The world was black again, but she was still aware of herself. {So, I guess it means I'm alive?}
She tried to open her eyes, seeing flickering neon lights and hearing bits of conversations in urgent-sounding voices, something like name and some medical terms, and then she really lost consciousness, thinking {That happens way too much lately...}
The lead surgeon stormed into the operation room. "Some of her ribs are broken and piercing her lungs and heart, she's lost a lot of blood, broke her spine and limbs and has some concussions. Her organs are starting to shut down, there is barely any chance of her surviving", the assistant surgeon reported the patient's state.
Just as she finished speaking, an alarming beep started to come out of the machines.
"She's going into cardiac arrest!", shouted one of the surgeons.
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At the same time, on the top of a snowy mountain, a black-clothed, hooded man was gently floating in the air, looking as if he was listening to the wind. He has been in that same position for a very long time. The serenity of the scene was a huge contrast to the tense operation room at the same time, far away from there.
With no prior warning, the man moved, descending until he stood on the ground. He opened his long coat, which reached half-way down after his knees, like a long, black cloak, and took out of his inner breast pocket a blue, softly glowing crystal orb.
"The Representative of this planet has been chosen- it's time."
Those words were said stoically, emotionlessly, but for the man even the fact that he was saying these words showed unprecedented, rare excitement. A ambiguously complicated feeling rose from the statement.
He vanished, without leaving even as little a trace as a footprint on the snow.
************************************************************
Meanwhile, the surgeons were still trying to save Ashly, desperately charging the electrical pads again and again.
Thud, thud, thud.
The three quick, muffled sounds were at first ignored by the rest of the doctors, until they called out to their colleagues and got no response, turning around only to discover them on the ground.
The lead surgeon rushed forward. "William!" He held one of the men and started shaking him. He started saying "Clara! we need to get hel-" He stopped in the middle of the sentence, hearing the foreboding thuds again, and turned around, the sight being one he would never forget.
All the surgeons and nurses were on the floor, and above them towered the figure of a man fully clad in black. Before he could utter any stunned questions or accusations, the figure vanished, and with a slight sting on the back of his neck, he found himself reunited with the floor.
The hooded man continued walking towards the bed, his steps silent, as if he wasn't touching the floor at all.
He stopped beside it, scrutinizing the motionless figure with one brief glance and placing his hand on her forehead, an eerie glow forming in the point of the skins touching.
A mysterious force seemed to envelope the room and it seemed as though the world had stopped in that moment- the air stood still, the fly hovering near the ceiling got stuck in the middle of flapping its wings, the sound of the machine beeps ceased and even the blood trickling from the girl's wounds stopped. Her eyelids fluttered, and she opened her eyes.
After the initial blurriness was gone she was stunned, finding the situation weird enough to wonder if she was dreaming a lucid dream.
Alas, the man didn't give her time to take it in.
He started talking, his deep voice speaking apathetically, with monotony that could make one believe he was reciting lines from a script.
"I'm giving you a choice. As you are right now you will die, nothing these doctors do can save you." His raspy voice stayed indifferent all along, but the weight the words carried got through to her.
"I can save you, but the life you will have won't be as it was until now. You will have to live with more pain that you ever thought you'd know and as times goes by, you will outlive your family and friends, time and again standing alone, isolated from the rest of society. You'd have responsibilities unlike others, and powers that will give you strength but also great trouble. You can't take back your decision. What is your answer?"
She suppressed her instinctual desire to answer positively, thinking about what her response really meant. She had no doubt that the man was not joking, and she also didn't know to what extent those difficulties will be. Was she willing to live no matter how painful and hard it gets? Without her family? Is she really strong enough?
She knew how much she hates pain. She wasn't a hero who wouldn't sell out his friends even when being brutally tortured. She was just a regular girl.
But she wanted to live. Because she managed to live until then. Because she hadn't lived more than those 15 years. Because every fiber within her body, every beat of her heart, every breath and every thought, her whole existence screamed desperately, unwilling to leave.
Her whole being screamed "I want to live!!"
Worst comes to worst, she'll just end up dying again, or living every day just to regret her choice, right? It's not like she'll have the chance to regret anything if she's dead.
She doesn't want avoidable stupid regrets like that in her life, she believes in living with her whole heart, not living hesitantly without getting to actually do or experience anything.
She clenched her fists, as hard as she could in her condition, and looked up determinedly, mustering all her strength to resolutely say: "Yes!".
The man paused for a second, looking at her with an enigmatic look she didn't see. "Alright", he said. At that moment, time continued flowing at the same pace.
The deafening beeping of machines returned, the air flowed regularly, the fly continued beating its wings and Ashly lost consciousness again, her wounds continuing to bleed. The beeping of the EKG returned to a single piercing note, showing that her heart wasn't beating.
She was, again, completely dead.
Ignoring all of that, he placed the blue sphere on her chest and it began glowing, slowly sinking into her chest, eventually reaching her still heart, getting embedded in it and sending blue pulses through her veins.
With her body starting glow and heal, he knew he had to leave with her before the next minute when the transformation will begin.
He took her in his arms coldly and vanished once again, reappearing in a small, dark room, somewhere very far away from they were before.
************************************************************
Moments later a nurse came in, dropping the box of supplies in her hands out of shock, and hurriedly checked the pulse of the closest doctor, relieved to see they all seemed only unconscious.
She then walked out of the room, calling for help and informing the other doctors and nurses of the worrying situation.
The nurse got back in, shook one of the doctors, and when he groggily opened his eyes she asked, "Are you alright? What happened to the patient?".
The doctor, who was still confused, tried to explain what he remembered. "There was a man in black, and he knocked us out... I don't know what happened to the patient, but she went into cardiac arrest right before that. She probably would've died anyhow..."
************************************************************
At that day, articles popped hectically on the internet.
At first, articles about the bombing started showing up in the afternoon, but twenty minutes later the people surfing the internet were shocked with the story of the incident's only survivor, a teenage girl who jumped off the burning building.
Just an hour later, even crazier articles started showing up, crazy enough even for netizens in other countries to pay attention to them, with those articles starting to spread like a wildfire in the internet.
In the evening news, the female newscaster started to introduce the main article:
"The only survivor of today's bombing in Klaesmon's city hall, the girl who jumped from a burning building, went missing from the surgery room! The lead surgeon and the doctors were found unconscious. According to one of the surgeons, they were knocked out by a black-clothed man. The doctors said that she had no chance of survival even with the surgery' and she went into a cardiac arrest even before she disappeared. We'll join Will, who's asked the police about the progress in the investigation so far..."
At that night, Ashly's family and friends were all looking for the answer to a question.
"Ashly, where are you?!"
© 2021 Scarlet Embers