Guarded, the introduction.

The first time Cody Amelia Kessler was reset happened on a miserable day in April.

            It had been raining near constantly, but not the good, solid, everything-feels-born-again kind of rain. The inescapable sort of consistent drizzle like a runny nose that won’t stop until it’s been wiped raw.  The sort of rain that quietly soaks down to the bare flesh and keeps everything humming in a lethargic haze of gloominess.

Cody had chosen this night to pull on her red rubber boots and tromp into the park with her underwater camera, firstly because her school project was due the next day and secondly because she couldn’t imagine another time where use of an underwater camera would actually come in handy to her situation. Hating irrelevant objects as she did, she unwrapped the packaging decorated with tropical fish and palm trees, scenery that was just so alien to the urban-Midwest feeling of Kettle Springs.

              The camera clicked over and over under her fingers, catching images of budding flowers dripping with moisture, a ladybug scuttling around the gathering puddles, garbage cast aside along the garden path. Cody considered picking it up and throwing it away. But she had already taken the picture, it was stamped on the little film spool for proof… it was art now. She couldn’t destroy the art. That would somehow make it a lie.

              Thunder rumbled overhead and the rain came down heavier. She pulled the hood of her raincoat further over her head, and listened for a moment to the rain pattering along the plastic. It was melodic, in its own way. But not enough for her to stand there until it soaked through to her bones. One quick call on her cell phone, and she was headed towards the fountains on the west side of the park.

One couldn't see the fountains from where Cody stood, they were obscured by layers of trees standing in too-planned rows like soldiers preparing for battle. They slouched in the rain, their leaves bent under the weight of it. Bearing the weight of their lives, captive, lined, concentrated. Cody loved the outdoors, but this didn't count. These trees were created by the people who put other trees in pots and stuck them in dental waiting rooms.

                Halfway to her destination, she stopped, turned, and returned to the entrance of the park. The garbage was still there, a bundled piece of paper with ink bleeding down its sides. A wounded, neon bird. She snatched it from the ground, half frustrated at her inability to walk away and half grateful for the humanity it allowed within her, and pocketed the sloppy trash. Dex would be waiting for a minute or two, but he could wait. She knew him well enough to know he had nowhere especially to be.

                After the tree army, the path veered left to the fountains. Four of them stood to each direction, intricately crafted with stone pillars rising up to meet the sky, riddled with gaps and twists to look like latticework and church towers. Water spurted from the highest, central point and cascaded down in perfect arcs to the basins, littered with change and mostly-ignored wishes. In the middle of these miniature altars where people gathered to pray and offer tribute, a supreme fountain larger than the others rose and hosted a stone angel. Her face was blank- bored Cody thought- and gazed west towards where the sun usually set. That always bothered her. She had the feeling that the angel was watching the darkness come, watching it gather at the fiery death of a day and spread like disease towards her divine perch atop the mightiest altar of them all.

                It was a good thing, she remarked yet again, she was hardly religious. Otherwise, she’d blame the Devil on this one. She eyed the angel, charcoal colored in the heavy gloominess and wet with downpour that made her wings drip darkness. How morbid. Cody snapped a picture of her, and then hurried past to where the road curved into the park and an appropriately gray Toyota waited in silence. The passenger door was already open when she rounded the hood.

                “I thought you said you were ready?” Dexter frowned, clenching a fist and using the thickness of it’s side to clear away fog on the windshield.

                “I was.”

                “Ready as in nearby, or as previously stated, ‘I’m on the curb, waiting like a wet hobo.’”

                She smiled at his irritation; she knew it was only for the sake of being difficult. That and he hated the typical ‘hello’. “I was, but there was a wetter hobo there. I couldn’t compete, so I waited until he left.”

                “Ha.” He replied humorlessly, although she didn’t miss the flicker of a smile that darted across his expression. The Toyota pulled out from the bus bay, and back onto the road. It hummed with life from the heating vents that breathed feeling back into her chilled flesh. The sound of it was accented with the beat of wiper blades, steady proof mankind’s answer to the elements.

                He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and she realized a Muse song was playing on the radio. “Get good shots?”

                “Good enough. I probably could have torn up a magazine, slopped some glue on it, and called it ‘Collage of Current Events.’ Art class is a joke.”

“Too bad you’re an overachiever; you’d have so much free time.” At the eyebrow she raised to him, he chuckled. “You’re right. You’re just an achiever. Kettle Springs… is less than up to par when it comes to the education system.”

“It’s shocking we can conduct a conversation.”

“It’s shocking we can even form full sentences.”

Cody laughed and pulled off the raincoat that felt like she had Saran wrapped it on. A few drops of water slid off the hood and down her spine, making her grimace and rub the area dry.

Beside her, Dex hummed a few lines of the song, his eyes trained on the road though he probably was seeing off the edge of a stage. Cody followed his line of vision, seeing nothing but the recoil of water as it bounced off the vehicle’s surface. “Thanks for coming to get me.”

He smiled quickly in answer, more concerned with a guitar solo. Dexter would probably not be a famous musician in his lifetime. But he would be an award-winning mixer, agent, or maybe even the best damn roadie anyone had ever known.  She would put money on it.

They stopped at a red light on Vernon, the traffic blurring through the intersection and sending up a foggy mist of water and exhaust.

Cody turned down the radio. “We got the slot on Friday.”

“This Friday? What time?” She ignored the look of ‘duh’ he shot her way, fixing him with a serious look to discourage his teasing. It worked.

“Eight thirty.”

“Ooh,” She sighed, her mouth puckering into a look of doubt. “I won’t get out of class til eight. And Amber’s in Desmond, so it’ll take a good hour for the cab to get up to Micky’s.”

“Riley said he’d get you.”

She exhaled on the window and drew a smiley face in the fog. “That’s fine. But if he hits on me, I have all rights to punch him wherever I see fit.”

Dex winced, glancing at her with amused blue eyes behind a pair of indie-style glasses. “Fair. But if you’re going for his man-hood, at least give him a one-strike warning.”

She thought on it then nodded definitively. “I can do that.” Riley was one of the guys that hung around with Dexter’s band without being in it. He was what Cody called a ‘glory-moocher’, but for the most part she could admit he was a decent guy. Except of course for his inability to take no for an answer when it came to asking chicks out.  She would trade twenty minutes of tolerance for his crap though, for Dex’s sake. He had been her best friend since they were three, she supposed she was obligated to go to his shows on that fact alone.

“Jesus, this is a long light,” he exhaled, gnawing on the edge of his thumb.

Cody’s eyes watched the cars thin from across the road. A tire hit a puddle which splashed up into the air. The altar angel and her fountain of darkness.

“That car’s going awfully fast.”

Cast your dreams, cast your prayers, but most importantly your petty change.
“Oh shit, is he serious? He’s going to run it!”

Offer yourself to the divine. Let us inspect your soul for garbage and bleeding ink. And your heart, for purity- but only after you add it to the fountain.
“Oh my God! It’s skidding! He lost it, hold-”

                The suburban careened through the intersection from opposite them. Its weight and the angle of the turn the driver attempted had proven too much, and it had flipped. Now it was a harbinger of death, rolling towards the small car with unbelievable power. Cody could feel it, even before it hit them, like a wrecking ball swinging in the air towards your body.

                First, there was nothing but surreal anticipation. A heaviness of waiting that filled up every inch of the world and silenced it, like the ocean in its entirety had been dumped right into the little car.

                Then, there was madness.

                Glass shattered in a sound like tinkling bells, clashing with the horrid scream of steel and metal grinding and twisting. The world seemed to shake and tremble, like it would never stop shuddering around them. Then pressure, force, a heaviness on her chest and shoulders followed by a million pinpricks of heat and needles all over her flesh. Another heartbeat passed and then there was only silence.

                Cody felt her face burning from sliding along the blacktop, felt her shoulder surging with the deep pulse of pain. She opened her eyes, and gazed at a world flipped on its side, filled with fire and broken glass. She blinked. The Toyota was not too far away, smashed up like an accordion. It was almost funny, how perfectly cartoon it looked, like an illustrated scene from her childhood. Fluid ran down its belly, a great downed beast bleeding into the street.

                She picked up her head from the pavement, feeling lightheaded and almost euphoric. Shock? Probably. But she wasn’t hating it. Her arm was twisted behind her back unnaturally, but it wasn’t broken, maybe just dislocated? With some effort she righted it and sat upwards. There was fire, somewhere. Smoke billowed in the air, she could see it, smell it, taste it. And all that broken glass.

                This is what the apocalypse would look like. Maybe this is it.

                Dexter.

                She looked around wildly, finding his body limply curled about thirty feet opposite of her. He had been thrown through the windshield, she could see the glass jutting from his body. But he seemed to be breathing, also. A woman was kneeling over him, her gaze focused intently on his face as a pale, petite hand probed around his neck. Was she an EMT? Cody struggled to clear her gaze through the rain and the hiss of blood surging in her head. Her heart was pounding so quick it was going to kill her.

                There were sirens in the distance. Footsteps around her. No… she didn’t want to be touched, moved, spoke to. Not like this.

                She shoved herself upright further, having to lean on her palm to support herself before she could sit normally. Everything burned, stung. Cody glanced down to the mess of her own body. Her clothes were already torn and soaked through with water. No… not all water. Blood. It made her clothes dark and ran into the street, onto the asphalt. It covered her flesh and dripped from open tears like a ruined doll. Bleeding ink bleeding ink bleeding ink bleeding ink-

                Someone crouched nearby. Tall, dark, looming. She didn’t look at him, but felt him there, felt him all around her. Smelled him. There were sirens still in the distance. How far were they? Where was Dexter? Had the angel come for him with her bleeding ink wings and sad eyes full of sunset?

                The man had injuries just like hers, identical. His blood ran into the street and bled words panic and chaos and broken glass onto the ground out of torn doll wounds. She was looking at him and had been looking at him for so long but still couldn’t see him. Where was Dexter?

                The man had eyes that were green but silver too, like the hunched trees in the rain. But they were more than a color. She watched them, and they calmed her. They dulled the noise and the burning and everything else, they matched the pace of her heartbeat and told it to steady and it obeyed.

                “You are reset.” The voice was thunder and rain and smoke.

                Sirens had come, finally. They interrupted the smoky air with high sing-song voices and stopped nearby. Their lights screamed louder than their voices and made her eyes ache. She shut them once, tightly. When she opened them, the man was gone; the crumpled body of the Toyota sprawled sickeningly before her instead.

                Arms underneath her pulled her up off the street, trying to be gentle but feeling like a jarring forklift. Now she saw the other cars. Two other victims, one with only a corner bent in and the other near perfectly crumpled on its whole driver’s side. The suburban laid against the base of the light pole, bent in half and caved in. It hardly resembled a vehicle… more like a mass of scrap metal.

                “Three more… one lady trapped in the Ford…” The voices were distant, zooming in and out of her head. Cody landed on a stretcher, faces crossed over her vision as her eyes hit the sky. Rain drops fell on her face, splattering with force like they had on the hood of her rain coat. The gray clouds looked angry, spiraled and heavy against each other.

                “She’s got barely a scratch… lucky…Miss, you’re very lucky.”

                Were they talking to her?

                “Cody Kessler? Is that your name? You’re going to be fine Cody, you’re in shock, but you’re perfectly unharmed.”

              No… I’m bleeding… its everywhere…can’t you see? Can’t you see it dripping onto the street, down from my wings?

                “Lucky girl… and the boy. Look at their car. It’s amazing.”
Dexter?

They shut the ambulance doors leaving her alone and she bolted upright, searching her body in what had to be continued shock. Her clothes were still torn up, ripped like angry wolves had caught her in the street. But there was no blood, not even any cuts or scratches. She clawed at her arms, her stomach where her shirt was torn away. Nothing. Not a single mark.

Her pulse heightened, blood racing in her ears, loud and panicked.

Outside a crowd had gathered, a hundred faces in awe, camera phones flashing, police pushing them back. Out the window she could see it all. Including the man who stood on the corner away from the crowd, watching the ambulance with a blank expression as if it were nothing he hadn’t seen every day of his life. His right arm was held a little higher then the left, twisted outwardly a little unnaturally. The street below him ran red with blood washed down by rain. She met his eyes, green, silver, trees. A heartbeat passed. Two. Three. And he was gone.