fade to black | jacinta/mackenzie [84th]

It is three hours past midnight, and Jacinta is in one of the private training rooms of the main floor, throwing knives at holographic targets.

Three of them rush her from all sides. She finishes off the first two with ease, throwing knives into the heart and then the eye. Jacinta runs out of time to hit the third, and has to side step when it lunges at her.

The hologram comes at her again, swinging a fist at her head. She ducks, and as she comes back up, she slashes its throat with her last knife. The figure crumbles into pixels and dissipates like mist, leaving Jacinta alone in the training room.

Or at least for a moment, she thinks she is.

Her heart is pounding in her chest from the adrenaline rush of combat. She has hardly broken a sweat at all over the past hour; the air in the training center is cold as a morgue at night, and she has enough endurance to avoid exhaustion.

When she turns around to pick the throwing knives off the floor, she sees Mackenzie standing in the doorway. She wonders how long it took him to realize she was down here. Jacinta frequents the training rooms at night, especially when she can't sleep.

Tonight, she was woken up from a nightmare. It was the same as usual — drowning in blood.

"I thought you were asleep," Jacinta says between deep breaths. "Did I wake you up when I left?"