OUT OF MIND² ━━ Bellamy Blake

𝐗𝐗𝐕𝐈𝐈𝐈: No Way Out

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NO WAY OUT

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          BECCA'S LABS glow against the sea of stars like brilliant snow. Night dampens the outside world and yet this place remains untouched. Something like the blood of a god that had leaked into the cosmos. Radiating out of the suffocating, endless abyss, a bright burning orb of promise. Mythology and science and magic and hope perfectly aligned.

     Lyra presses her fingertips to the freezing desk panel as though she wishes to feel the frost through the snow-coloured materials. It's bitter; her fingertips are pale as ice. Her head hurts, too.

     But these days, her head always hurts.

     On days like today, it's just a dull throbbing in the back of her skull. An incessant pulsing. An incendiary heartbeat. On worse days. . . that incendiary heartbeat begins to feel more and more like hellfire. Like her skull is raining ash and blood. And the last time she'd felt like that. . . well, you know what happened.

     She'd had another seizure.

     And the inferno in her head had rivaled the blistering stars.

     Jackson had forbade her from setting foot in the labs for at least a week. And yet here Lyra is all the same, clothed in old clothes from Becca's mansion, the blazing fluorescents glistening in her hair, adding to the furore. Hands aching against the monitors and control panels, an anaesthetising ice creeping through slender bones, staring across the lab that simmers in the ink-coloured abyss of night that threatens to drown the tiny island. Frissons of despair spiral down her spine as she contemplates the fate of the world that lays in her hands. So, so, so many people are counting on her.

     Jackson's voice trickles down from the lofted portion of the lab. "This is Becca's main research lab, but there are 5 other levels."

     Lyra lifts her head with some difficulty. There, standing right beside Jackson, is Clarke.

     "Incredible," the blonde murmurs as her eyes trail the vastness of it all.

     However Clarke doesn't seem to notice her yet. Instead she has eyes only for Abby, whose eyes crinkle affectionately as her daughter descends the steps. There's something so beautiful in the way that Abby caresses Clarke's face and in the way that Clarke looks up at her mother with nothing but adoration in her eyes that Lyra almost has to look away. The moment is raw and it does not belong to her. It belongs to them.

     "God," whispers Abby as Clarke nods slowly. "It's really you."

     "I'll go check on Raven and Luna," Jackson announces from the upper level. "And Lyra — "

     Lyra makes a face. "Five more minutes!"

     Jackson grumbles something inaudible under his breath, rolls his eyes, and then stalks off. Lyra laughs under her breath.

     "Where's Roan?" Abby asks.

     Clarke doesn't look pleased to be discussing the Azgeda King ━━ his warriors had been the one to cost them the barrel of hydrazine; they'd betrayed Roan and tried to steal it. "He's unloading the fuel with the others."