Agent (Book 1)

Next Book: Sneak Peak! (Lynn)

I wake to a child's scream in the night. Rolling over, stretching my hand over the grassy surface of my bedspread, I see her. Helplessly wailing to the sky. Her brown eyes catch the starlight, covering her face in a shadow. A branch snaps, as he moves closer to her. "Shh..." he whispers, pulling the girl into his arms, cradling her head. Her tears bleed into his shirt. My head might've hurt like that, when I cried. Like your skull is being split through the middle. But for a different reason. For someone else.

"They're coming back aren't they," she wails between hiccups. She buries her head in his shoulder, freeing the tears, shrieking her sorrows into the dead blackness of the night. He makes another effort to quiet her.

"They're not coming back, Ava. They're gone. Shh..." He rocks her back and forth in his arms. "You're safe aren't you? That's all that matters now. You're perfectly safe."

Her braids are loose, and he gently takes a fleeing strand and tucks it behind her ear. Her pudgy hands shake, as she grapples for his wet shirt in her fingers. "Promise?" She whispers.

He promises.

He cradles her for a bit longer, tracing his finger down the side of her face. Tapping his foot in a soothing rhythm. Her cries every so slowly minimize to coughs, and then silent salt trickles. He doesn't leave her. He just keeps pulling her hair away. Shushing her. Pointing to the shooting star as it streaks across the sky in a ball of fire. I roll over when I see his hand, trace it with my eyes. It runs, sprinting, before ending in nothing but an orange streak. That too, disappears.

I roll over. Close my eyes. Wish the world to be gone. And it does. Like those moments in between consciousness, when you're awake but you aren't really, you're just existing, staring between the dozens of trees, wondering where it is you fit in. A creature, surviving. Thriving even.

Oh who am I kidding? No one can be thriving anymore. No one, except them.

But I can't think about them either. Can't think about anything. Clutching my wrist, releasing a breath of cold autumn air, I clamp my eyes shut.

I can't bare to think about the road ahead of us. The way this'll all end.

Because no matter what, things can never be the same again.

That, I'm sure of.