Metal Deep 2: Something Beautiful Read Online Free PDF Page B

did you plan on telling me?”
     
    Her face paled a little save her cheeks, which flushed a red to rival the color of her ponytail. “I wanted to figure out why you couldn’t see yourself. I suspected there was some kind of program in place, but I knew you wouldn’t believe me unless I could make you see for yourself. I didn’t have the know-how to do that, so I wanted to take you to some friends of mine who I thought could help. I still think they can, and this car can Skip us there in a matter of moments, so hang tight.”
     
    My foot slid upward in the floorboard to help me brace my head against the seatback, and that’s when I felt my shoe graze the two guns Maeve had used in her escape. She had thrown them down in the passenger floor after jumping into the car.
     
    I knew what Skipping was. Dad prattled on about that one after a sci-fi movie about wormholes. Skipping was essentially the opening of a wormhole from one point to another and traversing great distances within seconds. Also how we ended up in Colorado from Alabama in no time at all.
     
    “Are they the ones that paid you to get me?” I was now cautious of anyone who wanted me. I was no longer just some random Amalgam abductee. I was the key to a master plot of world domination. I had to make sure I didn’t fall into the wrong hands.
     
    She shook her head denying they were. “No, but we essentially have the same boss, and it’s my sincerest hope that they might be able to help clean you up a bit. You’re still a bit raw, you know?”
     
    I knew what she meant. I looked like I was half done, and not just as in I was part flesh, part metal. The new Amalgamated parts looked like they were missing something. What exactly? I couldn’t be sure. I had been dragged away too early. Something had to be done because I was hideous, but I wasn’t ready to find out what her friends had in mind just yet.
     
    I betrayed her again. I picked up one of the guns at my feet, pointed it at Maeve, and pulled the release spring on the side to cock it. (Thank you video games for teaching me that one.) “No. You’re going to Skip this thing to my home, and you’re going to do it now.”
     

 
     
     
     

     
     
     
    DONE
     
     
     
    I was not scoring any brownie points with Maeve, this much was certain. The look she gave me was an entire swarm of daggers flung at my face. Reluctantly, she changed the Skip code in the strange red and white flashing console on the left side of the dash, and the car sped into a puddle of blinding light.  Through a mix of magic and science the car had produced the event-horizon directly in front of us.  The motor hummed away, and after we charged through a temporal formation there was only about a second’s worth of travel, and then we flashed back out to reality. We dropped two feet from the wormhole’s exit with a huge clanking sound, right in the middle of a pasture. The car tossed a mountain of churned sod and mud as we slid sideways to a stop before ramming into an oblivious cow munching away on some grass.
     
    I instantly recognized being near a county road close to where the fairgrounds were. We had just traveled through a wormhole. To simplify the wormhole phenomenon I’ll use this question: Is it quicker for a worm to travel around the outside of the apple, or tunnel straight through the middle of the core? It was a big thing in all the science fiction shows I used to watch. I guess I had to wrap my head around the fact that I was living those sci-fi and fantasy tales as something of a strange and twisted reality.
     
     Purple and orange rays of dusk stretched from a line of heavy gray clouds as if the hand of God was about to slap us into the face of the Earth. It was what we deserved. I was a monster. Coming to terms with what I had just learned was not going to be easy. It might even be impossible. No wonder so many Amalgams traverse the world on insane death-reaping rampages. I did my best to maintain my