deCEIVED (Book 2)

4: Lucas

The moment I hit the ground and blacked out, I realized that when I woke up, I was going to have to fight as hard as I could in order to keep my life. I looked around me and noticed how my mind currently resembled the exact same environment as the Australian Dreamscaper Society, only much more war-torn than it had originally been.

Dead bodies laid askew everywhere I stepped, and as I took even more steps to an unknown part of the Australian Dreamscaper Society, I could see Jared lying behind a bush with a knife in his chest, his skin as pale as a ghost and his brown eyes rolled up to the sky. He was, just like the other people in this new environment, dead.

"Mother of all things holy...Jared?! Wake up, Jared, you've got to be alive! Who could've done this to you?" I panicked, trying to shake my best friend awake.

Suddenly, a bunch of different voices began to echo over the city, causing me to worry twice as much.

"She can read my thoughts and everything!"

"You obsess over this girl day and night, Phoenix, and you have learned some of her biggest secrets...but one secret still remains to be discovered by you."

"They say she's the girl born with hope..."

"DADDY, PLEASE DON'T GO!!!"

"Who said that?" I demanded. "Show yourself! NOW!" I prepared to throw an indigo fireball at the first person I saw, but when the first person I saw showed up, I never threw the fire.

"Please don't hurt me..." A little girl pleaded. "I don't mean any harm!"

A tiny girl with an ombrè and hazel eyes appeared from the forest behind Jared's dead body. The girl cautiously approached me while holding a lime green fireball in her right hand. "I will use this fireball if necessary, but I really do not intend to hurt you."

I gave the tiny girl a puzzled look. "Who are you?" I asked her.

"That's for me to know, and you to figure out, LUCAS POWERS." The tiny girl hissed through gritted teeth.

"How do you know my name?" I questioned her.

"We're in your mind right now, Lucas. But soon you will wake up and realize who I am...and you will learn WHAT I am."

"You don't know your uncle at all."

"Don't cry...we'll both make it out of this alive, okay? So just forget about what you saw, and if you will come with me, I can show you something that should cheer you up in an instant."

"Your sister will be just fine in the hands of her remaining relatives...just like you will be alright in the palms of my hands."

"There was nothing we could do to save him."

x•x•x•x•x•x•x•x•x•x

"Lucas, wake up!"

The car had been torn apart. The forest was slightly in ruins. But Jared was still alive.

"Jared, you're alive!" I cheered.

"Why wouldn't I be? I mean, sure, we just fell from a cliff in a car accident, but aren't we...different?" Jared asked me quietly.

"You've got a point there, Jared. Now which way did the Troopers go?"

Jared suddenly smacked me hard, and I barked at him, "What was that for?!"