Girl on Fire

Chapter 14

"Ash, Ash, wake up. Come on, wake up!"

I could feel wind rushing around me and hear the heavy thud of rotors.

"Kathryn?" I said wearily, opening my eyes.

"Oh, thank goodness you are awake!" Kathryn said, relief seeming to flood her face. "I thought you were never going to wake up."

I slowly pushed myself up into a sitting position and looked at my surroundings.

We were in a helicopter, a small one and I was lying across the seats at the back, meaning that Kathryn and Tefia were forced to sit on the floor.

"How ya doing over there?" Tefia called, waving from the other side of the cabin.

"What's happening?" I said, not bothering to answer Tefia's question.

"We're on a helicopter, bound to who-knows-where." Tefia said grumpily.

"The people from the place came and picked us up." Kathryn explained. "They said that they are taking us to the next part of our journey."

"The next part?" I said, surprised. "You mean that all this, all of that, wasn't even necessary?"

Kathryn looked like she was about to cry, and something suddenly occurred to me: where was Jemma?

The realisation hit me like a shockwave. Jemma was dead. Shot in the back. Some cold-hearted person pulled the trigger and probably didn't even care about her, about us, about the people she left behind, Juliet.

I shook my head and reached out to hold Kathryn's hand in comfort

"Her last words..." Kathryn said, tears rolling down her face, "do you want to know what she said?"

"Yeah, sure." I said gently.

"She said to me: 'I don't want my last words to be a cliche, but tell Jules I love her."

"Oh, Jemma," I said with a slight smile, "only you, only you."

Kathryn looked like she was about to burst into tears again so I immediately tried to comfort her.

"Let's not dwell on the past, eh?" I said before sighing deeply. "Apparently we have a new mission, so we should think about that for now, not about what happened or what might have happened if things had gone differently."

"I'm a monster." she said quietly.

"Since when?"

"Since I dislocated that woman's shoulder! The rush of adrenaline just kicked in and I barely realised what I was doing before it was too late. That poor woman."

She sniffed and bent down into her bag and picked out her battered glasses and put them on, then took out a book, different from the previous one, I noticed, and started to read.

I decided to leave her alone for nor and use my remaining time to try and get as much information as possible out of Tefia.

Calling her over, I sat up properly and made space for her on the seat next to me. At first she looked as if she wasn't going to come over, but then she changed her mind.

"What's up?" she said brightly.

"What did you mean about us going to the other place, and why did you even play that stupid prank?" I said, getting straight to the point.

Tefia grinned, "Well, there was another building on the map that looked more secret, and I hoped that you would think to go there because it wasn't as blindingly obvious as the communications centre. And as for playing the trick," she actually laughed out loud, "why shouldn't a girl have a bit of fun? I'm a Lone Ranger, and I didn't want you lot catching up, though it turned out that you did in the end."