OUT OF MIND² ━━ Bellamy Blake

𝐗𝐕𝐈𝐈𝐈: In Name and Blood

Becca strides further into the lab. It is colossal, sleek and scientifically advanced ━━ more scientifically advanced than Lyra had ever seen in her whole life. She swallows back a barrage of questions as her eyes dart back and forth across the place that she could not conjure even in her wildest dreams. Rather than being lit by starlight or dull yellowing fluorescents like the Ark, vibrant blue-tinted lights glimmer from every little pore within the walls. She traipses after Becca and Clarke towards a very thin white table that seems to grow straight out of the white, glossy floor.

It takes Lyra a moment, but then she figures out why she's in a spacesuit. Clarke had thought they were on the Ark and thus thought of the Lyra that she remembers from the Ark ━━ the spacewalker.

     "This is it," Becca tells Clarke.

     Lyra jerks her head up. A polished switch lies in the dead-centre of the table.

     She swallows thickly. The last time she and Clarke had stood in a room to code a kill-switch, three hundred and eighty one people had died. They'd committed a genocide. A massacre.

     Clarke stares at it hesitantly, and Lyra knows that she is not the only one remembering Mount Weather.

     "Do it," Lyra says quietly. Clarke glances at her in surprise and Lyra gives her a sharp nod. "Fate of the world at stake, remember? Pull it."

"If you pull that, you will be killing everyone. See for yourself."

Scowling, Lyra eyes Alie uneasily as she strides through the lab. She looks entirely out of place in her blood red dress. But the familiar spike of terror that she feels when she can see Alie never comes; she knows that Alie's not only in her head anymore. Clarke and Becca can see her too.

With some hesitation, Lyra trails Alie, following her back to the starboard window facing Earth.

The swirling blue planet is suddenly not so blue. Great fiery explosions rock the Earth's surface across the vast majority of it. Entire continents of green have been wiped out, razed by hellfire.

"The nuclear power plants that weren't destroyed by the bombs have begun to melt down," explains Alie. "My drones detected the first of them four months ago. There are more than a dozen at-risk plants around the world. Seven currently burning. Global radiation levels are already rising. By my calculations, in less than six months, 96% of the Earth's surface will be uninhabitable. Even for those born in space. . . "

Lyra's lips fully snap apart. The idea is so unfathomable that it is completely impossible to comprehend. Because what Alie's saying is that there will be an apocalypse.

Alie meets her shocked gaze easily. "So you see, Lyra, the City of Light is the only thing that can save you."

     Lyra can only stare at the Earth in horror.

     "Black rain will come first," Alie continues with baffling calmness. "There will be no drinkable water. Precancerous lesions will form on — "

     "She's stalling," interjects Becca poisonously. She eyes her doppelgänger with an explicit hatred. "As soon as the update is complete, she'll delete the kill switch."

     "But she's not lying. She can't," responds Lyra lowly. She glances back at Clarke, whose hand hovers uncertainly over the kill switch, then turns again to Alie. "This is what you wanted to tell me on the Ring, isn't it?"