OUT OF MIND² ━━ Bellamy Blake

𝐗𝐗𝐗𝐈𝐈: Day 46

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DAY 46

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          WHEN THE WORLD caves in, Lyra's sundered heart is in more pieces than it is made of, scattered in the dark.

     The planet is ash. Everything has burned away and the world above her is smoldering embers. Here beneath the dirt, it feels as if all the lights in the universe have gone out.

     "It's been 46 days, Bellamy."

     Her voice is a tendril of a dying flame; a heartbeat away from fading. The radio is nothing more than another dead weight in her hand ━━ a rock dragging her to the coldest and blackest and bleakest depths of an ocean of despair. Weighing her down, down, down. . .

"I don't know if you can hear me, but. . . " Lyra's voice catches. Wavers. "I hate you for what you did. I hate you so, so, so much. . . and I miss you so badly that it hurts."

Tears spill into her eyes like broken glass. It feels like the pieces are cutting her.

     "Here we go again," a voice remarks in what clearly is an attempt to be teasing, but it trembles with regret. . . and something else. Something that sounds like unfathomable sadness.

     The door scrapes open and Noah Jupiter steps into the dark, empty chamber.

      "You spend all your time in here, Lyra," he continues as he steps forwards very carefully, as if not to startle her. "You don't show up to mealtimes, you don't talk to your friends. You've missed another training session with Octavia."

     "I've been busy," Lyra says listlessly. "And you're not supposed to be in my lab."

     Lab is too kind of a word for the chamber. It is nothing like the blizzard-white, sterile utopia that Becca created, where she'd become the worlds worst nightmare and last hope. Instead it's a cramped little chamber chiseled straight out of stone in the bleakest corner of the bunker; there are a few old microscopes, centrifuges, some d electrophysiology equipment, micromanipulator, lab glassware, a sink, a flat top treatment table, and a cot haphazardly shoved into the corner. There's a raggedy blanket and a few textbooks scattered around the cot, which is all Lyra's doing. She hardly ever leaves this room.

Yet it's proof of one thing, at least. Cadogan had expected scientists to live here, too. Experiment and research, even, by the looks of things.

(What that means, Lyra isn't quite sure she wants to know.)

Noah looks unimpressed. "The delegates have assembled. You know that you're supposed to join them — Octavia made you Skaikru's delegate for a reason."

Probably that reason is so Octavia wouldn't be bored out of her mind during them. The two girls have already started treating those meetings like the Earth Skills class they met at so long ago ━━ whispering snide comments under their breaths, snickering, and even going as far to pass notes under Indra's nose. Their behavior hasn't gone unnoticed in the slightest, but who the hell is going to tell Octavia what she can and can't do?