Legacy to Zero

Interlude - Copy

Crash

I tangled my legs in a blanket on Astra's duvet, cradling my chin against the soft fabric. In protest, my jaw flared and my head thudded. But I was trying not to shut my eyes or blink, trying to swallow the groan of pain like it was a rock in my throat.

Vision still doubling, I trained my gaze away from the floor. A second set of wooden grain rose above the first, blurry and overlapping and rising and rising like smoke. Against the roof of my mouth, my tongue was heavy. All I could taste was metal and wire.

"Hey, you! Where did you run off to this time?" a voice said from outside of my line of sight. Socks gliding against the floor, she appeared from her ensuite bathroom. Stopped, her eyes narrowing at me as she tossed her hairbrush on the countertop. "Whoa. What happened?"

I lifted my face. Astra pressed her lips into a grimace and watched me, her golden eyes softening. "Hey," she repeated, softer this time. Rushing to my side, she brushed fragments of dust off my shoulder. "What happened?"

"Wren's mission," I said, though even when my mouth moved it was like I couldn't feel it at all. Couldn't hear myself or see anything but the walls and the floor and the wires. The wires. Was that what they were? Even now, they were everywhere, beneath Astra's feet and so far down my knuckles hurt trying to sense them. Closer to her apartment, the paint peeled and flecked and winked at me, all exposed wires.

Astra ruffled the bedsheets as she sat, crossing one leg over the other. My senses caught the chips in her purple nail polish and the frayed hem of her favourite sweater—it had gotten worn over the years, the image that had once been printed on having faded to a grainy splotch. "Wren brought you to her mission, or you brought yourself?"

"She was gone, so I took her watch. I was just trying to—to do something. I'm the only Tetra member who never goes outside!"

"Ah." A small smile crossed her face, and she laughed, not like it was a joke. More like it was half of a sigh. "You go outside. And I know I've told you before that you don't need to be like us. The strength of the Tetra comes when we're different."

She had, many times. Still, it didn't matter when I wasn't a member. Kendra was my sister—but that was the sole reason we were four instead of three. I shook my head. "How am I supposed to do that if the council never gives me any missions?"

"So you took the watch because you wanted to do the right thing," she said.

"It was the right thing, wasn't it?"

She nodded, placing a hand against my side. Wordlessly, she blinked at my clothes before signalling for me to stay. She left for the bathroom for a few minutes while I listened to the cupboards opening and the clatter of a box against the floor.

As she slid an ottoman over to me, she stacked bottles of strong-scented liquid—peroxide—and a bag of cotton balls on her lap. With a warm rag, she dabbed the ash from my chin. The sting of it made my eyes water.

"You breathe in lots of smoke?" she asked in a quiet tone. When I nodded, her frown became more pronounced. "Let me see your hands."

I wiggled my fingers beneath the blanket, then pressed them back into fists. Somehow the burns hurt less like that, when my fingernails made bite marks into the skin, and I'd wondered on the walk here whether they'd be stuck like that. Forever seared, lulled back into the only position that would keep me from touching anything else, in the only position where my hands still felt like my own.