Consciousness returned in fragments.
The first thing Matt registered was the taste of copper and rain on his tongue. The second was the unnatural angle of his body—dangling upside down, suspended by the metal remains of his seatbelt, his arms hanging toward what used to be the ceiling of his car.
He blinked. Once. Twice. The world swam into focus.
Somehow, impossibly, he was still alive.
His memory of the crash was a fog of scattered images: the bullet punching through the window, the explosion that should have been his end, the car tumbling end over end like a child's toy thrown in a tantrum. He remembered fire. Heat. The sensation of his skin peeling back, his blood boiling, his bones—
But there was no pain.
