0 January Secret Agent #49

TITLE: The Portal
GENRE: Young Adult Fantasy

Once again, Quinn woke in the middle of the night and fought the urge to scream. She was hopelessly entangled in her bed sheets, drenched in sweat. She ripped from the confines of the linens and lunged to the window at the end of her bed. She was just in time to empty the contents of her stomach on the ground outside.

Even after all her time at the Facility, her life didn’t feel real. Her nightmares felt real but not the emptiness inside of her.

Quinn wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and glanced over her shoulder at the other girls tucked safely in their beds. Thankfully, they were still asleep.

We’re nothing, she thought sullenly, hanging her head.

Leaning against the window sill, Quinn let memories of her mother washed over her.

“Now Q,” her mother used to say. “It doesn’t matter where in this world you go. I’ll always be there for you. Just look at the moon and know I’m out there somewhere looking at the same one, thinking of you.”

Her fingers glided upwards to the worn crescent moon necklace hanging from her neck. The crystals of the moon’s surface had been polished to their fullest shine from her thumb travelling across them daily. The necklace had been a gift from her mother on her sixteenth birthday. It was the only thing she had left.

Her mother would never gaze at the moon anymore to think of her. No one would.