Excerpt of Ignition by Alexander Alten

CHAPTER 1
    What a stunning day. The smell of slowly grilled meat,the sound of some kind of mesmerizing electronic music pulsing louder with every second, a beat that’s everywhere and nowhere at the same time, a disco ball hovering in the air casting colored glitter over her face, the barbecue, the grass, the green backyard with its sandy hills, a surreal, but beautiful view. Jade leans back, pressing her back against the wall behind her, taking a deep breath to memorize this unbelievable scene. She closes her eyes, savoring every second, feeling the relaxation and peace. She feels her heart slowing down, her mind drifting away, making room for relaxation, lifting her up…

       A brutal punch shatters the dream. The disco ball hits her chest with the speed of a bullet, a hard pressure, like an alp from her nightmares grasping her tightly, pressing the air out of her lungs. She panics, trying to move, getting away from this wall, but she can’t. The wall holds her with hidden tentacles. With her body pressed against the wall she can’t breathe, wants to scream, to call for help, but no sound leaves her mouth — no air left.

     With a last flickering view the beautiful backyard evaporates into the abyss.

      A jolt rips through Jade, catapulting her back into the world, her brain can’t distinguish for a few seconds between what’s real and what’s not. The smell of burned meat, the intense heat, the disco
ball, her vision is blurry, distorted. Her hand flies instinctively to her face, smearing a sticky liquid across her cheek and eyelids as she struggles to focus her eyes.
     “What the fuck? What happened?” Jade looks perplexed at her bloody hand, the words barely audible through the ringing in her ears. She tries to move her head, but pain races through her skull, letting the disco ball explode into millions of colored pieces. Her brain struggles to process the images her eyes capture before her as her vision clears.
    “Damn that’s a lot of blood.” Jade slurs her words, her mouth dry like a desert. “Ouch, damn, my head,” she chokes out again.

    Memories are flooding back, striking her with the force of a train out of control. The sudden turbulence, the hard push from the gust, pressing the left wing up, tilting the Cessna to the right, hitting the rocks, ripping a section of the wing off, and sending the old bird downwards. Her training kicked in, a few milliseconds of automatedhandling, the fine line between death and survival. As routined and cold as she could be, she screams “Cover!” fighting to maintain control. A deafening cry followed by the crunching sound of metal against sand. The wheels got busted, she felt the dust crashing through the cockpit window and piercing her skin with a thousand needles of glass, the abrupt stop, pressing the air out of her lungs. Then, it seems, she fainted.
    Jade fights with her body, her eyes wide open, blinking against the harsh sunlight. Disgust wraps around her like a suffocating shroud, tightening with each attempted move. Every muscle screams in protest, every joint throbs with an exploding ache, her senses torture her with the constant smell of burned meat, mixed with the metallic taste of blood in her mouth. Jade gags, the smell triggering a wave of revulsion, bile surging up her throat like a geyser ready to erupt. Her body wracked with spasms, she retches violently, emptying the contents of her stomach onto her flight suit, adding another layer of filth to the already devastated fabric.
   She had been flying low, trying to stay under the radar as long and often as she could, always evading the high penetration radar of the military. But the Gobi with its unpredictable winds and unforgiving terrain doesn’t like to be disturbed by a low-flying plane today. Her instructor’s yelling voice echoed in her ears, high-pitched and chattering – she always imagined talking to Donald Duck. They
called him Duck in her team.

    “Jade, trying to fly low and avoiding radar always comes with a price. You fly low, you get caught in the shit!”
     Jade coughed out a smile, pain shooting through her ribs.
     “Yeah, yeah, I got the message loud and clear today, Duck,” she groans. “But hey, at least I’m still alive, thanks to you.”
      Jade takes another deep breath, a few seconds to concentrate and focus. The nausea fades, her will winning over her battered body. Nothing is lost, yet.

     Oh, that sound, her ears ringing, the collision warning screams, “Impact, Impact, Impact!” Yeah, yeah, you stupid arse of a bloody mechanic, I know! Jade switches the alarm off. Silence. Blessed silence. Only the frizzling sound from the damaged electronics and this intensive, disgusting, constant smell of burned meat. She takes a deep breath, concentrating not to vomit again, trying to disconnect mind and body, racing to assess the damage. No fire, at least. And since I’m alive, the plane didn’t crash totally apart. Good.
    That smell of burned meat makes her sick — Jade looks down. Blood, glass mixed with the former content of her stomach and… is that an ear? Her arms instinctively shoot up, searching frantically for her ears, releasing a relieved breath as she finds both at their natural place. Jade looks down again, twinkling her toes, moving her legs slightly. Bloody, but intact. “Okay, good,” she whispers to herself. “I have bloody great legs.” She moves her head to the right, staring into a dead eye.

   Jade flinches back, terrified. What the…? The headaches hit her again; the vision starts to blur. She needs a few seconds to focus her eyes and take a closer look. Who the fuck is that? Her headaches overshadow anything; she can’t think. A few deep breaths, slowly in, slowly out. The headaches seem to fade.

   Ah, yes, the lab doc. Tom? No, that wasn’t his name. Or was it? She can’t even remember his name. He looks awful, must have hit the instruments pretty hard — so hard, in fact, that an eye popped
out. And obviously, his right ear was ripped clean off, finding an unlikely resting place on her leg as if seeking a nap. The right side of his face seems to have melted into the instrument frame. The sizzling wreckage releases small plumes of smoke where his face creates a kind of symbiotic connection with the metal, feeding the remaining electricity with flesh to produce permanent plumes.
    “Jade, get your shit together,” she talks to herself, feeling the rebellion of her stomach, the spasms starting already again. Acid crawls up, burning her throat, ready to explode. Jade forces herself to take a deep breath, holding the air in, counting to ten. Her stomach welcomes the exercise. She manages not to throw up; the pressure fades, leaving a dull feeling.

   She stares apathetically at Tom, like she needed to burn this scene into her memory, this strange assembly of death and technology. She remembers now that he was one of the lab folks, working on that drug her boss wanted so badly.

   “Well, isn’t this just glorious,” Jade laughs silent, her voice laced with dark humor. “Looks like we’re both fucked.”

     The memories cause a flickering between reality and the past. Shit, she got hit hard. But she’s alive. That’s all that matters now. “Get out, girl, move!” she berates herself, forcing her body to move.

    “Baby steps,” her instructor’s chattering voice reminds her. “After surviving a crash is always before your death. Analyze, separate the
mind from the body, and focus on survival.”

     Jade fumbles for the harness release, the metal cold and slippery against her bloody fingers. The belt releases with a satisfying click,