"Zoey! Come on, girl, we gonna be late if you keep this up!" Hayden violently shakes my shoulders as she practically drags me out of my cocoon of safety.

"Reeeeeeeeeeed, staaaahhhhhp." I groan and pull one of the fluffs closer to me, "It's Saturday!"

"Yeah, the only day we can get away with exploring those ruins all day! Up!" With a final jerk, she's yanked me off the bed and onto the floor. "Hurry before your Mother gets up!"

You're such a pain.

I stick my tongue out at her as I get to my hands a knees, starting to climb myself to my feet.

"Before my mother-" I fix Red with a glare, "What time have you woken me up? I swear to Fury if you've woken me up before the helicarrier is even considered awake-"

"You love me anyway!" She calls as she tosses clothes at me, "Now get out of your pajamas, it's much too cold for you to go out in a tank top and fashionable booty shorts." She whistles as she leans over the bed.

"Stop checking me out and turn around." I roll my eyes while looking at what she tossed me.

Jeans, sweater, and long socks. I'm guessing that means boots.

She does as demanded as I change into the warmer clothing, sliding my shoes out from under my bed and picking the hiking, combat ones. In a few moments, I have my mess of brown hair in some sort of shamble passable as a ponytail and tap her shoulder.

"Come on. I'm guessing you got me up with an hour to spare since you expected me to resist the whole thing, meaning it's 03:00 and you've sweet talked Jared into letting us sneak out one of the pods he's in charge of." I huff as I toss on my trench coat from the hallway.

Probably promised him a date, or maybe she was cruel enough to actually lead him on. I swear, once word gets out she's lesbian I'm going to make sure I see the face of all the males hitting on her.

"You see, this is why I keep you around. You're brilliant, Zo!" Hayden gently punches my arm as she laughs, "We wouldn't get into half the crap we do if you weren't here!"

"You say that like it's a good thing." I grumble as we follow the corridor around the main control console. No need to get caught before we even get out of the ship.

A few seconds later, we're prepping the shuttle to take off. Rather, I'm prepping the shuttle for take off. Someone has to keep Jared distracted from his rational thoughts during this, and we all know I don't have that skill.

Green.

A dark green glitch seems to take over my vision, lines flickering like some sort of retro video game.

What the hell?

I stop moving and look around, the shuttle glitching and being replaced with... with people. Someone in a red suit is standing bedside me, but there's some sort of metal shine off to the right. A... a blue glowing shine?

"Wake up!"

What is this?

I stagger backwards as a headache onslaught ensues. Some high pitched noise noise rings while I fall into the side of the ship, putting as much pressure as I can on my ears.

"You have to hear me! This isn't you, wake up! Zoey get up!"

Isn't me?

Isn't us.

My lungs just stop working, a cold sweat covering me as I kneel down. I shudder violently with another wave of this high pitched noise.

"Stop it!" I call out, "Stop it!!" Tears burn, literally burn as they fall.

"Zoey, what's up, we gotta go!" As soon as I hear Red's voice the pain goes away. I stand and blink while I look around.

The glitches... am I going insane?

"You said you could fly!" She stands in front of me, putting her hands on my shoulders. "Don't have a panic attack on me now, Zo, we only have a few moments." I nod and straighten up with a deep breath.

"Fine. Fine, I'm fine." I take my seat and detach from the main carrier.

*tsssht*

"Number three, three, five, what's your purpose for leaving?" The robotic voice of Fury echoes over the intercom, "Because I know for a fact your parents aren't with you."

    "Ah, damn." Red leans back, looking back to the door. "How are we gonna-"

    "Sorry Director, training mission. I have permission and forgot to tell you. Mot- Agent Hays gave me a permission." I start the engine to move us forwards as he takes a moment to check.

Dad has been up on the night shift, so he'll be going to bed while Mum gets up.

I press the joysticks forward.

Just a little further...

*tsssht*

"Don't make me get Agent Hill to throw her slipper at you, Ms. Hays." A smile comes to my face as I hear the hallow threat.

    "Have her work on her aim before you deliver that order, Director."

       *tsssht*

     "Just keep yourself out of trouble." He chuckles, "You have roughly thirty minutes before your mother sends herself out."

    "Understood sir." I snicker as I move us further out to make sure the carrier will be safe from the engine. "I'll be sure to fly fast."

    "Damn girl, you sure you're not considering letting my rainbow turn you?" Red leans over my shoulder, her hand on the back of the chair.

     "You only want me for my connections, Red. Don't think you can fool me." I push her off the chair as I flip some more of the switches.

     "I'm a bit hurt," She puts her hand over her chest as she leans forwards. Her nose lightly brushed mine as she moved under my arm. "But you didn't answer my question." She mummers, scooting close.

I could smell the perfume she put on this morning, the mint smell of her toothpaste, and Jared's cologne.

    "Don't distract the driver." I turn my head away and peek around her to see where we're going. She takes the hint and moves off of me with a huff.

It takes about ten minutes, but we get there without issue. Landing the shuttle wasn't too hard and soon enough we're walking out to look around. The ruins are surrounded by fence topped with barb wire, a sign advises against trespassing hangs on the hinges of the gate, and there was a giant tarp over the ruins themselves to keep prying eyes away from it.

"My turn." Red grins as she pops her knuckles and walks to the pad on the gate. In a few moments, it beeps and swings open with a shuddering complaint. "After you, M'Lady." She bows dramatically as she waver her arms forward, "You did get us here after all."

"Gee. Thanks." I mutter sarcastically as I walk in first. "I'll be sure to avoid the cameras, yeah?" She grins as she nodded and followed close behind me after closing the door.

It was simple enough to avoid most of the cameras, a dodge here, a U-Turn there, but a few of them would've caught feet. And that was only for the ones I'd been able to find out about, there were most likely thousands more. I walk up to the tarp and study it for a second before managing to find a slit in the cloth.

Inside, the place was lit by a few lamps on the ground and a chain of bare bulb lights that wrapped around the top of it. Red came in after me and I closed the tarp.

"Did you see what the file said about the ruins?" I question her at I peer at one of them, an image of some sort of cat creature with wings tangled in battle with a crocodile looking thing. But the tail was too long, the wings much less natural looking on this figure.

"Nope! Not a clue!" She announces as she steps into the center of the pillars and puts her hands on her hips. "I just saw the word 'ruins' and the coordinates before I ran off to find you." I roll my eyes as I move on to the next pillar.

This one showed the cat creature and an arrow pointing to... a king, perhaps? Some sort of fanciful dressed humanoid, at least. An image below is of the crocodile creature from before falling into some sort of dark circle. Those were the only images I could really make out from the pillars, the rest look like an Egyptian resemblance with the hieroglyphics as mini pictures around the two main ones.

Zoey.

The voice made me jump away from the pillar, eyes wide as my heart froze.

You're hurting them.

Hurting them. Hurting who. What am I hurting.

"Zo? What are you looking at?" Red appears on my left and I turn to her, my heart beginning the pound again as I took a slow breath. "You've been staring at this for a while." She taps the image of the cat and frowns, "Here, look over here." She grabs my arm and drags me away from the pillar to the center of them.

In the exact middle was a circular stone that was smoothed over, way too smooth for the tools that should've been available to the people who made the ruins here. There was a single thing carved into it — A box in the dead center.

"Why am I looking at this?" I ask as I raise an eyebrow at Red, "It's unnaturally smooth, but weathering could've done that. Most ruins have something that could be explained as the center to gravitate around."

"I don't know." She shrugs as she motions to it, "It's more boring here than I thought it would be. I was hoping you could tell me that this was some sort of ritual for something we could summon or something." I look back at the piece.

"Sure. As though this were some sort of button to press and the ground would open up and swallow us." I press my hand against the square with a shake of my head, "There's nothing that-"

Pain.

It's immense, spiraling up my arm and bringing me down to me hand and knees as I tried to move my hand back. The air was hot and sticky as I gasped with tears running down my face and falling onto the stone.

"Zoey!!" My mother's voice called for me, but I could barely here her. "Get away from her! Don't touch my baby girl!!"

My Mom...

Is gone.