I was standing in a burning city, naked and alone, the unbearable heat of the flames eating away at my flesh. I crouched down, shielding my eyes from the brightness of the fire, choking under a blanket of smoke, tasting ash in my mouth.
It was everywhere, consuming buildings, devouring families and claiming lives, and I knew that it would try to take me as well. I cried out for him. “Aizel! Help me!” But no one came, no one heard me over the violent crackling of the flames.
I crawled for as long as I could, my hands and knees bleeding from being scraped along the road, and throbbing from the heat. Like a child I cried out for refuge, until I stumbled upon a familiar house at the end of the road, with what would have been a beautiful garden. The garden was shrivelled and the timber was slowly burning away, but I still went inside – I couldn’t understand why.
By some miracle the fire hadn’t reached inside yet, but I could still hear the muffled roars of the inferno outside. I coughed and fell to the dusty wooden floorboards for rest. It was so strange that I was safe from the fire here. This place allowed me to forget everything that was happening. It was as if I were falling.
I looked up when I heard a noise – fast breathing and heavy whimpering. I saw someone rocking back and forth in the corner, with grey-stricken eyes and blood pulsing from his neck and chest. He was repeating something to himself, some uncertain words – an unfinished sentence.
“All I wanted… All I wanted… All I wanted… All I wanted… All I wanted… All I wanted… All I wanted…”
It was Brakewater, and I surely couldn’t understand why I was seeing him like this. He used to be so tall, so confident and unmoving. This jittering person must have been someone else, only it wasn’t – it was him.
I walked over on sore feet and touched him on the shoulder. He jumped and swiped my hand away with the savagery of a wild hound, and then he just kept rocking back and forth, uttering his prayer.
“All I wanted… All I wanted… All I wanted…”
I turned around and my father was standing there, he wore a suit and tie and looked quite civil, however I felt this strong sense of emptiness resonating from his eyes
“You will avenge me, child,” he told me with a cold voice.
It frightening me to see him like this, and the emptiness. I stormed over to the door and prepared to face the fire. Outside, right on the doorstep I saw my father again, his body burning, as well as the professor, but my father was right behind me!
I spun around again to face the inside of the house, and I saw president Lace standing there with a gun and a wicked smile. Suddenly the inside of the house erupted in flames and I heard his spine-chilling voice. “I killed them,” he said slowly. “And I will kill you too.”
He fired the gun and I felt the bullet rip through my naked chest – it was cold and unforgiving, and yet I could feel it dragging me down into the fire below. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t fight it, and I fell through the air, pulled down by the flames, until I plunged into a vast body of water. One minute I was burning and the next I was drowning, and all I could do was scream.
I thought I was dead – or at least some variation of being dead – when I opened my eyes to see the silhouette of a man above the water. I knew him! He had come to save me like he did before! “Aizel!” I screamed, with bubbles gushing from my mouth.
The hand reached down and I caught it by the wrist, and then it pulled me once again to the surface.
My eyelids snapped open and I took in a massive lungful of air, sitting up suddenly and clutching my hand over my heart as the burning within my chest died away. My entire body was sopping wet, my clothes and my hair were soaked and covered in mud and an earthly smell, and I shivered as the wind ran a chill down my spine.
I remembered seeing Aizel, and then falling. Did I seriously just have a nightmare? When did it begin? And how did I get out of the water.
“Are you okay?” asked a voice.
I looked up to see a boy, about the same age as I was, with dark skin, dusty clothes and messy hair. The dreariness in his eyes told me that he was most likely homeless, and the spark that I noticed in his smile told me that he was happy to see me breathing.
“I’m… I’m fine…” I coughed, so hard that it made my lungs scream, and I felt droplets of water fly from my mouth.
The boy ran forward and touched me gently on the back. “Don’t try to talk,” he told me, “just nod your head when you can. When I pulled you out of the river you coughed up a lot of water. I saw you fall out the window. You’re lucky to be alive.”
I had thought that it was Aizel who had pulled me from the water, but it wasn’t, it was this man. “What’s your name?” I asked weakly.
“Me? I’m Angelo.”
There was something incredibly familiar about him, and I knew that I had seen him before, or perhaps heard his voice. I think he had caught on to my thoughts.
“Your eyes are asking if we’ve met,” he said. “We have met before, although it was terribly brief, and I never actually caught your name.”
“I’m Abigail,” I told him. “Jeannette… is my first name, but a lot of people just call me Abigail.”
When he saw that I was really all right he sat down casually beside me, he seemed alright, however despite my instinct I was sure to be careful of him.
“We met about four days ago,” he explained. “I was using an air vent as a shortcut through the building when I spotted you being chased by those men, so I called out.”
So, he was the one who had saved me that night, to be honest I had wondered about that a lot at the time, but given everything else that was going on I guess it just wasn’t important anymore. “How did you end up finding me here?” I asked him.
“Well, when I saw that you were going the right way I bolted – I sure as hell wasn’t going to wait around for those guys to show up. But before I left I overheard you through the walls, talking about a code.”
Was that what he wanted? I had hoped not.
“It sounded interesting,” Angelo continued, “so I followed you, until I heard talk about ATLAS – the weapon that could end the war. I’ll admit, it all sounded a little too crazy for my standards, and the resistance sure wasn’t going to let a bum like me do them any favours, so I just sat back to see how it’d play out. I followed you here, and I’m thinking this time you might actually need my help.”
I didn’t like the idea of trusting a stranger, but I knew I wasn’t going to get very far on my own, and speaking of getting anywhere, I had absolutely no idea what my next move was. The plan had failed but Lace hadn’t won yet…
Lace. There wasn’t a single word in the English language that could induce as much hatred as that one. I hated him, more than I could hate anything in the entire world, and I wanted revenge. I thought for a moment and really, I could see no other way, my next move was blood, Lace’s blood. He let this damn war happen, he stole ATLAS, he tortured me in order to get the code, he killed Aizel, and he killed the professor and my father. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, contemplating each rise and fall of my chest. Archibald Dennett Lace needed to die, it was the only way – but if Lace was to die I’d need help, and I knew that I needed the help of someone who I should have trusted a long time ago. Benson would help me see that Lace got what he deserved. ATLAS belonged to the resistance now.
ns 172.70.127.58da2
and then Add to home screen.