He reaches me and ruffles my hair, still laughing."I didn"t know you had it in you Bolt. I"m impressed. You put on quite a show there." My whole face lights up at his praise, his eyes sparkling with mischief as I start to peel the mango.
"Now how about sharing the spoils?" He asks, at the same time grabbing the mango out my hands, and jumping to the next tenement, a sly grin spreading at the corners of his mouth.
"Dom!" I yell moving to follow, getting that similar feeling of weightlessness as I jump to the next building except now I"m falling, and falling...
And I slam back into reality just as I hit something cold, hard and unforgiving. Then everything goes black.
I raise my hands to my eyes to wipe away the dust, blood and pus, but my vision is still blurry, and I can only crack open one eye. Where am I? There"s this concrete floor underneath me and I seem to be lying in something wet and cold. One sniff informs me that it"s my own pee. Gross. I slowly make my way away from the puddle, crawling on my hands and knees, until I come face to face with a wall. I gratefully sit down against it, my lungs heaving painfully from the exertion, and a strange feeling of pins and needles all over my body. I must have cracked some ribs.
As my eyes gradually adjust to the darkness, I can make out that I"m in a square room, with dirt walls and a rough concrete floor with a drain in the middle of it, maybe 5 by 10 feet. I"m imagining what they would need the drain for, all the way down here, and images of my blood swirling down it flashes through my mind. Get a grip, Bolt. It"s not real. You need to focus on what is to get out of here. I continue to take in my surroundings, purposely not looking at the drain, and something in the corner of the room catches my attention. It"s a vaguely humanoid shape. I scoot over on my b.u.t.t to get a better look and that"s when I remember Shadow. Your apprentice, the one who"s only 9 years old? Yeah that"s him over there. Lying in the dark like a dead man. Great. Now I got bigger problems than Capt. Amber.
Panic and adrenaline surge through my veins at the thought of the poor kid being dead. I move as fast as I can to his side and place my fingers against his neck. I first I don"t feel a pulse and an anguished cry escapes me. "Shadow!" My voice sounds scratchy and raw even in my own ears. Then his pulse jumps unexpectedly under my fingers and I almost collapse from relief. He"s alive, he"s alive! His chest is moving up and down in a steady rhythm, but he"s not waking up. I grasp his shoulders and shake him, hard. He cracks open one bleary eye, sees me, and groans. I"m so relieved I laugh out loud. "I"m not that ugly, now wake up."
He groans again and rolls over to one side, managing to get out, "You are, trust me. I would know. I have to spend every day looking at that twisted face while spittle flies from it, right onto my forehead."
I laugh at this description of me that"s so accurate if i think about it. But to him I say, "Trust me, I only look like that when I"m screaming at you. It"s a special face I save just for you."
He just groans again and rolls over, mumbling. "I"m tired…", and then the next thing I know his breathing evens out and his gentle snores start to float over to me. I sigh, resting my back against the wall, thinking about how we are going to get out of here. I let my head fall back, and it clunks dully against the wall. I"ll just close my eyes for a minute, just a minute… I feel the pull of blackness and I don"t resist, letting it take me under, even if it is just to escape the gnawing feeling of hunger and hopelessness for a little while.