“You need to go five clicks east,” Brazen instructs, making Hale realize why he’s sitting up front instead of in the back.
Hale does as he says, blindly trusting the full blood he can’t stand.
“Brace yourselves,” Brazen warns - his arms protectively drawing me closer to his body.
I feel the forceful impact trying to snap my neck off my shoulders as it jolts me forward. My head spins as the large, beast of a vehicle climbs onto its side, and I hear the snapping of wood and metal clashing as we barrel through the sand-wrapped gate. My head thuds against breaking glass as we skid into the compound, my breath catching against the heated base of the mask.
Brazen’s arms tighten around my waist when more glass shatters around us, the shards relentlessly trying to cut through our resistant skin. The dust surges in with more ferocity now that it has too many points of access. All visibility has disappeared, except for the swirling wonder of a storm in the sky that is pulling the dead land into it. The red lightning crashes with more grace and beauty than the erratic bolts of blue that come with the other stage storms. The vibrant drops of crimson rain litter the ground with the same elegance of blood dripping from a vein. It all becomes more nature’s ballet rather its demon child. It’s hypnotic, entrancing actually, and though I’ve seen them before, I’ve never felt like this about one. I almost feel connected to it in some strange way - as though it’s trying to tell me something about… myself? It’s the strangest feeling I’ve ever had to deal with, leaving me bemused in the face of a crisis rather than alert or even functioning.
The suctioning feel of death’s grip promising to capture us if we linger for too long finally prompts me to snap out of my mesmerized trance.
“Damn it, Araya, what the hell?” Hale screams, as though I’ve been tuning him out for a while.
He grabs my hand, the seatbelt snapping free from my waist, and he rushes us through the doors to follow behind the others. My feet try to leave the ground just before I see a hint of a stone building hiding behind the swirls of sand rising between us and sanctuary. Hale’s arms fasten around me, pulling me into the safety of his embrace as he forces his feet to stay grounded. We run blindly through the storm, and I feel Brazen’s touch instructing us where to go as we rush into the safety of the walls in the center of the compound.
The sound of sniffling noses, falling tears, and restrained whimpers rattle around in my ears as I rip free from the mask. With the filter full, I had run out of air to breathe. My first fresh breath almost hurts as I gulp it down too hard. My eyes receive more of a shock than my lungs, though, as they fall upon the horrid sights sitting in the halls of the shaking building.
I gasp when I see several humans gashed up, their lacerations being stitched up due to their inability to heal any faster way. Their lips quiver in fear, and their fragile bodies convulse from the pain of the sustained wounds being too severe for them to handle without the help of something to numb them.
My gaze then shifts to the full bloods and hybrids drinking blood to heal their injuries - their own blood still dripping from the gaping wounds that could have only been caused by a gifted or uranium.
“What happened?” Hale prompts.
“One of the gusts picked up a truck and launched it into the arsenal before we could secure it,” a man answers. “Uranium tipped weapons sprung out everywhere.”
“We’ve still got people trapped in the tunnels below. They’ll bleed out if we don’t get to them,” a woman cries.
Hale, Brazen, and Clay exchange a look. They dart off without saying a word, intentionally excluding me from the private conversation. I start to follow them when crying sounds strike my ears.
They’re distant, but the terror in them is unmistakable. Only the forgotten can carry guilt in their screams, for only they can feel guilty for needing help.
“Where are the hybrid children?” I screech while whirling around to face the shriveling cowards on the floor.
“They’re trapped in the school,” a woman whimpers out, her eyes casting shame on the floor.
“No one is getting them out?” I scream.
“The captain said to leave them. It’s not safe for us to go out there,” she says, keeping her eyes steady on the ground beneath her.
“You’re a hybrid,” I snarl. “How could you?”
Her eyes finally look up, regret and guilt swimming tirelessly in the watering edges of her hybrid blue irises.
“If I disobeyed our captain, it wouldn’t me he punished. The children… worse would happen to them later.”
Her eyes lower once more at the end of her emotionally choking words. I narrow my eyes at her, wishing I could just knock the hell out of her cowardly face. These children need people to stand up for them, not sniveling cowards willing to comply because they’re too afraid to do anything else.
I blur away from her before I let my gift go rogue and shred her to pieces. The savage threatens to creep up, and I quickly inject myself with the olophine that subdues me within a breath. Satisfied the beast has been tamed, I start rifling through the closets of the great hall.
“What are you going to do?” Alex asks, a worried tone gurgling in the back of her throat.
“I’m going to find ground treaders, and then I’m going to go sit out this storm with the kids that are over there alone and terrified.”
“Ground treaders? What the hell are you going to do with them?”
The sound of the steel roof threatening to be sucked free hinders the conversation. We’re both forced to duck as fans and other ceiling ornaments crash to the ground. The roof holds steady, though continuing to creak and groan against the torrential winds picking up with more deadly force. My eyes catch a small glimpse of something I hadn’t noticed earlier. The small mirror hiding in the back of the closet gives me a peek of the eyes I almost don’t recognize.
A few violet, vein-like slithers run along the sides to step in closer to my pupils. They almost look to be glowing, a secret emerging in their subtle, narrow lines no one else has seemed to notice - not even the two men claiming to love me.
