Surge and Grit

PROLOGUE

SMASH TO SMITHEREENS

It was one of those dreadful nights for Maya. Nights where swimming to the surface prove difficult with each upward dive she takes. Her heart keeps hardening as cruel memories flooded her mind.

 She continues to pace her bedroom of 16 feet, searching desperately for a release. It felt like hell deep within her. With heightened steps, she moves to her window wall by the west, took the small white controller and lifts the grey motorized roller binds. The curtains drifted apart to a striking view of the night sky. The last time the agonizing memories threw her into the darkness, gazing at the pitch-dark sky lit with stars had given her the release she needed. She rushed to her King size bed, sleeps on her side and gaze at the life outside her window.

Thirty minutes after, she gave up on the task and sit on her bed. Who is she kidding? She thought. It never works twice.

With a newfound determination, she walks out of the ivory room, strides past the white long hallways and veered a corner. She climbed down the stairs to the main entrance and stepped out into the chilly night. It’s 1 am. Though her mind is filled and clogged with painful memories, warning signals still flashed like a siren in her mind.

‘Don’t go out at 1 am,’ her mind chant. But she ignores it. If facing danger will keep her from feeling broken, then danger she will adore.

Ten meters from her dad training yard, she heard a scream and stilled. A female’s cry of terror. She turned and tip-toed towards the sound. Now, the painful memories have gone and her mind is wholly occupied with warning alarms.

She gets to the garage, the sound source, and looks around. There’s no woman or anyone really that needs help. Maybe there was no scream, she thought. Maybe she’s losing her mind.

She heard screams again, but this time, the wailing didn’t stop. She rushed to the north walls of the garage. It makes little sense the cry is coming right from it.

She touches the wall and screamed when her hand moves through the wall. Before she could retreat her hands, the wall engulfs her and pulled her into a blue room.

Nazik, Maya’s dad, holds a sword to a woman’s throat in the center of the room. Two bodies in a pool of blood lay on the floor, one of them being Mazarine’s best friend, Sakya, and the other, a guy who she has never met.