People!

I know I promised to do a summary of any of 11's POV chapters as they tend to be kind of boring, but to be honest, if this bores you and the rest of the story doesn't, you should probably start asking yourself the serious questions in life.

Now enjoy.

Or don't.


CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: BLINKING LIGHTS

11

The world is upside down.

The.

World.

Is.

Upside.

Down.

How'd that happen? Did I do that?

Someone's shaking my shoulder. Fiercely.

I try turning my head to see who it is, but somehow I can't.

That's odd. I never had problem with turning my head.

I'm in a car. At least I think it's a car, I've never seen one from the inside. Only from a distance. Big, black, shiny cars rolling through the front gate of the Ashwood Estates.

This one doesn't seem that big, though. Not from the inside at least.

Maybe it's a bad car.

That would explain the shattered windows. And the dents and holes in its side. Or why it's not moving.

Something cold is stinging me in the side, and when I scratch the spot, I feel hot liquid running down my fingers. Alarmed I pull away my hand. It's red.

"Joanne, this one's still alive, I think," I hear a man's voice shout. It sounds oddly high, not Mogadorian at all. Kind of like the humans in the movies we sometimes watch at school.

Movies about how we evil humans are. Educational movies.

Someone's shaking my shoulder again.

"Hey," the same voice says right next to me. "Hey, kid. You okay?"

What's going on? Why can't I move my head.

"Hey, are you okay? Can you hear me?"

I can't feel my left leg. It's a strange thing to say, because if you can't feel your left leg, well, how can you feel that you are not feeling your left leg?

"Joanne, come quick! This one's bleeding. Really bad."

If I didn't have any legs, would I not feel them? And what if I actually have a third leg, but I just can't feel it?

"Really, really bad! Holy shit! We'll need to treat her right here."

Maybe I have a thousand legs, but I can't use them because I can't feel them. Maybe I have a thousand arms. Maybe I even have some completely new body parts I don't know about because I just can't feel them.

"Joanne, we need to get her out right now! If we don't stop the bleeding she'll die."

If I were to discover a completely new limb, what would I name it?

"Alright, umm, you take her hand, and I'll take her shoulders."

Someone's grabbing me by the shoulders.

Truchtzen, that would make a nice name. Truchtzen, that's got a ring to it. Hey, look at my new Truchtzen. I just discovered it.

"Her leg is stuck under the front seat. No, the left one."

It's a shame I can't feel my Truchtzen, though.

"Wait, I'll try to free it."

Why is the world upside down? It has been upside up for as long as I remember. Which is from the moment I was born.

"Just a second."

A sudden sharp pain shoots through my left leg. I groan. Guess I do feel my legs it after all.

"There we go."

I suppose that means I also don't have any extra Truchtzen. Oh well.

"On the count of three."

I'm being dragged out of the car, head first. It takes me a second to realize not the world is upside down but the car was flipped on its back.

Wow. This is not just a bad car, it must be the very worst car in the entire world.

As the jolly sound of a siren disrupts the rest of the noises around me, I suddenly notice how loud my surroundings are. Odd. It's never loud in the Ashwood Estates. The loudest it ever gets is when my next door neighbour, Commander Allry, has a cold and snores all night long.

But this is noise on a whole new level.

Sounds of multiple car engines, a crowd of people mumbling and whispering, and this siren blurt in my ears. It almost hurts, that's how loud it is.

"Ah, good, the ambulance."

They stop dragging me and lay me on my back, cold asphalt below me. I stare straight forward, up into the dark sky. There's a tiny airplane crossing my field of view. Small lights periodically blink on each of its wings, left, right, left, right.

The sky is deep black, except for a couple of lonely stars shine down on me, like small eyes, silently watching my every move.

It must be night by now. And it was early morning when Kelly and I had paid our visit to the General's meeting room. Which means I've been out for almost a whole day.

What happened during that time?

Left, right, left… As if it's trying to send me a signal. Nivi, it could be saying. Nivi, where are you? What's going on? Where's Kelly?

I flinch. Why hadn't I thought of that? Where's Kelly? Is she alright? All I remember is hearing her voice crying for help. Then stopping.

"Kelly?" I shout – well, it sounds more like a hoarse rooster cawing, really. "Kelly, are you here?"

I sit up, and my head immediately starts spinning and twisting. Dizzily I take in my surroundings. Flashing lights, colourful posters and advertisements everywhere, big, metal houses that reach high up in the sky with windows bigger than a fully grown up Mog.

Wait, this isn't the Ashwood Estates.

Crowds of people standing in a large circle around me and the burning flipped car.

Humans! Not Mogs, humans!

A man and a woman wearing a blue uniform are kneeling beside my left leg, wrapping it in white cloth that quickly turns red. My leg is oddly twisted in a strange angle, as if it were trying to run away from me. No sign of Kelly anywhere.

"Kelly," I caw again. "Kelly, where are you?"

The man looks up at me. "No, no, you can't sit up now, you have to lay down. You've lost a lot of blood," he says and helps me lay down again.

"Blood?" I mumble.

"Yes. Blood. There's been an accident."

"Accident?" I mumble. The man sighs and rolls his eyes.

"Could you maybe not repeat everything I say, thank you very much?"

"It's the shock," the woman says, still wrapping my leg in cloth. "A bit more patience. It's a miracle she's even conscious with the amount of blood she lost, let alone can speak."

"Sorry. Long day."

"Is there anyone we can call?" the woman at my leg continues. "Family, boyfriend, anyone who would want to know what happened to you? Anyone missing you?"

"Kelly," I say. "Call Kelly!"

"We need an address or a phone number," the man says.

"Call Kelly," I repeat. "I need to talk to Kelly!"

"Kelly, is that the other girl?"

I immediately sit back up. "She's here? Is she alright?"

"She's… not hurt, if that's what you mean. But she's behaving strangely, talking crazy stuff," the man answers.

"Must be the shock," the woman adds, shaking her head.

"What kind of crazy stuff?" I ask, and as if on cue, I hear Kelly yelling in her normal commanding voice.

"No, I obviously don't have a driver's license. That's why I wasn't driving the damn car."

I look around, having to turn my whole upper body because I still can't seem to move my head, and spot her on the other side of the flipped car, talking to another man in blue uniform.

Well, not actually talking. Screaming probably describes it better.

Nonetheless, I'm happy to see her.

"How was I even supposed to be driving when I was sitting in the back the whole time? I mean, you even found me in the backseat."

"Well, someone had to be driving," the man replies without looking up from a small notepad in his hands.

"Obviously," Kelly replies in an annoyed tone. The man frowns at her, then motions her to continue.

"Two men were sitting in the front. One was driving," she sighs.

The man scribbles on his notepad.

"And where these two men now?"

"Dead," Kelly gives back and the man stops writing.

"Dead?"

"Yeah, you know, dead, as in 'stopped living'," Kelly explains impatiently. "It's what happens when you ask too many stupid questions," she adds with a glance at the man's notepad.

The man looks at her for a second, then continues taking notes.

"So, can we go now or what?" Kelly says after a while, but the man shakes his head.

Kelly presses her lips together and lets out an impatient sigh. She's not used to being denied anything, and I can tell she's not liking it very much. No. Not at all.

The crowd of humans around us on the other hand seems to really be enjoying themselves. Some of the, are laughing at Kell's conversation with the man, others are taking pictures of the burning car with their smartphones.

I've never had a smartphone myself, but we learned about them in school. 'Little devils of the modern age', our teacher Miss Grakhl had called them. Humans, she'd said, use them to communicate with each other. Phones dictate their every day lives, and some people would rather die than have to spend a day without one. I have no idea what she could have meant by that, though. How could anyone possibly let such a small insignificant device control his life? I mean, humans can't actually be this simple minded, right?

"Whoah, Joanne, did you see her side?" the man next to me says and I turn my attention back to him. He's standing to my right, pointing at the exact same spot I felt the cold stinging earlier.

The woman finishes patching up my leg and gives me a reassuring nod, as if to say everything's going to be fine. Then she walks over to the man and takes a look at where he's pointing.

I watch the corners of her mouth slowly drop down until her lips form a perfect semicircle.

If the mouth makes semicircle that points upwards, it usually means people are happy, Dad had once told me. A line can mean many different things, but a semicircle pointing downwards means people are sad, or angry. Or both.

And this woman's semicircle, umm, I mean, her mouth is definitely pointing downwards.

"Where did you say the holes in the side of the care came from again?" she asks me with a suspicious look on her face.

"I… don't know," I reply, because I seriously don't know. The woman doesn't seem to believe me, though.

"Trevor, you'll want to see the see this," she shouts over at the guy who's talking… being yelled at by Kelly. The man looks up from his notepad, nods in our direction and starts shoving Kelly over.

"Do you even know who you're dealing with?" I hear her shout as they approach us. "My father is… was a really powerful man!"

The man rolls his eyes and stops next to the woman. When he looks down at me, a surprised whistling noise escapes his nose. "Holy shit, what happened to her?"

"Multiple bullet wounds," the woman replies, pointing at my right side. "Two in the hips – bullets probably still inside – one in her arm, went through cleanly, and one graze shot to the neck."

Bullets. I knew something had stung me.

"It's a miracle she's even alive right now. The seat we found her in was soaked in blood," she continues and motions towards the car. "Well, at least that explains the exploded gas tank. Bullet must have hit it."

"Alright, who the hell are you and why the hell were you shot at?" the man turns back to Kelly, who had gone oddly pale from the moment the woman had started explaining the wounds in my side.

She quickly looks away from me. Almost as if Kelly wasn't as used to seeing blood as she always says after all. But no, that's impossible, Kelly is the toughest person I know.

Maybe she's just not feeling good after the accident. Probably.

"I already told you," she hoarsely says. "We were trying to run away from… a gang. They were after us because they thought we had killed their leader."

"Why would they think you killed their leader?" the other man asks.

"Oh, that's because we did," Kelly smiles, slowly regaining her composure. The man with the notepad shakes his head.

"You said there were two other men. Where are they now?" he demands and Kelly puffs out an annoyed sigh.

"Are you deaf? I told you, they're dead!"

"Where are their bodies then?"

"Gone, of course. Where else would they be?"

"There were traces of white powder on the front seat… Were you guys doing drugs?"

"That's ash you idiot."

"Careful, young lady, or I'm going to have to…" the man begins, but Kelly cuts him off.

"Listen, officer, your good cop bad cop things ain'g gonna work on me, so why don't we all just walk away from this and no one gets hurt?"

Yup, that's the Kelly I know. Laughs from the crowd follow as the two men and the woman all stare at her in what seems to be complete astonishment about her threat to hurt them.

"I'll take that as a yes," she says, and kneels down next to me.

"Hey Nivi, good to see you… alive, and all," she says with a quick glance down at my wounded side. "I hate to rush you," – lie – "but we need to move before their reinforcements arrive."

"Reinforcements?" I ask. That doesn't sound good.

"Yeah, reinforcements. Things got a bit rough after I… after may father… after you blacked out," her voice cracks and she clears her throat. "Apparently the soldiers at Ashwood weren't exactly happy to find out we'd… you know. Anyway, some of them followed us when we fled out of the base. We managed to get rid of them, but it cost us my two most loyal soldiers and the car." She shrugs and stands back up, leaving the details of how it happened to my imagination. I gulp. "They'll send reinforcements to go after us, I'm sure of it. That's why we need to get going, right now. Can you walk?"

She grabs me by the shoulder and starts pulling me to my feet. I groan in pain. The woman immediately steps in and pushes Kelly away.

"Are you crazy? She can count herself lucky if she can ever walk again after this kind of injury. And you two aren't going anywhere, anyway. You have some questions to answer at the police station first. Now, where's that damn ambulance for the poor girl? She's dying here."

Yeah, where's my ambulance? I thought I'd heard the sirens quite a while ago.

Just then, a car door slams shut and heavy steps over drown out the noises of the crowd. Then, as if being pulled apart by two strings, the crowd parts and makes way for a group of men in long, white coats who are quickly marching towards us. But even without the crowd suddenly parting, the newly arrived men would stand out between all those humans, simply because they must be at least one head taller than anyone of the surrounding people.

To the surrounding pedestrians, the men must appear like the strangest team of doctors they've ever seen. Every single one of them is wearing an oversized pair of sunglasses and some sort of hat, and then there are the weapons in their belts. Guns, knives, swords, grenades, you name it.

Yes, these humans must think this is the weirdest doctor task team ever.

Kelly and I, on the other hand, know better. We know that the hats are there to hide their tattoos. They need the sunglasses so no one sees their big, purple eyes. And they carry their weapons not for protection, but for aggression. Their only purpose is aggression. These men live to kill.

And we are their targets.

"Finally, that took you…" the woman begins, but the men just shove her aside with apparently no effort at all. As if they were not from this world.

They stop to lean over me, five or six of them, and I freeze.

"Did someone call for an ambulance?" one of them snarls and smiles at me with his big, white, razor-sharp Mog teeth.


Hey everybody!

Blah blah yet another chapter blah blah don't know when the next one will come out blah blah.

Arctic Blue: Brevity is the sould of wit ;)

Zack: Thanks, Zack, I'm really happy there are people enjoying any of this. If you like it, that really means a lot to me, but I can't convince myself to actually like this.

Please do review, it will make you a better person, trust me, it works.

That's all for this chapter, thanks for reading, and have a good time until we meet againnnnnnnnnnn.

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And yes, I do have a cellphone myself. It's not a smartphone, though, it's a really old Nokia with a black and white screen, so yes, I do get to say such things. #hipster