Free Metal Deep 2: Something Beautiful by G. X. Knight

 
     

     
     
     
    EAST BOUND / SOUTH BOUND
     
     
     
    Have you ever been concerned, because you were not concerned?
     
    I sat in a stank-filled motel room on the back end of Texas where my mind pulled me in a thousand different directions. I processed everything that I had learned in my last twenty-four hours, about what happened to me with an easy acceptance of every new fact. I think my good mood might have helped my stability. What was the source of my new found elation? I’ll tell you.
     
    It felt like I had been gone for months. Awaking in the middle of a snowstorm, I had assumed it was winter on that desolate concrete paddock where the Street Viper trucks had been hiding. A shock for sure when the last thing you remember was springtime rains. Turns out I had only been gone about a day , and somehow the Street Vipers and their mojo had managed to cross from Bama to the mountainous Colorado hideout in just moments. Magic and science made just about anything possible these days. This meant that my dad wouldn’t be that worried, and there was still hope that I could get home to repair our relationship before he had complete meltdown over my disappearance. I couldn’t imagine him remaining sane if he to spend all that time alone. Mom’s loss was enough, mine would have been more than he could bear.
     
    I was changing. I could tell I was different. The influx of information that was coming way concerning the truth behind the Amalgam Legends should have made me crazy, but I wasn’t. At least l don’t think I was. That point was up for debate long before I piggybacked a Street Viper semi across the country. I took every new piece of information with a certain amount of satisfaction. The stories I had secretly longed for so many years to be true … were. I was trying to maintain my composure.  All I wanted to do was run through the streets screaming, “YES!”
     
    We didn’t make it far after our escape before Maeve wanted to set down.  At least it felt like a short amount of time since I spent most of the flight nodding in and out of consciousness. She said her armor needed to charge, and I needed to get some real rest. I couldn’t argue that point. But, about where we were headed, whether my home or wherever she was supposed to deliver me, we had not stopped arguing.
     
    Maeve had not been overly forthcoming when it came to talking about what she was doing there, who sent her, how she found me, or basically anything else that would have shown some kind of clue as to her origin. But what could I say? If she hadn’t been sent I would be dead or still in the tortured dreams of the Street Vipers, being turned into who-knows-what kind of monster, which was just as good as dead.
     
    We touched down behind an old no-tell-motel with a thud. I was mesmerized when her white and silver armor vanished into a shower of sparkling white flower petals that absorbed back into a palm-sized silver disc worn on the right sleeve of her black scaled underlay. The faint scent of lilacs and honeysuckle still remained, and floated away on the warm breeze that tossed my ugly brown hair. Was there nothing about her that wasn’t awe-inspiring? The landing and her incredible transformation happened faster than a blink, and I was taken aback as I caught my balance when I blurted out loudly, “I want one.”
     
    “Get in line.” She replied as she ran a confident hand through her perfectly straight red hair. Then she shooed me behind an outdoor ice machine at the farthest end of the building, and told me to wait there no matter what.
     
    I tried not to be obvious in my gawking when she walked away, as what she was left wearing had enough of a tracksuit-look so that it didn’t gain her any more attention than any other skintight piece of clothing would. The only other soul outside was an old wrinkly man, and he was not so subtle in his “appreciations.”
     
    He rocked in a splintered chair that creaked with every in-and-out