Kaleidoscope: Chapter 2

In hindsight, it was probably a good thing that he had missed. He needed to retrieve what she had taken. And he likely couldn’t do that without her help. If it was true that she didn’t remember anything now - and that certainly seemed to be the case - he knew it would only be a matter of time before she did.

Casey hissed in annoyance, splashing water over his face before reaching for the towel that was draped over the sink. With a huff, the boy leaned against the porcelain, thinking about what to do next. There was blood on his clothes, serving as proof that the bullet had found her, but he was fairly certain it was only a flesh wound to her arm. Her banishing spell had worn off at the perfect time. He had gotten too carried away.

The boy sighed, lifting his head to stare at his reflection in the mirror. He let out a puff of hot air then turned and ran a tired hand through his hair. At least he wasn’t starting from scratch now. Now that he had found her, he knew where she would end up next. He would have another chance soon enough. 

*

It was the pain in her shoulder and the aching in her head that woke her. With no idea how long she had been unconscious, or even how she got that way, Corinne suddenly woke with a start. Her eyes and mouth shot open and she gasped for air. Her stomach was flat on a wooden floor, her arms at her sides and resting atop pieces of broken glass. 

Her vision was blurry and a cold sweat coated her body. She coughed, her throat feeling simultaneously sore and full of dust. She didn’t recognize her surroundings, something she first blamed on the blurry vision, but then she began to blink the dreariness away and nothing changed. 

With a heavy groan, Corinne drew her hands up to the sides of her shoulders and pressed them into the ground, pushing herself onto her knees. Immediately, she let out a yelp as an excruciating pain cut through her upper arm and sent a chill down her body. With tears in her eyes, she looked down at her shoulder to see it dripping red. Gently, she reached a hand up to examine it, inhaling sharply as her finger dipped into warm stickiness.

Nausea rolled over Corinne and she had to squeeze her eyes shut as she shifted to a sitting position, pulling her legs up to her chest. Glass crunched beneath her as she placed her forehead gingerly on her knees and tried to stop her head from spinning. Closing her eyes only seemed to intensify the pain, however, so she forced herself to lift her gaze and focus on her new environment. She was no longer in the library, that was for sure, and she felt miserable. Although, after some quick evaluations, other than the bullet that had passed through her arm and the intense headache, she didn’t appear to be in too bad a shape physically. The same could not be said about the room she was in. 

Wherever she was, however she had gotten there, the walls around her were blackened and burned. To her left were the skeletons of a bed and a big chair. A scorched desk and dresser were dusted in ash and charcoal, and Corinne’s presence was stirring them into the air. There was no sign of any windows, but the glass on the floor suggested there used to be at least one. The devastated room looked like it hadn’t been touched in a very long time, and at first it was extremely unsettling. 

Fear pulsed through Corinne more profoundly than it ever had before. She was practically vibrating, she was so on edge. Tears began to blur the vision she had just cleared. Then suddenly, something stilled her racing heart. Just as quickly as it had picked up its pace, it began to slow as a new feeling began to overtake Corinne. At first, she couldn’t quite pin what the warm feeling was, the one that started in her chest and spread to calm the rest of her body. But as she continued to look around, clocking the set up of the room and trying to picture how it might have looked before a fire had tasted it, she realized the feeling was familiarity. 

For the first time in a year, Corinne could swear she was starting to feel what it was like to reminisce. She looked around slowly, blinking a couple times as a blurriness began to sweep over a corner of the room. A fog similar to the one in her head was making an appearance near one of the walls. 

For a second, she thought she was just seeing things. But then the mist started to get thicker, brighter. As it crawled out of the cracks in the debris and slithered towards her, Corinne’s heart rate picked up again, and she scooted back on the floor. She could still feel that strong sense of familiarity that the room filled her with, and it compelled her to stay. However, the bright haze creeping along the floor filled her with other less pleasant emotions, and she found herself searching for a door.

Relief filled her when she found one just behind her, though that relief was quickly replaced with pain when she tried to push herself to her feet with her wounded shoulder. Corinne couldn’t stop herself from crying out, but that didn’t stop her from making her way to her feet. She was a little unsteady at first, and she reached out a hand to stabilize herself. It found its way to a splintered beam that had just enough support left to help Corinne find her footing.

She was about to take her first step, when suddenly she felt a slight heaviness on her leg she didn’t recognize. She looked down at her pants, dipping a hand into her pocket and wrapping her fingers around a cool metal object. When she pulled it out, a pocket watch was seated in her palm, a long chain dripping down her pant leg. Her brow furrowed and she pressed a thumb down on the top to open it, but it was jammed. 

Shaking her head, she dropped the object back in her pocket and took the final steps out of the room. She stumbled slightly at first, but she quickly regained her balance and sense of awareness as she made her way to the top of a staircase. She coughed a couple times as the taste of dust filled her mouth, and she squinted to adjust to the new room. 

The entire house looked and felt like it was about to fall apart. So before the rickety staircase had time to collapse on her, Corinne booked it to the bottom floor. There was no need to look for a door out this time as there were so many craters in the ravaged house. Once she was running, she didn’t stop until she was free from the corpse of a house and then some. Luckily, there was a drastic change between the environment of the house and the land where it was seated, and Corinne was finally able to catch her breath beneath the warm evening sky.

Somehow in the midst of everything, the girl had lost her shoes. It had sucked in the house, she had felt every splintering step, but now she was thankful for it. The soft, steady grass felt wonderful beneath her feet. It didn’t feel like it was about to give out and drop her at any second. She dug her toes into the earth, breathing deeply as she looked around to figure out where she was. From the looks of it, Corinne was in a neighborhood. Houses lined the street made of grass and dirt. Only, contrary to the one she had just come from, the houses before her were not skeletons. They didn’t look great, but they were mostly intact at least.

There were no roads, or sidewalks, or driveways or even cars for that matter. Just houses and trees and dirt paths… and now Corinne. The safe feeling she had won from being free from the house wavered, and an eerie one began to replace it as she stared at the silent neighborhood. However, no feeling quite compared to the one that slapped her when she turned around.

In one direction, the direction Corinne had been staring, the houses went on for miles. When she turned around, the row of houses promptly stopped. And there, at the abrupt end of the dirt path, was a door. It wasn’t connected to anything. It didn’t appear to lead anywhere. From where Corinne was standing she could see both sides of it. It was a deep, viridian green on its face, while its frame was a dark oak brown. It would have been beautiful had it not been so incredibly ominous. A door standing all by itself at the end of an abandoned neighborhood. 

At first, Corinne thought that it had been the lone surviving piece of a building of some sort, but there was absolutely nothing around it but soft green grass. There were no remnants of anything having ever been connected to it. No debris, burned wood, or broken stone. It looked like it had always been this way. 

Corinne swallowed, simultaneously terrified of the bizarre setup and intrigued by it. She couldn’t just find a set up as strange as that and not go check it out. Slowly, Corinne walked forward, closing the grassy distance between herself and the door. She narrowed her eyes, examining it. Cautiously, she walked around to the other side. It was completely the same, except for the lack of a handle. It could only be opened from the end Corinne had come from. Confused and unnerved, Corinne made her way back around, her gaze drifting down to the handle. There was only one thing she could think to do.

Slowly, she reached out and took the ornate handle in her palm. She felt the cool metal and intricate designs against her skin. She let it sit there for a moment before taking a last anxious breath and twisting her wrist. 

The door opened with ease, smooth and silent. Corinne peered through, unsure of what to expect. At first it looked like nothing had changed, which would have made the most sense. On any other day, a door connected to nothing would open up into nothing. However, upon further investigation, the nothing on the other side of the door did not match Corinne’s nothing. 

Grass and trees, mountains in the distance, a sun in the sky. That was what greeted both sides of the doors. However, on Corinne’s side, the sun was overhead. It was tucked away behind some darker clouds, causing strange shadows to be cast wherever it peaked through, but it was definitely above her head. Through the other side of the door, Corinne was staring at the beginning of a sunset. 

Confusion filled the girl’s face, and she raised her eyebrows at the sky above her. Her sun still said the time was late noon. Her brow furrowed further, and she turned her gaze back through the door frame. While the environment looked generally the same, it was definitely a different time of day on that side. And the clouds were different colors. 

Carefully, Corinne leaned halfway through the door, keeping her feet firmly planted on her side. With one hand gripping the door frame for balance, she leaned as far as she could and looked up. The sunset was beautiful, and the air was fresh and cooler. No part of it smelled like smoke, and there wasn’t a house in sight. 

The sunset in front of her felt safe. Once she was beneath it, she didn’t want to go back. So, with one foot, she stepped over the bottom frame and set her toes down gently on the other side. Her body stopped halfway into the doorway, her right foot staying behind. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting, but she figured better to go slowly while crossing through an impossible doorway. No sudden movements.

Slowly, she put all of her weight on the front foot, feeling out the grass to make sure it was safe. A cool breeze drifted by behind her, wrapping up in her hair and cooling off the back of her neck. It pushed up against her back, encouraging her to keep moving forward, so Corinne took the final step through the door. 

She was moving a bit in slow motion, still trying to comprehend everything that had happened, everything that was currently happening. All of her senses were lagging a bit. She thought she heard something to her right, but her eyes were still busy taking in what was in front of her.

“Wait!” A voice shouted, though Corinne could hardly hear it. At first, it only sounded like the wind.

“Don’t let it close!” This time the words were closer, and Corinne blinked a couple times before slowly turning her head to the right. Her neck was sore, and she found it difficult to turn, so she had to turn her entire torso to see what was happening. 

"The door! Don’t let it close!” The words were so much closer, but the ringing in Corinne’s ears made it impossible to interpret. She had already let go of the door handle, and her other hand was barely touching the door frame. The wind picked up its pace and aggression. It moved Corinne forward until the last of her fingers slipped off the wood before pushing against the green paint and shutting the door behind her. 

“No!” 

A girl was barreling towards Corinne and the door, sprinting as fast as she could. That speed did not decrease even when she was a mere feet away from Corinne, and Corinne wasn’t fast enough to move out of her way. The girl’s shoulder rammed into Corinne’s chest as she threw herself up against the door, desperately trying to get it open again. Her fists landed on the wood a second after a lock clicked.

The breath was nearly knocked from Corinne and the force of the impact sent her stumbling backwards, pain tearing through her gunshot wound. Corinne gasped, squeezing her eyes shut as her hand flew up instinctively to her wound to stop the pain. 

“No,” the girl on the door breathed. Her tone was desperate, defeated. “No.” She looked like she couldn’t decide if she wanted to sit down against the wood and cry, or if she wanted to scream and shout and throw her body into the door until it broke open. A spark in her expression suggested she might choose the latter, but then that spark was suddenly directed at Corinne. 

The girl whirled around, her expression borderline deranged as her eye burned into Corinne. 

“How did you get in there?” The words spilled out of her mouth so fast Corinne hardly caught them.

“How did you - ” The girl started speaking again and Corinne was ready to try to listen, but then she got majorly distracted when she realized the girl was not alone. 

There was a boy a few feet behind the girl. The way his chest was heaving up and down indicated that he had also been sprinting with her, but as soon as he saw Corinne he skidded to a stop. There was a deep streak of dirt behind both of his feet and he was frozen in place, his eyes wide and jaw agape.

Corinne’s eyes met his momentarily before they were drawn to strange gold markings on his arms and neck that glistened in the setting sunlight. His features were dripping with simultaneous shock and astonishment. He looked absolutely shocked. At the same time, the longer her looked at her, the more his lips twitched upwards. It made Corinne’s heart skip a beat, as she realized the look in his eyes was recognition. 

“Oh my - oh my gosh,” the girl was finally done yelling, now speaking in a whisper. She had to start her sentence twice because she choked on her words. When Corinne turned back to her, her entire demeanor had changed. 

She was almost wearing the same look as the boy - almost. It looked like she was trying to decipher something. Her eyes were wide as she took a step back, her head tilting to the side as she analyzed Corinne. As she looked longer, though, her eyes narrowed. The familiarity in her expression wavered, as if she was second guessing herself. Corinne felt the shift in her chest, and was instantly ready to do anything to get the previous look back. 

“My - my name is Corinne,” she stuttered, hoping to see the recognition return to the girl’s eyes. Her voice sounded strange to her, like she hadn’t used it in a long time. She hoped this was what the girl was waiting for. What both of them were waiting for, but their looks didn’t change after she spoke. In fact, it looked like she had only confused them more.

“Your - what?” The boy asked, and Corinne turned to look at him. There were tears filling up in her eyes that she couldn’t stop. The pain, the confusion, the adrenaline, so many feelings were fighting for control of her body and she didn’t know what to do anymore. She just wanted someone to look at her and tell her what to do, tell her what was going on. It was all she had wanted for a year, and she felt so close to it now.

“My name is Corinne,” she repeated, puffing out a small, shaky breath with her words. It was all she could say. It was all she knew.

“Corinne?” The boy repeated, and the way that he seemed so much more lost than when he first looked at her made Corinne want to sob. She had misread their first expressions. She thought they knew her, but now their familiar expressions had changed to ones of confusion. 

“Oh my gosh you’re bleeding!” She exclaimed, and Corinne turned just as the girl stepped towards her arm. She reached out a hand, and without hesitation took Corinne’s wrist. She flinched when the girl lifted her arm, but she let it happen. 

“You’ve been shot! Zeke, she’s been shot,” the girl continued, her voice growing frantic. Her eyes were only on the boy for a second before her horror was directed back at Corinne. 

“Who shot you?” Corinne couldn’t help it, as soon as the attention was back on her wound, tears started filling up her eyes again. She had been able to ignore the pain for a bit, but the conversation shifting to it made it so much more real. The throbbing, the shouting, the door, the house, it was all too much. 

Corinne’s legs began to shake where she stood, one of her knees buckling and nearly giving out on her. She drew in a shaky breath, and she felt the girl tighten her grip on her arm. 

“Do you -“ Corinne started, but she had to stop to swallow a sob. “Do you know who I am?” She was looking at the boy - Zeke - as she spoke, slowly relying more and more on the girl for support. Her vision was beginning to get splotchy, her head dizzy. There was a moment of silence as Corinne swayed where she stood, anxiously awaiting his reply. She just needed him to respond to that. That was it. She just needed to know. 

“I… yes.” Finally he answered. He was still squinting strangely, but he was nodding his head as he made his final decision. “Do you know who we are?” She could tell by the look in his eyes he already knew the answer, yet it was still going to hurt just as much to hear it out loud. So maybe she wouldn’t say it out loud. With just the slightest shake of her head, she watched his entire demeanor crumble. Both of theirs. 

It felt so wrong, bringing them so much pain after they had just filled her with so much hope. She couldn’t help but feel their heartbreak. Especially considering if they looked this grief stricken upon discovering her memory loss, she must have really meant something to them. 

Tears filled Corinne’s eyes, though they didn’t stay there for long. She sniffed, the salty water beginning to run down her cheeks as she did her best to apologize to them. 

“I have been trying to remember for so long.” She couldn’t look at them when she spoke. She didn’t know what to feel. She was still so overwhelmed and confused by everything that had happened leading up to this moment. Not to mention these two hadn’t had the reaction she had expected she’d receive when she found her people again. Her stomach was in knots and her chest felt tight and every emotion inside of her was lost and conflicted. She was tempted to just sit down and cry, when suddenly the boy spoke up. 

“You know what? This is fine,” he said, surprising both Corinne and Alexia. He shook his head once, gritting his teeth as he willed his eyes to dry up. 

“What?” Alexia asked, furrowing her brow in utter distress. Zeke took a breath. 

“We can fix this,” he said firmly. “We can totally fix this.” He nodded once at Corinne before turning his determined gaze to Alexia. “I’m sure Asher will have something he can do to help with whatever memory loss she has. Not to mention that.” He gestured to Corinne’s shoulder as he turned back to her. He regathered his computer, doing his best to put on a small smile for the girl.

“We just have to get you home,” he said assuring, though it sounded like he was trying to convince himself of these things just as much as the girls. Corinne didn’t notice though. While Alexia hesitated to take on his same sudden confidence, Corinne’s entire body suddenly felt weightless. 

“Home…” she repeated. And suddenly nothing else mattered. The smile on Zeke’s lips brightened ever so slightly as he reached out a hand for her to take. The hope that had filled Corinne when Zeke first said he knew her returned. Slowly, she reached out to take his hand, only for a loud sound to interrupt them from behind, and the ground to give a violent shake. 

Zeke and Alexia stumbled when the earth shivered, but quickly caught themselves. Meanwhile the same motion nearly took an unbalanced Corinne out, and Zeke reached out to steady her.

“What was that?” Alexia snapped, her eyes snapping to the direction of the sound. Another sound like thunder echoed in the distance, and Corinne turned to face it, too. The beating in her chest increased instantly, and Corinne turned to see the sky darkening in the distance. 

As the sky’s atmosphere shifted drastically,  as did the atmosphere beside her. The two faces that were just soft and melancholy were stern and on high alert. 

“They must have heard the door open,” Alexia said rigidly, narrowing her eyes on the distance before turning her gaze to Zeke. Zeke nodded, gently tugging Corinne towards him as he began to turn his body away from the door. 

“We have to go,” he said in a low tone, before raising it once more for Corinne to hear. “Corinne, you have to come with us.” The girl hardly noticed someone was talking to her as her eyes were locked in on something in the sky. 

The ground shook once more as she watched large gray clouds swiftly tumble across the sky. The sun had nearly finished setting, and everything was suddenly dark except for the orange horizon line. She squinted. The clouds were moving faster than she had ever seen, but there was something else over there that was getting closer. 

Small, dark shadows were rapidly approaching. They grew larger and larger until she realized that half of whatever was coming for them was made up of enormous, terrifying wings. 

Behind her, Zeke and Alexia exchanged glances, having a short conversation with their eyes before deciding what they needed to do. 

Suddenly sprinting out of the corner of her vision, Alexia raced forward, flying across the grass at incredible speed. Corinne's eyes widened, her mouth opening to say something when she whirled around. 

“We have to go,” Zeke’s eyes were urgent as he looked at Corinne, and she hardly had a chance to register what was happening before he was pulling her into a run. 

The wound in her arm was impairing her entire body, making everything feel like it was injured. She had to remind herself that physically she was fine everywhere else, that her legs were able to move. 

It took her a second to get started, but Zeke helped her out the first bit of the way. Once she was running it was easy. Especially knowing that something was chasing after here. She was ready to run for miles… until they quickly ran out of room to run. 

It was difficult to see at first. The sky made everything dark and shadowy. Corinne found herself watching her feet more than anything to make sure she didn’t step on anything. When she finally looked up again, she realized the earth suddenly dropped off about fifty feet in front of them. Her eyes widened. She glanced over at Zeke, but he wasn’t slowing down. Maybe he didn’t notice. 

“That is a cliff,” Corinne finally heard her voice again, her thoughts making their way down to her mouth. She glanced at Zeke, but he didn’t say anything. Corinne blinked a couple times, involuntarily slowing down as it went against her nature to run towards sudden death. “We are running towards a cliff. Are you aware of this?” She tried again, having to call much louder this time as she had fallen behind Zeke. 

“Trust me,” he called back, and Corinne’s neck jutted back.

“Trust you leading us off the edge of a cliff?” The sound of rushing water filled her ears, and when she looked to her left she noticed a river running towards them. It turned abruptly up ahead, spilling out over the edge of the earth. 

Finally, about ten feet in front of her, Zeke came to a stop. Corinne allowed herself to finish the jog to him, making sure to stay clear of the edge. The dark clouds had chased them there, and it was difficult to see all the places the jagged cliff cut off. She was about to look behind her to see if anything else had chased them, when suddenly Zeke spoke up. 

“Grab onto my shoulders,” he said, backing up a step so that his back was closer to her. That caught the girl’s attention, and instead of turning behind her she shot the back of his head a strange look. 

“Grab onto your shoulders?” She repeated, and he nodded vigorously. The sounds behind them were getting loud again. 

“Like a - like a piggyback ride,” he tried to elaborate. If Corinne hadn’t been so stressed it might have been comical how urgent he sounded saying those words. 

“A piggyback ride?” She repeated shrilly. 

“Just do it!” Zeke exclaimed pressingly, but it was too late. Suddenly the eruptions and explosions that had sounded far behind them a second ago were now right next to them. Corinne screamed as something severely hot and extremely loud exploded behind her, the force of the blast knocking her to knees, then stomach, then over the edge of the earth altogether. Zeke had somehow managed to withstand the attack, yet in an instant he was on the ground, as well. Before she even had a second to fall, he threw himself down to the ground, reaching out a hand to catch her arm. His fingers skillfully wrapped around her wrist, stopping the girl from plummeting over the cliff. He was about to reach his other hand out to pull her up, but her scream of pain stopped him. 

Without realizing, he had grabbed ahold of her arm that had been shot, yanking it upwards and causing possibly more pain than the initial injury. Corinne could take it, though. She knew if she didn’t want to fall, she would have to reach up with her other hand to meet his and help him pull her back up. The scream was involuntary, and she did her best to silence herself so not to make him feel bad. She looked up at the boy with a teary but determined expression. She was about to reach up with her other arm to climb back up, but the boy had other ideas. 

All of this happened in a matter of seconds. The scream, the realization, the locked gaze. Zeke’s heart stopped when he caught sight of the fresh blood seeping through her shirt and the way she was about to fight to climb back up. So, to spare her from the pain, he thought of another plan, and he let her go.