Behind the Walls. NOVEL By Claire Darcy.

10. c l o u d s.

It had been a regular day at the Academy, but not anymore. The prodigies were in uproar. A huge crowd of students gathered at the base of building 12, all of them yelling. They were all completely engulfed in a cloud of grey-white dust as if a bomb had exploded. Soldiers tried ferociously to get them to calm down, but to no avail.        
Something big had just happened here. Nobody could explain it.

"Stand back, all of you, please stand back!" a soldier demanded.

"Dr, what's going on?" Josh asked, frightened, "Is she... Is she dead?"

"That is a good question, Joshua. A very good question indeed," he responded. Dr McArthur seemed to be in some kind of trance, staring solidly forward.

All the students that had been yelling only minutes before, were now in a strange, stunned silence. Josh was pushing his way further through the crowd when he felt the smooth cement ground beneath his feet suddenly slope.

He looked down to see jagged cracks in the once perfectly flat concrete, pushing it in sharp peaks and sudden drops. The ground before him sloped slightly downwards and around as if he stood at the edge of a crater. Slowly the dust began to settle, and he realised he was, in fact, standing at the edge of a crater, and although it was no more than three metres in diameter, it was still something of great destruction.

A complete silence fell over the entire audience as the cloud faded. Even the soldiers had frozen in their places to look at the spectacle in the centre of the crater- the thing that had caused it.
Josh glanced at the short boy beside him. A lanky figure with dark blue hair and freckles.

"What's going on?" he whispered, scared to break the silence.

Taking one quick look at who he was, the blue-haired boy replied, "I don't know. She didn't even scream."

Josh stared through the blurriness, determined that this was all some kind of illusion. Nobody moved. And as the dust settled, nobody even breathed.

There, in the centre of the crater, was Ace.

She was hunched over, down on one knee, her head bowed low to the ground. Her hands were planted firmly by her sides, and on her arms and legs she wore many scrapes and bruises. Her dark hair hung in scraggly waves over her face, shielding her features.

Everyone stared at the girl, whose body was surprisingly still intact.

Was she alive? It was hard to tell.

She had to be dead. There was no way someone could drop from that height and still be alive. Nothing about this was normal. Nothing about it was right.

And then she moved.

...

ACE.

I was surrounded by nothingness.

Everything was empty and dark. There was nothing. No light, no sound, no feeling. Just... Nothing. It was as if I were completely disconnected from my own body. Was this what it felt like to be dead? No, it couldn't be. I wasn't dying. I wasn't dead. Not yet, anyway. The darkness that engulfed me seemed to stretch on forever.

Then suddenly I felt something.

My body. I was there, inside my own head. I could feel the temperature around me. It was warm, but not the harsh heat I was used to. I could feel my knee against my chest. I was crouched, my hands at my sides, dug into the hard ground.

Then I heard something.

The sound of my own breathing. The sound of the breeze. Strange whispers, and the low hum of machinery. No- not machinery, perhaps something else. Electricity- energy, around me and inside me. It came from nowhere and everywhere. My body was aching. Everything around me sent silent messages of pain, a pain that was only felt outside my body, in a strange and empty echo.

My eyes slowly fluttered open. Light penetrated into the deep recesses of my mind, mixed signals of triumph and dismay swirling through my confused thoughts. My vision slowly came into focus, lined with a foreign blue glow. I was looking down at a cracked and shattered cement ground, my scratch-covered hands holding me up.

Finally, my memories filtered in.

Camp Three. Josh. The arm-wrestling. Rowan.

The helipad. The escape. The crash.

The forest. Rowan's wound. The walk. The sickness.

Camp Four. My brother. The news of Annabelle Rigby.

The Academy. Lieutenant Gaspard. The elevator fight. Detention.

The threat. '...Deal with this girl. She's a waste of time...'

Then it all made sense. They'd dropped me off the building. They'd tried to kill me.

And they had failed.

My own words rung in my ears, distant and echoing. I am the storm.

In one swift movement, my head turned sharply upwards. A gasp echoed through the air. Around me was a crowd of teenagers, all of them acutely attractive, sharp and aware. These were the prodigies. Trained and enhanced to be so advanced, physically and mentally.

I slowly stood up, my body stiff yet flowing in strange robotic movements. Dust swirled around my ankles, and the ground beneath me was cracked and forced as if I was a nuclear bomb that the Council had dropped. There was no sound from anyone around me.

And then someone pushed to the front of the crowd. I locked eyes with the boy who stood there.

He was fiercely good-looking; tall, strong, determined. He had light brown hair, and piercing brown eyes. His face showed a grim expression, his eyes swimming with what could only be fear. And yet there was something more- something like understanding.

I averted my eyes, slowly dropping my gaze to the ruined concrete beneath me. It was absolutely smashed. I looked up at the crowd.

"Sorry about the ground," I said weakly.

Then I stumbled backwards, blacking out before I could hit the ground.

At least I was alive.