OUT OF MIND² ━━ Bellamy Blake

𝐗𝐗𝐗𝐈: And as the Earth Burns to the Ground

There is a heartbeat of suffocating soundlessness.

Noah gives an almost maniacal laugh, though his face is so crude that it doesn't seem as if he finds anything funny. "Fifteen minutes."

She gives a nod.

He stares at her, a mixture of shock and disbelief sweeping his face. "Fifteen minutes. You need to stop your heart for fifteen minutes — you'll be brain dead, Lyra! And that's assuming we can even get your heart to start again — this is going to kill you — !"

"Not if I'm frozen." Lyra's existence feels collateral. She jerks her head in the direction of the tank. "Or just really, really fucking cold."

There is a resounding silence.

"This is the only way you'll live?"

"It's the only way."

An eternal despair falls across Noah's face like a shadow. Lyra can only imagine the civil war raging within him ━━ this is something no father should ever have to watch, no father should have to see his last child bleed together with the darkness until she has become death.

"It'll be really cold," Noah says at last. He eyes the tank of ice water. "You could get frostbite. What if you come out with no fingers?"

Lyra gives a startled laugh. Oh, god, she loves her dad. She loves him more than anything.

"OK." Noah blows a puff of air from his chapped lips. His limbs are trembling and his eyes glisten with shattered slivers of silver, but he puts a brave face on for her. "OK. I can't believe I'm saying this, but uh. . . kill yourself, kid."

There are no words left. She swallows, wondering vaguely if her mouth had ever been this dry. The crushing pain in her head is colossal, but soon she will feel none of it. She will feel nothing at all.

Only for a little bit, she thinks. You'll come back.

Everything smells of frost and bitter earth. It is then that Lyra feels the dread digging deep into her bones and it is now that the air in the room is suddenly cold as she strips her clothing from her body until she is left in nothing but thin, moth-eaten spandex and a sports bra with dozens of loose threads hanging like loose strands of a spiders web. She faces the tank and wonders if this is how fast winter falls ━━ with deathly speed, lethal and swift, flashing steel like a Grounder's blade. Her heart ricochets so much that she thinks it might burst from her ribs, and soon it will stop completely. Soon it will all be over. Her heart will stop and it will hang there in the black tar of her sinful lungs. Dead. Dead but not decaying.

Noah helps her into the tank. Into her grave.

The water is glacier. Lyra wonders what would happen if she screamed. Her lips are shivering.

"A live wire on a timer is set to go off fifteen minutes after i flatline." Her teeth chatter violently and Noah pretends not to notice. "I rigged it to deliver the exact same charge as the defibrillator med kit I took from Abby. It's analog. But shocking my heart could put me into cardiac arrest. If that happens, you'll need to shock it again with the defibrillator."

"What — me?" Noah's jaw is agape, his eyes storm-stricken. "Shouldn't it be Abby or Jackson or — "

     "They're not. . . " Lyra's entire body shudders. It is so cold she can hardly breathe. "They're not awake yet."