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As I recounted my mission’s details, the pain of the memory etched across my features.
“I had meticulously planned every detail, every entrance, every exit. I was confident I could snatch the plans and be gone before anyone knew what had happened. But I was discovered. I ran from one exit to another but they were already locked down. I ran for the only place left unguarded: the facility’s core. I thought it would give me time to come up with a new escape plan. But it ended up sealing my doom. They turned the core on, sending out a pulse to fry me. They weren’t going to come in after me. They were going to kill me with radiation.
“But, my scales…” I paused, looking down at the iridescent scales that covered my arms. “They absorbed it. Not once but multiple times. Each time they tried to bring me down, my body defied them. But the power… it was too much. I felt it coarsing through my veins, a power I had never felt before. I felt like I was on fire, like I was going to explode… And then I did.”
I took a deep breath. “It seared my eyes, and I unleashed beams of pure energy, tearing through the core, the walls, everything. My scream echoed through the facility, a cry of pain and defiance until darkness took over.”
Violet’s eyes were glistening with tears, “Oh Kuana…” She pulled me close, her arms wrapping around me. “I’m so sorry you had to go through all that.”
“When I woke up, I found myself in the research facility’s ruins. The core must have exploded, I guess. I ran and ran and ran until I couldn’t run anymore. I had to live off grid and disappear. I couldn’t contact you in case someone tracked me. I took whatever work I could while I learned to control the power in my body. I got caught and sent to Ikmal. And that’s where I ended up.”
For a moment, we stayed in that embrace, feeling the shared warmth and comfort.
It felt like a balm to the searing memories of the past.
But that comfort was short-lived.
Violet pulled back, her eyes fixed on the wall behind me. “Kuana… what’s that?”
I turned around and saw the wall vibrating, shimmering with a peculiar energy.
The entire room began to shake, the objects around us blurring and fading away.
The sensation was vertiginous, like being pulled through a vortex.
The next moment, the farmhouse was gone, replaced by the cold, metallic confines of a room I knew all too well.
“No…”
The air was thick and smelled of stale metal, and the familiar hum of machinery rang in my ears.
“No,” I whispered in horror. “Not here… Anywhere but here!”
But there it was, the undeniable truth: we were back in the heart of Ikmal, surrounded by danger once more.
We had never really escaped Ikmal.
We had been here the whole time.
We had been living in a fantasy world.
18
VIOLET
The vibrating walls, the sound of shifting molecules, the sensation of my skin pulling and pushing like the tide, everything swirled and merged until the familiar warmth and coziness of the farmhouse disappeared.
In its place, a frigid, metallic chill enveloped me.
My eyes darted around, struggling to process the abrupt shift from soft bed linens to hard, steel surfaces.
Ikmal.
And not just anywhere in Ikmal.
Ikhax’s cell.
Blinking rapidly, a pang of fear raced through my heart, urging it to beat at an unsettling pace.
