BOOK OF MIA: 2081

Chapter 7: Scar-tissue

I gasp for air and water rushes into my mouth. It slithers into my lungs, sheering every corner, every cell, every pocket with pain, but I can't help myself. I try for another breath. Perhaps this one will have air.

I struggle to open my eyes, to flail my useless arms. To pull myself upwards, towards the surface. The surface that retrieves fast from my reach. My mind and body are no longer my slaves. All I can do is wait for the water to stop churning around me. Hopefully soon?

The dawn that was breaking through right before I jumped fades as I'm pushed deeper. That, or I'm passing out. I hope it's the latter. I'm a strong swimmer — always have been — but not right now, I suppose. Not with the newly acquired hole in my chest, courtesy of the firing squad above the water's surface.

The occasional bullets spray past me. Tiny little torpedoes I might have thought 'cute' if they weren't desperately trying to end my life. I stare at the trail of red around me, swirling in the white water. I don't know how deep I am, or how far the river has swept me. The only thing I can think of is, this is not how I imagined I'd go. Perhaps a cranky old lady or a middle-aged woman succumbing to radiation, but not like this, swallowing water and bleeding like a sieve.

For a moment, I wish I could go back to the last time I walked out of the house with a grin on my face and my mother begging me to give her a moment. 'There's something I need to tell you, Mia, before you go to this camp,' she had said with desperation. Desperation I had treasured, goading her with 'I don't have time, mum. My ride's here.'

I'd been in a rush to catch up with Nate. I hadn't seen him all break. His older brother lived halfway around the country and always sent for him during the holidays, which meant we couldn't hang out. As Nate's my friend, let's just say, my holiday was lonely. That and I was desperate to go out and enjoy a pre-birthday celebration. I was turning sixteen soon and having to spend it at a stupid camp. This camp. I turned sixteen at eleven-thirty last night. Yay, happy fucking birthday to me!

I gag on the water and embrace the darkness sweeping over me. My mind finally succumbs to the suffocation and the blood loss. Not the way I imagined I'd go, wondering what mum might have wanted to say to me. It had sounded important, an epiphany only hindsight can give one, I suppose.

I close my eyes and imagine I'm floating in the air as the thunder of the fall mutes and dulls, just like my other senses.

A faint tug on my arm makes me take a peek. A hand grips one of my wrists and pulls me to the surface. To air. To life. Yet, there is a numbness to the whole thing, like a dream. I close my eyes again. Too tired to fight against it. Probably a Sentry's here to finish his job.

Why weren't there any female Sentries? Maybe she would be kinder when she puts a bullet in my newly sixteen head.

I feel the hard earth beneath me as I'm dragged out of the water, through the muddy shores, and onto a grassy area. A warmth of sorts touches my lips occasionally. My chest presses rhythmically. Someone's even counting under their breath. One, two, three... performing CPR. So this is what it feels like to be saved. Soar, numb, and a little tired. Just let me be. Please. No more.

Wait. Am I being saved?

Muffled voices whisper around me. "Stop. Sentries, two o'clock over the fall."

I feel myself being tugged a little more, then something heavy washes over me. I can't tell what, but it's a little warmer than the water they fished me out of, so I don't mind it. The icy water had numbed the pain in my chest. Pain I am aware of now. The bullet hole, I realise. I still have a bullet hole in my chest. Ha! So much for being saved.

For a long moment, I cannot hear anything and wonder if they left me here to die. Let nature do its thing. Or maybe this was the afterlife. Empty, cold, and nothing. Hallucinations... that's all.

"They're gone," one voice says. Inches away from my face, I wager. That's when I realise that something warmer, heavier, covering me is another body. Maybe another Sentry is trying to save me, but why? And who's gone?

"What if they come back?" a youthful voice asks in the cloudy haze as I splutter and cough, expelling the water from my lungs. The first breath I take burns like wildfire through my lungs. Oh God! I open my eyes and can't make anything out, for there is a cloth over my face.

"They won't come down here to hunt these kids. They'll just wait them out. Take them down when they return." The weight above me shifts and I curl over to my side. More water and pain escape me.

"We're not sending these kids back up there?"

"No." The man, or was it a woman next to me, says. I can't tell the gender yet as water still fills my ears and everything is muffled.

Someone grabs my face and turns it left and right. I feel the person frisk me top-down as sensation finally returns to my skin. "This one's shot in her chest. If we don't hurry, she won't make it through the morning. How's yours?"

I know I'm shot — that's not news to me, mister! May the codex protect. What a joke that prayer is. Why do we pray to a code, anyway? And who are these people?

I try to shake off what I assume is a cloth placed over my face as a biohazard barrier for whoever performed CPR on me, but the material doesn't shift. I turn my head towards the voices and see shadowy figures through the muslin.

"He's got a clean wound through the shoulder. We'll patch him up near-new." A third, more authoritative voice burst through the cloth. A voice I almost recognise, but not yet. Not with my ears still waterlogged.

I shake the cloth harder, seeing two figures load Nate — I assume — on a stretcher. My voice crackles, raspy from the water. "Nate. Nate!" but it sounds more like 'mate' to my ears too.

"Hold still, girl!" My rescuer is strong and grips my shoulders to make me stop wriggling. "Or you'll open your wound wider. A faster way to die for sure."

"Seal her wound," their leader commands and despite my protest, the grip on my shoulder gets stronger.

They rip open my T-shirt across my chest and I hear a sigh. "By the Codex, this girl should be dead!"

I hear the hiss of a spray can and feel the icy cold bio-sealant sprayed across my chest where I assume the wound is.

"Gulson," the familiar, androgynous voice calls out, "take the cover off. Let her see us, or she'll keep doing that."

"But, Vera!" Gulson protests above me as he empties his spray can on my skin.

"Take it off," Vera demands, and I'm keen to see her. I'm keen to see them all. Whoever they are.

Gulson lifts his weight off me and removes the cloth that obscured my vision. Light floods my eyes and I shut my eyelids tight. Was daylight always this bright and painful? Almost burning?

Vera's voice now looms above me. "This is a radiation heavy zone, girl. Your eyes will take a while to adjust to it. Two-three days, give or take. If not, your retina will burn. So, shall we put the cover back on? It's lousy I know, but at least you can open your eyes and not go blind permanently."

The radiation burns. She's not lying. I attempt to open my eyes again. Stupid teenage defiance winning out. I want to see her face before I'm shrouded again. She is inches from me. Her breath falls on my face when she speaks. But as soon as my eyes are open, even a sliver, the brightness burns and I have to close them again. Tight. I feel the burn on my exposed skin, too. I'm in a radiation zone beyond the river. No wonder Gems thought we'd be safe on this side of the water. Radiation zones were notorious for heavy burns and detrimental mutations and cancers. So how were these people here? Alive?

"Keep doing that and we won't have to worry about getting you into surgery and mend that chest of yours. You've lost a lot of blood. Do you want to die here? In the middle of nowhere, going blind?" Vera's hot breath is steady and I can tell she loves garlic. Garlic — a rare vegetable that's priced as high as gold. How is she affording it? Out here? As far as we know, no complex life form survived outside containment zones when the nukes went off decades ago, poisoning vast spreads of land and decimating life.

I nod. Yeah, I want the shroud before my face melts off. Please and thank you.

Maybe they're deformed? Another reason for the radiation protective shroud. Too many questions still float in my mind, questions I can't get answered if I accidentally die of blood loss. As I nod for the shroud again, I realise I haven't looked at how big the bullet hole is in my chest. From the way Gulson spoke, I was a goner. Or at least I should have been.

"All right, child. Calm down," Vera says as she replaces the radiation blocking shroud over my sensitive eyes and face.

"Mia," I rasp, feeling a splutter of warm blood ooze out of my mouth. A small vial of panic rises in my sore chest. They weren't joking. I'll drown in my blood if they don't get me into surgery soon. The bullet has collapsed my right lung.

"All right, Mia. Let's see if we can save you yet," Vera's still familiar voice says calmly as her warm hand compresses my chest, trying to stem the blood flow. My mind floats into oblivion and I desperately want Nate back. I need a friend right now. Dying alone is a bitch.

"Nate." I rasp again, not entirely sure I said the word.

"He'll be fine!" Gulson replies to me as they lift me onto the second stretcher. "It's you we're worried about."

The world floats around me as I fight against consciousness. For all I know, we're still not safe. Gulson talks to me calmly and I try to hold on to his voice. Perhaps it's his way of keeping me tethered to the mortal body. I don't mind. I'll take it.

"If you survive, Mia, you're going to have one helluva scar-tissue and a darn good story to boot."

Ha! What story? I haven't really done much in life. Not like my family. The famous descendants of the famed Billy-The-Saviour. What a dumb name for a man who single-highhandedly ensured the survival of human species when so many other species went extinct on the Dark Day in history. I'd be disappointed at that nickname if I were Billy. They should have named him Father-of-Humanity, or the HumanCoder, or something awesome and mysterious. Billy-The-Saviour just sounds stupid, but he sure had a great story.

I chuckle half-heartedly, welcoming the quiet. The tech my grandfather created to save lives cannot save me. My grandfather — emphasis on the grand — was a great man, and poor Gulson does not know who I am. I am Mia Love. Daughter of the one and only heir to the CodeTech empire, created by one Dr Love. And I'm bleeding to death because the same tech that saved thousands of lives and ensured their survival, and humanity's; the same tech Billy, my great grandfather invented, can't do a thing for me. Damn Sentry 176 and his fudging taser.

A simple taser is the end of my story.

I can't help but chuckle again, only to wince in pain and gag on my blood. Now that's irony.

And boy, do I love irony?