Summary: My version of what happened after Alkali Lake.
Disclaimer: I only own Jinx "Whiplash" Espinoza and this plot line.
Prologue
Dead. I knew I was dead, or at least as close to it as one could be. My mind and body were twisted and ripped, flesh, bone and sinewy muscle shredded. The warm, soft cotton fabric of my hospital style robe was bloodstained, ripped and waterlogged beyond any hope of recognition.
I was drifting, somewhere in the middle of Alkali Lake. My home, if one could call their prison home. It felt like I had been drifting for all eternity. There was a sharp shooting throb in my mind, both physical pain from whatever blow my head had received and the residual psychic pain from hearing the final desperate thoughts of everyone in the base. And the other; the unknown mind that connected with mine for one brief second, before being silenced. This pain kept my eyes firmly shut, but I could tell, on some primal level, that it had been three days. Three days adrift in the middle of this icy lake. Three days without food, and more water than one person could ever need.
The icy grip of death began to clutch tighter at my blood-soaked throat, when there was a rough scratching against the splintered desktop I was floating on. I ignored the throbbing pain in my head and forced my eyes open. I was five, maybe six, feet from dry, or relatively dry, land.
I sacrificed myself to the pain that was coursing through my entire body and raised my right hand. I quickly flicked my right wrist, and a faint golden light emerged and formed into a rope. I flicked my wrist once more and wrapped the golden rope around a tree trunk. With a tremendous amount of effort, I pulled myself to land.
The side of the desktop hit a rock and I was flipped off it and onto the snow covered ground. I lay there, facedown, drained of life and power. I breathed in, trying to recollect myself. Off in the distance, I heard the whine of a jet engine, and I drew a deep, ragged breath, knowing it would be my last. But I did not know that, soon, I would draw another breath as something more than Jinx "Whiplash" Espinoza.
