Run

Gem meets up with Jess and is angry when faced with her mortality.

Her phone was still on the table. That probably shouldn’t have been one of her first thoughts after she had been told that she would definitely going to die. She didn’t really have an excuse for it other than the fact that she still hadn't checked it after it had buzzed, the mysterious stranger had distracted her with that strange green rock that would probably kill her.

Death had become incredibly commonplace. Once the bombing had stopped people would die for simple reasons. It was effectively like the whole world had gone back in time when it came to medical knowledge and technology. So much was left unknown of the state of the world outside of the nearest cities.

“You know what? Screw you!” Gem picked up her phone up off of the table and pushed the person that she didn't even know the name of out of the way. The message told her that her friend Jess was around the corner. When people had started to go back to work after two months of no change in the state of the world it had caused Jess and Gem great anxiety to not be able to communicate. The internet and phones were incredibly unreliable seeing as it was pretty much entirely hackers now. Jess had worked solidly for a week to create a secure network that they could communicate to each other through safely. 

Gem picked up her speed as she approached where Jess should be, she would probably be wearing a long coat and have her face covered as she had started to grow increasingly paranoid over the lack of any secure government and was in the process of searching for a way to have a safe place to live and exist in. Gem found her friend hiding in the shadows. Jess made an attempt to put her arm around the girl but she pulled away before she could touch her and told her to stay away from her skin.

“This crazy person threw something at me and then told me that I would die from that stupid thing touching me. They are either crazy or an alien or something. Maybe they’re both, who knows?” She was disguising her fear behind her anger, something she had done a lot over the past decade.

“We should go somewhere private.” Jess said in a hushed voice, always the calm and collected one of the two.”

The girls turned and met with the stranger that was dressed in red all over, standing out against the bleakness of everything in the city. Gem let out a sound of surprise and slight alarm. They were like a wizard or something, materialising like that without the two of them noticing. Jess squinted her eyes slightly but her look only conveyed the feeling of understanding and not of hatred.

“I am Saff. I come from far away. You are in danger.”

“Could you be any more cryptic?” Gem said, crossing her arms defensively.  The device shook in her hand. She dropped it. Her friend had dropped hers as well. There was a string of something alive attaching their hands to the grey metal devices laying dormant on the pavement. Saff looked up at them. It was a look of alarm that was a surprise to the girls that had not seen this stranger scared by the mention of death or anything else. Jess could see other people in the city centre that had strings of beige and brown attaching them to metal as well. It was a very strange day. 

Saff’s dark skin was untouched by the strings, they had not been touching a mechanical device. A red cloth was wrapped around Saff’s head, they held out their hands for Jess and Gem wordlessly. The girls had no reason to touch them or trust them. They took the hands and started running. The strings snapped as they ran away from the phones. Their light cloth garments that had come into style after the war spanned out around them in billows and folds. Sand picked up from where they hit the ground with their shoes.

They reached a door in the desolate city of Prague that had swirling patterns of green light spanning out from the edges. Jess looked around frantically but there was no one there to see them as the alley that they had turned down was vacant. Saff pushed the door open, the green light growing stronger. Gem was pushed through the doorway towards a room that felt ancient. Like an alive thing that had become one with the earth.

There was effectively a cavernous damp room inside of the doorway that belonged to a small shop that the girls had been in countless times before. The girls could tell the size by the sound of water drops. A strange familiarity radiated from the edges of the room even though they had not seen it before. Their companion was enthusiastic in closing the door. 

They were left in darkness, three bodies breathing harshly. A grinding noise came from the other end of the deep room, it alarmed the two girls but Saff had been expecting it. They looked coolly over their shoulder and remembered the first time that they had heard the sound of those gears working away at the universe. They had been a child, lonely and weak, they had been saved by what that sound had meant. That sound, of rock and metal, could set people free and take everything from someone. They were so much older now, not an innocent child anymore. 

These children, these girls that had hardly seen adulthood, they were clinging to their saviour. The door was opening, this room would not be seen for a long time, it would change when they saw it next. If the girls were there it wouldn't be safe to return to Prague, to that time and place. The light spread over the high ceiling, the green highlighting the girls strangely, like an illness. Jess' brown hair down her back swaying with her movements Her cloth covering that had been covering her face had come undone. They all stepped towards the now open door where another place and another time were waiting for them.