The Girl with the Last Miracle

Terminará

The words buffeted her skull. She saw hundreds of horrible images, one merging into another. She saw people dead in the streets, too many to even count. Most of them were faceless, nameless, simply side victims of a disaster she couldn't prevent. But some faces stood out. Some faces repeated again and again, and entire street of people she knew. Two faces, over and over again. María. Abram. María. Abram. This seemed to stretch on forever, their bodies lying dead over and over again, mutilated in a thousand different ways. She was running blindly, trying to escape the carnage. She was trying to escape the deaths of the only two people who had ever loved her. Someone was screaming words at her from far away. "Who saves you, Ainika? Who could possibly save you? No one loves you! Everyone who cared about you in the slightest is dead. You were too late. You were never enough to save what really mattered! Did you hear me? You were never enough! And now, I can finally rid the world of your abnormality! I can finally wipe your abomination off the face of the earth, and the world can go back to how it was meant to be! You can't save yourself, so no one can save you!" With this, the voice crescendoed into evil laughter. It was laughter that pierced into her mind, her heart, even her very soul. Ainika pushed her hands to her ears and kept running. There was someone out there who could save her, that she was sure of. She turned another corner, and sure enough, there he was. He reached out with open arms, and Ainika ran toward him. She needed him, she needed him more than life itself. He was the only one who could save her, and she was the only one who could save the world. But it didn't matter. The more desperately she ran toward him, the farther away he got. With one last surge of energy, she leapt at him. But when she reached him, he sill wasn't there. His body turned to nothingness in her fingers, and she was left on the ground, grasping for air. She finally looked up, and the only thing she could see in every direction was herself. An endlessly repeating maze of mirrors, each one showing her her many flaws. And she knew then, without a single shred of doubt, that this time, she would fail. Her miracles had kept others alive for this long, but they would no longer save anyone. For nothing she did would allow her to save herself. The world would fall, and it would be her fault for not being there to stop it.

The mirrors all whispered one thing. "There is only one miracle left, Ainika. You'd better choose wisely."