GLASS || The Catalysts Series, #1

Part 1 || I || Raining Cars & Teenagers

PART ONE: The Academy

Her earliest memory was a stormy sky, and rain-filled streets. And of a man who offered a hand in the gloomy dark, beckoning her to a world beyond what she's ever known.

They ask where is she from. Always, she has the answer from the tips of her tongue, the mind churning images of a life in which she feels like the happiest person in the universe. And yet, every time after, her senses full into something like a void, doubting the emotion was ever there.

Every night, she dreams of the past, the present, of what is real and what is not. The lines blur together. So every morning, she has had to find some purchase in this new reality where she now lives in.

And, before long, she finds herself already immersed in the new world the stranger brought her into.

*****

Lena's life has just taken several odd turns.

One, she's living on her own now, far away from the place she once called home; two, she's just barely stepped into the most fast paced, advanced area of the City of Leatia — they call it the 'Static' — and has already experienced the infamous 'Catalysts' in action causing havoc all over the city; and, finally, three, she has just discovered she is a potential Catalyst — an ability user — herself and has just received an offer to enrol in the Academy for young elite Catalysts, the top academy of the City of Leatia — the Arcane Academy.

This isn't the new life she's imagined, and certainly isn't the way of living she has once wished for.

Sure, she's always, for all her life, admired the Catalysts. They have everything a person will want: power — literally — money, authority, respect and probably even supreme sovereignty. Their inhuman, godly gifts have aid their lives, putting them so far above past civilisations that the City of Leatia is located away from the mainland to ensure a normal peaceful world still exists.

Because right here in the City of Leatia, an ordinary day is never the same for those who live beyond the bridge.

Abnormality is the norm.

As Lena rushes through the busy streets of the city, she barely avoids a car falling from the sky and completely crushing her. At first she thinks it might just be an accident, since most vehicles are levitating one on top of the other anyway. The unusual traffic structure was the very first thing her eyes laid upon as she first stepped into the city. She has been so fascinated, yet afraid, too.

And now, standing millimetres away from the disaster of the fallen vehicle, she can't bring herself to move at all, not even to make way for what seems like the automated rescue team of robots that work so quickly and efficiently.

Stunned, Lena continues to stare at the mess and how the debris of the crash is removed within seconds, and how the tar is magically fixed almost instantly.

It's as if nothing's happened, and every passerby continues on their daily routine, unfazed. She also finds it strange that the driver or passengers aren't present at all, and she holds the thought. They probably used their abilities to escape. No one stops by to take a look, not even reporters.

Perhaps it's too small a issue to be reported, Lena thinks. After all, this is the City of Leatia.

But that's when she's wrong — there's another crash overhead, this time not near her, but close enough that she can make out. When she glances up, her eyes widen.

It wasn't a mere accident after all. There is an entire battle of some sort going on above, some mass explosions every now and then, throwing the vehicles levitating higher in the air off their tracks. Flashes of different colours paint the sky: light icy blue, pitch black, stark yellow... and sometimes a little spot of white dashing through the clouds, rippling the atmosphere with great pressure.