Lynse

And then she was pulling herself out of the portal and onto cold tile. She took what felt like her first breath in years and then all of the sounds hit her at once. She could hear the crackle of electricity, the whirring of machinery, and multiple sets of screams. One was louder than the rest and when everything had stopped and her senses were no longer being overwhelmed, Jazz could finally piece together what had been going on.

She could feel the wisps coming off of her faster. It felt like the hair on her arms had raised, if she had hair that was. 

This reminded her of her own accident. The buzz of electricity. The feeling of it before it hit her. And the feeling of her falling into the place of darkness without so much of a warning. 

She was just gone. 

But it sounded like this time no one went missing. There were two voices, asking if someone was okay. The voices sounded familiar, though she couldn’t quite place them. They sounded older.

She finally pried her eyes open and took a look around. 

Her brother’s friends. They were her brother’s friends and they were crowded around someone.

She felt her heart fall to her stomach and fury began emanating from her. She could feel the ground rumble beneath her. Debris rained from the ceiling and the two of them turned to look at her. Their eyes widened at the sight of her and they shook her brother where he lay unconscious. 

His eyes finally opened and they widened when he took her in. They were bright green instead of their usual blue and he had a lock of white hair fall in front of his face. 

 He tried scrambling away from her but couldn’t get very far with his friend's arms wrapped around him. 

She lifted up off the ground and floated towards them. They looked up at her in fear. She bent down and ran her fingers through his hair, gently caressing his face.

“This is all their fault.” She said darkly.

“Our fault?”

His friend with the glasses squeaked out the question. She turned to look at him.

“Our parents.”

Her brother’s mouth fell open and he studied her, but he didn’t look like he found what he was looking for. 

Then she heard footsteps coming down the stairs. 

“Son?! What happened?”

“Are you alright?”

Her head whipped up to look at the opening to the room. Her parents stepped down onto the floor and looked wide eyed at where she sat, her hand still on her brother’s cheek.

Her hand clenched and he yelped as her claws dug into his face. 

His friends looked past her at her parents. 

“We don’t know what happened to him! He was in the portal-“

“In the portal?!” Her mom exclaimed, cutting off the purple one. Her eyes were flickering between her and her brother. “What do you mean he was in the portal?”

She scoffed at her mother’s words. “As if you didn’t learn from your mistakes the last time.”

Her mother’s gaze flicked back to her and stayed there. “Who is this?”

His friends shook their heads. 

“We don’t know. They crawled out of the portal when it turned on.” The one with the glasses threw her a wary look. 

“Who do you think I am?” 

Her voice was filled with venom, furious that they couldn’t even guess at who she was. 

There was silence for a couple moments before her parents' eyes widened.

“Jazz.” Her father whispered. 

She heard a sharp inhale come from her brother and she cackled.

“You let me into that first test you did with the ghost portal. You did it in our home and I wandered into the lab but you didn’t notice me in time. The portal opened on top of me and trapped me in a void for years!”

“Jazzy, we-“

“And then you did it a second time!” She gestured to her brother behind her. “You still built your new portal in your basement! You couldn’t even be bothered to lock that damn door!”

“Sweetie-“

She ignored her parents and kept screaming at them. The walls were shaking around them. 

“I wasn’t enough! You had to kill your son too! Didn’t you care I was gone? Did I impact you that little?”

“These were just accidents!” Her father shouted at her with scared, sad eyes. “We didn’t mean to-“

“I don’t care!”

She grabbed her father with her hand around his neck. Shouts erupted around her. She shook him. 

“You killed me!” She screamed into her father’s face. “You killed me and you didn’t even care! You-“

As she was yelling, a black ring appeared around her waist. Frightened, she let go of her father and backed away from him. The ring split and traveled over both halves of her body and she was seeing something she hadn’t seen in years.

Herself. 

As the rings disappeared she dropped to the floor. Now that she was herself again, she could feel the full force of gravity weighing down on her body that hadn’t felt it in years. It felt almost suffocating and for a moment she wondered if this was what astronauts felt like when they came home. 

Laying on the floor, she could see her skin was pale and her fingers were bony. She wondered if she was truly dying this time. She felt so weak.

She looked up at her parents, trying to muster the energy to get up.

“What did you do to me?” 

Her voice was soft, she could hardly hear herself but she knew her parents did. Their eyes were wide and her mom’s eyes were filled with tears. 

“Jazz?”

She turned her eyes first, and then turned her head to look at her brother. Tears were in his own eyes and he no longer had snow white hair and glowing green eyes. He looked as she remembered him, just a little bit older. 

Relief washed over her. Her brother didn’t look dead. Maybe he was still okay. Maybe he was still some sort of alive. 

She turned her head back and rested it against the tile below her as she grew more and more tired. She didn’t think she’d be able to say the same thing about herself. With how pale and boney she was, even if she were still somehow alive right now, she probably wouldn’t be for much longer. 

She heard her name one last time as she faded into the dark. It was different than the dark she’d been trapped in for years, but it felt different this time. Like it wasn’t a trap.