Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 140780 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 704(@200wpm)___ 563(@250wpm)___ 469(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 140780 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 704(@200wpm)___ 563(@250wpm)___ 469(@300wpm)
“I-I’ve seen fish breathe air and swim in the sky.” She squeezed her eyes tight, riding out her body’s limitations. When she opened them again, a glowing white circle ringed her pupils before dissolving. “I’ve seen birds inhale water and fly in the sea. I’ve seen mice that can suddenly change colours like a chameleon.” She shuddered as if the creatures she’d mentioned had just as much as a miserable existence as I did.
Sucking in the biggest breath as if fearing she’d never take another one, she said, “If Snowflake Corp did somehow alter you...like they did with those poor creatures. If I’m not completely crazy and jumping to ridiculous conclusions then...you probably don’t have much time left.”
“What?”
Her words struck a match inside me, setting fire to all my fears.
So I was breaking.
I was dying.
But...
I didn’t want to.
Not now.
Not yet.
She cowered a little, crawling backward as if unable to fight her natural response to get away from me. “The fact that you’re failing so fast. That you’re getting so much worse...” She broke off, swallowing hard. “Every altered test subject I’ve ever seen follows the same pattern. There’s the initial agony of fighting evolution. The struggle of stabilisation. The speed of escalation. And then...”
I buckled beneath another inferno wave. “And then?”
“Collapse,” she whispered. “Bodies can’t sustain something so much greater than what they’re designed for. Cells start cannibalising themselves. Organs fail. Hearts give out.”
I stared at her, the fire coiling like a whip around my bones. “So you’re saying there’s no hope for me?”
“I’m saying my parents sought to eradicate death.” Tears spilled down her cheeks as she continued to inch across the floor. “They tried to force life to continue, through whatever means necessary. But...it can’t be done.”
My vision fractured, sparks bursting behind my eyes as my heartbeat staggered and slammed, staggered and slammed—each one feeling like it might be my last.
I wanted her to take everything back.
To never tell me.
I wanted her to be wrong.
A morbid chuckle tore out of my chest as the fire surged, almost dropping me to my elbows. I rolled my eyes at the irony of surviving Marcus for twenty years, only for my own system to forsake me.
But what she said rang true.
My body was no longer my own. I didn’t feel like flesh and bone anymore but fire and brimstone. And if I didn’t stand a chance. If my future was just a grave, then...
What did I have to lose?
“Thank you.” I closed the distance between us until I was close enough to trail my fingertips over her foot.
A soft noise caught in her throat as her skin flashed white beneath my touch. She shivered as I slowly wrapped smoky fingers around her icy ankle.
Unlike every other time I’d touched her, I got no reprieve, no relief.
Heat flared so violently my vision went red. My muscles seized as if rending themselves off my bones. It felt as if the fire was moments away from tearing through my skin.
“It seems I truly have run out of time.” Tightening my grip on her ankle, I yanked her into me. She cried out as she skimmed over the floor, flying to a stop beneath me.
“But if I’m going to die...I don’t want to do it alone.” Looking down at her—black hair haloed out on the floor and her eyes aching with her own pain—I tried to imprint everything about her.
Dropping to my elbows, I caged her in. “Help me...”
A ripping in my heart as if something had torn free.
I coughed, wet and deep.
Dark Ashfall blood splattered across her chin and lips.
For one suspended, horrified second, neither of us moved.
But then, she utterly destroyed me.
Swiping her tongue over her bottom lip, she cleaned up the scarlet droplets as if her pain was so bad, she’d willingly accept any help from me—even if it was my final breaths.
The sight of her accepting me.
Choosing me.
My mouth crashed onto hers, feral and desperate, blood and heat and madness tangling us into an inescapable war.
I kissed her like a dead man.
A man clawing to survive—
Her cold surged into me, slamming with violent waves, ice and snow, frost and sleet.
I kissed her harder—rewarded with another blizzard. A blizzard that bought me a few more minutes.
Maybe she could stop this.
Perhaps she was the final key to saving me.
“Make it stop,” I groaned. “I need you to make it stop. I don’t want to die. Not yet.”
She kissed me back, her fingers digging into my lower back and pulling me deeper between her spread legs.
I lost myself for a moment. Drowning in her taste, living in a fantasy where I wouldn’t die if I just kept kissing her.
And if kissing could buy me time, perhaps other things would cure me completely.
My right hand strayed to her breast, squeezing her soft flesh and running my thumb over her nipple.