Discoveries | TMR | Three

6:1

Adeline hadn't known what to expect when she heard all the screams for Lily.

The sound had torn across the Harbour like something unholy, sharp enough to stop her heart mid-beat before it kicked into a sprint of its own. She hadn't known what she'd find when she followed them, hadn't stopped to wonder what could have driven grown men and women into that kind of panic.

Her feet moved before her thoughts could catch up, pounding against the boards as she stumbled down the pier, her breath ragged, hair whipping across her face. Each shout carried her forward faster, building and breaking over one another until they became one endless cry of desperation, each note raw enough to scrape down her spine.

She didn't think about where she was going, didn't think about why - she just moved, as though pulled by some invisible cord that tightened with every step, dragging her closer and closer to the storm at the centre of it all.

The Harbour blurred around her, shapes and sounds collapsing into fragments that barely registered. The thud of boots hammering past, the slam of a door against its frame, the distant rattle of a crate tipping over and spilling its contents across the ground - all of it passed in a haze.

Faces turned as she ran, mouths opening in warning or prayer, but she couldn't make out the words. Her world had shrunk to the screams alone, her body surging forward in blind obedience to the fear laced through them.

By the time she rounded the last corner, her chest burning, she felt as though she was no longer running of her own accord at all, but being carried headlong into something she couldn't hope to stop.

The office felt smaller than it was, the walls pressed tight, the ceiling too low, the air so thick with heat and noise that she could barely breathe. Bodies crowded the space, moving frantically, shouting over one another, the sharp smell of blood and sweat and metal suffocating every breath.

At the centre of it all, a body lay sprawled across the desk, pale and shaking, their shirt cut away to reveal a wound that wouldn't stop bleeding. Bandages were piled over it, soaked through in seconds, red spilled onto the floorboards where it gathered in dark pools that lapped against the boots of those trying desperately to save them.

Her mind faltered. For a moment she didn't register it, didn't understand what she was looking at. And then it hit her all at once, brutal and merciless - the slackness of the body, the shallow stutter of their breathing, the panic on every face around them - and her stomach twisted so violently she thought she might be sick.

The voices blurred into a single roar, too loud, too close, and yet somehow distant, as though she was hearing it through water. Only Lily's voice cut clear, sharp and commanding as she barked for hot water, for cloth, for hands to hold them steady. Adeline clutched the frame of the door, knuckles white, unable to move, unable to look anywhere but at the body.

"Daniel?"

The name slips out before she even realises, thin and trembling, a single word splintering through the chaos. Her heart lurches as though it's been ripped out of her chest and shoved back in the wrong way round. It can't be him. But it is.

Her mind reels, grasping for air, for sense, for anything solid to cling to - but all she sees is Daniel. Daniel, who has been with her from the very beginning. Daniel, who stood beside her through every trial, every desperate run, every sleepless night, lying broken in front of her. Skin ghost-pale, blood spilling faster than anyone can stop, the fierce spark inside him flickering lower with every breath.

The sight tears something open in her chest so violently she thinks she might split apart with it. This isn't supposed to happen. Not Daniel. Not the one person she cannot lose.