The stakes are higher than ever.
It's been months since the four managed to temporarily defeat and escape Laurel, Amber, Kali and the others but the four's problems are far from over. Forced to live with their guilt and still plagued by nightmares o...
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Kalliope's POV:
Seconds after I stopped talking I can hear the silence that seems to stem from my words. Deafening silence seems to eat into the atmosphere of the room and turn it sour. That same sour feeling makes me feel like I've swallowed bad milk that's been left on the shelf too long. And all because of what Dana said about Amber not waiting for us. Because like it or not that was the plain and simple truth. She wouldn't wait for us to make the next move, she wasn't the type of person to wait around and see what we wanted to do as a next move, she proved as much when she used our parents before to get what she wanted. When she dangled lives over other people's heads and manipulated people to get them to bend to her whims. Whatever they were. But she also had an axe to grind, a grudge she was holding. And not just against me. Nor Dana. or anyone else in our immediate group. No, her grudges went beyond one group of people who had symbolised what she hated. Because she hated the whole system that we all subscribed to every day with how we acted. Who we followed.
She hates us all enough that she wanted to rewrite history the way she wanted it. She intended to get rid of all the people she hated and who she thought had done her wrong. All the council members. And their associates. Anyone who stood for believing in what was always done before and how it needed no change. Enough that she'd want to see us all dead. Dead and rotting assuming we got to die and didn't end up in the cages we saw in the vision before. Out of nowhere the haunting image of the silver cages pressed up against one another in that ruined city fills my mind and I shiver at the memory for a second until it disappears. That is until I close them.
Closing my eyes it's like the action transported me back to the vision since it blended into reality so seamlessly that I can barely tell where it ends and where the real world begins. I see those burned, charred buildings standing in the moonless night. I can see the crumbled remains of what had snapped off smouldering. Smouldering and smoking in huge bonfire-like piles that give off noxious smoke that choked me. Stopping my breathing almost entirely thanks to how powerful the fumes were.
In the remaining houses, I saw people trapped behind a thick layer of tar-like material that had become layered over every door and window to secure the people inside from being able to come outside. Only over the windows, I can see it's thinner so you could see what was happening inside. The people working for Amber and the others to control those who refused to submit. I saw people in cages lined up in rows, eyes glazed over with hunger as blood was passed back and forth in front of them yet never offered. As if Amber was trying to see how she could push their rebelliousness before they snapped and she could control them. The weaker-minded ones had already been compelled by her to give up whatever freedom they'd had after she'd taken down those in charge just to save their skin. I see some who are so desiccated they may as well be dead but the shallow rise and fall of their chests show otherwise. I see the collars and leashes that chain them to the sides of the cages, keeping them caged and as close to submissive as Amber can get them when they're like that. When she hasn't broken them.
