Karai only tilted Leo's head back a few inches, but it felt as if the world itself was rolling away beneath him. The nausea hit him with the force of an earthquake.
He was going to be sick. He started quivering, and tried desperately to wrench his face free of Karai's vicious grip. All he could manage was a pathetic lurch, and a hell of a lot of trembling, as his stomach cramped in a violent spasm that made him nearly curl up from the pain.
He was so woozy that he nearly fainted, as his stomach clenched up, hard and sharp as a fist.
He whimpered, swallowed hard, but couldn't choke back the vomit. She suddenly released her grip on his neck, gracefully stepping backwards to avoid the filth hitting her boots.
Leo pitched forward, head slamming against the cage bars. He saw stars as he slithered downward. The world blurred from his tears.
He gagged as his stomach cramped and convulsed like a trapped animal. The bile burned its way up through his throat.
Whimpering, he vomited on the floor, unable to even raise his head enough to keep his face out of the puddle of his own filth. He felt the warm, foul mess around his cheek, a strange contrast to the cold metal of the floor.
Karai hissed in disgust, with a scowl. She lightly stepped away from the turtle, watching indifferently as he miserably shut his eyes.
Karai never got the chance to kick the turtle in the plastron, or even insult him.
The convulsion didn't give her the chance.
Leo felt a white spike of heat ripple through his skull, and come to smoulder behind his eyes, felt every muscle in his body clench and contract, heedless of his will. Before the seizure, he was as limp as cloth, unable to move, his whole body laying across the cold floor, dribbling out like spilled water.
And now….oh, God…..it hurt….
His nerve endings were misfiring, almost as if an electric current had been shot through him. His legs, askew and twisted, suddenly arched up, and shot out from his torso, arrow straight and rigid. His fingers curled into claws that dug into his palms, his jaw clenched shut, teeth grinding together so hard that it ached.
He couldn't open his mouth, or shut his eyes, his stare was fixed and dead, as his neck lurched and sent his head clanging against the bars.
His breath was stuck in his throat, heavy as a brick, ramming against his clenched teeth, but unable to get past his locked jaws. He could hear his own wheezing, a sick, garbled sound between a sob and a snarl as he grunted.
He couldn't breathe. His breath was strangled, trapped in his throat by his spasming muscles, by the quaking that kept him sweating and lurching on the floor. He could feel it clawing at his throat, hurting, aching, drowning.
He couldn't breathe.
He couldn't breathe!
His jaws were clenched shut, so hard that he tasted blood and felt the searing ache of bones bending. His whole body twisted, each limb locked up and curled and askew as he could only watch himself convulse.
He would have curled into fetal position, if his shell had allowed the movement. He could see the pale, twisted smear of Karai's face, wan and rising like a moon over him as she screamed out some sort of orders that were shrill and high and unheard.
He heard footsteps falling around him, human hands clamping down on his limbs in the attempt to keep him firmly planted on the ground.
It didn't work. They could keep him down, but they couldn't stop his limbs from twisting in the shackles, or force his rigid limbs to relax, or force his bones to stop lurching as if trying to break free from his skin.
Karai's face was twisted as she stared down at him in shock, as her men frantically unshackled the shaking animal and heaved him out of the cage. They dumped him on the floor, and watched Leo writhe.
Karai watched with a raised eyebrow, wondering if the turtle was experiencing some sort of death throe from the drugs used to sedate him.
She coldly gave the order for the van to stop.
She wanted the turtle to suffer, but that would not be possible if he died en route. He needed treatment of some sort.
Leo shuddered once more, and then went limp beneath their hands. For a long, terrible moment, the turtle lay, pale and twisted, not breathing, though his pulse fluttered erratically.
The turtle grunted, letting out a gurgle filled with spit and vomit from a mouth that was twisted into a scream.
Karai's scowl deepened as she heard Leo's tortured, labored breathing, mouth flung open and eyes empty as a tomb.
She could not tell if he were simply under the effects of a toxic reaction, or dying. It didn't matter. He would not have long, even if he survived the trip to his holding cell.