The door creaked open. Jade didn't flinch this time.
She was already on her feet, barefoot on cold concrete, swaying slightly from lack of sleep and bruised ribs. A plate of food sat untouched in the corner—something grey and pasty she hadn't bothered with. Hunger felt less important now. This was routine. This was survival.
Donatello stood at the threshold, arms crossed, expression unreadable. "Get up."
She was already up.
They led her into the training room—a hollowed-out loading bay with rubber mats and sandbags and weapons that looked older than she was. Sweat and blood stained the floor in fading circles. The boys were already waiting.
This time, Leo stood in the center.
He held two real knives. Steel. Sharp enough that even the dim fluorescents above caught on the edge. One was handed to her.
No wooden blade. No dummy. No drills.
"Cut me," Leo said.
Jade didn't move. Not yet. Her fingers tightened around the knife's hilt. It was heavier than she expected. Real. Cold. Real.
Leo didn't blink. "You've hesitated enough."
She lunged.
She wasn't fast enough. His blade sliced across her upper arm. A clean, shallow cut. Blood welled immediately, warm against her skin.
She looked at it, at the dark red line, and something inside her flicked.
It was just pain. That was all. Just a message.
And pain could be ignored.
The next hour blurred into a flurry of motion, pain, and sharpened clarity.
She came at Leo hard. Again and again. Her movements were fast, her reflexes sharper than ever before. He blocked, ducked, redirected. He didn't taunt her. He didn't insult her. He taught her with every movement. Every time she swung too wide, he corrected with a quick wrist-lock. Every time she overcommitted, he trapped her blade and twisted it from her grip.
She ended up on the floor more times than she could count.
"You're fast," he said, offering a hand after flipping her for the fourth time. "But you fight like someone bigger. You're not."
She ignored his hand, got up on her own. Spat blood.
Mickey and Raphael were worse. They didn't bring blades. Just their fists.
Mickey was chaos. Jokes, jeers, low feints and sudden uppercuts. He kept talking, kept laughing, even when she doubled over.
"You thinking about running yet, ghost girl?"
Raph was brute force. Unyielding. He didn't say a word as he slammed her against a wall, again and again. She started to recognize his rhythm. A pattern of two punches, one elbow, then step back. He always stepped back.
She waited. Let him swing. This time, she caught the pattern and turned into the hit. Her elbow caught Mickey square in the mouth.
Crack.
He stumbled. Laughed. Bloodied lips stretched wide.
"Finally," he grinned. "There she is."
The notebook.
It came to her that night. As she nursed her wounds and traced bruises like they were constellations, she remembered.
Leo. Always in the corner, watching, writing. Not out of distance—out of study.
He learned them all. Dissected them. Every angle. Every movement. Every weakness.
Now he was doing the same to her. And maybe—just maybe—she could do the same back.
The next day, they gave her no rest.
"You're not strong," Donatello said, circling her like a shark. "So stop trying to fight like a battering ram."
"You're quick," Leo added, guiding her hand as she positioned a blade to Mickey's throat during a grapple. "Use it. Let them underestimate you."
They changed their approach. Less beating, more breaking her apart and putting her back together.
They showed her how to use her legs more, how to turn her small frame into a weapon.
Wrap your thighs around the neck.
Twist from the hips.
Drop your weight, let gravity finish the job.
They showed her how to weaponize momentum. She was light, flexible, fast.
Jumps. Spins. Takedowns that made Mickey cough up air and Raph groan from the floor.
She threw herself around like a phantom. Flowed like smoke.
"Ghost," Mickey breathed after she landed a clean flip and knocked Raph off his feet.
She paused. Remembered. The man at Terminus. The one who screamed it before she slit his throat.
Ghost.
She liked it.
That night, Jade didn't sleep.
Her cell was a tomb. Cold and echoing. The bruises on her back were deep purple. Her arm ached from the slice. Her knuckles split. But she didn't sleep.
She trained.
She shadowboxed with ghosts. Practiced footwork across the cramped floor. Kicked into the air until her thighs trembled. She gripped her toothbrush like a blade, mimicking the movements they'd drilled into her.
The old scratch marks on the wall had faded. Words she'd scrawled in desperation.
She began new ones.
ADAPT.
BREATHE.
FIGHT.
She whispered them like prayers.
And for the first time, they didn't sound like pleas.
They sounded like a promise.
YOU ARE READING
When The World Ends
Actie"What happens when the world ends?" He asks in my arms. "We build it back up again." Jade Jacklyn Joy is a 25 year old girl who had a rough upbring. She was the Grimes babysitter for 9 years before the apocalypse happened. Spending that much time w...
