My Delicate Destruction: Book One of the Wolfegang Series (8 page)

My eyes felt heavy, and my entire body ached. I wasn’t sure if I could even move, but I wanted to stretch. Abruptly, my motions were cut short, and I strained to peel my eyes open. Everything was white and cold. My breath practically crystallized in front of me. Slowly, I took a deep breath in and then let it out as I tried to calm my heart. I was okay. I had to be.

Something glowed in the top right corner of my vision. I squinted, trying to see through the frost. I could barely make out the distorted numbers—my heart rate and blood pressure.

Oh yeah. Right.

The memories left me breathless. My chest constricted, and I tried to pull in air, but all I could hear was a pathetic rasping. What had I done? I saw my twin stepping into his cryogenic suit and then the slow sink into sleep from sedation.

I remembered watching Kris getting into to the pod. I remembered the experimental procedure, the cancer, my mother crying in the lobby, and Kevin kissing me. It all came crashing back.

Why wasn’t anyone coming to get me? I waited a few seconds, but the claustrophobia started to claw at my throat, and the tears froze on my cheeks. The air was only slightly warmer than before.

I struggled against the restraints. I had to get out. I made my hand as small as possible and tugged. I felt my skin pulling. My hand wasn’t small enough. There was pain, almost like a rug burn, but I didn’t stop. My hand finally slipped through.

The glass
above me was covered in thick frost that was quickly melting. Terrified, I wondered why no one was responding. Surely there had to be a monitor or two that let the doctors know that I was awake.

I called out. No one answered. The terror clenched my heart harder. I needed to get out of there, now.

I undid the strap on my other wrist and then the one across my chest. I disconnected the wires that monitored me and evaluated my situation. My ankles were still strapped down, but the pod was too small and cramped. I couldn’t reach down to undo them. My arms weren’t long enough.

I pushed against the glass instead, but it didn’t budge. I made a fist and hit it as hard as I could. The frost cracked and fell. I felt a little bit better; I was going to get out. I punched with both fists as hard as I could over and over. The gloves ripped, and the skin on my knuckles tore until blood covered my hands. Finally, the glass shattered, falling all around me like deadly rain. I covered my face as quickly as I could, but the glass still cut into my cheek.

When the glass stopped falling, I carefully peeked through my arms, glass falling from my suit and clinking against the pod walls. There was a hole in the glass, and shards were still hanging over me. I pushed at them until they fell away. I then had enough room to bend down and undo my ankle straps. Glass shards cut at my hands, but I ignored the pain. I needed to get out of that pod. I needed to breathe.

I slowly stepped out, glass falling from my body and my hair, and I carefully moved forward, holding onto the sides of the pod for support.

Once I was free and standing in the lab, I looked around. I still couldn’t see much. It was dark, but there had to be a light somewhere because I could make out shadows.

Where was everybody? “Dr. O’Leary?” I called out. “Kris?” My voice bounced off the walls. “Anybody?” It made the room sound empty. “Kris, if you’re playing a trick on me, it’s not funny!”

Something skittered across the floor. I screamed and jumped back. It was a rat. I could barely see it
cleaning its whiskers in the corner. Gross… though, it was weirder that it would be in the lab in the first place.

I scanned the room to see if there was anything that could give me a clue as to what exactly was going on. My eyes caught on my brother’s pod. The glass was broken, and the pod was empty. A cold, icy fist squeezed my heart. Something was very, very wrong.

There was a desk against the wall with papers scattered all over it and mercifully, a lamp. I stepped towards it and stumbled over something. I turned on the light, the glare hurting my sensitive eyes. The hospital must have some sort of isolated power supply, which I was intensely grateful for. I waited for them to adjust and looked over my shoulder to see what it was I had tripped over. I couldn’t quite see, so I got closer and squinted. It appeared to be a skeleton. I jumped back the second my mind realized what I was seeing, and I screamed, slamming into the table. My heart pounded. I slowly caught my breath, holding on to the table so I wouldn’t fall.

I decided if I was going to find out anything, this skeleton would be the first clue. I stepped a bit closer and looked at the white lab coat on the pile of dusty bones. It was a doctor’s coat. I moved it with my foot so I could see the name tag: Dr. O’Leary.

That took a minute to sink in, and I still didn’t quite get it. How did that happen? How much time had gone by that a dead body could decompose and dry up to just the bones? The thought gave me shivers. I shoved down the nausea. Out. I needed out.

I turned my back to the deceased doctor and took a deep breath to compose myself. I needed answers. I saw the papers on the desk. There had to be something in there that could tell me something, anything.

I frantically pushed papers aside. There seemed to be a lot of nonsense, a lot of long math equations, and notes in that irritating doctor style of illegibility. DNA sequences were printed out. I grabbed all of them. I didn’t have time to pore over them at the moment, but I definitely wanted to give them a close inspection later. There was a scrap of paper still lying on the table. I picked it up and immediately recognized my brother’s little-boy scrawl. He was a genius when it came to computers and math, but he still wrote his name like he was five. I scanned it, and then read it over again carefully. My heart rate sped up.

Kat, I don’t know what happened to us or the world outside, but I’ll find out. I’ll come back for you. Don’t worry; I’ll take care of everything. If anything goes wrong, remember Speed Racer.

-K.

I didn’t know what our favorite cartoon had to do with it all, but I tucked the papers in my suit and gave in completely to the burning need to get out of there.

I checked the perimeter of the room and found nothing. The only exit had caved in. I looked up and saw how my twin had gotten out. It seemed he had used the crumbling ceiling as his exit. I wasn’t tall enough to jump up, so I dragged the desk over. It squealed across the floor, and the sound was almost unbearable. I placed it directly under the broken ceiling and climbed up.

I jumped and caught the edge with my fingertips. Using what little strength I had, I pulled myself up, putting my forearms on the ledge. My muscles trembled with the effort, but I heaved myself up. I got my body over the ledge and rolled onto my back. I stayed there for a while, catching my breath and resting for a second.

I traced my fingers in the dust as I looked around. Everything was destroyed, and the ceiling looked like it was ready to cave in at any moment. Beams were lying around haphazardly. Hospital signs were still up, though they had faded almost beyond recognition.

A knot formed in my stomach, fear of ‘what ifs’ taking hold. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what had happened anymore.

Beams of light shown down from the floor above me. I couldn’t believe no one had tried to excavate the basement. Was this area of the hospital even on the blueprints? That question frightened me. I looked around, the stairwell door had crumpled off its hinges, and the stairs beyond were dark.

I got up and went to check it out. The stairs themselves were still intact. I placed my hand on the wall to guide myself as I carefully went up them. The rough cement scraped across my gloves. There was a lot of debris lying around, waiting to trip me up. I stepped over some broken pieces of the building as I made my way up to the second landing. I almost didn’t need my hand on the wall; shadows outlined everything, and I could see what I had to.

I came out on the first floor and realized I didn’t recognize anything. Everything was torn to pieces. The windows were boarded up, the walls were falling apart, and the sun was shining in through the broken plaster.

I went to one of the windows and tried to peer out, but I couldn’t see much. I tested the boards, trying to find a loose one. A board at the bottom felt promising. I kicked at it, loosening it a little at a time as I hit it over and over. It finally fell off, leaving barely enough room for me to slip through. I went through legs first, pushing against the wall, but my suit caught on something, maybe a nail. I pushed harder until I tumbled to the dirt in a heap. I picked myself up and brushed off the dust.

I turned around to figure out where I was, and my world crashed around me. Everything I knew was gone. There was a ringing in my ears. I thought I was going to pass out from the shock.

The desert had reclaimed the city, nothing for miles except shattered foundations and piles of debris.

I fell to my knees, no longer having the strength to keep myself standing, and desperately tried to keep breathing. How long had I been asleep?

My chest constricted as I saw how deserted it was. I was now on the outskirts of a city I used to call home. On the horizon, I could see buildings and towers reaching for the sky, higher than anything I’d ever seen before. It was as if they wanted to touch the stars. There were ships flying in and out like bees around a hive.

I got up walked around the side of the building to see in the other direction. I had to know what else was out there. There had to be some indication, some sign that would tell me what had happened.

It was like there was an invisible line, and across that line there was death and desolation. Endless desert as far as I could see. There were no highways, no 101 or 405 freeway. So much
nothing
that I felt myself get lost in it. It was like there had been a war or a holocaust and only the two hundred mile radius of L.A. that now existed had survived.

I crouched and put my head between my knees, taking deep breaths to try to regain some semblance of composure. It wasn’t easy. My world was gone, and I felt so utterly lost without it.

There was one thing I knew I still had for sure, and that was my brother. I had his letter, and I was going to find him.

I got up, nervously running my fingers through my hair. It was a lot longer than it had been when I started the procedure. It was only shoulder length then. Now it reached past my waist. My nails were long and clear, and my skin was ghost white and silky soft. Whatever they did had changed me. I could feel it, but I couldn’t place what was different. I felt so strange. There was bile on my tongue as that realization and all of its possible implications
hit me. Did they just cure the cancer? Had my genetic makeup changed or evolved while I was asleep? Was it the same? What did that mean? I was trembling, my fear holding me in its iron grasp. What was going to happen to me?

I needed answers and a plan. I turned back to face the city and resigned myself to a long walk. I walked through streets of deserted buildings, buildings that were nothing more than the bricks and faint outlines of what used to be there.

When had Kris woken up? Was he alive? How was I supposed to find him in a world I knew nothing about? I didn’t even know the date. I wondered if our parents were still alive, if Kevin was still out there waiting for me years later. Had it been decades? A hundred years? I had no idea.

If I was going to learn anything, I had to find somewhere that I could sit down and research without anyone interrupting me or asking me questions I might not want to answer. I had to find a library. If there still was one.

The closer I got to the city, the more nervous I became. I wasn’t sure what to expect. Would they ignore me? Or would they take too much notice? The only thing at that moment that I was thankful for was that I hadn’t gone backward in time and arrived naked.

As I walked down the deserted street, broken glass and debris crunched and cracked under my feet. It was a long walk. A few hours later, at the edge of the city, I could feel a difference in the air, an energy I didn’t feel in the wastelands—that feeling of being lived in.

There were sleek cars in the city, all identical to each other. They were black and low to the ground with a body that reminded me of a Lexus. They were fast, though the motion was too uniform for them to be run by individuals. They had to be on autopilot, or something similar.

The buildings were much higher than the skyscrapers I remembered. People on the streets were scarce on the outskirts, but there were a few walking here and there the further I walked. Mostly, the city was sterile, as sterile as a hospital. There were domes and glass skyscrapers; I could make out the ocean beyond. There was a large square doorway that led to the beach, kind of like a doorway to another world. The buildings were all made of cream colored concrete, so uniform compared to the California that I knew.