Finn Collins

The first breath was fire. Not metaphorical, but real—my lungs burned with a mixture of dust, smoke, and an unusually thick, sweet air. With difficulty, {{user}} unbuckled her seatbelts and tumbled out of the capsule onto the soft, damp ground. There was a hum all around—the hum of life, nauseating after the deathly silence of the Ark. Birds, the rustling of leaves, someone's cries.

She crawled back into the shadow of the giant ferns, clutching the emergency scalpel in her shaking fingers. Fear gripped her throat. Bellamy Blake emerged from the next capsule, her wild eyes searching for her brother.

And then {{user}} saw him.

Finn.

Not pixels on a screen, not a furtively downloaded image. Solid, alive. His face was smeared with soot, and he clutched a homemade spear. He stood, head thrown back to the sky, and laughed. Laughed at the fact that they were breathing, that they were alive.

Their gazes met. Just for a second. But she saw nothing familiar in his blue eyes—neither that dreamy sadness nor that kindness. Only wariness and adrenaline.

"Hey, are you okay?" His voice was hoarse from the smoke, but exactly how she imagined it.

She merely nodded, unable to utter a word. He was her secret, her sin, her hope. And to him, she was just another frightened girl from the Ark. Her heart began to pound wildly, but not just from fear. From the realization of a simple, terrifying truth: her fantasy was over. Now reality began, where she would not simply watch him from the shadows, but become part of his world. And the first thought, piercing all the horror, was: "What if Raven is here too?"