The first thing Jinx becomes aware of is the dull ache all over her body. It’s reminiscent of another explosion years ago, the explosion that took away her family and threw her into a pit of despair.
She doesn’t remember if she fell or if one of her bombs finally worked as it was supposed to, but she remembers a flash of light, hot air and a scream. If it was her own or someone else’s she can’t tell. She hears someone’s raspy voice and tenses. Who are these people? Where is she? What’s going on?
“Her injuries are severe.”
There’s an answer somewhere out there but Jinx’s body twitches as someone tightens straps around her wrists, her legs, her head. She wants to yell, to ask them to let her go, but she can’t open her eyes, she can’t force her body to respond.
“I believe I can save her, but the process will be demanding.” The man hovering above her smells like the sewers deep in the bowels of the lanes. There’s a hint of something pungent and humid and Jinx doesn’t know if this is how hospitals are supposed to smell like or if tying an unconscious girl to a bed is someone’s sick idea of fun.
“Sometimes death is a mercy.”
Jinx can agree with the man. Not for her, though. Her body will get up again and she will make whoever tied her up vomit bullets.
“She can take it.”
That’s a voice she recognizes, gruff and deep and comforting. It awakens something inside her chest. Silco. He’s here, he’s going to take care of her, he’s going to make the hurt go away as he has done multiple times in the past. The sound of his voice is enough to drag her up, up, up towards the greenish light in the room. She can’t open her eyes but she knows Silco is there. He will take care of her, he will.
Jinx’s body spasms once more and a violent cough tears through her body, shaking the straps holding her body down.
“Jinx?”
He’s there, his voice close to her face as she tries to speak up. Her throat is raw and she can taste blood on her tongue, as it sits heavy inside her mouth when she tries to speak up. when she tries to speak up. when she—
I’m here, I’m alive, help me out.
Truth be told, Jinx is barely there, hardly conscious, the words never make it out of her throat, but she groans as pain shoots through her back and arms and legs. Her entire body aches, enough to make her wish she was unaware of her surroundings again.
“Jinx!”
Jinx finds the wait unnerving. She wants to yell at Silco to let help her out of the restraints but all she manages is a grunt.
“She won't die, Doctor.” His bony hand, the same hand she’s held several times before she falls asleep caresses her forehead, moving her hair out of the way softly. Silco’s voice is an anchor to the real world and Jinx won’t let go. “She can't.”
She feels his chapped lips kiss her temple before retreating. There’s more mumbling and the sounds of a light scuffle, over too quickly. She can no longer feel Silco’s hand on her clammy skin, nor hear his voice whisper sweet nothings against her hair. Jinx’s heart tightens protectively. They will not take Silco from her too.
“I, too, once had a daughter,” the unknown man says. There’s no emotion in his voice, it’s as empty as the darkest lanes in the Undercity when there’s no shimmer to go around.
The straps around her wrists tighten painfully. The strange man gets closer, enough for Jinx’s nose to wrinkle from his nasty breath. “He should’ve let you die.”
There is a sting in her arm and then there’s fire.
It starts in the inside of her wrist and climbs up her arm fast, lighting up her nerve endings. She thrashes against the straps holding her down, but they barely give to her frantic writhing.
Jinx hears her own laugh but it’s not her. It’s a younger version of herself that hasn’t seen just how ugly the world is out there. For a moment, she sees the world from that height again and she feels scared. She holds Vi’s hand and then Vi lets it go as she leaves for one of her excursions to Piltover. When she comes back, she’s got a bruise forming in her face but she tells Powder not to worry. She smuggles her candy and shiny trinkets she might like.
Then Vi’s screaming at her that she’s a jinx, loud and clear, over and over again. She doesn’t stop when Powder cries and yells for help. She’s alone in a dark alley and there’s no light and the walls are closing in and she’s in pain, pain, pain.
The needle goes into her arm once more. This time she can feel the liquid moving inside her body as slow as the waves in Still Water’s coast. It creeps up her arms inch by inch, a wildfire consuming her veins.
“You know, Powder, you're stronger than you think.”
Vi’s voice is distorted by the water rushing over her head. Is that water? Is it inside her? Where’s this coming from?
Powder looks at Vi’s silhouette by the door, at her strong arms and wide shoulders.
She came back for me. Vi came back for me. Vi, Violet.
“Vi?”
She’s ten years old again, Milo is laughing at one of her failed bombs and his laugh echoes through her skull. She’s four years old and her mother is leaning down to help her up so she can see far up ahead, as far as her eyes can; the harbor seemed immense for a four-year-old. She’s twelve years old and she’s falling from a building, the explosion shaking her bones, fire licking her legs. She’s falling, falling, falling.
Next time, the fire starts at the back of her neck. A sharp poke, followed by heat that wraps around her skull viciously.
“I'm so sorry, Powder.”
Vi’s hand is holding her own hand and she needs her. She’s so small, she’s tiny, if no one holds her she will disappear.
The fire licks her insides but it’s not enough to stop the cry that bubbles out of her throat.
“Vi!”
But her sister is no longer at the door. She sees Claggor put on his goggles and smile, but blue goo drips out of his mouth, dripping down his chin, his neck, his chest. The sludge pools around his feet and burns the floor like acid. She opens her mouth to warn him, but there’s gunk inside her mouth, thick and heavy down her throat. She can’t swallow and she can’t spit it out. Claggor falls down a hole that expands to consume the entire room.
Vi is at the door holding her hand out to Powder. She wants to grab it, but she’s no longer Powder, no longer tiny. She doesn’t fit inside the small body, she can’t help the little girl grab her sister’s hand. Vi frowns and now there’s a gun in her hand. She’s pointing the gun at Powder’s head and Jinx can’t look, she can’t look, she can’t look but she can’t take her eyes away.
The gun goes off in a puff of blue smoke. Powder is nowhere near the gun, Powder is nowhere near the room. Powder is falling down the side of a building, fire licking at her legs, blue smoke surrounds her and she falls and falls and falls.
“Your sister is Jinx.”
The enforcer’s voice forces her to open her eyes. She’s looking down at Jinx with a syringe in her hands. Vi stands next to her with an impassive look on her face.
“No!”
She doesn’t know if she speaks or if she thinks the words, but she’s thrashing around the bed, wiggling to get free. The enforcer comes closer and Jinx squeezes her eyes shut. She feels someone’s hot breath against her cheek, the foul smell of the sewers, a man’s voice mumbles something.
“Jinx.”
Vi screams in her face, Vi slaps her, Vi throws her to the ground. The fire coursing through her body makes her nauseous. She’s going to throw up.
“Jinx.”
When Vi says Jinx is a spit on her face, another slap, another kick, another slap, another scream.
“Jinx.”
Silco’s voice makes her open her eyes again, looking for him, but he’s nowhere to be seen. The next hit is directly at the base of her throat, the needle sinks and sinks and sinks and it goes inside Jinx as if she was made of butter. The needles multiply and she hears her name being called once again but it’s distorted and she can’t make out who’s saying it.
“No, no, no!” she sobs and begs and screams but she doesn’t know where reality begins and where it ends.
There’s blue fire and purple lights behind her eyes. She smells of smoke and for a moment, she’s convinced her skin is burning. The fire licks her shins, her thighs, her stomach and she’s falling when the building explodes underneath her.
Milo’s voice taunts her from the darkness. “She’s a jinx!”
Fire, fire, fire.
“You’re right, she’s not like us.”
The sound of her backpack falling to the water, feet hitting the pier, the sound after shaking mouser, a prayer on her lips that it works this time around.
“You have to let Powder die so Jinx can be born.”
Her head goes under and she makes a grab for Silco’s hand but she can’t get to it. She’s sinking in the river and the river is made of blood and shimmer and she can’t swim, she never learned how to swim, she needs someone to take her hand.
“I understand this must be painful.”
The man’s voice is closer than before. She wants to scream but her throat is full of insects. There are fireflies pouring out of her throat. Jinx feels a million tiny legs claw up her throat, leaving small, open incisions from which blue ichor flows.
The strap around her forehead loosens and she turns her head to the side. She gags and her stomach retches violently but she doesn’t remember the last time she ate something. There’s nothing to throw up but bitter bile that never makes it out of her mouth.
Strong fingers open her mouth and a cloth is shoved inside. The coarse texture of the fabric against her tongue reminds her of the plushie she used to bite before falling asleep.
Jinx dares to open her eyes and sees the enforcer with her plushie. She hugs it tight to her body, then bites its head off in a shower of fluff. It explodes in blue and purple hues.
No!
A whimper escapes her as the grief for her toy settles in. There’s nothing else they can take away from her now. The fireflies that came out of her throat are flying around the room in a frenzy. Jinx hears their buzzing get louder.
“I'm afraid it will only get worse.”
A swarm of fireflies descends over her body, devouring the flesh of her bones until there’s nothing left but purple blood in their wake. She screams in agony, but there’s no point, she’s nothing but the shade of the girl she used to be.
She feels a new needle in the back of her neck and everything fades to black.
When Jinx wakes up, her limbs are no longer tied to the bed and the warm, stuffy air in the room reminds her of Vander’s bar. She opens her eyes, careful not to move too quickly. There’s a soft green hue to the room that reminds her of trees. She hasn’t seen a tree since the last time she was in Piltover.
The tiniest movement in the corner of her eye catches her attention. A man whose face is half-covered by a red handkerchief is watching her, turning a purple-tinted syringe around his hands.
Jinx has seen Sevika pump herself full of shimmer many times, enough times to know instinctively that what’s coursing through her veins has to be shimmer. It pulses underneath her skin like a second heartbeat. Every time she blinks, Jinx sees a glimmer of the same purple hue in the man’s hands.
She stares at Silco’s still body in a chair and her heart skips a beat.
“What did you do to him?”
“Spared him the misery of seeing you writhe in pain for hours,” the man’s bored drawl makes her wary. She slowly sits up on the bed, bringing her knees to her chest.
“Why did you do it?”
“He wanted to save you.”
A fuzzy feeling fills her chest. Vi didn’t come for her, but Silco stayed by her side while she died and came back to life. She will never leave him, she knows that now. The enforcer’s face flashes in her mind and bright, hot anger rises inside her. She took her sister and turned her against Jinx.
If she needs to kill the enforcer to get Vi back, then so be it.
Jinx stands up and walks to Silco, still unconscious on his chair. The unknown man’s eyes follow her every move, but she doesn’t let it bother her. She traces her index finger on top of the scar running down his face. Silco wants the nation of Zaun to exist, Jinx will give it to him.
But first, she’s got a sister to catch with a flytrap made of enforcer scum.
She turns around without another glance at the strange man, decidedly making her way out of the Undercity. The next time she’s here, this will be her father’s kingdom and the lanes will be no more.
The nation of Zaun will rise.