The Gemini Age: Book One

[16-2] Through the Crossfire - Part Two

    Cracking wood and smashing bricks broke the air as Jade approached the Chambers. Whatever she had endured in the facility had until now numbed her to the sudden bursts of chaos that erupted throughout the city, yet the fury articulated by the car horn as it tugged Skye away had shone through the fog in her mind. Her reawakened senses wasted no time as they alerted her to every rampant fire, every crumbling structure, every distant scream that occupied her surroundings. The Chambers stood at the heart of the unfolding crisis, its cries the loudest and sharpest of all.

    Through all this, the way Skye had jerked out of sight without a sound still haunted her. Jade's entire body tensed at the visual memory. The timing of the intervention was fortunate considering Skye was trying to recapture her, but she could not shake off the disappointment that loomed over her head. Their contest deserved a better end than that.

    Maybe she would see Skye again one day.

    The air snapped over Jade's head as her foot hit the floor again, barely giving her enough time to dodge the chimney stack that hurtled to the ground she had once occupied. With a thud that thundered off the walls, the brick hid behind a veil of dust and fine stone bits, emerging from the dust as two drifting continents. Jade shook off the fragments that had struck her arm. "No more daydreaming," she muttered to herself, mimicking the stern authority her mother acquired when concerned.

    In truth, she made the excursion to the Chambers on a whim. Without her phone to contact anybody or an idea of where she was in the city, she was at a loss, a sitting duck for the indiscriminate mobs cruising the streets. Reaching the Chambers would at least place her close to the flat, though she had no way of getting inside if the boys were out. Jade wiped a speck of dust from her face that drew a small tear. It was naïve to assume the brothers were still in the city, let alone the flat, given their history of getting by on the road.

    More debris clattered to the floor behind Jade, this time a set of rooftiles dislodged by a lasso of air projected from too far away to be the work of a single person, yet she did not acknowledge the noise. Before her, the straight-cut shape of the City Chambers unfurled into tinder for a single insatiable bonfire. The cindered teeth moved in delicate slow-motion through this rear side of the building, and the wood entombed in the weather-weary stone quaked in grim recognition of the fate that marched towards them. The liquid glow of the fire, the glinting eyes of the glass windows, and the peek into the building's topmost level made possible by the gnawing flames all combined to make a morbidly fascinating scene. The death of the Chambers would make a beautiful painting, or so Jade's untrained eye figured.

    To her mild displeasure, people entered the scene. Two girls emerged from an open rear door with a man and woman in smart clothing trailing behind them, their limbs bound. The girls moved in sync, even stopping right beside each other on the rear wall of the Chambers and turning to look behind them, perking up slightly at the sight of a pair of boys following them with two more men coiled in tight wires. Jade pressed herself against the side of the building she hid behind, keeping one eye around the edge.

    A light footstep tapped over Jade's shoulder, and the sound of the next step suffocated beneath the scraping of her heel on the floor that carved out the piece of rock she prepared to lob. "Back off!" she cried out, imagining Skye's amber eyes burning like stars before her.

    There was no burning. Where Jade expected vivid starlight, two far more earthbound campfires roared with surprise. "Woah, Jade! Watch it! It's me!" Marcus cried, his arms up in shock.

    Jade gasped, then flew between his defensive arms into his chest. "Marcus! You're still here!" His body was hot to the touch from running and casting, yet this only reassured her further as she planted herself within his presence.