The son of Health

Don't let Alex drive unless you want to teleport.

The heat of the explosion blew at our backs and scorched the bottom of my concert tee-shirt, the BOOM left ringing in my ears and the map fell and landed onto the grass that seemed so far away.

The fall didn't hurt, mostly because we never landed. I was levitating above the ground and so were my friends. Alex looked like she was concentrating on something, she was humming a tune you would never normally hear, it sounded like a whisper in the trees and leaves rustling on the ground. Silent yet loud, screaming and whispering, sounds of the Earth. As soon as the sounds were done we were gently placed in the grass. I turned around expecting to see the building in flames, but it looked fine. The only difference was that it was a different building.

I searched the ground for the map, crawling on the grass, I bumped into someone, I picked my head up slowly seeing Jamie holding the map out

" you dropped this Niko" I stood up taking the map.

"Sorry, hey where is Alex?" Jamie asked. She was leaning against a willow tree, she was the only one of us that looked like they were actually in a fire. Her chin was covered in ash and her nose was dripping bright red blood and it looked like she was unconscious. I didn't know why but I felt compelled to touch her hand and so I did. As soon as I was touching her The blood went away and her face was clean, her eyes opened wide. I stumbled back immediately, dizzy the world slowly moving around me.

"you're okay, right?" Asked Jamie "you're not hurt"

" No, no, no, I'm fine!"

" Really? Because you're repeating your words, you're pale and you look like you're going to pass out."

"Yeah, you might want to catch me"

The last thing I saw before I closed my eyes were two silhouettes standing over me.

I was in the park surrounded by a group of people in black, Was all that a dream? Were Alex and Jamie just figments of my imagination?. Standing beside me were two graves, that's when I knew that I was dreaming now, I was having a flashback to 3 years ago. The two graves each embedded with a person I knew:

Thomas Ramírez - my brother

Kelly Ramírez - my mother

I was drowning in words telling me I was nothing. An outcast, A failure. Pictures swam in my mind, memories of Tommy and me, memories of us doing everything, memories of his death. With each memory, I sunk further and further from the surface into darkness.

A slap across the face brought me back to reality. I jolted up, my mind still in my dream. I saw a confused Alex sitting in front of me, and Jamie shaking his compass about 20 feet ahead of us. "Who is Tommy? You were talking about him in your sleep" questioned Alex. I met her eyes, could I trust her? Were we family? Would I die for her or Jamie?.

You can trust her. my mind was telling me.

"Tommy was my brother and my best friend."

" was?" Alex whispered and then a second later she formed a silent oh 

Before she could continue asking questions, Jamie ran up to us. "Finally you're awake, while you are off in dreamland we are figuring out where we are. Niko I now present to you, Dallas Texas."

"How did we get here?"

"Yeah... about that..." Alex scratched her head

" When I sense danger, I think about places and we get there." She confessed looking at the ground feeling ashamed.

" I know how you feel, like an outcast." I stammered, but I remembered that we were on a time limit before I could get caught in my pain. " We should start moving," I commented, interrupting the silence.