All was eerily silent.
   Jamie walked past dozens of closed doors, all along the hallway. Every single one of them was locked.
   The only sound was her own heavy breathing, and her soft footsteps on the smooth stone floor.
   She walked down the seemingly never-ending hall.
   Her eyes began to ache from all the gray. Not to mention her head, which ached as she tried to take in everything that had happened that day. Jamie felt so terrible for getting mad. For letting her negative emotions take hold.
   Because now she was in this impossible predicament. Her odds were slim, she was bound to get caught, and she was pretty sure her neighbours' lives were in her hands.
   The hallway stretched ahead, and seemed to strain longer and longer, just to annoy her.
   But by the time she did reach the end, she almost crashed right into the sturdy door there.
   Her back was aching from supporting Coco, so she set the sleeping girl on the ground, and tugged on the door. Obviously, it was locked. Jamie tugged on it, and felt around the handle, feeling no latches to pull. How did the door get locked?
   She thought for a moment. Was it some sort of magnetic lock? Like, touch a magnet in the right spot and the door sprung open? Or was it some sort of keycard scanner.
   Jamie sighed, and wrenched on the door handle once more, before giving up. She checked down the hall again, but no one was there. She looked down at her feet, then up at the ceiling, thinking.
   If this door wasn't going to open, she was going to have to find another way out.
   She was about to step away from the door, but then the unimaginable happened. A loud click resounded from the handle, and it began to turn.
   There were only a few seconds between the click of the lock and when the door began to open. But it felt like eternity. Of course, the door wasn't just going to unlock itself. There was someone on the other side. Someone opening the door.
   She had no idea who it was. Ms. Gisela? Gethen? The hooded man with the evil words? Another terrible person in this group of kidnappers?
   Or, could it be someone coming to save her?
   She doubted that. She was just a little girl who had gotten messed up in this. She was probably worthless to these people, or this other group she had created in her head—the 'Black Swan.'
   But she hung on to some hope. It was possible that all those questions about her true parentage had been because her real mother or father was someone important, making her an asset. And if not that, was it too much to hope that Mr. Forkle might be important and worth finding for this group of good guys.
   But there was only a split second for all these thoughts to zip through her head, and when the shadowy, cloaked figure swept through the doorway, she leapt upon it, slamming its head against the ground, and knocking it out.
   As a second thought, she tore back the hood. It was a male, definitely. Though she didn't recognize him, something was familiar about his face.
   He had black hair, and very pale skin. She couldn't determine his age, though he looked pretty young.
   She tried to grasp at what it was, that she recognized, but couldn't quite reach it. Taking one last, long stare at his face, she let him rest on the ground, not even bothering to hide his unconscious body. She hadn't closed the door to the room holding she and her neighbours.
   She wasn't making any attempt to cover her tracks.
   It was harder to get Coco into her arms this time. She had to kneel, while trying to get the other  girl into her arms. She accidentally bonked Coco's head on the wall a couple times, and winced every time it happened. But eventually managed to pick her up
   With her neighbour back in her arms, she ducked through the door, into a circular room. She had been busy knocking the guy out, and picking up her friend, that she hadn't even realized where she was planning to go.
   The room was bare, except for a long curving bench in the back. And the hole directly in the middle of the room, that shone a gentle ray of sunshine downwards.
   She held up her hand, and the beam of light shone delicately across her fingers.
   It explained why there were no doors. The guy who she had knocked out was probably just coming back to the base from who knew where. And he had most likely light leaped.
   But that wasn't good news for her. Because she didn't have a crystal. And there were no doors out.
And if someone came down the hall right now, they would see the unconscious body, and the metal door open. She would be trapped.
   She stared up the hole. It was pretty tight. But maybe she could try to climb...
   Immediately, Jamie shook the thought from her head. That would mean leaving Coco behind, because she definitely wouldn't be able to get her up the tunnel.
   But what else was she supposed to do?
   Then she realized, if he had leaped, he must have used one of those crystals. Which meant that he probably had one on him. She laid Coco on the bench, and raced out of the room. The guy was still there, out cold. She didn't know how long she would have before he awoke, so she worked quickly.

   Jamie pulled open his cloak, and felt for pockets inside. In one, she found a strange metal cube, covered in little wires and hooks. She wondered if it might be a tracking device. But it also could be some sort of memory chip that held plans for the evil people's weapon of mass destruction or something...

   Deciding that it might be useful, she pocketed it.

   In another pocket, she found a pendant. It was a circular ring, on a long chain. In the middle of the ring, was a tiny silvery-white crystal.

   That must be it. Clutching the crystal in her hand, she left the unconscious person, and hurried back into the circular room, where the unconscious Coco was still laying.

   Jamie hooked her neighbour's arm over her shoulder, and hauled her to the middle of the room. She held the crystal up, and the faint sunlight shone through it, sending multiple beams of light on the ground around her feet. She was ready to step into it, but hesitated for a moment. She recalled the things that Ms. Gisela had said. Could it be true? She hadn't really been listening, but she recalled Ms. Gisela talking about serious health problems, and death from failed leaps.
Something about concentration, and focusing on holding your particles together.
Almost like a command programmed into her, she reached back into her mind, and tugged at the warm energy resting there.
She pulled it, imagining it stretching around her and Coco, holding them together.
She jolted forward, and disappeared into the light.
A never ending instant later, she felt cold hardness smash against her. She didn't understand. When she tried to stand, there was just... nothing. As if someone had snipped the nerves that let her move her legs or arms.
She couldn't see. Just a hazy orange-white-grey glow above her. The smell of salt and the sound of waves seemed far off and irrelevant.
Her memory was hazy too. Filled with glowing too-bright spots of light.
Through it, she remembered something. Someone. A person she had dragged into this mess. An innocent human, who despite their unkind nature, did not deserve death.
Energy surged through her, and she found herself sitting up. Hanging her head over that of the unconscious body beside her.
"Coco," she whispered, in a ragged voice, that didn't sound like her own. There was something wrong with her. She wasn't sure what, but there was pain all over her, and it was spreading, like a disease, throughout her body.
Everything had happened so fast. That was an understatement—everything was happening too fast for her comprehension. The past began to fill in. All that had happened.
It had been what, two hours since she had thrown the tantrum at her parents? Less?
   Since then, she had been kidnapped by her psycho neighbour, almost lulled into a magical trance, interrogated, discovered an evil secret society, and a good one, and finally, used a crystal with light shining through it to transport herself to who knows where.
   Probably the most eventful two hours of her life.
   And now, what?
   She had her neighbour with her, who didn't know anything, and was somehow kidnapped by mistake.
   What was she going to do?
She closed her eyes, and collapsed onto the other girl, hugging her for comfort, and crying.
She didn't want to be the brave little girl in all the storybooks. She didn't want an adventure. She didn't want people to get hurt. And yet, she had already cause three people to get hurt, and judging by this whole "evil secret society" thing, a lot more than that.
Clutching her bully of a neighbour, and shivering from the cold wind and icy rain that had began to fall, she felt herself retreating. Scared, hopeless, and stuck in a situation with lives at stake, her mind was closing down.
Her eyes flew open, and the haze that had begun to form vanished, as golden light filled her brain. Power.
It felt as if she had just grown a new limb, and she tested it out. Reaching to the closest living think nearby. Coco. With this new power, she shoved inside the girl's brain. It was pitch black.
Coco? She thought, the words somehow echoing around the empty blackness. Coco!
Nothing. Still getting accustomed to this new power, she pulled her consciousness out of Coco's mind, and found herself back in her shivering body. She pushed herself up so she leaned over her neighbour's face. Once more, Jamie sent words into Coco's silent mind. Begging and pleading for her to wake yup.
   She sat back on her heels, and looked up at the moon, not sure if it was rain or tears running down her cheeks.
Coco.
   Coco!
   COCO!
   There was a shift right after her last transmission, and finally—finally—she got a response. Through the shadows and mist of Coco's mind came a soft Jamie.

1772 Words!

I have not updated much. I will be away from internet more in the next little while, so hopefully that will mean I will spend more time writing than using social media.