SNOW ON THE BEACH 1.04 | it's all around _______________________________
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"GRACE! WAKE THE FUCK UP!" The voice slammed into her like a shockwave, but it was the rough grip on her shoulders that really yanked her back to reality. It felt like she'd been pulled from deep underwater, her mind slow to catch up, her body heavier than it should be. A sharp sting bloomed across her cheek—Evelyn had slapped her.
Grace's eyes flew open, her breath catching in her throat.
The first thing she noticed was the heat, thick and suffocating. Smoke curled through the ruined plane, filling her lungs before she could stop it, setting her chest on fire. It stung her eyes, turning everything around her into a hazy blur of flickering orange light and shifting shadows. Evelyn's face hovered above her, wide-eyed and frantic, her dark curls wild and tangled around her face.
Her lips moved, her voice rough and strained, as if torn from the depths of her chest. "Shit—sorry." The words came sharp, edged with guilt, but there was no time for remorse. Her fingers closed around Grace's arm, firm and unyielding. A tether. "Can you stand? Are you hurt?"
Grace tried to respond, but her own voice felt like a stranger in her throat—raw, fractured, barely there. She swallowed against the nausea twisting inside her, forcing herself to push past the fog, past the pain. "I think I'm fine," she croaked, though every fiber of her being screamed otherwise.
Evelyn exhaled sharply, a sound caught between relief and impatience. Her grip tightened. "Good. Okay, we have to get out of here."
The world was moving, even if Grace wasn't ready for it. Evelyn pulled her forward, urgency radiating from every motion, half-dragging her toward the gaping wound in the plane's fuselage. The wreckage groaned around them, the twisted metal exhaling a deep, wounded sound, as if the plane itself was dying. Beneath their feet, the floor trembled—a shuddering, unstable thing, threatening to collapse at any moment.
The wreckage was nearly empty. Most of the team had already fled, leaving behind a world in ruins—overturned seats jutting from the floor at unnatural angles, broken glass glittering in the firelight, luggage torn open and discarded like the innards of some great, gutted beast. The heat was unbearable, a living force pressing in from all sides, wrapping around Grace like a second skin, seeping into her very bones.
And then—
A scream.
It was coming from the back of the plane.
It tore through the chaos, a piercing, blood-curdling cry that echoed with the weight of desperation. It was the kind of scream that wriggled beneath the surface of your skin, the kind that made your heartbeat stutter, your breath catch in your throat. It wasn't just a sound; it was a presence—a force so raw and desperate that it burned into Grace's mind the moment she heard it, carving its mark deep into her psyche. It vibrated through the air like a living thing, grabbing her by the ribs, squeezing her chest, making everything else in the world feel distant, irrelevant, like it didn't matter in comparison to the suffering that scream represented.
