93.5 - Dylan's Sacrifice (Horror Version)
Hidden Chapter/Reimagining by Roxanne
Setting: Alternate retelling of the second half of the final chapter (chapter 93) in Maximum Ride: Forever
Premise: When Dylan offers it to her, Max agrees that she wants Fang alive, however she can have him. Dylan pushes Max out of the room instead of letting her watch and performs his mad-scientist self-electrification maneuver, results TBD.
POV: Intentionally vague, until it's not
His sharp intake of breath slashed through the silence. His lungs were cracking, they were stone, they were on fire, they hurt and he could barely push the first breath away so he could take a second.
His eyes were glued shut.
His fingers were cold, so cold, but his heart galloped in his chest.
Galloped like a stampede of elephants wearing army boots.
Blood rushed through his limbs, muscles cramping and warming and burning hot, and all he could think was this:
I'm not dead.
I'm not dead.
I'm not dead.
He was supposed to be dead. He knew it was coming, and he had accepted it.
He could even remember the moment everything shorted out.
He'd expected it.
His second breath was a massive, gasping, gusty wheeze through his swollen esophagus. His vision exploded, flashes of light blotting out the room around him and then popping into nothingness.
There was a cable, still crackling with electricity, balanced on his chest. He scraped it off clumsily, arm swinging to the side, and his hand dangled in empty air. It felt alien at the end of his arm. His fingers, too long for his body. Everything felt too long. Was that what almost-dying did to a person? Stretched them out until they snapped back into life?
White fabric was draped across his torso. How did he end up under these covers?
How did he end up on this bed?
His third breath was wobbly, but measured. The ice in his lungs had almost thawed. He was starting to feel incredibly dizzy. He dragged the covers off his body and sat up, everything aching. He pitched forward, off the bed.
Max, he thought. I need to find Max. It didn't work. I need-
His bare foot landed on something firm, something with some give. It was warm.
Bare feet? Hadn't he been wearing shoes?
He looked down.
He saw the body.
Curly queues of black smoke lazily rose from crushed brown feathers, filling the lab with an oily, gamy, meaty smell. Pale hair, frosted across a burned scalp, shimmered in the dim underground light. A bloated tongue filled a slack-jawed mouth. Piercing blue eyes stared sightlessly at the wall.
His eyes.
Dylan bent in half around his stomach and wretched, dry-heaving until bitter yellow dribbled from his mouth and slimed across the limp hand at his feet. He stumbled backward into an instrument cart, metal clattering like a cotillion of cymbals, and pivoted at the waist until he was braced over it. Eyes pinched shut. Breathing hard. Coughing on his sick.
When he finally dared to look, his reflection in the polished steel stared back at him with fury he'd never known.
With black eyes.
Author's Note: I might be misremembering, but I think I've got it right, that this was the chapter that started it all. MR:F was so deeply unsatisfying that my imagination wanted to grab it and strangle it until something better resulted, and this was what came out. I shared it with Lustrex, we got excited about the possibilities, and we had a couple of months of insane brainstorming. Some of the concepts we came up with, you can see published in this story. We have other concepts, but this is the last unpublished chapter that we have written up. I'd like to say there might be more to come, but I think that's unlikely.
Stay safe, keep writing, and let your imagination run wild.
-Rox
