The icy chill of the night was already too much for her warm body to handle. Her battlesuit was made with the technology from Earth in mind. Her father made sure that they were the best that they could get with their limited materials. In her current state, however, it was no better than a thin sheet of paper on her skin.
The speed at which she moved didn't help her situation at all. Carmilla was slowly succumbing to a state of hypothermia.
Keeping to the impossibly large trees' branches, while allowing for a stealthier escape, meant expending more energy jumping through large distances than she would if she ran on solid ground. It didn't take much for her to conclude that she won't be able to keep this up without significantly straining her body than what she was already doing.
A feverish heat burned through her. Her breathing grew laboured. She felt her stamina dwindle faster than she could plan her next jump.
The time between each hop stretched longer. Carmilla found herself leaning on the trunk and making her feet were still firmly planted on the tree. The height beneath morphed and moved even when she held herself straight.
She would give herself less than an hour before her body gave out. What's worse was that she was still at a distance for the scouts of her district to reach her.
It was only by sheer willpower that she was able to make it that far before her body stopped listening entirely.
The next thing she knew, she slipped and fell face-first onto a branch a few ways away. Pain shot through her nose. When she sniffled, she felt an uncomfortable sensation of snot mixing with her blood.
"Fuck..." She mumbled, her voice muffled by the congestion.
Carmilla pushed herself to her feet. It took more strength than she would like to admit—even when compared to her years training and pushing her body beyond the limits. Her headache hit her in full force, with a brain that squeezed and twisted itself like a wet towel. The banging in her ear grew louder. No matter how fast she panted, the air coming into her lungs wasn't enough.
Carmilla knew that she was screwed. She just didn't realize how much until this moment.
No matter how hard she forced her limbs to move, they trembled out of her control before giving up. Snot tinged with blood trickled from her nose. Restraining her brother took more out of her than she realized.
After all, it was rare for her to get sick, if she ever was. Her mother explained that her powers remained dormant in her younger years, however, that didn't mean that it slacked off. In its dormancy, it molded her body to the perfect host. She was far from a human with the district's scientists seeing her more as a beast.
It took a lot of illegal research, bribery and blackmail to figure out how she was going to pull off her plan. She drained her life savings for hush money.
The people she worked with gave her everything she needed to know—how to catch the flu, and how to make it last long enough to fool her mother.
All that knowledge did not prepare her for the hell she was going through.
She placed her arm over her eyes, moaning as the movement worsened her headache. "I feel like I'm going to die..." She muttered between breaths.
When she opened her eyes, the sun was starting to rise.
"Fuck..." She muttered. She must have blacked out.
Carmilla struggled to sit up. Her trembling arms barely lifted her chest a few inches off of the ground. Bile rose to the back of her throat. It took all of her strength to keep from vomiting her lack of dinner.
Her body protested, sore in places she didn't know existed.
With what strength she could gather, she pushed herself to her feet, leaning on the trunk for support.
She was in no condition to continue her bunny hops. The next best thing was to climb down and walk on foot. Carmilla hated her body for slowing her down. Thinking back, she should have at least taken flu medicine. Laying down, she didn't feel how sick she really was.
She grabbed the rope from the side of her utility belt and tied it around the branch beneath her.
Every minor action was accompanied by a sniffle that did nothing to clear the snot clogging her nostrils. Carmilla couldn't tell whether she wanted to scream or go back to sleep.
She let the other end of the rope fall from the branch. Looking over the edge, she gauged that the end was about five feet from the ground. She knew she could make the jump, however, anxiety clawed at her through her delirium.
Carmilla shook away the unnecessary thoughts. "I'm their best senior scout for fuck's sake…"
After making sure that knot would hold, she awkwardly positioned herself for the climb down. Her pacing was a mess—she couldn't tell if she was going too fast or too slow. Through the haze, all she noticed were her mistakes. Every second wasted sniffling and moaning felt like a stab to her ego.
She was gifted in her physicality and she prided herself for how efficient her body worked with her. Her coordination was top-notch, worthy of her reputation as a scout.
It didn't matter that she was useless at pleasing politicians. She had the raw power and skill that proved her worth as a Theodore. Every slip and pause due to her sickness felt like she was slowly losing the only thing that made her good.
Jumping down five feet felt like falling from a cliff. So much adrenaline went to her brain that she forgot how to land properly, face-planting onto the dirt unceremoniously.
"Kill me now..."
Her cheeks were swollen from the blood rushing to her face. The dull ache under her skin told her that she might have broken a bone. Something inside her body screamed that an organ didn't feel alright. All while her brain pulsed hard enough that it might as well explode from her skull.
Carmilla knew that they were false. She knew that the pain was exaggerated by her abnormal state. It didn't stop her from groaning and sobbing in agony.
"Move, god damn it..." She mumbled, shuffling in the direction of the rising sun.
She recognized a dead tree, marking the halfway mark toward the exit of the dense forest. Instead of relief, she prepared herself for the new hell in the next part of her escape.
The forest naturally divided itself by three sections when her ancestors arrived. Humans stayed on the inner-ground, beasts stayed on the outer-ground, and everyone else fought over what remained in the middle.
Middle-ground was a small distance to the outside. It grew smaller over the years as the district's scouts expanded their range. It allowed for projects outside the district walls to proceed with little to no casualties and thus elevating the quality of life for the citizens.
Unfortunately for Carmilla, this meant that the animals in the middle-ground were extremely territorial. If they ever found out that someone or something stepped over their marked scents—be it prey or predator—the fight that followed was violent.
Carmilla did prepare a small recovery point. It was something she juggled in between lunch breaks and day-offs. She made it as a backup plan in case she couldn't manage to escape while battling her flu.
"If only I had the tact to position it closer to my marker..." The heat was so bad that she felt them hover over her nose and the tips of her ears. Her eyes watered for no reason and her legs shook with every step.
If she awakened the power to teleport instead, then she wouldn't have needed to come up with this plan in the first place.
The only good thing about the middle-ground was that the animals were more or less normal.
Humans, with their habit of categorizing everything into little boxes, categorized every species they encountered in Itov. For her ancestors, they primarily categorized them by how dangerous they were and how similar they were to the animals back on Earth. Middle-ground primarily consisted of animals from Earth.
A bush rustled and a bunny burst out with a great leap. It didn't even notice Carmilla's shuffling frame as it passed. Carmilla couldn't shake the bad feeling that rose to her stomach.
She watched as it disappeared inside another bush. Not far behind, a fluffle followed, more panicked than the one ahead.
They weren't just running—they were fleeing.
Without a second thought, Carmilla followed them with staggered steps. She strained her senses to have even the slightest of clues to identify what was driving their whole burrow out of their territory. Despite their soft and adorable appearance, bunnies were quite territorial. They have the ability to perform unspeakable things if threatened.
She gave up. A new, much more painful headache threatened her with a bad time.
The bunnies gained speed and jumped into another bush.
Carmilla scrambled to catch up. Injuries from the middle-ground weren't a problem—she'd heal in a few days. But not like this. Not while she was sick.
A wave of sadness hit her. She choked out, "I want to go home…"
The building pressure finally snapped.
Carmilla slowed to a stop.The ringing in her ear intensified, muffled by invisible hands. Her vision swayed to both directions. She followed, only for her legs to tremble and slip.
Her body stumbled onto a dead tree. Its branches blocked the early rays of the sun. There was a loud crunch as the wood gave out underneath her weight.
Soft pastels of daybreak smeared across her vision.
Then the ground disappeared followed by a weightlessness that felt familiar. It pulled her from the scruff of her neck.
Just as quickly as she felt it, it was gone. She landed on wet grass. Wooden shillings following her fall, landing painfully on her front.
Carmilla didn't have the energy to open her eyes. Her heavy breathing and the sandy feeling of her hands were the last things she remembered before falling unconscious.