She'd lied.
She hadn't meant to; she'd meant to tell the truth, but for some reason, when a doctor asked her a question, she wasn't entirely honest.
Like when they'd asked her if she'd done any recreational drugs and she'd said no.
Which was technically true; at least not in the last twenty-four hours.
It was all around her now, the Bloom.
That's what the Doctor had called it. The other Doctor. The Doctor Doctor. She hadn't lied to him, but then again he hadn't asked.
The Bloom was bursting up through the ground, red, yellow and orange roses that snapped at the sky with teeth like dragons and roots that flailed and tore at the ground that gave them life. Seething and gnashing, they clustered around her, surrounding her, spitting and biting at her shoes and ankles.
Above her a rocket screamed, plummeting down out of the sky. Shard began to panic and tried to run, but found herself knee deep in bodies, some in uniforms, others in blue gowns amid scattered trolleys and hospital trays.
She was back. In the crater. Before the missile hit. Before the company tried to cover the evidence… before they'd hunted Bryce down and tried to kill her.
And then suddenly, the world dropped away from her, as if she'd been plucked off the earth itself, lifted up into the sky, the vicious, clawing Bloom fell away, to become a small purple smudge. There was a small poof as the missile impacted, a tiny mushroom that sprouted upwards through the purple, blossoming up to tickle her feet.
She remembered: she'd been contaminated. They'd been contaminated. The Bloom was already in her. It was only a matter of time before… before…
She was flying.
Whatever the hell she'd been smoking with Bryce, Shard really wanted more. Now. She wanted this to go on forever. Of course, mixing it with this anesthetic again would be tricky, but she was willing to learn.
And the world turned.
And rose up beneath her once more, gently letting her feet touch again. A beach this time, with black sand, and basaltic columns that rose out of the ocean, red and glorious against the setting sun.
SgJnộ
Shard twitched. Hello, she remembered. It was Cayugan, her ancestral tongue, the speech of her tribe. Her mother had made her learn it. Memorize it, that is, Shard had never learned the language as such.
Shard stared around her, but the beach was empty. There was nothing but the wind that flew along the sand, sweeping up and down the ripples, teasing her long brown hair and gently shifting the glittering grains. Against the sheer blackness of the sand, her soft brown skin shone bright, bleached and blinding.
ẹhsgyẹnawá's gJh
Shard couldn't remember what that meant. The words sounded over and over, but she couldn't remember.
She wanted to fly again, fly away from this strange place and feel the air on her face and the embrace of the star filled sky.
To go higher. Faster and higher.
To fly away from the words, from her mother, from her past, from her childhood, from the scars on her legs, from the memories of her teenage years, the long cold winter nights, the blistering cold, the drunken rages of her father, of cutting, cutting, desperate to feel something, anything, pain, anything just to know she was alive.
Help me. She'd remembered. Will you help me…
The sand around her began to spiral, twisting slowly around her, around and around, tugging at her feet, the grinding sound of the grains seemed to sing as they pulled at her, drawing her deeper into the earth
Sáhseht.
Contaminated. She was contaminated. Will I survive? She'd asked the Doctor, all the doctors.
Yes. They'd answered.
The sand was roaring now as she sank into its shifting vortex, burying her deeper and deeper.
But she'd seen their eyes. She'd seen that same look in her father's eyes, each time he promised he'd never drink again. And again. And again.
Sáhseht.
She didn't understand. She couldn't remember.
Sáhseht.
The coarse sand twisted around her neck now, the grains laughing a deep throaty chuckle as the beach consumed her and she reached upwards, through the shifting mass up to the sky to reach out, to fly away, to just get away…
But up in the sky, burning through the atmosphere something fell, dragons, red and black twisting in its wake as it sped toward her, gray, leaden and lethal.
Sáhseht.
The massive bollide slammed into the beach and Shard felt the burning, the raging pain spike through her, every nerve firing as deep inside her, the Bloom fought to tear its way out of her body.
She screamed.
Alone on a mattress, surrounded by gleaming metal and green sheets, starched and coarse, Shard's body lay, taped to wires and machines that hummed and beeped.
Within the transparent greenness that was the gas mask, Shard's lips trembled as the rest of her body began to fail.
But not a sound came out.
And there was no one in the room to care.