The city was burning. It didn't take a genius to figure that out. The sky was dark with smoke and ash. It looked like one of those replications on how dinosaurs died you used to see on Discovery Channel. Just the thought of how everything used to be made Yin's throat swell up, tears threatening her eyes.
Just hours before, really, she'd been brought back to life by an unknown form of necromancy by the very man who'd killed her. She'd woken up his his arms without a shirt. She could only guess and shudder to think of what he saw... He'd warned her not to go away. But she had slipped off when the man had dozed. Even he was human. He needed sleep too, right? It was strange to think of your killer/necromancer as human... Scratch that. Still strange.
And it seemed he was fairly intelligent with it, too. He hadn't given her a lot of strength. She'd crawled maybe two feet away when she started wheezing, smoke and the already polluted Sigma air plus a limited amount of energy killing her lungs. She imagined a black layer over the inside of her lungs, bubbling and acidic and slimy. Ugh.
By the time she'd managed to get out here, an hour or so had passed. Yin looked over herself in disdain. Before she'd died, she might have been one of the scrawniest and least athletic humans on Sigma. But she'd been strong enough to run one mile in under thirty minutes without breaking a sweat. Or, much of one...
She'd managed to pull herself up against one of the remaining buildings, which there were few of. In fact, this used to be a skyscraper. Now it was about as tall as a two-story house or hotel, the top sheered right off. She could spot small remnants of it dotting the pavement she was sitting on. Yin hugged her knees close to her chest, panting softly from the exertion of getting her body upright after that heck-filled crawl. She'd been terrified an Evoknight would see her, or that the man would come and kill her again. More oft than not, she'd hide behind a trash bin when she heard a small alien whimpering or any other noise she couldn't recognize right away.
She looked pathetic, she reasoned. Even if some alien came up on her, the most they'd do is poke her. She looked dead enough already. Her long white hair was so dirty it was a shade of gray, brown and green streaks from muck and moisture making it look like a piece of moldy bread attached to her head. Her skin was also dirty. She looked like she had a bad tan. Her eyes were a dull sapphiric blue, blazing with the last shred of her dignity and determination. Wow... What she wouldn't give for a hot shower right now... Even her clothes were in tatters. Her shirt barely covered anything, and she had to shift it to cover her chest and what mattered constantly. Her jeans were now shorts with ragged holes and stains in them. She looked like a ragamuffin.
And still... She could feel Yang. She and her twin had always shared a special connection. They could sort of sense when each other was near or far. It was like Adailia used to be when she was alive. Always rambling about some life force that gave off a magnetic rebound to the ground and reflected back as colors... It was kind of like that.
Now, Yin could feel him. He was coming back! He had to be. He was coming closer. She could feel her leg aching dully from a reason she didn't know, but she didn't care. Her chest was tight with hidden fear that wasn't her own. Still didn't care.
She looked about her. They had to have a landing strip, right? This looked like a good place... Only a couple chunks of concrete and melted steel scattered about. But they were small. For a ship, they'd be no obstacle. Yin made up her mind, taking a deep breath and threading her fingers through the gritty air.
Instantly, things started to move. Small lights blinked to life, then winked out. They lit back up at some insistent prompting from the girl, flying up and gaining mass until they were circles of light over six yards wide. Huge fireflies. She didn't have the mental strength to make anything else. If they were coming back soon... Then they would see those fireflies and they'd know there were still people alive, that this was a possible landing strip.
She didn't think that the lights floating in the air would attract Evoknights.
