OUT OF MIND² ━━ Bellamy Blake

𝐗𝐈𝐗: Red as the Dawn

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RED AS THE DAWN

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RED AS THE DAWN, the streets are drenched with rivers of blood.

Lyra stumbles across the crumbling cobblestone. She does not dare yet abandon the safety of the cool shadows that hang overhead of the chiseled entrance at the base of the tower that claws at the insipid morning sky. Her hope had struggled to persevere the hundreds-of-feet descent from the throne room. Pale sunlight slices down over the ruinous city. All Lyra can see is the endless red that stretches out and mutilates the city. All she can hear is the scorching screams as survivors crawl amongst the damned city. A man is on his knees. He cries out with incendiary anguish. In his arms is the broken and battered body of girl no older than six.

She must be his daughter. She looks like a mutilated doll in his arms. Her limbs are contorted inhumanly.

     Stories have no beginning, Lyra reminds herself as her heart clenches. The City of Light was not the start of something doomed. There is a culminations of prologues, epigraphs, and footnotes explaining different events throughout time. They assess everything that happens because, in the end, everything tends to connect more than you realize.

     Stories have no beginning. Lyra did not start the City of Light, she did not start the second apocalypse.

     Millions of possibilities have spiraled and some have solidified into solid form. That is what has given us the story thus far ━━ ninety-seven years ago, Becca Pramheda accidentally created a murder bot. Alie survived the earth's downfall alongside Grounders with black blood running through their veins. She bit her tongue and bid her time until one day, Thelonious Jaha, distraught after his son's brutal death, was determined to find answers. He set out across a desert to find purpose and he took John Murphy with him. Murphy who was trapped in a bunker for eighty-six days while Jaha became Alie's most trusted ally. And thus he came back to Arkadia with a new goal in mind.

You know where the story goes from there.

Stories have no beginning. This is not Lyra's doing

     "Look alive, star-girl."

The girl's reverie is shattered by her dad's gentle voice. Her eyes snap up from the blood and the bodies and the death; the air stinks of freshly slaughtered flesh and overwhelming copper.

He takes one look at her face and seems to know exactly what she's thinking. "This isn't your fault, kiddo. It's no one's."

"I know," Lyra mumbles. "But —

"But it feels like it?" Noah guesses. She nods. He gives a long suffering sigh. There is a crease between his brow as his mundane blue eyes drift over their destruction. "Feelings suck. Trust me on this one. I mean, I still feel pretty shitty for telling you that I was gonna kill myself and it would be your fault."

      Lyra snorts. "I told you to take the chip, though."

      "To save my life," he responds. "Don't beat yourself up, going through everything that's happened. You'll drive yourself crazy. Besides, I'm the dad. I'm supposed to be the one protecting you."