Titans
[16] ATARA

Darkness. My hot breath hovers in front of my face, warming the skin around my mouth and the edges of my cheeks. Everywhere else, the cold air is a constant, biting presence. I feel as bare as bones.

Running. My feet trample against the uneven, rocky ground, ankles wobbling with every poorly placed step. My head pounds with blood as my panicked lungs gasp for air. Fast is not fast enough.

Silence. Tears pool in my eyes, leak onto my cheeks like droplets of ice sliding down my skin. Each breath is a cosmic crash of a thousand colliding galaxies, splintering the silent dark. I am the loudest thing here.

It is a frightening thought.

“Atara!” His voice replaces me in the dark. I reach for it, stumble towards it, arms outstretched like a toddler learning to walk, naively trusting that someone is there to catch them when they fall.

But when I fall, I collapse through the weightless air. My face collides with dirt, my head striking the edge of something lumpy and hard. In the solid darkness, I suddenly see spinning stars.

“Atara! Where are you?”

I can’t speak. I can’t scream. Fear glues my lips shut, bites my tongue until my teeth are coated with the tangy taste of blood.

Footsteps. I pull myself up, head spinning, lolling like a doll’s. The world is upright, then sideways, the upside down. Every angle is the same: black.

Instincts have me crawling backwards, butt scraping across the rough ground as I scramble back on my hands. My palms are stinging and red hot. The footsteps get only closer.

And suddenly, silence.

I stop moving, hold my breath, listen. No footsteps, no voices. There’s nothing. The seconds draw out, become minutes, hours. Each boom of my heart is like thunder rippling through the ink black sky.

Then she speaks, voice a whisper directly beside my ear. Her hot breath tickles my neck. “I know what you did, Atara. And I’m going to kill you for it.”

I wake with a scream, sitting bolt upright. An intense pain rips through my shoulder, like a knife digging into bone. My vision blurs.

“Guys! She’s awake!”

The first thing I notice is the light. It hits my eyes like a thousand suns, burning my retinas after so long in the dark. Shapes and colours shift, swirl, emerging from the brightness. Slabs of grey for walls. Bed sheets the colour of the day sky. Fingers tinged purple from the cold. I sway – the light, the pain, the dream – all too much. It’s a sensory overload.

“Woah, Atara. Steady. You need to lie down.” Firm hands gently guiding me back down. My head hits the thin pillow, the bed soft beneath me. Wait – bed? What the hell?

“Where am I?” The words leave my lips as rasps, softer than whispers. I clear my throat and try again. “Where am I?”

One second, two seconds, three– “It’s a long story. Your focus should be on resting. I think you may have broken a stitch or two when you woke.”

I shift my head to the left. Merc stands over me, hands barely an inch from the skin of my arm. “Stitch?”

“In your shoulder?”

“In my shoulder? Why do I have stitches in my shoulder?”

He pauses, lips slightly parting. “Atara, you were shot,” he says gently. “You don’t remember?”

“I was what?” Despite the protests of my shoulder, I spring back up, every muscle in my body pulled taut.

Merc doesn’t move to stop me. “Shot,” he repeats carefully.

“I was…” Suddenly, my head feels filled with water, sloshing from side to side with each movement. The world starts to slip and slide.

“Atara…” His hand replaces the small of my back, the other lightly holding my elbow.

“I was…” The feeling overwhelms me, drowns out first Merc, then the room, then my own thoughts. The world tilts sideways as my back hits the softness of the sheets. I no longer have the strength to hold open my own eyelids. They drift shut and I descend into darkness once more.