Suddenly Daniel snapped out of his day dream and found himself at the sharp end of his mother’s glare. She had been talking, but Daniel hadn’t been listening. “I-I’m sorry mom. What were you saying?”
They had long since reached their destination but Daniel’s mother wanted to stay and talk to her son before they went anywhere. She had been meaning to talk to him for a while about his plans after high school but never really got around to it.
She figured that that day was just as good as any. She watched as Daniel suddenly got out of their parked car to take a walk around the lock with her. His mother never knew how, but it seemed he always knew when she wanted to have a talk with him.
Feeling cheated out of her chance to catch him unawares of her desire to speak with him, she threw on a childish pout. “Hmph! You have some nerve ignoring me Daniel Lee West. It may be a special day for you but it doesn’t mean you can be disrespectful to your mother. I have half a mind to just-”
She never finished her sentence as a nearby explosion knocked the limo onto its back and threw Daniel away from his open door and into another car’s windshield.
As Daniel regained consciousness he noticed a ringing in his ears that drowned out any sounds other than some muffled screaming and concrete falling from nearby buildings. He slowly and painfully peeled himself off of the car he had been thrown onto.
As he moved to get up he could see a rebar rod sticking out of his side. But he felt nothing except the cool chill grasping him. As he began moving slowly and numbly to get off of the car he had landed on, he remembered his mother and little brother who were still in the limo.
He couldn’t remember if they were wearing their seatbelts or not. He prayed they were. ‘No. no. no!’ He found their limousine flipped upside down and the driver’s area crushed by a fallen billboard. He moved as fast as he could, which was a slow limp to those nearby, to the back end of the car.
But before he could get there he found himself growing dizzy. He felt cold and his body wouldn’t move as he wanted. It took every ounce of strength he could scrounge up before being able to crouch down without screaming bloody murder.
His eyes weren’t working as well as they should have been as all he could see was blurry objects. He tried to speak but had long since been unable to do so, his last thoughts as he succumbed to the darkness was his family.
-
First Responders that arrived on scene had been combing the area for any survivors. Most of those they found had only been the bodies of people who didn’t make it. Either crushed by falling rubble, killed by the explosions, or a sad combination of both.
And even those lucky few, if they can be called that, who had managed to make it out alive were in horrible shape. The blasts had sent huge amounts of shrapnel into the general public and many people found themselves riddled with bits of concrete, glass, metal, and various other materials that made its way onto them.
A responder, one Cynthia Lewis, had been asked to summarize the situation by a news reporter who had managed to make his her way past the blockades and into the danger zone. But before she could tell her to leave she noticed the cameraman.
His face betrayed shock and horror. Following his line of sight she saw what could only be described as an absolute miracle. Slowly limping his way to a crushed limousine was a young man who by all means should’ve been dead.
The reporter, who had been trying to get any kind of information out of the first responder she could, had realized she’d been ignored had gotten angry. Noticing her cameraman wasn’t paying attention either, she looked at what they had their attention on and felt that this is what she had been waiting for.
Seemingly unfazed by the abnormal sight she shook her cameraman’s arm and got ready to go live. The cameraman, who had been so caught up by the sight, had come back to his senses. He put the camera down and walked away. He didn’t make it twenty feet before he lost his breakfast.
The reporter rolled her eyes at the weak willed man and set the camera up on some nearby rubble. She set it up so that what she filmed would be a live feed. This was her moment to shine, and it made no difference what tragedy laid before her.
“I’m standing here today, October 9th 2015, amidst the devastation that is the aftermath of several bombs detonating in the downtown area. I must warn viewers that what you are about to be shown may be extremely unsettling to watch.”
She picked up the camera and made sure to show the remains of crumbled buildings, crushed vehicles, scattered glass littering the streets, emergency workers digging through rubble, and then finally on the walking mess that was Daniel.
All throughout America, people watching the news had simply stopped. Some cried, some threw up, some just stared. But with this one image it was clear to everyone just how bad things really were.
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Arms hanging limply down at his sides, one foot dragging behind him, portions of the left side of his body burned to a red and black crisp, and a blood trail following him from the car he landed on. As if to put the cherry on top, a reinforcement bar, the ones they stick in concrete for support, was firmly planted in his stomach.
Yet he limped. He limped with such purpose. Never looking anywhere else other than the limousine. The closer he got, the less balanced he became. It was around this time that Cynthia came back to reality.
Calling out to any other nearby worker she ran towards him. Just as he collapsed near where the door on the limo was supposed to be. What happened next went undocumented as a police officer seized the reporter’s camera and had her escorted from the area.
-
Daniel woke up in a daze. He laid there for a minute before it all came flooding back. His graduation, the ride home, the explosion, getting ripped away from the car, and trying to find his…’Oh no!’
But try as he might he couldn’t move. With every movement he made the more he exhausted himself; and as a result he nearly passed out.
The machines he was hooked up to were monitoring his heart rate. When he realized that he wouldn’t be going anywhere and that he had no idea if his brother and mother were still alive he started to have a panic attack.
The machines began to make a loud beeping noise that brought what seemed like hordes of people into his room. The excitement proved too much as Daniel once again fell prey to the soothing calls of slumber.
-
As Daniel calmed down from his episode, his mother stood over him with a hollow look in her eyes. The car they were in had a reinforced passenger area so she and her son were safe and in their seatbelts when the car flipped over on its back.
Her Daniel, however, was anything but. She had watched as the explosion threw Daniel away from the limousine with horror. And she gave a soundless scream as she saw him trying to walk back over to them.
For five and a half months Daniel had been in his room in a coma with various scores of private doctors examining him. They had done everything they could for him, but it wasn’t enough. They managed to give him five extra months to live, but they just couldn’t save him from the inevitable.
His organs were starting to fail and it wouldn’t be long before his body just gave up. She stared at where his left arm used to be. It had become gangrenous and needed to be removed before it spread. Not to mention the hundreds of shards of glass that imbedded themselves in and around his spine. His body was a mess.
Slowly, his mother pulled out a vial of blue liquid. It was a risk, she knew that, but it was better than letting her son die. Daniel’s mother, aside from being a rich man’s trophy wife, was Juliana West, a geneticist. The best of her field. Though she only operated behind closed doors and with government blacklisted materials.
Most of them failures from a lack of sophisticated technology; all except one. And even then, she kept her one success to herself. No one could know. Not even her late partner, Robert DeCastro.
One of the hardest decisions she’d ever made, but she knew Robert. She knew how large his hunger for wealth and fame was, as well as where his loyalties lied. He would’ve stopped at nothing to be the face of that project.
For the last twenty years she had been working on one particular project that was on a personal level. Unknown to Daniel, when he was two he had been diagnosed with something never before seen. Something that had no cure, no treatment, no anything.
His cells were breaking down at a terrifying rate. They weren’t replicating as they should have been and while it wasn’t understood what would happen exactly, there was no doubt that it would have ended with the death of a child.
Now how could a mother who, by the grace of God, had the only thing in the world with even a chance of helping her son not use it? The answer, she couldn’t. Thus, she was now standing before him, with the most concentrated dosage she had given him.
If it didn’t kill him like it was likely to do, it would be the thing that saved his life. What Juliana didn’t and wouldn’t realize until many, many years later was that she had not only saved her son’s life, she had also created something that would change the world forever.
For the serum work to its full potential, it needed to be injected via the eye. Unfortunately, for Daniel, this is exactly what his mother was aiming for.
-
Daniel had never been in so much pain before. He could barely think, it hurt so much. It went on for what seemed like days until it suddenly stopped. He felt tears running down his face in sweet relief.
He felt awake now. Opening his eyes was a mistake. It was too much, too much light and too much color for him to handle. Slowly he tried to adjust his eyes to the bright lights until he could open them without the intense pain.
It took much longer than Daniel felt it should have. ‘Maybe there’s something wrong with my eyes.’ Once he could look around without much problem, he realized he was in his room. But it looked less like it had when he was last there.
There were two couches now on either side of his bed. And several large machines surrounding him that were hooked up to…’me? What the hell’s going on here??’
“H---” His voice felt coarse and unused. Finally gaining some volume he called out “Hey! Someone! Mom! Joey! Anybody!” Nothing. ‘Maybe no one’s home.’ He felt too uneasy in his room and tried to move.
It was then he noticed the leather straps that kept him trapped to the bed. He tried several times to move only to remain trapped. Getting angry he moved with all his might and finally broke free of the straps that should’ve held him.
Slightly scared from this feat he jumped off the bed and tried to run, forgetting that the machines that monitored him were still there. The plugs and tubes were ripped from his body and caused several gashes all along his arms.
“What. The. Fuck?” He watched as the wounds on his arm slowly began to close. He ran, looking all over the house for his family only to find them gone.
He was alone. No one here and he was alone. He was scared and angry at the same time. “Where are they!?” He began to throw vases and various glasses across the room. Soon he moved onto furniture. Flipping the couches and table and smashing the mirrors in the bathroom.
But before he could further express his seemingly infinite rage he saw something in the mirror. He saw…himself. It was him, but he looked different. He looked…different. As if it were him but…better…in every way.