OUT OF MIND² ━━ Bellamy Blake

𝐈𝐕: Lyra, Monty, & the Dying Boy

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LYRA, MONTY,
& THE DYING BOY

┕━━━━ ⋆｡˚☽˚｡⋆ ━━━━┙

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THE WALKMAN broke.

Lyra knows it's stupid to be thinking about the Walkman after everything that's happened, but she can't stop. Mount Weather exploded because she couldn't get the launch codes herself and thirty-seven people died inside. Men, women, children. Gina. Forty nine people died inside of that mountain.

     "I don't trust it."

     "Dad, it's an apple."

     Lyra and her dad loiter near the Arkadia gates, the camp bustling with activity behind them. Thick gauze bandages wrists and palms; she'd taken the brute of the heat in the explosion, having been much closer than Sinclair and Raven. Abby had ordered her to stay in medical for at least a week, but Lyra is finding it harder and harder to stay in the same place for more than a couple minutes. She's never been so restless.

    Pretty gold smothers the sky, drenching the clouds in honey. It feels wrong for the Earth to be so beautiful right now. Lyra's features are stiff, her eyes flickering unseeingly across the yard and at the Alpha Station exoskeleton. She clutches the blood-red apple tighter in her palms, her nails breaking through the thin skin and pressing crescents into the fruit. Her nerves are erratic, a sort of anxiety chewing straight through to her very marrow. It's a kind of helpless nervousness.

     "I still don't trust it," announces Noah, eying the fruit skeptically. "It could make your throat swell and you could stop breathing. Or maybe it's poisonous and you'll just drop dead on the spot."

     Since Lyra doesn't have anything against dropping dead on the spot, she takes a bite of the apple.

It tastes fine to her.

     Noah makes a face. "Ugh. Don't look now, but the devil reincarnate is coming over here."

     "Kane?"

     "Obviously."

     "Jupiter's!" Kane calls, grey hairs crawling across his jaw as he gives them both a polite wave. Then his voice lowers as he casts an anxious glance around the camp, his usual peaceful aura flickering. "Lyra, I'd like to have a word with you."

     "Sir, with all due respect, I'm not going back into medical."

     "It's not about that, even if I think you should. This is about Bellamy."

     She stiffens. "Is he OK?"

     She hasn't seen him last night; the first thing he'd done when they got back to Arkadia was check on her in medical. Then he just disappeared.

     "In retrospect? He's seems absolutely fine," answers Kane, but his mouth cramps into a thin line before he continues grimly. "But really, I'm not so sure. He just came to me and quit the guard."