
"Paul was taken by the centipedes last week. I saw him on one of the news broadcasts," I was telling the girl. Melanie, my mind grasped. She and I were sitting in a bedroom. Leeann glanced out the window revealing a thick line of green masked by a sheet of rain. Beyond the thick, dark, green hedges stretched the flat, red of the Arizona desert. Her father had been worried about flash floods lately, it was the rainy season.
"That's horrible. It's everyone!" Leeann-no, I- told her. She buried her face in her hands, trying to mask her tears. Melanie patted her on the back.
"I know Lincoln, I know." she said. Lincoln? I was Leeann.
"It scares me. What if you or I are next?" I asked.
"I don't know. I just don't know." she said. She sighed. "My uncle had a shelter, he showed the way to my dad once, but I can't remember where it was. He did give me this though," she handed me a picture album with lines etched into the cover.
"Do you put it on a graph?" I asked. I looked at her puzzled.
"I don't know," she told me. "I suppose we just have to find out." She went over to my desk and looked through my numerous art supplies. She found what she was looking for, my book of tracing paper, and walked back over to the bed. She tore out a sheet and traced the lines darkly on it. "If I ever find out what they mean," she leaned in and lowered her voice, "I'll find a way to tell you. I want you to keep this somewhere safe. I know it means something, and the day will come when we will have to figure them out." She folded the piece of paper and put in my hands, they were sweaty from the Arizona humidity.
"Melano," I sighed and looked at her, tears gathering in my eyes. "Dad said we're moving soon, to the city to be with his sister."
Her eyes widened. "You're moving?"
"I don't want to, but he's making us. He says that he doesn't feel safe here and that he thinks it will be easier to blend in in Chicago," I told her. I had my suitcases already in the garage, I'm surprised she hadn't noticed. "If anything happens, he said he'd leave a key in the dip on the top of the door. You can use it whenever you want, okay?"
She nodded, tears gathering in her eyes too. Russell laid on the bed looking up at us with sad eyes. "Russell doesn't want to leave either," she patted his head. I pulled him into my lap and he snuggled against my stomach.
"I'm gonna miss you," I wrapped her in a tight hug. She returned it and we sat on my bed crying.
I opened my eyes when I heard the soft click of short heals walking across a hard surface. I tall, skinny woman that was severely beautiful walked to my bedside.
"Hello, Sings Like the Wind," the woman said. "My name is Petals Stand Tall, or Pat is my human name." She shook my hand.
"Nice to meet you, Petals Stand Tall."
"Now," she sat down and crossed one leg over the other, clasping her hands and resting them in her lap. She had abnormal long, bright, red, fingernails. "We believe that your host may have been in a human resistance before we put you in there," she told me. "Have you found anything that may lead us to where it is?"
"Well," I thought back over the memories I had just explored. "She was in Chicago, with her dad and brother. But they were both caught," I took a breath. "There were some lines, that her friend gave her. To where one resistance was."
"Did they look like this?" she held up a sheet of paper with the same zig-zag lines that Melanie had given me before we left.
"Yes, those are the ones she gave me," I said. The woman put the paper back in her folder.
"That's nothing new. We've been trying to find out what they mean for over a year. Is there anything else, Sings?" she shortened my name. It hadn't seen like such a mouthful in the singing language.
"She ran with her dog…Russell…after her brother and father came home after insertion." I pulled the memories from the back of her head. "She had been to Arizona because that's where the man…she didn't know his name…lived. She couldn't find anything and was headed back here when she got caught. I'm curious, what happened to the dog?" I tacked my own question for the Seeker on at the end.
"The dog is in the animal part of this facility, you can have him back if you wish.. The host's on this planet seem to get very attached to pets. It's perfectly normal for you to want him back," she assured me.
"I would like him back. She was very attached to him," Her - no my - heart ached to see the dog.
"Okay, I'll tell them. Is there anything more?" the way she turned her head illuminated the silver in her eyes, my body cringed at the sight, a leftover reaction.
"No, I'm sorry. That's all there is. She got the lines, from her friend…Melanie. But she never got any more information before she moved."
"Thank you, Sings. Your information is appreciated. If you'll wait here, I'll bring you the dog," she clicked out of the room and a healer took her spot. I hadn't noticed her quietly observing in the corner.
"You're good to go once she brings you Russell, Sings Like the Wind."
"Thank you," I smiled genuinely at her. A few minutes later I heard the clicking oh the Seeker accompanied with the clicking of Russell's nails on the linoleum. I was smiling before they even walked through the door. The Seeker brought him in on a leash, and when he saw me he strained and jumped, barking.
"Sh, boy, sh!" I kneeled down and he was all over me, his butt wagging because he only had a stump of a tail. He licked my face and I laughed at the roughness of his tongue against my cheek. I stood up eventually as the Seeker held out the leash handle for me. Russell was jumping all over me.
"Sit, quiet." I commanded sharply and he sat and stopped barking. He was trained to be on the run. I took the leash from the Seeker, Petals Stand Tall. "Thank you."
"No, thank you," she smiled and led me out of the room.