Indestructible (2 page)

“You must go.”

“Are you even real?” I choked out in desperation.

“Who knows? Who cares?” His lips quirked into a smile. I was an idiot. Of course Adrian couldn’t control this illusion of himself. It was all in my head. I had to…

Before I could finish my thought, the darkness smacked back into me, destroying the kingdom of ice and snow. Adrian’s gray-blue eyes disappeared and I was alone again. The coldness pulled back, but the emptiness inside of me stayed. Was I ever going to wake up?

A loud crash resonated all around me, as if something had exploded. I focused as best as I could on my hearing, certain that whatever I had heard had come from the real world and wasn’t part of any illusion. Adrian had already pulled his element back, so there was no way it was still inside of me.

“Get her!” an unknown female voice yelled.

“No!” Adrian’s voice was filled with panic.

“Kill him if he gives resistance,” the female said matter-of-factly. What the fuck was going on? The woman couldn’t be a doctor because last time I checked doctors didn’t threaten to kill visitors.

“Step away from the girl and nothing will happen to you,” a rough male voice said.

“Who are you? What do you want with her?” Adrian’s voice was the loudest because he was probably standing very close to me.

“That’s none of your business,” the woman snapped. “Now get the fuck out of our way or we will hurt you.”

No, no, no! What was going on? My heart jumped all the way to my throat, slight tremors running through my body. I had to wake up. It was now or never. I had no clue what the mysterious people wanted from me, but it couldn’t be anything good.

Another crash and a couple of thuds and grunts chased away the silence. A gust of warm air flew next to my leg, followed by a cold breeze. What was going on? Once again, I tried to pry my eyelids open without success.

“Do it!” the woman yelled amid the noise of things breaking. A gunshot rang through the room, chilling me to the bone. No! Adrian! No.

I felt my hand twitch.

Chapter 03

It all happened at once. A painful scream escaped my throat, my eyes flew open and my fingers clawed at the sheets underneath me. One half of the room was drenched in the water from the melting ice, the other half littered with charred bits of broken furniture. There was smoke everywhere. The wall to my right had partially collapsed, a huge hole gaping in the middle of it.

Adrian was crouched to my left, his hand pressed against his left shoulder, his fingers coated with blood. A dark-haired man I’d never seen before was sprawled nearby, his massive shoulders protruding through the tight black T-shirt. A woman dressed in a black pantsuit jumped in front of the bed, shaking bits of ice off her long brown hair. Her dark eyes regarded me with curiosity a second before she lunged for me.

I scooted back and tried to get off the bed, but my knees wouldn’t support me, so I rolled to the floor, hitting my head on the edge of the nightstand. Pain erupted at the back of my skull, black spots dancing in my vision, but now wasn’t the time to go back to sleep.

The woman curled her pink lips at me, glancing in the direction of the hole in the wall. Adrian grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet. It took every ounce of my strength to keep myself upward, but I managed.

“Who are you?” I rasped. The noise of multiple feet came from the hall and I knew it was only a matter of time before more people showed up. Judging by the hesitant frown on the woman’s face, the people who were coming weren’t her friends. With one dark look at me, she pointed her gun at the man on the ground and fired. He yelped in surprise, then went still.

“I’ll be coming for you,” she announced, her eyes focusing on my hand, and jumped through the opening in the wall. Adrian moved next to me as if to go after her, but I placed my hand on his right shoulder.

“Are you alright?” I asked. His gray-blue eyes were wide, his mouth slightly open. Blood was still seeping freely from the wound in his shoulder and I wondered whether he was in shock.

“Say something, please. I don’t want this to be another dream.” Even if we’d both almost died, I didn’t want this to be another figment of my tortured imagination. “Adrian!”

He blinked and rushed me, crushing me to his chest, his unhurt arm snaking around my waist. “Ria, thank God!”

“Hey, nice to see you too.” I carefully wrapped my arms around him. Armed men ran inside, their eyes scanning the room for potential threats. I just hoped they didn’t think of Adrian and me as threats.

“There was a woman…” Adrian let go of me and approached one of the men who was the closest to us. “A carrier. She ran.”

“Call the doc,” one of the men yelled as he saw Adrian’s shoulder.

“Ms. Milanez, you’re awake,” someone exclaimed, but I couldn’t see who it was because there were too many people in the room. Some were assessing the damage, others were checking on the dead man on the ground, the rest just looked alert. A beginning of a headache started to form behind my eyes and I had to sit down on the bed.

“Ria, hey, look at me.” Adrian was at my side in a heartbeat, a concerned look on his face.

“Don’t worry about me. I’m fine. It’s just… weird to be awake.” I yawned. “How long was I out?” It was good to be able to feel my own body and move as I wished. I hadn’t even realized how much I missed Adrian’s warm touch until his fingers grazed mine.

“Three months,” he whispered.

“What?” I gaped at him. No, it couldn’t be. A prickly sensation traveled through my arm and I realized there was a needle stuck in my skin. One look at the machinery near the bed told me I’d been connected to it, but I must have ripped myself free. The machinery was broken now anyway. “Three months?” I repeated, shaking my head. No wonder I felt like the walking dead.

Adrian nodded, his eyes softening. “I thought… I thought I lost you.”

“You didn’t. I could hear you, but…” I swallowed past the tears. I’d only lost three months of my life. That wasn’t so bad, right? The nauseous feeling in my stomach told me otherwise.

“Oh God, let me check that!” A nurse rushed toward Adrian, covering his wound with a gauze pad.

“It’s just a scratch,” Adrian said, but allowed her to inspect his shoulder. An elderly man approached me, his green eyes filled with disbelief, his stethoscope ready in his hand.

“I told you she’d come back to me,” Adrian bit out, smirking at the man.

“Yes, you did,” the man said absent-mindedly. “Ria, my name is Dr. Jenkins and I’d like to check your vitals.”

“Sure, go ahead.” I waved my hand at him. I was too weary to complain.

“Welcome back,” Lily said, a smile crossing her face as soon as she laid eyes on me. The smile disappeared when she noticed the dead man on the floor. “Who took him out?”

“Actually, the woman who was with him did it,” I said, wincing as the doctor pressed something cold against my skin. Lily’s eyebrows shot upward.

“I broke his leg,” Adrian said. “She must have realized that and decided it was better to kill him than risk him talking to us.”

“I can’t believe they managed to get inside. They weren’t even supposed to know Ria is here!” Lily chewed on her lips, her arms crossed. “Anything else you noticed? Something that could help us track her?” She kept looking at Adrian, which meant she didn’t think I was reliable enough. Oh well, I probably wasn’t. It had all happened way too quickly for me to process it.

“She has dark hair, dark eyes and I believe she could be a carrier.” Adrian pressed his lips together as the nurse applied an antiseptic to his wound.

“A carrier?” A frown creased Lily’s brow. “Are you sure?”

“No, not really, but she didn’t use an element against me. Only the guy did and I couldn’t feel his element, so he must have been a carrier.”

“But she could have worn an element-blocking bracelet just to be safe around the carrier.”

“It’s an option, yeah.”

“Interesting. Anything else?”

“Umm.” I raised my hand and waved at Lily like a kid at school who wasn’t sure whether she knew the right answer. “She stared at my wrist. It was kind of creepy.” I didn’t even know if that was relevant, but somehow it felt important.

“The bracelet,” Lily said quietly.

“What brac…” I looked down my arm, and surely enough, along with the needle there was also a silver bracelet around my wrist. It was so thin that I barely felt it. “Oh, you mean this one.” I shook my hand and the bracelet jiggled.

“Maybe she was afraid you’d use your element,” Lily mused. “Some people claim they saw you use two or three very powerful elements. I’d be scared too if I thought you were in a coma and found you wide awake instead.”

My head snapped up. “Wait, so you’re telling me everyone knows I have more than one element? That I’m a carrier?”

Lily shook her head. “No, of course not. People talk, but no one has proof. There are rumors that you simply used a lot of your fire or that someone helped you.”

“But if someone had helped me, the elements would have canceled each other or at least tried to cancel each other.” If what I’d heard was true and the Element Preservers Organization no longer existed, then it didn’t really matter what people thought about me.

“Yes, but some people think you are special. They have a hard time believing you are a carrier since they know the government would never allow you to be the president,” Lily said, not bothering to lower her voice. Did that mean she trusted everyone in the room? That was surprising for Lily. What else had happened while I was out?

“Right. You’ll have to explain that to me later,” I said. “So are we at war?”

“No, we’re not.” Lily grinned. “Surprising, isn’t it?”

“You could say that.” I took a deep breath.

“The whole world is judging the actions of our government. They tried to cover the whole thing up, but they failed.” Lily’s good mood quickly disappeared. “But we have other problems. People are frightened for their lives and families, both carriers and elementals. There are movements that want to eradicate everyone who doesn’t agree with them…” She sighed. “I won’t bother you with this right now. You’ll see it for yourself.”

So that was what not at war meant for Lily. Great.

“Everything fine, doc?” Lily asked.

“Surprisingly yes. I’d like to do a couple of more tests, but it would be safer for Ria to leave this place. We don’t want more people to come after her,” Jenkins said.

“Of course.” Lily motioned at the doctor to follow her. “I’ll be right back.” She winked at me.

“Seems like I’m as good as new.” I flashed Adrian a wide smile, but the emptiness inside of me twisted my smile into a grimace. Glaring at the bracelet, I ripped it off my wrist. Who the hell put an element-blocking bracelet on my wrist in the first place? I wasn’t going to blow myself… Oh, wait, I probably would have blown myself up if I hadn’t been in control of my elements.

Adrian froze, all expression fleeing from his face as he watched the bracelet fall to the ground. Alarms went off inside of me. Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong.

“Ria…” Adrian licked his lips. “Please don’t freak out.”

“Freak out about what?” My voice shuddered as I reached inside of me, searching for the familiar feel of my elements. I hadn’t felt the warmth of my fire, the breeze of my air and the cool depths of my water for months. And while I missed all of my elements, I missed my fire the most. My fire was a part of me, a part of who I was… Even if it had melted with one that wasn’t mine. Who was I kidding? My fire was me. I was nothing without it.

As I desperately grabbed for a tiny spark of warmth and found nothing, I realized what the lost look in Adrian’s eyes meant. He didn’t know how to tell me. He didn’t know how to tell me that my elements were gone. All gone.

Chapter 04

“Ria, it’s going to be fine.” Adrian laid his hand on my shoulder.

“No, it’s not.” I was sitting on the bed, unmoving. How was any of this possible? Even if I’d lost the elements that weren’t mine, my fire should have stayed with me because it had been a part of me since I was born, even though I couldn’t use it until adolescence. Ethan’s fire might have overwhelmed mine, but that didn’t mean my fire couldn’t survive. Now there was only a big black empty hole inside of me, as if someone had ripped out my very essence. Suddenly going back to a coma seemed like a better idea than living without my fire.

Adrian placed his finger under my chin and made me look at him. “I know it’s a lot to take in, but it’s not the end of the world. You’ll get used to it. Maybe your fire will come back.”

I snorted. “I wish more than anything that it would come back, but I feel like a part of me is missing. I know I said that I could feel only Ethan’s fire, but I didn’t know then how having no elements feels, and I think my fire was somewhere in there. If my fire was just partially gone, shouldn’t I be able to feel it like I could when I was young? I didn’t know it then, but now that it’s gone…”

“Lily’s doctors don’t have any experience with cases like yours. I’m sure there’s someone we can talk to about this.” His face lit up with hope I couldn’t feel. Well, at least one of us was optimistic.

I shivered and rubbed my arms. “And how are we going to find this super-knowledgeable person? There are people coming after me for God knows what reason and I don’t even… Wait, do I still have magic disease?”

“I don’t know. Everyone here is either a carrier or wears a bracelet because we don’t want to risk any accidents.” He shrugged and winced.

“Does it hurt a lot?” I nodded towards his injured shoulder.

“It’s fine, just a scratch. Nothing serious.” He tried to smile, but his eyes still held concern for me.

“So if the doctors here know nothing, then how did they know I lost my elements?” Judging by the look Adrian had had on his face when I took off the bracelet, he’d known all along what I would discover.

“They didn’t. I did.”

“How?”

“I tried to exchange elements with you because I wanted to see if that could wake you up. But I couldn’t reach or feel your element.” He brought his hand to the bandage on his shoulder. I had a feeling his wound was more painful than he let on.