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Gardens. Smoke. Fog. Screams. Terror. Miracles. Flames. Violence. Floods. Birth. Disaster. Climbing. Crashing. Crumbling.
Silence.
What did you see when your eyes were opened?
E v e r y t h i n g, Jade whispers after they've plunged the green liquid into her arm. It feels like ice coursing through her body and she shakes uncontrollably.
Jade doesn't know where she is. She opens her eyes to an unfamiliar world. She's not in the lab anymore, her arms aren't strapped down at her sides, and the air is heavy and thick and thin and cold and warm. There's no oxygen. Someone is s c r e a m i n g- at the top of their lungs or maybe under their breath. Jade can't tell. An alarm is hissing in the distance.
For a better future for a better future for a better future for a-
Jade knows what she is. She's a god. She's setting herself ablaze, plunging toward a reluctant fate she can't escape, praying for everything she's lost, watching the stars fall, igniting, shedding her skin to emerge as something better and stronger and tougher, she's lighting a matchstick, and a supernova ready to burst.
She's J a d e.
Something roars through the Academy. She looks around and the school is in ruins. Everything is rotting and b r o k e n. The earth shakes, tearing itself apart, and it makes the bricks split and shatter. The glass bounces off the solid, snow covered ground, and all the remains of the buildings disappear.
From ashes to ashes and dust to d u s t-
The school is gone.
The sky s h a k e s. Jade doesn't even think it's possible for the air to shake, but it is. Breathing feels like too much of a challenge.
Something shadowy looms in the distance. The figure sways and bulges in and out of focus. Is it drunk? Is Jade drunk?
She waits with baited breath. The shadow begins to lose its silhouette-like quality and becomes clearer in her mind. She must be drunk. Jade can hear a voice now. She turns her head to the side, the rest of her body is stuck in place. There, she sees a girl-a woman, actually. She's serious, fox-like, with long wispy hair, and incredibly intense eyes that meet hers.
Jade has seen her b e f o r e. She knows her. But from where? The freckles, the gleaming eyes, the fire buried somewhere deep inside-
Jade is that woman. That woman is Jade. But how can that be? -I am me and she is me but she is her and I am her and- the woman points up at the column of smoke floating towards the sky. Jade thinks she can see it too, the way the night sky is shaking like the whole horizon is threatening to collapse on them.
"What's happening?" Jade asks, and her voice sounds so breathy that she doesn't think any words sneak out. She crushes snow under her feet.
"What do you think this is?" The woman replies. The voice doesn't match, but Jade isn't sure what she'll sound like when she's older so she can't tell.
She's staring her future dead in the eyes and she doesn't like what she sees.
"This isn't r e a l. It's in my head. The academy is still standing. Everyone is still alive. I'm still in the basement." Jade insists to her older self. The woman tells her to look around. Look at the at the blackened sky, the grit and dust, the burning ash floating down, the crumbling buildings around her.
"You're wrong." Older Jade says. She squints at the woman, confusion evident on her freckled face.
"All of this is real," The woman continues, ignoring Jade's earlier statement.
"No, it's not."
"It is," The woman insists, once again, "Well, it will be, if they kill him. When the time comes, you can't let the Ukrainian girl kill him, do you understand?"
The wind picks up around them and the stars begin to fall. Whatever was holding them in place must have slipped, because balls of light start plummeting towards the dusty ground.
"You c a n n o t let him die." The woman repeats with urgency, but Jade isn't listening. She's had visions before, but none this intense. None that felt this real.
Then Jade is screaming, lips moving on their own as the wind sucks the breath right out of her lips. The sky comes crashing down around her and she implodes like a dying star into her next life.
Smoke. Fog. Screams. Terror. Miracles. Flames. Violence. Birth. Disaster. Climbing. Crashing. Crumbling. Stars.
S i l e n c e
What did you see when your eyes were opened?
Jade wakes up. She's never been so happy to see Hodge, as much as she hates her. If she's alive, that means the Academy is full standing and Jade's friends are still alive.
It means Jade has time.
L i t t l e silver s t re a k s in the s k y, Jade whispers. A n d they're getting C L O S E R.