City of Dreams

The Pain

This time my breathing is not a welcome awakening. As soon as the dust swirls in front of my face, I sit up as quickly as I can and the sight brings bile into my mouth. I'm surrounded with tons of bodies on the floor. I look up and recognise the main building of Polis, and can hear the sounds of other people waking up. I sob as I realise what must have happened, the city got destroyed. When I look down at my hands, my sobs intensify. The necklace in my hand is the locket that my Dad bought me for my 18th birthday. As I close my eyes, all of the memories that I'd tried so desperately to forget when I took the key, come uninvited into my head and I can't block them out. I shake my head, tears flying, as images of my Dad being attacked by a grounder and stabbed in the chest come flooding in. My hands clutch the air as I remember having to hold his body as the life drained out of him. My heart feels like it's going to tear itself out of my chest. A human body should not be able to withstand this much pain at once.

"Emma." My eyes fly up and try and piece together the memory of the man stood in front of me. His stern eyes I recognise from the meetings he used to have on the Ark with my father, but his supportive and kind smile is new.

"Sir". I bow my head, suddenly ashamed of my obvious pain. I never was very good at handling sympathy or pity.

"It's Kane." He holds his hand out for me, and guides me to my feet. "I didn't realise you made it to Earth, you were on a different part to me. Your parents?"

I shake my head, new crevices of pain opened. I didn't realise it was possible to feel pain in every atom of your being, but even just standing hurts, needles erupting through my legs. "My mum died in the crash, and my Dad got killed in the grounder attack after we landed."

He rests his hand on my shoulder and bends down to look directly in my eyes. "I can't imagine what you're going through right now. But what I do know, is that you need to be with your people. We're leading people back to our base, Arkadia, through those gates." I follow his gaze, and see that a stretch of people are heading into that direction. I nod, allowing myself to give him a grateful smile. I don't know what's happened to him since we landed on Earth, but he definitely has changed.

As I walk back through the woods, flashes of images keep popping in my head and I twist the palms of my hands into my eyes and into my head. As if I can actually stop myself from remembering. Stop myself from remembering the sudden floppiness of my Mum's hand in mine. The screams that erupted from my Dads chest when he was impaled. The blood of my parents that refused to be scrubbed from my hands. I tuck my shaking hands into my pockets and let my thoughts drift back to something safer. Jasper. I wonder where he is right now. Will I find him at Arkadia? What if everything that ever happened between us was just a mirage of the city of light? The only way I'll ever find out is to find him here, and see if any feelings are still between us. He's all I have here right now. The only person I seem to know who might know what I'm going through. With a purpose in my step, I feel stronger and more confident as I follow the people in front of me; determined to find the boy with the cheeky smiles.