LUCY
"Amara, are you really ready?"
My voice is barely a whisper, thin against the heavy silence of the outskirts.
We are standing in a secluded hollow just beyond the final human town, a place where the world seems to have forgotten itself. There is no grass here, only a vast, indifferent expanse of fine, pale sand that shifts beneath our boots with every nervous twitch of my feet.
The sun is dipping low, casting long, skeletal shadows across the dunes, making the black SUV behind us look like a grounded beast of metal.
Our hands are locked tight, forming a small circle behind the vehicle. Jaxl's grip is to my left, warm and calloused; Amara is to my right, her skin humming with a low-level vibration that makes my own blood feel like it's fizzing.
