Chapter Six
Iggy started to fly slower, his wings and muscles ached from having to carry Fail. They were probably in Georgia by now, and he was getting tired, fast. Fail noticed this and spoke up once he started to drop in altitude.
"You need to rest!" She shouted up to him.
"No, I'm fine" Iggy replied, forcing his tired wings to keep on beating. He heard a growl emit from Fail's throat
"No, you need rest, the ramifications are mine to suffer and I don't want you to drop enough altitude so I ram into a tree, better yet, a Semi!"
"Ugh… fine" Iggy replied in his own growl.
The drop of altitude was quick, especially with Fail shouting if he was to close to the highway or in an open space. Eventually he landed in a small clearing in a forest, so how Fail described it. He dropped to the ground in exhaustion once he felt he was close enough to earth.
"You were the one shot, I thought you'd be the first to go under the fatigue line, how do you last?" He could not see Fail shrug and grin.
"It's what I am, I can heal amazingly fast, cuts and bruises can heal in an hour or less, bullet wounds can heal in about twenty hours and my bones are practically like steel."
"Is the bullet still in you"
"Well…yeah but-"
"Just get it out" Iggy said, sitting up and looking in the direction where Fail's voice came from.
He heard a few grunts of pain as Fail worked the bullet out of her shoulder, which ached from both bullet and being held by the wrist from a person above for a couple hours. The last budge and the bullet was out.
"Aha!" She said, examining the bullet in her hand "It's from a handgun, Caliber to be exact"
"How do you know so much about guns?" Iggy asked, receiving an uneasy grin from Fail. She put an arm behind her head and looked away from Iggy's pale blue eyes.
"I've experience with them, I've lived in School and in Itex for all my fourteen-year-old life. I've been guarded heavily by guns so I get to know gun types and recognize bullets and-" she shut her mouth, scowling and studying the suddenly fascinating ant mound a few feet away from her.
"And… what?" he asked, leaning his head on his hand that was propped up on his knee. He frowned, the aura coming off of Fail said to him that she was basically having a flashback, her silence was awkward and he could tell that she had looked away from him.
"What happened?"
"It's just" Fail rubbed a hand on the back of her neck "I've been shot a lot in my life, most in critical areas" Iggy froze at this. He looked at her, or, at least tried to.
"You mean you've been shot, perhaps in the heart, and you've survived?"
"Guess you could put it that way. I-I just can't really… die" she hugged her legs to her chest and rested her head on her knees, still looking at the ant hill "Well technically I've died before, once when they were getting a bullet out of my head, twice from a bullet to my lung, but so far I've healed from all of them except-" She broke off, her voice cracking with uneasiness.
"Except… except what?" Iggy's voice grew louder, in frustration that she was hiding from him, hiding her history, hiding the scars of her past life.
"Except… when they tried silver, I'm like their practice dummy, they try all these different things and use them against me to see if I heal or not. They've brought both metal and wooden daggers into my blood stream but- then they tried a silver dagger, slit my wrist, and it didn't heal till two weeks after, I didn't die since they took care of me, fed me blood and fluids. I've been stabbed by ten wooden daggers and shot with fifteen wooden bullets, I've been wounded by five metal daggers and 'incidentally' wounded by twenty metal bullets, one dagger of silver, and they discovered how I could die. It's sort of like the werewolf myth of silver." She said this slowly, choosing the words to say.
She looked at Iggy, who had his blind eyes wide when she revealed her past.
"I'm their shooting target, I'm a victim, just like you and your flock, but you escaped. They wanted me, wanted me to join the Erasers and try to hunt you down, and bring you back. They haven't tried reeducating me till last week, I'm scheduled to be reeducated in three weeks. I'm to become a victim of brain wash and then your flock would be my victim" A tear rolled down her cheek. Her voice cracked at the end of her speech, not from frustration, or anger, but fear.
Iggy listened to her, knowing that she had never said anything like that to anyone in the world, and why had she just told him, just told a blind person who can't even see what color hair she had, he didn't know. At first, he felt shock, of the way she was tested in both the School and Itex H.Q. Then he felt an emotion he hadn't felt in a long time, but he recognized it, and recalled its name, pity. He looked at her, in her general direction, wishing that, for once, he could actually see, see her, see tears of the past, but that was impossible.
"You were those things" he said "You said you are those things, now, you were those things, there's a difference there" Fail grinned "I guess that's true" she stood up "Rest, I'm going hunting"
Iggy's brain clicked, hunting, hunting with no weapon? That's when he remembered the question he had wanted to ask her.
He opened his mouth to speak but heard her footsteps that began to fade. Another time another day, he thought to himself then I'll ask what she is. He blinked lazily in any direction, before lying down, curling his wings around him. He sighed when he put up his fist as if expecting to feel Gazzy's fist come on top of his own, and thus begin the stacking process the flock made with their fists before they slept. He missed them, dearly, but then wondered, how they were going to react to Fail, a girl with a bullet wound in her shoulder and saying that she was perfectly fine less she was hit with silver.