Megin Levin's POV J

Chapter 6

I yelped as the ground suddenly disappeared underneath me. Then it got dark. I felt the incredibly uncomfortable feeling of falling, and then I was being dropped on my butt. My teeth clicked together and I was lucky I didn't take a chunk of my tongue. Before I could get my bearings something heavy, goopy, and stinking was thrown on me, instantly hardening and holding me to where I was. I instinctively tried to jerk away from it, only succeeding in hitting my head on a cold concrete wall. Ouch.

"Oh, that's just perfect." A familiar male voice said to my left. Kevin. I looked over and saw him held against the same wall with Level 6 tech. Where had they gotten that? He didn't look too beat up, just tired and extremely pissed off, in the same grease monkey T-shirt and jeans he always had on, courtesy of his I.D. mask. I was surprised that they hadn't taken it from him.

"Wha' happen?" I was disoriented from my fall and the smell was making my eyes water. God it smelled like something ate crap then vomited it up. I think some of it got in my hair.

"Another plumber!" a voice that sounded like it seriously needed to hawk a lugi said. I looked toward it, and 'it' turned out to be a DNAlien. Wow, I was amazing at this rescuing stuff. Not. "Well you were stupid to come here alone! Now we have three plumbers!" It let out a mucus-y laugh.

"I'm surprised that you can count that high. Next you'll be reading. I'm so proud of you!" I said. That stopped its laughter pretty quick. It came over to where I was pinned in an incredibly awkward yoga position with my knees, and hit me. I gotta say it hurt, and my vision got blurry for a minute.

"Nice," I forced out when my jaw would cooperate. "Hitting a defenseless fourteen-year-old girl that's glued to a wall. We really are big and bad today, aren't we?" It snarled at me and left with another gross vomit-thing on my chest, right at the bottom of my neck, so I couldn't breathe with out smelling the oozy warmth. "Oh nasty." I choked out.

"Oh jeez, Megin, why are you here?" Kevin asked from my left. I turned my head to scowl at him.

"What does it look like genius? I was trying to rescue you and your girlfriend." He rolled his eyes.

"Can I just say you're doing an amazing job?"

"Shut up."

"Is Ben here too?" This time it was Gwen, from the other side of the wall. I listened for aliens quickly and then said yes.

"Yeah, I lost him on my way down." I tried breathing through my mouth, but that only filled my mouth with disgustingly warm air. I wanted to throw up myself.

"Nothing to do but wait and see if he finds us." Kevin said. I was jealous of his nice, clean, non- disgusting, high-tech holdings. Guh…

****

What felt like forever later, we heard a commotion down the hall. Well, not really, it just sounded like a lot of gross phlegmy talking and then a fight. An alien came to our cells, a flash of green light, and then it was Ben. Gwen came in after he opened our doors carefully releasing Kevin, then me. I probably wouldn't be able to wear these clothes ever again.

"Come on, someone's bound to come check on us." Gwen urged and we began to run down hallways.

"How did you guys get here?" Kevin asked. "We can use the same tunnel to get out."

"No we can't. We used the tracker in your cell to get down here, but now that you're with us it'll do us no good." I said.

"So how do we get out?" He asked. Ben looked at Gwen.

"Do you think you could retrace the mana trial we left on our way down?" he asked. Gwen nodded.

"Just come here. It might be a little hard to see your different trails so just hold onto each other." My eyes widened a little at that.

"Um, you sure we have to? Can't you just follow his trail?" All I could think about was our kiss. I definately didn't want to touch him right now, feeling a blush creep up my cheeks.

Kevin rolled his eyes. "C'mon Meg, he doesn't have cooties."

Gwen nodded. "There are, like, a million trails here. The signal will be stronger and we'll get out faster if I can follow one reinforced trail." I gave a little grumble but obediently took Ben's hand. He looked almost as uncomfortable as I did as he hooked his fingers through mine. Gwen put her hands on our shoulders and the strangest thing happened. I suddenly felt Ben. Not just with my hand, but with my mind, like we were linked. It was insane, the intimacy of it. There was no way I could hide anything from him right now, and the same with him. I could so easily pluck information from his brain like I was picking cherries.

Megin? I flinched as his voice in my head called my name. What happened? he asked.

How am I supposed to know? She's your cousin. I thought. Jeez, he didn't get it? Gwen was using our mana trail and that turned out in us being temporarily psycically linked (and they say that I didn't learn anything from Buffy the Vampire Slayer). Ugh, he was such a simple-minded-

Hey, I can hear you! He thought.

Quit picking around in my head!

What else am I supposed to do? You're not talking to me.

I didn't hear an apology towards Kevin so, yeah, I'm not talking to you. I felt him sigh mentally. This was getting old fast, and it was just creepy. I didn't like it when his tongue was on my mind, and now his actual mind was on my, um, mind.

Oh, so my exceptional kissing skills are on your brain?

Stop that! And apologize!

Just as long as it doesn't include all of the perks my apology to you did.

Ew, that's just weird.

Don't act like you didn't love it. We both know you did.

Oh please, you liked it so much more. You were wanting to do that for a long time! I know your head, remember? I wasn't lying. that's really what was in his head. He had liked me for a long time now, even when he was with Julie. It was all right here, why he liked me and the way he saw me...

Stop that!! Ben's mental voice shouted.

I can't help it! You think so loud! But...is all of that true? Like, how you like my powers? And-

Suddenly the connection was cut off. Like, literally, ripped away. It was a little disconcerting, like wearing hoop earrings, and then someone tears it out.

Ouch.

My eyes snapped open, and we were surrounded by aliens. We had also moved, really close to were we had come in, and now we were swarmed with Uglies. Nasty.

We immeadiately spead out working like a machine. I dropped to the floor and absorbed the concrete, using my position to trip up three aliens on their merry way toward me. I sprung up and threw my leg out to another, feeling like I broke it's jaw. Something grabbed my arm and pulled, hard. I turned and punched...Kevin. Whoops.

"Ah! God, Megin, calm down!" He tugged at my arm, pulling me toward the door.

"Where is Ben and Gwen?"

"They already got out, now let's go!" There was just one problem. There were freaking DNAliens on all sides! "Great." he muttered. He reshaped his hands into a hammer and a mace. "Cover my back, I'll clear us a path." and he had at it. I trailed after him, kncoking away anything that tried to jump him. We finally got to the door when something else grabbed me from behind. Then another, then another, and then I was held on all sides. Thrashed and hit, and I'm pretty sure I crushed a few faces, but for every single one that I made let go of me, two more grabbed on. I don't scream often, but when I do I really let it out.

"Kevin! Kevin!" I kept calling, but all I could see was disgusting yellow, liver-spotted skin. A space above me cleared, and I felt a shock relief. But it turned out, they were about to place one of those weird, octopus-like, alien infectors.

The ones that made humans into DNAliens. I screamed louder.

"Kevin! Oh God, Kevin, help me! Ben! God, Ben help-"

"Shut up insignifigant girl!" One of them covered my mouth with a putird smelling hand. I sqeezed my eyes shut and hoped to God it wouldn't hurt...

There was a flash of green light behind my eyelids, a burst of heat, then all of the hands holding me roughly fell away, and were replaced with strong arms and a strong smell of sulfer. I opened my eyes to look up at Swampfire. Then my adreneline ran dry, and I blacked out.