Jade gasps
awake, and begins to spiral.
Her body vibrates, sending waves of space
distortion out in all directions. But there’s nothing to absorb
those distortions—no space, no nothing. She’s floating in a void of
pure, overwhelming light. She feels it even before she feels the
pain from the wound in her chest. The vast emptiness surrounding
her. The absolute abyss once known as the Furthest Ring.
For a moment, she has the feeling that she’s
recalling something. Images and sounds in her head that resemble
memories. But the memories aren’t hers, exactly. They seem to be
someone else’s. There’s an older version of Roxy... someone with a
cheerful green skull for a head, who was... Roxy’s girlfriend?
Something about an election. No, this doesn’t make any sense at
all. The memories are slipping away, anyway. Quickly, they
dissolve, and soon they’re completely out of her mind’s reach, like
she’s waking from a dream. Just like that, they’re gone.
All that’s left are the memories belonging to her,
along with the dire predicament for which she must claim
responsibility. Her friends. Lord English. This great nothingness.
This savage wound in her chest. That...
That black hole.
She looks away from it. Quickly, reflexively, the
way you turn away from a light source that’s too bright. The hole
causes the same kind of discomfort to behold. It’s so dark it
hurts. Yet it calls her.
Her hair spills around her like tentacles
unfurling. She coils into a fetal position and runs her fingers
along the edge of the shard in her chest. It sends pins and needles
under her skin. It’s pure... negative potential. The absence of a
future. The thing skewering her through right now is the space
between breaths, between atoms. She tries to remove it but has
trouble getting a grip on it. It fails to behave like a solid piece
of matter, remains lodged within her stubbornly. It hurts, but she
won’t finish dying. Not just yet.
She unfolds, blinking against the vast, empty light
around her. Her memories crease as she moves, filling her mind with
the knowledge of the last few hours. She’s sixteen, she thinks,
trying to orient herself. And she just fought Lord English after
being plucked out of a doomed timeline. At least, if you can even
call what she did fighting. But what was that dream? It was
significant, she’s knows that much. Dave and Karkat? Why did they
jump into her mind as a unit? Earth C. What’s Earth C? Concepts
collide, commingle. Two different understandings of her world knit
into each other as easily as she takes her next breath. Urgency
bleeds off her neural receptors, melts right out of her fingertips.
She lets herself float, unmoored, carried along an ebb tide in
space that only she can perceive.
She wonders if anyone else survived. She wants to
see John.
She didn’t notice the moment she turned her gaze
back toward the black hole. But now she couldn’t look away if she
tried. In slow, hazy spirals, it beckons her. The longer she stares
at it, the deeper she peers into the folds of infinite atrophy, and
the louder it gets. Loud? She only now notices there is sound
emanating from it, but not the kind physical ears can detect. The
hole has a voice—one that becomes material the more the expanding
black sphere dominates her senses.
Jade’s wound throbs. She hears the voice fill up
the dark space between her ribs. It’s calling to her from the
center of the death of everything. She kicks off her ruby red
slippers, and drifts ever closer.
come.
What the fuck?
Forget I said that. Jade leans into her
accelerating descent. She listens for another command. But the hole
has seemingly said all it will. She considers asking who is
speaking, but her mouth stays shut, powerless against the forces
transfixing her. Jade has no way of knowing who this voice belongs
to. She has no context for understanding the true nature of this
being, what role she has played in bringing about the end, and how
long she has been waiting for this. She has no idea. But I
do.
The dead cherub is making her move.
We should get the fuck out of here. Let’s see what
Dave’s up to, okay?