PROLOGUE

THE DREAM

JOHN

The collapsing skyscraper sends debris and dust into the air. The sound of explosions nearby doesn't give it the chance to finish before being overtaken. In an instant hundreds of lives inside of the skyscraper die.

The dust is absolutely killer on my lungs. It hurts to look up to the sky—it's so much darker because of all the debris. I'm standing in a crowd looking horrified at the collapse. Everyone around me is mirroring my own emotions...or I might be mirroring theirs. I'm not quite sure yet. We're all stuck on a sort of island—not a natural one, mind you. Fissures have broken the ground into pieces from earthquakes that now tear through the earth. I cannot keep on my feet. The cataclysms don't seem to end. I need to find some cover so my thoughts can catch up with me. I turn on my heels and another building is beginning to fall on its foundation. It feels like I'm never going to escape it. The shadow grows larger and I feel the other bodies around pushing and shoving to get out to safety. We move as a single organism towards the edge.

Some of the members of the crowd fall into the crevices created by the fissures. Some don't move at all—accepting that their time has come. They would rather die with their say so rather than have their life be stolen from them. A loud cracking sound comes from the building as an explosion sends each of us flying back—the shock-waves are immense. I'm thrown over the edge of the crevice. The world spins as I come to a hard rolling stop on the other side of the chasm.

I think my arm is broken and I know several of my ribs aren't where they're supposed to be. I pick my head up anyway, the adrenaline moving me more than my own mind. I look up to see the nameplate on a building in front of me that's miraculously still standing.

"One Bush Plaza."

Dust enters my lungs and I feel the hoarse cough rising to my chest. It stings each part of my body it passes through and ends with blood being hacked up. Behind me is the small jut of land that had been claimed by the other building. I didn't have to see the bodies to know that not everyone made it out as I did.

They were dead.

To my right, there's a small circle of land that is vibrant. Grass grew perfectly on the circle like it was uprooted from some sort of forest...but, in reality, it came from the city's park. Somehow it wasn't where the park was...or maybe the rest of the park sank in the gigantic chasm that the earthquakes had wrought. There was too much going on for me to keep track of the whole collapse. All my mind thought when I saw it was "safety". Everything around the rubble, yet inside that perfect circle lies full life. Another cracking sound erupts from behind me and then a fissure opens up right in front of my face. I'm up and running before the pain processes and I only stop to the scream.

Two people are lying on the ground: a young early-twenties something man with dirty blond hair and ripped clothing with a finely dressed late-teenaged something girl curling over him, holding him in her arms. Her reddish hair was covered in dirt and dust. She's sitting in such a way that shields her face, but I can hear that she's crying. When I look at the guy again, I can tell why. He is bleeding from a wound in his abdomen, his eyes have glossed over.

"What are you doing just standing there?! Go get help!" The girl screams. She doesn't turn to face me.

I shake my head, "This place is going under. You cannot stay here."

"No! I'm not leaving him!"

"There isn't anything more we can do for him," I say.

"It's not fair! He can't...he wasn't supposed to..."

"He'd want you to live."

She lets out a small sound and cradles his hand between both of hers. Before resting it on his chest. He has a very slender face and that both of his eyes are different colored; blue and hazel in both of them.

"O-Okay," she tries to speak up. "I...okay."

I nod and we both stand up. She turns her head towards me and then it clicks. She goes to my school. I feel kind of dumb now for not recognizing her. Her name's Iris McCallum.—her name is Iris. I hadn't really spoken to her much, if at all. When in Rome I guess. She has these really docile brown eyes, but I've never seen them really this sad before, angrier than anything. One thing that catches my notice is that I see something in her eyes, something behind them as if her eyes were windows to an outside world. It looks like some bright light, almost like an explosion.

"Hey, come on! Are you coming or what?" She asks me, standing up.

"Yeah, I'm coming," I say, coming out of my thoughts. "There's a large gap we'll have to jump, but I think we can make it!" I start running in the direction of the fissure.

She nods—following my lead. My legs start to buckle, but there's no stopping now. We're on a one-way road to slightly less hell from pure hell. I catch a stronger hint of blood as we pass an overturned car in the street. The air tastes like sulfur. The combination of the two is too much. Don't look inside. Don't look inside. I'm shaken out of my trance-like state—Iris is staring me down. "Come on!"

My eyes cross the inside of the car and are pulled toward it. Rubbernecking, they call it. Although this was more like...well, a paranoia of confirmation. I'll never be able to fully tell if there's anybody inside unless I check. Inside I see the splattered remains of a young woman in the driver's seat. Her head dangles almost to the hood of the roof of the car—her torso is impaled by various shards of glass, from the broken windshield and windows. In the backseat, I can only see a small hand out from underneath the compiled metal of the car.

My stomach overturns everything inside onto the side of the car—some of the chunks land on the body.

"Jesus Christ what's in there?" Iris asks.

I shake my head and pull myself off, standing up and wiping my mouth with my sleeve. My stomach wretches as the smell hit me again and I feel dizzy. "Move on. We have to move on."

The circle is just beyond the next set of cars, but the fissures have since grown since I last looked. We'd be lucky to cross the chasm even with a running start. Iris looks to the chasm and then back to me. "You aren't seriously suggesting that we jump that? I didn't know it was this large."

I pace a few steps back, quiet. I take a quick breath and kick my heels into the earth. Every second I hesitate is another second I have in not making it. I can feel the wind pick up on the sides of my face and I open my eyes right before the crevice and take off. Time seems to slow down as my feet leave the earth. I take another deep breath and I close my eyes again. I feel myself begin to fall, but then there's a tight squeeze on my right arm—the one not throbbing, thankfully, and I stop. I look up to see a blonde girl bending over the side of the edge, struggling to keep me from falling to my death. Her eyes are strikingly blue.

I also notice that the sections of her that had left the safety of the circle are messy and scuffed up, there are some cuts and blood sprayed alongside it. She's struggling to keep a solid grip. To my side I hear a grunt and see that Iris jumped behind me, she slams her gut into the side of the edge, but she catches with her elbows. She gets a grip and pulls herself up. I can feel the blonde girl's grip on me beginning to loosen and I look up back at her, I'm sure she sees something similar to a dog that knows it's about to be put down. She's scared to even more because of it. She pulls hard one last time.

I try to reach my left hand up, it refuses to move even a little. I can't speak—all of the pain from before rushes into my body like a terrible curse. I can feel an extra pair of arms on mine, Iris had come over to help. I rise up until I'm all the way to my hips and then am dragged over the top. I sit for a second to catch my breath. I'm actually feeling a lot better once I'm inside. I feel my arm once again and can move it around freely.

"You're safe inside here," the blonde girl says.

The noise from outside has stopped completely. The earth no longer shakes and above this little circle of land, the sky is a bright blue in contrast to the bleak orange-red on the outside.

It feels like I'm in a new safe haven. The worst seems to be over. The blonde girl sits down and looks towards me. She's shorter than I am where Iris matched me. She looks to be around the same age as both of us—I'm sixteen.

"Huh, that was close, right John?" Her voice is tender and sweet.

"You can say that again." Iris steps in, breathing heavy. "God damn...That damn fissure almost swallowed us both up." She falls to her knees. "He didn't make it..." she broke.

I had almost forgotten about the guy she was crying over. Who was he? I didn't recognize him from school—he seemed a little old to be in school anyway. And...do these two know each other? And-cubed for the matter, how does the blonde know me?

I look at her and I see a bright light behind her eyes that rips into my mind. A harsh beast-like voice claws its way into my mind.

"Down shall fall the cursed arch,

three days past the ides of march.

Once, the world was born of fire,

shall it perish, a doom's desire."

I bring my hands to my head and all at once I feel the pain from before seep into my body. I try hard to focus on what's in front of me—and that's when I see Iris and the blonde girl cowering together...cowering because of me. They're scared...of me. They're backing away to the edge of the circle.

"W-What's going on?" I ask, my head pounding with each syllable. "D-Don't fall off—"

"Sarah, you know you can't let your feelings stop you," Iris says, her voice is strained.

"Stop right there!" Sarah screams out. She's crying and in her hands she's carrying a revolver. It's pointed right at me.

"W-Wait! What are you doing?" I ask, instinctively putting my hands up in defense. The reaction sends a force out, a force I cannot describe. It looks like tiny shockwaves in the air, they force her back, tumbling towards the edge of the circle. Outside I can see that all of the earth has rotted away except for the circle we inhabit.

"Sarah!" Iris calls out and then looks back to me.

"I'm sorry, but I need to save John," and she pulls the trigger. A loud bang sounds off and my vision in my right eye goes blank. The bullet tears through my entire socket and all that I see in the darkness as my life fades away is the same word repeated over and over again.

She pulls the trigger and a loud bang resounds. My vision goes dark and all sound drowns out. I see one word over and over, repeating across my vision.

Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah