Forbidden Game IV:
The Ascension
Disclaimer: Yadda Yadda Yadda. You know that I own squat. If something is in here that you recognize, it probably isn't mine.
Author's Note: Yep. I'm being bad and starting another fic without finishing any of the others ones floating around in the forgotten bowels of my C drive. Ah well.
Summary: The Games are over and Jenny Thornton has changed. Julian is gone, and Jenny will never forget him, but can the darkness forget her?
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Prologue
Wow... we're so high up… OH MY GOD! Jenny Thornton's mind shrieked as she plummeted from the plane, arms flailing and colliding with nothing but air. For a while, Jenny reveled in the fall, the sheer weightlessness and lack of control making the ecstasy complete. The sky around her was a piercing, merciless blue of a frigid December morning, and reminded her Julian. As did the falling. She always felt out of control when she was around him. But, she reminded herself harshly as the wind and gravity buffeted her from every direction, He isn't a part of your life anymore. Sure he died for you, but he died so you could live, not moan and mope about him being gone. And that was what she did. She would always care about him, always be grateful that he gave himself up for her, so she could live.
That was five years ago. The new-and-improved Jenny had done everything and anything to make her feel alive. Hang-gliding. Bungee jumping. Deep-sea diving. Snorkeling. Parasailing. Surfing during the hurricanes. Rock climbing. Mountain biking. Riding every roller coaster she came across. And now-
"WHY DID I EVER SIGN UP FOR SKY DIVING?! AHH!" she screamed wordlessly at the vague patchwork of ground that suddenly seemed so very very far away.
All of a sudden, the word Perthro flashed into her mind. She smiled. It was the rune of gambling and chance, the cup in which the dice were cast, which was exactly what she was doing: taking a chance and hoping to come out alive.
"On three!" Two strong hands grabbed hers, one on each wrist. Dee and Tom, getting ready to pull the cords on their 'chutes.
"One!" Jenny let go of Tom's hand.
"Two!" Then Dee's.
"Three!" She pulled the cord, her body lurching upward as the wind caught inside the vast expanse of neon green rayon and bright blue synthetic fibers, keeping her from being spread a millimeter thin on the now not-so-distant tracery of rocks, roads, peoples' backyards, and of course, the concrete landing site.
Dee was whooping loudly over the rush of December air, glad that the $150 fee had been put to good use. Tom was looking in awe about him, his hazel eyes hidden underneath the mirrored goggles obscuring the half of his face that wasn't bound with a thermal scarf.
The hair that had slipped from underneath Jenny's helmet was covered in brilliant, crackling silver-blue ice. So were her thick Gore-Tex gloves.
Jenny didn't let the ice bother her anymore. Or the thick shadows that always pooled around her, pulling her gold coloring into startling prominence with the darkness. Ever since that last, fateful, life-changing day, shadows and ice followed her, like trembling slaves in presence of their Queen. Even in the scorching days of summer, she would always be surrounded by her own little cloud of coolness. Some people said she radiated coldness. They were a complete 180 from the truth. She cold radiated her.
Dee was yelling something at her, her expression masked by the goggles and scarf. Jenny pulled her own scarf down and yelled back that she couldn't hear what she was saying.
"Your 'chute is snapping!" Dee screamed, sounding frantic. Jenny looked up, fear blossoming inside her. Real fear, not the artificial fear that comes from a roller coaster, because on a roller coaster, you really are safe, in your head. Your body just doesn't believe you. This time, though, her head didn't know she was safe. The cords, the only things between her and being a pancake were slowly fraying, snapping one by one. She fumbled frantically for the pull-cord for her emergency parachute. The waxed and triple braided black emergency cord snapped off in her had, the plastic red handle glinting innocently in the sunlight.
Jenny screamed, shrieking profanities at the oblivious sky. In that instant, she knew she was going to die. It wasn't going to be at all like the cave, five years ago. This was going to be sudden, harsh, and instantaneous. None of this drifting about, chance of recovery shit, this was the real deal, and Jenny Thornton was going to be a faceless bloody mess on the fast approaching concrete.
Her friends were panicking, the distance between them growing. She was speeding towards a rocky death, while they drifted, helpless, hundreds of feet above her. The crew below her was panicking as well, trying to inflate the emergency mat. The generator seemed to have frozen.
O God, I am going to be dead in ten seconds, Jenny thought, strangely calm.
A pair of strong arms wrapped around her, a shock of warmth in her ice-encrusted gear.