Ember Born

Chapter 9: Three Days Gone

Jade didn't wake up right away.

For three days, he drifted somewhere between sleep and something deeper, a place that didn't feel like dreaming, though it wasn't quite real either. Machines beeped steadily beside his hospital bed. Mary barely left his side, and Daniel, despite everything happening at his company, spent every spare hour sitting in the chair across from her, watching their son's chest rise and fall.

But inside Jade's mind, something else entirely was happening.

He found himself standing somewhere he didn't recognize, an open space surrounded by a crowd of angry, shouting people. Their words blurred together into one loud, furious noise, and when Jade looked down, he realized with a jolt of horror that he wasn't standing at all.

He was tied to a wooden stake, ropes cutting into his arms, his feet barely touching the ground.

He tried to speak, to ask what was happening, but no sound came out. The crowd surged closer, torches raised, faces twisted with hatred and fear he didn't understand. Someone shouted a word he didn't recognize, and the crowd echoed it back, louder each time, like a chant building toward something inevitable.

Then, through the wall of angry bodies, an old woman broke free, stumbling forward.

She looked frail, her clothes torn, bruises visible along her arms as if she'd fought her way through the crowd just to reach him. But it was her face that struck Jade the hardest, something about her eyes, the shape of her jaw, felt strangely, impossibly familiar, like looking into a mirror that had aged decades ahead of him.

"Please," she begged, falling to her knees in front of the stake, reaching up toward him with trembling hands. "Please, stop this. He's done nothing. Please, just let him come home."

Home. The word hit something deep inside Jade's chest, though he couldn't explain why.

The crowd didn't listen. Someone shoved the old woman roughly aside, and she cried out, collapsing to the ground, her pleading eyes still locked on Jade's face even as she fell.

"Come home," she whispered, barely audible over the roar of the crowd. "Please. Come home."

A torch touched the base of the stake.

And then, without warning, everything exploded, a blinding flash of white light, a deafening bang that swallowed the entire scene whole.

Jade's eyes shot open.

The hospital room came into focus slowly, blurry shapes sharpening into Mary's face, then Daniel's, both of them leaning over him immediately, relief flooding their expressions.

"Jade," Mary said, her voice breaking. "Oh, thank god. Jade, can you hear me?"

Jade tried to speak, his throat dry and scratchy. "Water," he managed.

Daniel poured a small cup quickly, helping him sip it carefully. "You're okay," he said, though his voice shook slightly. "You're okay, you're safe."

"What happened?" Jade asked, his mind still foggy, fragments of the vision lingering at the edges of his thoughts, the crowd, the stake, the old woman's face. "How long was I out?"

Mary and Daniel exchanged a glance. "Three days," Mary said quietly. "You've been asleep for three days, Jade. We didn't know if you were going to wake up."

Three days. Jade tried to process that, but his mind kept drifting back to the vision, more vivid and real than anything he'd experienced before. It hadn't felt like a dream. It had felt like watching something that had already happened, or was still waiting to happen, somewhere far away from this hospital room.

He realized, slowly, that whatever this ability was, it wasn't something small anymore. It wasn't a passing feeling or a strange hunch. It was real, and it had cost him something enormous just to have that one vision, three entire days of his life, swallowed whole.

Once the doctors had confirmed Jade was stable and likely to make a full recovery, Daniel and Mary finally sat down beside his bed, unable to hold back the questions any longer.

"Jade," Mary said gently, taking his hand. "How did you know about the bomb? Before it happened, I mean. You ran out of the house like you already knew exactly where it was."

Jade hesitated, unsure how to explain something he barely understood himself. "I saw it," he said finally. "Like a picture, but moving, like a memory of something that hadn't happened yet. I saw the car, and the device under the seat, and I just, I knew it was real. I don't know how to explain it better than that."

"Has this happened before?" Daniel asked carefully.

Jade thought about the swing set years ago, and other small moments since then, quiet flashes he'd mostly ignored or brushed off as instinct. "A few times," he admitted. "Small things, mostly. Nothing like this, though. This one felt different. Bigger."

"Do you know why it's happening?" Mary asked. "Why you can see these things?"

Jade shook his head slowly. "I don't know," he said honestly. "I just see them. I can't explain where it comes from."

Mary's composure finally broke. Tears spilled down her cheeks as she squeezed his hand tighter. "My baby is in trouble," she said quietly, almost to herself. "Something is happening to you, and I don't understand it, and I don't know how to help you."

"Mary," Daniel said softly, resting a hand on her shoulder.

"No, Daniel, look at him," Mary said, her voice cracking. "He's fourteen years old, and he's lying in a hospital bed because he ran into an exploding car to save your life. Something is happening to our son, and we don't even know what it is."

Jade squeezed his mother's hand back, feeling a wave of guilt settle over him at the sight of her crying. "I'm okay, Mom," he said quietly. "I'm right here."

Mary nodded, wiping her eyes, though the worry didn't fully leave her face. "We're going to figure this out," she said, more to herself than anyone else. "Whatever this is, we'll figure it out together."

The police investigation into the bombing moved quickly once Jade's account, along with security footage from the parking garage, gave them enough to work with. Within a week, they arrested a senior engineer at Daniel's company, a man who had been passed over for the same promotion Daniel received and who, it turned out, had been quietly plotting his revenge for weeks.

The man was taken into custody and later sentenced to prison for attempted murder. Daniel's company issued a quiet, careful statement about the incident, and life at his office slowly, awkwardly, returned to normal, though Daniel found himself checking his car a little more carefully every morning for a long while afterward.

While Jade recovered at home, Helen visited nearly every day after school, sitting quietly by his bedside, though something about her had grown noticeably subdued since the accident.

"You scared me," she told him one afternoon, staring down at her hands instead of looking at him directly. "You just ran out of nowhere, and then I get a call that you're in the hospital, unconscious, and nobody could tell me why."

"I'm sorry," Jade said. "I didn't have time to explain. I just knew I had to go."

"How did you know?" Helen asked quietly. "Everyone keeps saying you just knew, like that's a normal thing to say."

Jade hesitated, unsure how much to tell her, unsure if she'd even believe him if he did. "I don't fully understand it myself," he admitted. "I see things sometimes. Before they happen. I saw the bomb before it went off."

Helen studied him for a long moment, processing this. "That's, that's actually terrifying, Jade."

"Tell me about it," Jade said quietly.

Helen reached for his hand, holding it gently. "I just feel like something's different lately," she admitted. "Ever since the game, ever since all of this, you feel a little further away, even when you're right here."

"I'm still me," Jade said, though even he could hear the uncertainty in his own voice as he said it.

Helen didn't answer right away, simply holding his hand a little tighter, her eyes distant with worry she didn't quite know how to put into words.

Neither of them said anything else for a while, the quiet settling comfortably between them, though a small, unspoken fear had planted itself firmly in both their minds, a feeling that whatever was happening to Jade, it was only just beginning.