Every time Navia opened her eyes for the last month, it was with pain or a sore back after lying on hard ground. This time, she felt so comfortable that she didn’t feel like waking up, but she was in full strength without needing any more rest. Looking up, she saw a white ceiling, to her right a white curtain that only showed her the silhouette of a bed behind it, as she turned her gaze to the other side, she saw a window onto the busy street where people enjoyed a sunny day.
“It feels… Familiar… It’s not my first time waking up like that… In bed… In bandages…” She whispered as she took a look at the bandages covering almost her whole body. Even if she dropped the white linen clothes, she wouldn’t be naked. “It’s nice to wake up like that.”
“Waking up covered in wounds is nice?” Asked a woman whom Navia hadn’t noticed previously, even though she was sitting right in front of her.
Navia flinched in surprise but laughed at the innocent question. “No. Haha. In a comfortable bed instead of hard ground.”
“Wait. Are you from the Red Zone?” The woman asked, reaching for her file and pen.
“No. Just had a hard time recently… Far from home. My name is Navia, a warrior from The Order of Tomorrow.” Navia introduced herself and extended a hand toward the woman.
She grabbed it and also introduced herself. “My name is Abigail. I am the president’s assistant.” Once she sat back, she placed the file back on the table beside the bed. “I thank you in my name, in the president’s name as well as the two you had saved.
“I saved someone?” Asked Navia, grabbing her temple as she felt a sting in her head. Trying to remember what had happened brought her pain.
“You must’ve forgotten because of the injuries you got. From what I understood, when the tower was falling, you saved a young woman and her young brother. That was heroic of you.” Abigail reached into her bag and took out a knife and an apple. As she peeled it, she explained what had happened, or at least what she heard.
“No… I saved them just by chance… I was… Running away… From something hellish…” Navia slowly processed the words and found something wrong in what the woman in front of her had said. “Wait… What do you mean by tower?”
“The massive building that fell onto the tenements…” Abigail answered, unsure of why Navia became confused by the tower.
“No… That wasn’t the tower… It was a giant furnace…” Navia’s body began to lightly shiver, stopping mid-sentence as if something was stuck inside her throat, choking her. She bent over as the emotions began to boil up inside her. She was shrinking into herself as if thousands of hands were pushing her to the ground.
Once she began to tremble and sob, Abigail became concerned. “Hey… Are you feeling okay? I can call a doctor if you need he-” She calmly asked and gently placed a hand on Navia’s shoulder, but once she touched her, Navia moved away and made an agonising scream while her fingers scratched her pale face. Abigail jumped back as she didn’t know what was happening.
While she was thinking how to proceed, Navia calmed down, her breath became steady, and her gaze was back to normal. Whatever was hunting her, it went away.
“I’m… Sorry…” Mumbled Navia as she lowered her hands, revealing her scratched face, red, damaged skin, and a few lines of blood made with her own fingers. Abigail forgot for a moment what had happened as she saw black blood. “I just… Saw the truth of this… Tower…”
“...Truth?” Abigail asked after a moment of waiting as she was brought back into the conversation about the fallen building.
“It’s no tower. There were… Many… Far too many bodies. Corpses. They lit them on fire… I was stuck there… I tried to escape…” Navia began to sob, and the tears calmly and slowly fell down her face. This time, the emotions slowly leaked out of her. “I had to crawl through the corpses. They lit them on fire… I shouted that I am still alive, but they ignored me… They didn’t care…”
Abigail went cold once she realised the truth of the tower. She looked out the window and imagined this building once again, the very building that Devin was repairing right at this moment. “That’s not a tower…” Whispered shocked Abigail, which Navia confirmed with a saddened nod.
“It's hell… That's what it is… And I think I destroyed it. Or at least a part of it.” Navia revealed the truth, which shocked Abigail even more. This time it was a stare of disbelief, or at least her wanting for it not to be true.
“There was no monster?” She asked to confirm what Navia said. “Depending on her answer, it could change a lot of things…” She thought of trying not to reveal it to Navia.
“No monster. I was the one who made the ‘tower’ fall.” Navia stood up and approached the window to take a look at the sky. “It was either that or I would die… And I can’t do that yet. I have someone to save.” She turned to Abigail and said that with full confidence that she wasn’t about to show a moment ago. All of the bad emotions vanished with that panic attack, making her feel better.
“How were you able to destroy a building?!” Abigail almost shouted as she couldn’t clearly comprehend what had happened in there. The appearance of a monster was the simplest one, but the truth was harder to swallow.
Navia bit her finger, and the blood began to pour out of the wound, covering her whole hand and turning solid, forming a glove. “I have a gate that lets me manipulate my blood.”
“You have a gate? No. That’s obvious for someone who belongs to the order… Your blood is black? How did you end up in that morgue? How did you recover so fast? I have too many questions!” Abigail desperately counted the questions she had while writing some of the answers in her file.
“It would take too much time and I can’t spare any more.” Navia answered as she moved the blood back into her body through the wound and sealed it. As she moved toward the exit, Abigail quickly followed, trying her best to make a sentence, but it came out as a stutter.
As she was about to reach for the handle, it vanished inside the door. She pulled her hand away and looked for the door handle, but as she took a step back, the door was eaten by the wall.
“My apologies, but you can’t leave yet.”