LUCY
"Amara, are you really ready?"
My voice comes out barely a whisper, thin against the heavy silence of the outskirts.
We are standing in a secluded hollow just beyond the final human town, a place where the world seems to have forgotten itself. No grass here, only a vast, indifferent expanse of fine pale sand that shifts beneath our boots with every nervous twitch of my feet.
The sun is dipping low, casting long skeletal shadows across the dunes, making the black SUV behind us look like a grounded metal beast.
Our hands are locked in a small circle behind the vehicle. Jaxl's grip is to my left, warm and calloused. Amara is to my right, her skin humming with a low-level vibration that makes my own blood feel like it's fizzing beneath the surface.
Tavric and Jaxl are loaded with our bags—the things we scrambled together before fleeing the apartment. They look like statues carved from granite. Immovable. Ready. Their faces set in grim lines of determination.
