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"These are iron bullets," one of the masked men says, his voice distorted and scratchy, like it's coming through a speaker. "Come quickly and quietly and we won't have to kill you."
I can see Edward's knuckles are white, he's gripping the steering wheel so hard I think he might break it.
"What do we do?" I whisper, my stomach tight with nerves.
Before he can say anything, a shot is fired and a bullet bursts through the windshield, skimming his arm before embedding itself in the backseat. Edward cries out as blood soaks his sleeve.
"We are not playing around," the masked man warns again. My ears are ringing, partly from the blast, but mostly from anger at the fact that these people hurt Edward.
I'm out of the car quickly, then, my thoughts fragmented and only on making them pay. I can hear Edward calling my name, but it sounds far away, like he's underwater.
No one stops me as I get closer, though their guns are trained on my every movement. The air is sticky, like a storm is brewing above and there's this horrible screeching sound that takes me a while to realize is coming from me.
"We need her alive," one of them orders. "Lower your weapons."
I can see the hesitation in their eyes, can see the reluctance as they slowly do what he says.
"You fucking assholes," I grind out. "Get out of the way or I will destroy you."
A couple of them flinch, but the man who appears to be in charge laughs.
"She can't do anything," he assures them derisively. "She has no power. She's a fuckin' pawn."
There's nervous laughter scattered throughout the men, their shoulders begin to relax and I hear a voice suddenly in my ear, unfamiliar and breath hot on my neck.
"This will only hurt a little."
There's a pinch on my arm, one that burns and burns until all feeling, all light fades, and I'm in the dark.
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I come to in a too-white room that reeks of chemicals, so disoriented that I think that I've been caught in some weird dream for years and years and I'm back with my mom in the hospital. She'd been sick for a long time, apparently, but the end came quickly and unexpectedly.
I'd never known she was sick, just that one day she seemed fine, and the next, she had collapsed in our living room, her skin looking gray and blood leaking from her mouth.
Cancer, they'd said, but there was so much so suddenly, that they were unsure of where it started. I remember looking at the scans they'd done, at all the darkness spread throughout her body.
She only spent a week in the hospital, hooked up to beeping machines and dripping IVs, her ragged breathing fighting the silence around us.
The sounds are the same, but I'm on the one in a...not a bed. On a cold metal slab. An iron slab with restraints of the same material. It's freezing and my whole body is sore, and then there is a man in some kind of hooded robe looking down at me with a grimace.
"She's so...frail," he says to someone I can't see. "Are you sure she's the one?"
"Yes. We've read her psych evals. Her mother died when she came of age, the darkness had taken her from the inside. It all lines up."
"Doesn't explain why Cullen is here," the first man mutters.
"They were together at the blockade. He was...unhinged when we tried to take only her. Makes more sense to have him contained where we can keep an eye on him."
"Oh...she's awake," someone mutters and then there are hands on me and light in my eyes.
The first man grins and softly says, "Welcome to the beginning of a new world, darling."
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