Apathy: The Genesis Chronicles

Prologue

* * * * * * * * * 

It's his voice. He's in her head. He's right in front of her.

He's everywhere.

It's dark. Her wrists ache from the restraints. She was not meant to be a prisoner.

He talks. She listens.

* * * * * * * *

There is nothing but darkness. It's always the darkness that remains. Walls enclose her. The restraints are gone. Isolation. Her skin ignites with the slightest contact. She does not know how long she has been alone. Time stops.

His words, when they come, rage against her eardrums. Painful. Too painful. He builds her castles of words, their crushing weight suffocating. He pours his foundation on her chest, and brick by brick, sentence by sentence, crushes her sternum. 

She can't breathe. 

He talks. She listens.

* * * * * * * *

"They think you pathetic."

These words, she knows. She thinks them often.

"To them, you are a nuisance."

She knows this, too.

"I've heard them. They believe you are weak."

She nods. Ignores the digging behind her skull.

"But I, my darling. I see your potential."

She waits.

"Your powers are great."

He talks. She listens.

* * * * * * * *

"Only then, when they all bow at your feet, will they see the strength you possess. They will not bow willingly."

She can hear his grin. Feel his malice. Embrace his madness.

 "You must make them."

Her cracked lips spread thin over her teeth. The castle no longer sits atop her chest; she sits atop the castle. The view is magnificent. 

"You are strong."

He talks.

She believes. 

* * * * * * * *

The alarm clock on the bedside table demands attention. The redhead sitting upright in his bed gives a muted curse and hits the top of the clock with a closed fist.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm already awake," Jesse mumbles to himself, tossing his phone onto the bed. The phone bounces on the sheets before clattering off the bed, earning one more curse and a rueful dumping of the comforter onto the floor. If he had it his way, he would never stop running. Unfortunately, his body, along with his teammates, dictate otherwise.

Getting dressed takes a significantly shorter time when you're a highly coordinated speedster. Though he's sluggish from inactivity, it only takes Jesse a few short moments to grab the suit slung over his chair and step into it, pulling it up over his throat and securing the belt along his waist.

The picture she stuck into the frame of his mirror stares him down, and Jesse gives it a mutinous look. It's them. It's her.

It's Lana.

The black and white eight-by-ten is leftover from Piper's candid photo shoot craze. In it, Jesse has just told Lana a joke, the smallest of smiles ghosting over his lips. Lana has started to laugh, her nose wrinkling in that way Jesse will never forget, her eyes light and free of worry. Sora is in the background, half blurry from movement; the focus of the picture lies on the pair. This stolen moment will exist forever, shoved into the wood frame. Here, in this photo, Lana and Jesse are immortal.