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Chapter Text

Only God should have the power to be in all places at all times.

Those are the words Beatrice’s adoptive mother and head of the ancient society known as the Paladins, created in mediaeval times to eradicate Jumpers, Suzanne Cox, has told her her whole life.

But what are Jumpers?

To put it in her adoptive mother’s words. They’re abominations. Sinful creatures who can teleport to any place there mind can remember. They warp the space around them to create wormholes from one location to another called 'jumpscars'. They can teleport people, cars, and buildings, though the latter of those normally results in a Jumper's death. Something Beatrice has become adept at making Jumpers be over her life.

She knows how to trap them. She knows how to follow them through the scars they leave behind, like many of her fellow Paladins do. She knows how to kill them and well.

Electricity is there weakness. When in contact with it, they can't teleport, as it interferes with their nervous system and pulls them back whenever they try to jump. It also causes great pain and injures them more every time they try to teleport. The Paladins, such as Beatrice, have used this knowledge to fashion baton weapons to deliver shocks on contact and guns to shoot electrical wires at the Jumpers. While following any Jumper through a scar requires a warp cannon. Never leave home without one. A device that links to the Jumpers' abilities upon firing allows paladins to follow through their filthy scars across the globe.

They’re called scars for a reason. The Jumpers that make them scar the Earth with their presence. They have abilities no mortal should possess. Only God should have the power to be in all places at any time. And it’s something Beatrice goes about eliminating for her mother daily. Something Beatrice goes about now, in fact, as she’s trapped a flickering-to-be-free Jumper held against some electrical wires shot from Camila’s gun in the forests of Bolivia.

A local that pleads for his life, and Beatrice is not the one to ask for mercy. Her mother has made her a weapon against these abominations and Beatrice’s sisters and brothers.

But Beatrice has an ability rare to the paladins. It’s been passed down through the generations from the very first paladin, Adriel.

She can naturally sense Jumpers. She smells them.

She can feel them from miles away. Her senses are supernaturally strong for them.

It’s why Beatrice is at the head of her mother’s field operations. She doesn’t need technology or the Paladins’ normal form of tracking down Jumpers. Beyond a general location to sense them in.

The Paladins call her The Bearer or The Gift. The bearer of the sacred ability and the gift to the organisation to cleanse the earth of Jumpers, unlike any other paladin.

“Sister.” Camila, Beatrice’s fellow paladin, steps beside her in this dank rainforest.

“Please! Ahh!” The Jumper who’s tied tight by the electrical wires of Camila’s gun, shocks against the trunk of a tree in raggedy clothing.

Beatrice is given a knife to end the sin's life. "Thank you.”

“Please! I didn’t do anything! I’m just a…”

“A sinful piece of filth!” Beatrice throws the knife and lands it directly into the man’s skull. His shock is clear, and his death is quick.

“Nice throw.” Camila chortles with admiration.

Beatrice hums, analysing the dead, Jumper. He was like all Jumpers, born with the ability, but it takes time to manifest. And when they do, Jumpers like this one use the teleportation they possess in nothing but sinful ways. They all need to be purged from existence.

Eventually they all use the power they have in ways that the Paladins learn of. Stealing anything they like, be it from a bank or shops or anywhere they steal, and jumping from country to country to do whatever they want whenever. They’re too dangerous to be allowed existence as well as sinful.

“Only God should be in all places at all times.” Camila repeats the phrase Paladins all use after every Jumper kill.

“Only God should be in all places at all times.” Beatrice repeats the words like a prayer. Those words guide her. It’s what she’s been bred to believe for all her life to ensure the Jumpers do not have the power to do it for long before their lives are ended.

She receives a call from her mother, and she steps away from her sister. “Mother?” She moves toward the thin trees, away from Camila, for privacy.

“We have another potential. It’s in London.” Suzanne says the city Beatrice hates.

She stops and falls against a trunk limply. Her birth parents tossed her aside like trash in the city, and it’s never been a place Beatrice has had much fondness for because of it.

“Tell me.” She inhales sharply, readying herself for the visit she has no choice but to make.

“There’s been a spate of unexplained robberies, and Yas…”

“Has done her thing and seen it’s a Jumper?” She offers.

“Yes.” Suzanne snorts at how much Beatrice knows the words she uses over these types of calls. “After you’re done cleaning this one up, Yasmine will fill you in.”

Good talk. It’s the extent of what her mother talks to her about. She’s been made to be this by her, and it’s all she talks about with her.

“Copy that then.” She hangs up.

“Hey? Where are we off to?” Camila comes over after a moment.

“London. Yasmine will do…”

“What our Yasmine is so adept at. Knowing all.” Camila wiggles her brows and throws her electrical gun over her shoulder like an idiot.

Camila’s a rookie, and it shows.

“Easy.” Beatrice confiscates the gun with a head shake and tut. “You’re going to shock me at some point, I know it.”

Camila huffs and puts her hands on her tactical jacket sides. “I know exactly what I’m doing with guns. I know you’re the Bearer and all, but I’m…”

Beatrice deadpans. “You know nothing…”

“Jon Snow.” Camila does a deep northern accent. Beatrice is fucked with this one.

Beatrice eye-rolls so hard her pupils disappear into the back of her head somewhere. “Come on. We’ve got to dispose of this guy.”

“This Jumper you mean.” Camila spits on the ground with disdain. Like all Beatrice’s sisters, she’s been taught to hate the Jumpers. It was never a choice for Beatrice, and she knows that’s the case for others too. But her burden is the biggest to bear. The expectation is on her. It’s her life. It’s always been Beatrice’s life. She knows nothing else. Paladin. Bearer. Daughter to the head of an ancient religious organisation built to kill the impurities that are the Jumpers.

Chapter Text

“What do Jumpers even smell like anyway?”

That’s a question from Camila, and as Beatrice’s senses are on fire right now underground deep in the darkened abandoned railway. While she steps over the tracks, she doesn’t really have a solid answer for Camila. Not one that’ll satisfy her need for it to be something really intriguing At least.

“It’s hard to describe; they just smell like Jumpers, I guess.” She closes her eyes, holding a warp cannon, and breathes in deep. The Jumper when Beatrice is close flares her nostrils. They burn so much it hurts if she’s close enough to smell them and she focuses hard enough. She can feel them. She can only describe the feeling as a vibration throughout her chest, swelling her insides, desperate to be quenched. She’s any jumper’s worst nightmare. There is no escaping her. Once she has the scent—the feeling—they cannot escape her.

“You’re like our very own bloodhound, eh, Beatrice?” Camila's kids.

“Hush.” Beatrice snaps in annoyance. “I need to focus.” The tracks feel endless. It’s so dark, and the area is barely lit at all. They’re being guided by Beatrice and Beatrice alone. In the darkness. Their voices echoing through the underground.

Yasmine did her job by giving Beatrice the general search radius she needed, and Beatrice has taken it from there to get to here. The sooner this Jumper is dead, the sooner Beatrice can leave this hellhole of a country.

She lets the scent and feeling pull her to it. Step by step over tracks she slowly goes as quietly as possible, trying to not alert the jumper. “No more talking.” She whispers. “Be silent.”

Camila is impatient and raw, and Beatrice has been handed the rookie to train. Camila unfortunately likes to talk. A lot. Beatrice is not a talker. She’s a tracker and a hunter, and she gets the missions she undergoes done fast and efficiently. And so far, training Camila is like training a cat. She barely listens, and she’s skittish. Any noise puts Camila on alert. She’s too eager, and it’ll get her killed if she confronts the wrong jumper who has a taste for Paladin blood.

This is a war beyond the two factions, plain and simple, and the Paladins must win it. Eradicate every single Jumper, and the world will be cleansed of their filthy stain.

But also Beatrice was made for this. Born to be a Paladin. To be the Bearer. Without the Jumpers, her purpose is nothing. Maybe a devout soul to God. But she’d be lost without this. Suzanne made sure of it.

Beatrice feels her overcoat brush the back of her legs. The stillness along the tracks. This could be a jumper that’s made a home down here, like so many do in such places. Any Jumper with any sort of knowledge of the history of the war knows Beatrice by reputation. They fear her, and whoever this idiot is who decided to expose themselves by robbing some of London’s major banks is a fool to have been so obvious.

Sloppy. So maybe this one is just one in over their head, Jumper. No idea what’s happened to them, but they’re taking advantage to steal and take and take without repercussions in their eyes.

The best time to catch these inhumans is when they’ve freshly discovered their power. So easy when they do. So chaotic and excited.

They shouldn’t be, but they don’t know that. They do when the last face they see is Beatrice’s.

She places one boot over the tracks, and old words from Suzanne randomly enter her mind. “They are monsters, my starlight, monsters every one of them. They use the ability they possess to harm and steal and destroy. They are not made by gods’ hands; they are an impurity made by the hands of Reya.”

Words that Beatrice listened to over and over as a child and has formed her psyche around. Jumpers were created by an extra-dimensional being named Reya. She stained the pureness of God's creations with a wave of energy that infected the earth and the very fabric of what makes humans human.

Adriel ripped her heart from her chest, but it was too late. Reya’s madness infected humanity, and it’s been up to the Paladins to clean up the mess ever since.

A sudden short sharp burn hits Beatrice’s nostrils, and it makes her flinch. Her chest sears more than she’s ever felt. Like her own heart is being torn out. “Fuck.” She clutches her chest.

“Sister? What’s wrong?” Camila steadies Beatrice, but the pain overwhelms. It’s suddenly unbearable. Beatrice has never felt such an intense pain while tracking before.

She grimaces with an arm frantically going around Camila. “I don’t know, ah!” Another sharp pain stings hard; it causes Beatrice to hunch over. Too much. It’s too much.

A whistle.

“What was that?” Camila drops Beatrice to the tracks and aims her electrical gun into the darkness. Fuck. This doesn’t feel right suddenly. This feels different.

A laugh echoes. A man’s. And then a woman’s and then another deeper-voiced man’s laugh.

“Beatrice I don’t like this.” Camila panics. Aiming her weapon everywhere.

Breathe. Beatrice tries to tell herself as she feels the pain more than ever before.

It’s a trap. Jumpers never team together, but they’ve been becoming desperate of late. And with desperation come paths not taken before to survive.

Beatrice squeezes her eyes shut at the heat. She tries to get up, but another pulse sends her down against the tracks. “Ah, we need more…”

“There is no escape.”

That voice halts them both. A man’s, Northern and threatening. “No more killing of us, no more by you at least.” The northerner laughs. And a ripple of energy echoes through the tracks.

“Camila.” Beatrice labours for breath.

Camila haunts down at Beatrice. Knowing their situation and the dire consequences if they don’t get out now.

“Fire your weapon!” She commands with force, and Camila jumps. She fires at anything in the darkness. Electricity coiling around the underground, lighting it up with blue light.

Beatrice reaches, and Camila grabs her hand to pull her up. They’ve been lured into a trap to get rid of the bearer. With no hesitation, they have to flee.

Beatrice drops her warp cannon down to her side and retrieves a gun. To fire too. Cover fire to retreat. They aren’t far from the station; they can get out if…

Beatrice feels a warp behind her.

She spins and goes to fire, but her wrist is held tight in a vice-like grip. Brown eyes. A mischievous dark grin on the lips of a woman with a deep scar almost touching her right eye. “Not today, Bearer. You’re done.” Her accent is Hispanic, and her words are ice.

“Sister!” Camila acts, but after a loud thump, Camila tumbles to the ground. Beatrice grits her teeth in self-anger at leading them both into this. She turns and finds a shaggy-haired jumper holding Camila’s gun. Colder. Harsher.

“Hello, Beatrice.” He grins and gives a nod to his fellow Jumper. Beatrice’s baton is yanked free from her hip.

“No!” She goes to throw a punch, but she’s electrocuted on the spot till she wilts and wilts and crumbles down against the tracks.

“Ava, take the bearer; I’ve got the other one.”

Beatrice’s head slammed against the ground, and her body, coiling with agonising electricity, won’t rise.

She looks up, straining and straining to hold on to consciousness, and sees nothing but Ava the Jumper, the abomination's scarred grinning face. Her hair scruffily tied back. As Ava kneels down to Beatrice.

“You’re going to jump with us, Beatrice. Have you ever done that by a jumper's will?” She spits up at Ava, but Ava teleports to avoid it. Ava’s face turns to stone when she returns. “All of you Paladins are insane. Claiming religion as your excuse for killing thousands of my kind. No more. No more cheat codes…in your lifetime, at least.” Ava grabs Beatrice’s arm, and she jumps them both to the unknown.

Chapter Text

Months before.

Ava’s life was fucking awesome. She’s a Jumper. A teleporting badass who could do what she liked when she liked. But then it was swiftly turned to a nightmare. A life where she couldn’t stop looking over her shoulder for religious nutjobs trying to kill her.

She learnt they were called the paladins. Some bullshit organisation set up in mediaeval times to eliminate her kind.

Why?

Well, the answer is awful and heinous.

It’s simply for existing why so many of her kind are killed. Just because she breathes and can teleport is why the Paladins want her dead.

Ava made a decision; she had no choice. She started trying to find Jumpers like her. She found them. She only knew all the history of her kind because of a jumper named Griffin O’Conner. A brash, roguish man with a similar hatred of the paladins. Though his anger is deep-seated in family trauma. Hers is rooted in the utter injustice of her and her kind being hunted for the only reason of being alive. She met him in Egypt, and they’ve been luring Paladins to their deaths in secret for a few months with the help of other jumpers like Mary, her best friend now. But it was for a purpose other than just killing the enemy.

They’ve been searching for one paladin in particular. Trying to lure her specifically.

Beatrice Cox. Daughter of the head of Paladins. But more importantly. The bearer of the gift makes any jumper who comes within a few miles of her have a harrowing task to escape.

It’s an advantage that the Paladins have used to kill thousands of Ava’s kind, and it’s only carried by one single person at a time. It awakens inside of another paladin when the bearer dies.

Remove Beatrice from the board. Keep her locked away somewhere secure and alive, and her gift cannot be used again for at least Beatrice’s lifetime.

But so far no luck by Ava, Griffin or any of the other teams of Jumpers sent to lure Beatrice to them. It’s frustrating as fuck, but it’ll happen, and whichever team of two jumpers corners Beatrice, they have to be quick and ruthless; otherwise, Beatrice will end them fast.

She’s a jumper killer, and she kills fast. The boogeywoman must be stopped.

Something Ava goes about again with Griffin in Cairo. They’ve made noise and are hoping today’s the day they meet Beatrice.

All Beatrice needs is their general location, and they’ve done enough to be noticed now. Unexplained robberies and sightings galore. And they’ve found the perfect point for Beatrice to be cornered in.

Near the pyramids of Giza at the Sphinx. To be specific, they’re waiting on top of it at nighttime. Griffin’s idea. Nothing says, 'Look here we are.' Beatrice kill some nice gullible jumpers, like being drawn to the statue of the Great Sphinx.

“Ah, jeeps inbound. See, look.” Griffin, sitting with Ava and chomping on a packet of crisps, points out in his thick accent at the road.

“Gimme.” She motions for his invaded night vision binoculars. Griffin nabbed from a police station And as he says, there are a few jeeps inbound on a small road up to the sphinx. They know what Beatrice looks like through their own research, but drawing her to them was the way to go, and Ava searches for Beatrice in the seats.

She checks the drivers and the passengers of both jeeps, but none are Beatrice. “Shit, I don’t see her.” She gets up and rests her knees on the stone head of the sphinx.

They’re suited and booted for anything here. They have stolen body armour over there chests and Ava has a massive shotgun to blow any Paladin not Beatrice away.

“Hold up, wait for them to stop.” Griffin thinks he’s in charge. No one’s in charge. Its project gets rid of Beatrice, and after that, they keep fighting to kill the people who like killing Jumpers. It's self-preservation and protecting themselves. That's it.

Ava waits. She's patient, and they finally do not far from the sphinx. The lights of the monument lighting up the sand below.

More paladins come out of the jeeps, but none are Beatrice. “Fuck, she’s not here.”

“Hey?” Griffin shoulder bumps her arm.

She raises her brow. “What?”

Griffin grins with danger. He’s fun, and Ava likes him, and he knows how to kill Paladins ruthlessly.

“It’s never a wasted day when we get to take out some of these lunatics.” He winks and jumps, leaving his jumpscar behind.

Right he is. There are 6 Paladins to lay waste to.

She puts the binoculars down and jumps too. Straight in front of the suited twats holding massive guns to electrify them and a warp cannon to rudely follow them through their jump scars, Ava appears. “Hi! I’m Ava!” She waves happily. Taunting the fuckers beside Griffin. He gives them a nice wave too.

“Hello! Do any of you know where Beatrice might be!?” Griffin shouts.

The Paladins alert and A dark-skinned bulky woman takes the first step. Short hair. Big gun. She’s objectively hot, but she won’t be leaving here alive.

“Engage!” The lead paladin shouts and points at Ava and Griffin both, commanding her nutjob comrades. Maybe a big killing of these paladins could lure Beatrice here all by itself. It’s an act to do so, that’s for sure.

She turns to her friend and pumps her shotgun. Her best friend Mary loves shotguns, and she loves to use them to kill Paladins. Ava’s hero.

She grins. “Ready?”

Griffin smirks. “I’m always ready, baby.” He winks, and Ava snorts. Fuck, she’s definitely ready.

Rock N Roll Train by AC/DC.

She cracks her neck and steps forward with Griffin.

Paladins aim their electrical weapons at them, but they don’t scare either Ava or Griffin.

“Fire!” The lead Paladin screams in her insanity, and her followers fire on them all. 6 of them fire their weapons, and the electrical wires create a beautiful bright blue light.

“Huh, pretty.” She gasps at the sight. She loves blue. But she jumps and gets to work. Right behind the Paladins. “Hi, again!” She waves her hand again, then aims her shotgun at the nearest religious nutter she sees and blows a hole in his face. Ouch, that’ll hurt in the morning. Massive migraine, that’s for certain.

“JC!” The lead paladin screams, and Ava is joined by Griffin. He takes out another Paladin with a few rapid shots of his pistol to the man's chest.

She jumps as she’s fired upon. Behind a paladin, she appears and shoots her in the back. She rigidly aims her gun to the left at the next stunned paladin and goes for the head.

“No!” He screams and ducks, avoiding the blast.

Ava pumps the shotgun and redirects her shot as the paladin tries to fire his gun at her too. Bang! He fires. Ava jumps.

She appears behind him. Bang! Back of the head. Down. 3 left.

“Oi mate!” Griffin shouts laughing, enjoying himself, and Ava flicks her adrenaline-fuelled gaze to him as he blows a Paladin away with a few rounds. “Leave some for the rest of us, hey!?”

“Too slow!” She laughs back and jumps as the crazed head Paladin fires at her. Nope. She appears behind the paladin and prepares to fire.

“Bitch!” The paladin kicks Ava’s shotgun away, and it leaves Ava without her weapon.

“Awww, to hear that from a crazy paladin like you is such an honour.” She bows, mocking the enraged, snarling paladin.

“Killing you will be sweet.” The American paladin pulls out two batons filled with electric charges and storms at Ava.

Ava jumps before she’s struck. She appears beside Griffin as he disposes of the other paladin. “Gun.” She opens her hand for his pistol with a grin.

“Urgh, you have all the fun.” Griffin hands her the gun.

“Ahhh!!” The paladin sprints at Ava.

“Tt, Tt.” She tuts and aims before blowing a big hole into the screeching paladin’s head, whipping the woman back and down to the ground.

“You’re an expert now at this now, Ava. No doubt about it.” Griffin laughs. "Mary's taught you well."

But Ava’s glee fades. Despite what her enjoyment of this on the outside shows. She hates killing, but she’s had to do so to survive, and killing these six means more Jumpers will live. That’s worth the stain on her soul, and soon they’ll find and stop Beatrice once and for all, and when they do, it’ll save more than a few Jumpers. It’ll save countless.

Chapter Text

Ava and Griffin have another destination to lure Beatrice after the killing of those 6 knuckleheaded crazies in Cairo did jackshit. They’ve made their next move in London, somewhere Ava and Griffin learnt from a paladin is Beatrice’s birthplace.

Turns out it can be fruitful to keep a paladin alive for information. None of them spoke any intel before in their devotion to their cause, but a certain crying blond loser called Michael gave in easily when she aimed her shotgun at his head. He promptly wet himself and told them some priceless information that could unlock the door to Beatrice.

They’ve done their usual schtick to get attention, and they’ve set up a nice little snug spot to trap the boogeywoman bitch once and for all. And after? They’re jumping her to an uninhabited island in the Pacific Ocean. Ava and her fellow Jumpers have been hard at work building a nice little underground prison for Beatrice. She’ll be behind bars and trapped in a three-by-three cell.

Beatrice will love it. She’ll have a nice uncomfortable, hard as…something that’s hard bed. One toilet to do her business when she so needs and some reading material when a Jumper feels like offering her a magazine or some shit. Only the best for the Bearer. The insane killer who’s been bred to do nothing but kill the innocent for purely breathing air and existing.

They’re going to give Beatrice a lovely rest of her life she thoroughly deserves.

And Griffin and David Rice, another jumper Ava’s grown to know and trust as a good man, are waiting in an underground railway system in cover for Beatrice to arrive.

Where’s Ava, though? Well, she’s having a little break from the dark, stinking underground because it really does smell. It was abandoned in the 70s or something, so it became home to homeless people or rats or god knows what else – maybe a reptilian race of lizard people. It’s a possibility. Ava heard some strange noises down there when she was spinning a swivel chair in a maintenance room long untouched before she jumped out for this reprieve.

But to be specific to Ava’s location, she’s at the edge of the Empire State Building in New York, overseeing the city while rain spits against her face.

She outstretches her arms and shuts her eyes. Her scar along her eye still bites when it gets cold. She got it when she first encountered a paladin. Not a fun story. She barely survived.

She breathes in the cold New York air deep into her nostrils. Jumping from one country to another in the blink of an eye is her incredible power to have, and she’s travelled to so many cities and countries because of it. She could list everywhere she’s been across the globe, but she’d be listing for hours. Anywhere you can think of. Ava has visited. All she needs is a picture of a certain destination to visualise the place, and she can travel there.

It's funny. The paladins hate her kind because they view them as inhuman, ungodly, filthy creatures, but come on, having the powers Ava does is a gift from the Divine; it has to be. It’s incredible to do what Ava does. If she takes some shit from somewhere, boo hoo, suck it. She isn’t going to have these abilities and stop having a fucking blast. (Slight reference to the Paladin she blew the head off of last month – that was messy.)

But she also can’t go wild again. She’s careful now when she doesn’t want to be tracked or noticed.

She smirks. She has a need to have a little fun as she waits for the call from her friends. She loves jumping in any way she can imagine.

She collects her wireless headphones from her hoodie pocket and sticks them on. She loves doing this.

There may be a war going on, but fuck, Ava loves living, so she doesn’t stop having as much fun as she can when she can. She just has to be quick.

“Right.” She sighs and gets her phone from her back pocket. Songs, songs, songs. She needs music for this little jumping spree she's about to do. It makes it more.

Bad Reputation by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts.

Now what?

Ava lets herself fall. No hesitation. No fear. She just falls. She spreads her arms out and falls. A normal person would be scared shitless, but Ava is a jumper. She can jump in any way at any time.

She's a thrill seeker, and she lets herself fall to feel a thrill.

She jumps, not to end it. But to begin the spree. First, she jumps into a busy marketplace in the city. She speeds to a food vendor. “Hi Mick!” That’s most likely not his name. Who knows? Maybe it is.

The vendor almost drops his hot dog he was handing a lady. Don’t worry. Ava’s got it. She jumps with it in her clutches, freaking the pair the fuck out, and jumps to Paris below the Eiffel Tower. Enjoying a nice hot dog. Walking, eating, and saying 'hi' to a cute wiener dog. “Hi doggy!” She’s barked at. “Nice meeting you too!” She laughs, eats her hot dog and jumps to the Sahara. Just because.

She’s instantly hit with a burst of heat, and it’s a nice reprieve from the previous cold.

She needs a drink, and she obviously needs to receive the call. So she jumps to Paris at a supermarket, grabs a water and a Pepsi, and jumps again to the Bahamas. Halfway through her hotdog, she accidentally kicks a scuttling little crab. Oops.

She eats with a big smile on her face and unscrews her Pepsi for a nice refreshing…she’s interrupted. She’s by a hotel where the bar is plentiful and the pool looks tempting from afar, but that's for another time.

She sees it's Griffin. She answers, silencing her music. “Movement?”

“Oh yeah, and you won’t fucking believe it.”

Ava stops and drops her hot dog and her drinks. It can’t be. This is it. Fuck. It’s really Beatrice. “It’s her?” She gulps down her hot dog. This is it.

“The arrogant bitch is alone with some scrawny-looking girl, ripe for the taking. Jump.” Griffin demands, and Ava instantly jumps back to London. She arrives back in the maintenance room. Griffin, scruffy as ever in his leather jacket and shaggy hair, grins at her.

She grins back. “Finally.”

“Finally.” Griffin jumps to her side. “Look.” He shows her footage from the surveillance cameras they’ve set up. And there she is. Holding a big warp cannon with a jumpy-looking curly-haired girl.

She feels David warp to her side. “We’ve got her?”

She hums and tilts her head, analysing the woman every jumper fears. She’s been like a myth to Ava at times; she’s waited so long for this, but now she’s flesh and blood and arrogantly came right into their laps. Her hair looks so harshly tied back it hurts in her bun. Her overcoat makes her look like some sort of stupid hot detective or something. She won’t be needing coats where she’s going.

“She’s hot.” Griffin states the obvious.

“She’s killed countless of us.” David snaps, feeling the anticipation Ava feels. His voice brimming with it.

Ava’s scar stings for a second. A warning, someone would say. Beatrice is dangerous, but she’s fucked. Utterly fucked.

She takes Griffin's phone and steels herself. Paladins have just lost their greatest asset. Beatrice is theirs.

“Ready?” David’s American, btw, and yes, oh yes, she’s ready.

“Yes, Anakin. I’m ready for this little psycho.” She twitches with anticipation.

He groans. “I look nothing like him; you’ve got to drop that.”

It's a running gag, and she enjoys annoying David with it.

“Nope.” She looks ahead at the track dangerously. “Let’s catch ourselves a gift-bearing Paladin bitch, shall we, gentlemen?”

“Took the words right out of my mouth.” Griffin takes his phone back, and they prepare to jump to finally take Beatrice off the board.

"I'll hang back; you two engage." David reminds them of the plan.

Ava hums and jumps to catch their prey. Egypt or any other mayhem in country after country they’ve been wreaking havoc in hasn’t drawn Beatrice to them, something that both baffled Ava and angered her, but this has, and Ava won’t let the chance slip through her fingers.

Chapter Text

“I love you, my beautiful Beatrice.”

Beatrice hears in the dark. A foreign voice echoes. The silence after is louder. The thrum in Beatrice’s head is worse. She feels. A cold hard floor. Stifled air. A funny smell. Deodorant that's overwhelming to the nose.

“Tell me, where can we find her?” A loud thudding sound like a fist hitting someone sounds.

Beatrice tries to open her eyes. They refuse to open, such is the unbearable migraine she feels. The burning in her chest is so hard it’s hard to catch her breath.

She hears someone spit. “Fuck you! You’re all sins! The lot of you! You need to be eradicated so gods Ooft!”

“Fucking hell, shut up. Listening to you paladins is like I’m in a madhouse constantly. You're sins this—you're ungodly creatures, that. Jesus Christ. Oh! Sorry I used the Lord's name in vain. That’ll rile you up, won’t it?”

Another punch and that voice. That’s the northern voice she heard before she… Fuck. It all comes flooding back.

The jumpers set up a trap for her and Camila. And stupidly Beatrice led Camila right into it. She wasn’t to know a trap had been made. She’s never encountered two Jumpers working together before. But they’re dwindling, and desperate times call for desperate measures.

“Griff. Take a break. Her face will be here to punch when you get back. I’ll take over.”

Beatrice remembers that voice too. The scarred woman of sin who grinned at her before she lost consciousness. The inhuman abomination—scarred like she scars the earth with her disgraceful presence.

It angers Beatrice, and she finds the strength through that anger to flick her eyelids open slowly and wearily.

No. Damn it. Camila’s strapped to a chair, heaving for breath. Her body armour is removed, so she’s just in her undershirt, black and thin to her body. Bars block Beatrice’s view of Camila. She’s in a cell. There’s another to her left, and the prison, however small it is, is lit by a beam of sunlight coming in through an opening behind Beatrice.

But Beatrice’s present circumstances, however futile, don’t matter. Camila. She’s beaten and sagged into her chair. The Jumper Ava is at Camila’s side now as Griffin, the other jumper, jumps away to who knows where.

They both don’t deserve names. They aren’t worthy of them. They’re just stains to be wiped clean from the earth.

Beatrice feels her coat is gone. She’s just in her sweater. None of her weapons are on her. She can do nothing for Camila other than try to stop the beatings with defiant words. She’s been taught to never give up anything to these creatures of sin if in this situation, but Camila is fresh. She could.

“So.” Ava sighs and pulls up her hoodie sleeves to expose her muscular arms and the back of a tattoo on Ava's lower arm. “As you won’t tell Griff anything, maybe you’ll tell me. You can either die slow like this or in so many other ways – trust me, we’re inventive with that shit – or you could die quick. I don’t care how you die. You’d treat me and my friends with the same disdain, so…”

“Don’t touch her, Jumper!!” Beatrice shouts, deeply wanting to rip out Ava’s windpipe for threatening her charge like that, as she gets up onto one knee.

Ava’s shoulders tense. Camila flinches in her beaten, bloody, swollen-faced state at Beatrice.

“So our special guest is awake.” Ava chuckles, and it’s a horrid thing that should be ripped out of her. Beatrice will take more pleasure in killing Ava than she has any other Jumper and Griffin. She’ll kill them both. She’ll get the moment, and they’ll both die like they should.

“I’ll kill all of you. How many…”

“Shh.” Ava shushes, and Beatrice clamps her mouth shut to her own anger as Ava spins on the spot with glee in her excited eyes. She’s a creature of sin infected with an impure gift.

“Don’t you dare shush me, you…”

“Oh, do shut up.” Ava scoffs and shuts Beatrice up again. Beatrice boils at being silenced and allowing herself to be.

Ava jumps to be directly above Beatrice at the bars. Grabbing the bars immediately as she appears. Beatrice doesn’t move an inch. Jumpers are too dangerous to let live. Teleporting like that is wrong. Ava is wrong.

Ava’s fingers brush the scar above her eye as she stares down at Beatrice. Multiple bracelets, both string and rubber, around her wrists. Her hoodie zipped up to her neckline.

“Where’s the scar from? Did one of my sisters give it to you?” She spits on the floor in disgust.

Ava breathes in deep and unzips her hoodie, revealing a toned, pale figure as she drops it to the ground. The tank top Ava’s in is showing off her arms strewn with tattoos, just a hodgepodge of ink on Ava’s biceps and lower arms and shoulders and chest with breasts that, on a normal person might attract Beatrice like the rest of Ava, but Ava doesn’t; she’s a living, walking, talking stain to be erased.

Beatrice scans the tattoos. On the right bicep, there’s a tattoo of an eagle soaring free. On the lower right arm, there’s just an utterly random red zigzag line going down to Ava’s wrist. Ava’s left bicep has words too small for Beatrice to see. Her lower left arm has a red rose with a thorn stem flowing down to Ava’s wrist, coiling around her arm. There are more tattoos, but Beatrice doesn't bother scanning. They're on a being, not one of God's creations anymore. But infected by Reya's act.

Beatrice scoffs. “You…”

“Like what you see?” Ava utters words utterly ridiculous, as the jumper she is. “Oh no, of course not. I’m an abomination.” Ava laughs sharply and leans her forehead against the bars, nothing but hate in her eyes. “You’ll never leave this cell, Beatrice. This is your life now. You’ll sleep in here. Eat in here. Use that shit toilet behind you in here. This is your home now. Get acquainted. You psycho. You’re nothing but an insane murderer of the innocent like the rest of your people. You’ll never use your abilities to harm my kind ever again.”

Beatrice smirks darkly and rises to her feet to meet Ava’s disdainful eyes with her own. “You think you’ll be able to hold me? I…”

“You’re in the middle of nowhere. No one’s coming. No one will ever find you. No one.” Ava sternly silences Beatrice again. Tugging at the very fabric of Beatrice’s existence. Beatrice hates it. She hates Ava.

But she thinks of Camila. “Let her go. She knows nothing; she’s new.”

Ava tilts her head, analysing. “You should choose your words carefully, Bearer. I could let her go by dropping her in the ocean or off a building; you’re going to have to be more specific.”

Beatrice locks her jaw. “You hurt her, I’ll find a way to end my own life in here. Then my gift will be passed to another.” She says the words, and she doesn’t know if she believes them. She’s devout, but ending herself for the cause would be drastic.

Ava narrows her eyes at her. Scanning the truth in Beatrice’s eyes. “You say such a thing as if it makes you proud. You deserve to die, Beatrice. But we both know you’d never do it.”

“Don’t harm her, and you have my word I won’t attempt it.”

Ava instantly spits out a high-pitched laugh. “Fuck off, the word of a paladin is as useful as a wig and makeup on a pig.”

“Huh?” She confuses.

Ava bites her lip infuriatingly. Playful glinting in her eyes that shouldn’t be seeing anything. They should be still after Ava’s death. “Never mind.” Ava jumps to Camila, making Beatrice flinch, and grabs Camila’s arm, then jumps again and appears in the cell next to Beatrice’s, dropping Camila with a thump before she jumps right back in front of Beatrice, making her flinch again. It was fast. Beatrice has never seen a jumper jump that fast. “We’ll get what we want, Beatrice. We already have. With you trapped here. There's so much more to do to protect my kind. But I’ll leave you both for now. She needs a break, I suppose. And if you’re good, maybe we’ll let her live so you won’t be the only crazy paladin in here forever.” Ava winks and jumps away, leaving Beatrice feeling equal amounts unbalanced and angered.

Chapter Text

Cheers are in order. Beatrice is behind bars, and countless Jumpers are saved from her clutches. So Ava’s gone to celebrate. With Mary, Griffin, and David soon to be in tow, she’s getting absolutely blitzed at some nightclub in Japan, and what better fucking time for it? Beatrice. The Beatrice is off the board for good. It feels so freaking good. It felt like a pipe dream, but here they are. Beatrice is done. She’ll be stuck in that cell forever, maybe with her little curly-haired, equally as crazy friend. The company will keep Beatrice occupied and give her some false crumb of hope to get out of her predicament, or who knows, maybe they’ll drive each other insane. Either is fine.

She takes in the bliss as purple strobe lights engulf her and bodies of strangers brush her. A release of tension in her shoulders. So long she’s feared the Bearer coming for her too. But nope. The Bearer is all snug in her cell. No more gift bearer.

She takes a deep breath in the middle of dancing and takes in the glory. Her body pulsing and sweating and so on fire from this. Adrenaline coursing through her body. Finally.

She thinks of all the jumpers Beatrice has killed. She mourns for them. Poor souls who never did anything wrong but exist. Beatrice deserves far worse for her crimes. Indoctrinated into her way of life from birth or a young age or not. She’s killed and killed innocents.

She’ll never do it again.

Ava smooths her hand down her tank top's fabric, thinking of her own fear. Her own pain. The scar on her face. The scar on her back. It’s not over. The war is the war. Living is still a daily battle, a daily wary watch over her shoulder, but the Paladin's weapon is gone. For good.

She exhales deeply. Releasing the fear. Her story has always been one of hardship. The orphanage, the rejections from family after family, and then she manifested her powers, and it finally felt like life gave her something after only taking and taking and taking.

But it came with a catch. Paladins. She scowls at someone’s back dancing near her. A rage boiling inside. Beatrice deserves more. She needs to hear what she’s done to her and Griffin and David and Mary. She needs to know the people she’s put fear into. The people she’s controlled by the mere knowledge of her existence.

Her breathing labours in anger. She locks her jaw. Fuck it. She jumps. Back to Beatrice’s cell. To find Beatrice the same as she last saw her. Hate in her eyes. In her turtleneck sweater, she’s beside her metal toilet and her bed against the rock wall behind her on the floor.

“Let me guess, you were having a blast with someone else’s money.” Beatrice scoffs.

Ava flexes her wrist with so much rage, needing to beat Beatrice to a pulp. Needing her to feel even an inch of the pain she’s caused. She darts her gaze to the other paladin and sees she’s asleep in her hard bed.

“Would you like to know a story about the soulless Jumpers you’ve killed? I could tell so many.”

“You are soulless, Ava. You’re not blessed…”

“Just.” Ava huffs and rolls her hands into balls. Not wanting to hear Beatrice speak her horrible wicked words. “Don’t speak. You don’t deserve to speak. Just shut up and listen, and when I’m done, I’m going to make you…”

“What?” Beatrice tilts her head with amusement and constant disdain for Ava’s existence. A strand of her previously perfectly done-up hair falling into her eyes.

Ava jumps immediately into the cell to be above Beatrice and smashes a fist against the bearer’s smug face. “This!”

Beatrice stays hit. “You’re so predictable.” Beatrice says with satisfaction, and so fast Ava can’t jump away, Beatrice sweeps her leg to send Ava off her feet. She jumps before she hits the ground to be against the cell bars. Unfazed. Pissed, she gave Beatrice the opening panting for angered breath.

“Nice try.” She rolls her shoulder.

Beatrice glares with her hands on the ground and her knees. “How’d you jump so fast?”

“Practice.” She controls herself for a second. She’s going to jump and punch and jump and punch in a second; she feels herself on the brink of it. “It’s a part of me, Bearer.” She takes a sharp breath as Beatrice recovers to sit back against the wall and then steps forward, glaring daggers at the paladin murderer. She hovers a hand over her chest. “It’s not something…it’s me. The power is me. Do you understand? I didn’t choose to have it, but it’s me, and I love that it is. I’ve never brought harm to a person using it unless it’s a paladin. I’ve had to live with one eye over my shoulder for years from you, from your friends, and from your family. We all have. We aren’t soulless; we’re people, people with powers we didn’t plan for, and you’re nothing but a murderer of innocent people. That’s what you are, Beatrice.”

She points down at the paladin with impact.

“If there’s a god, neither of us are going to heaven for our sins. You aren’t cleansing the earth; you’re nothing but a misguided, sad bunch of lunatics. Mary, my friend, lost her wife to your family. She lost everything!!” Ava snaps with tears in her eyes, trembling. Beatrice twitches, and it’s something – it’s something to know she’s hurt her with words too.

Beatrice rests her head back against the rock. “She isn’t a person and neither are you; you’re…”

“As human as you! You kill us because we exist! Don’t you get how fucked up that is!? You’re not in good company, Beatrice, and you know exactly the people I mean from the past. I don’t see how you’re better than them at all.” She wants to tear Beatrice apart as she shakes all over and stands above her. She wants to badly.

Beatrice shakes her head, bowing her head. “No, what I do is to protect people from your kind, Ava. I do it because all of you are dangerous; any of you can teleport anywhere at any time, and that’s too dangerous to let live. Mother says you’re abominations, and you are.”

“Okay, what would you do right now if you manifested the power I have, huh?” She flops her arms against her sides, trying to get Beatrice to see. It’s pointless, but she tries through her anger.

Beatrice raises her gaze coldly. “I’d end myself. It would be expected of me. So I would.”

“No.” Ava crouches down to be at eye level, unblinking and meaning this to Beatrice. “You wouldn’t. You’ve been made to see us like you do because of the fucked-up teachings you were brought up with. You’re nothing but brainwashed fools, the lot of you peddling the same lines word for word. You aren’t even your own person you’re puppets.” She feels an inch of empathy in the moment. Beatrice has been taught to believe a belief that is inherently wrong. She didn’t choose her upbringing to be the way it was.

Beatrice sniggers and looks away. “Just go. I’m done talking with you.”

Ava came to hurt Beatrice; she came to make her see, but there’s no making her see. She’s a paladin. Bred to hate her kind.

"I pity you, Beatrice Cox. You've hated for so long I doubt you truly believe your own words anymore. It's just a reflex, isn't it? You'll die in this cell, and it's what you deserve." She scowls at Beatrice, but she'll never see, so she jumps away. She saves her fists for Beatrice for another time. Beatrice will always be in this cell waiting for them.

Chapter Text

Expelling a breath, Ava faces the clear blue sea above Beatrice's underground cell. She has this deep dread Beatrice will escape. It’s silly. She’s locked up, and there’s no way she can be free or even escape off this island if a Jumper doesn’t teleport her, but it’s bubbling under the surface of Ava. She’s back here regularly just to be sure. All the jumpers take guard duty in turns and are constantly pushing Camila for information. But Ava is here more often than most. They could do the same to Beatrice, but the jumpers are wary around Beatrice.

All Beatrice does in a fresh orange prisoner jumpsuit that everyone agreed would fit Beatrice for her crimes is stare at everyone. She no longer talks. She just stares. She eats her meals. She doesn’t try anything, and she’s stopped shouting in defiance when Camila is questioned. She just gives every jumper, including Ava most of all, a death stare. It’s all she does. She eats, sleeps, and trains for something that’ll never happen to keep herself fit and then spends her time just in silence.

It’s intimidating everyone who goes inside the prison. It doesn’t scare Ava. Beatrice doesn’t anymore. She can stare all she likes. She can not speak a word. It doesn’t matter; she’s a monster, and monsters like Beatrice deserve Beatrice’s fate or worse. She deserves it.

A chill goes up Ava’s back in the warmest of places. Beatrice gives her that chill. The feeling that something is going to happen to end this status quo runs deep.

Why wasn’t Beatrice deployed sooner? Jumpers were out in pairs, and that surely should’ve drawn Beatrice sooner, but she only came when a suspected jumper was in London. It just rankles with Ava.

She and Griffin took down numerous Paladins in flashy ways, but nothing?

Her fingers ghost over her scar over her eye. She thinks it over again. The first time she encountered a paladin. Her name was Lilith, and the cut across her back is Lilith’s doing. It was quick jumping from city to city as Lilith followed through scar after scar in pursuit. It was terrifying. Someone could follow her and wield a blade and numerous electrical weapons designed to trap her. She didn’t know who Lilith was; all she knew was someone was following. She stayed awake for days and days after it happened, too scared to sleep in fear she’d have her throat slit in the middle of the night.

So this foreboding over Beatrice doesn’t sit well. She jumps to the cells facing away from the Bearer after the fact and cracks her neck.

“No, no, no, not again! I’m not telling you anything! Just kill me if you’re going to keep this up!” Camila panics. She needn’t. For now. The option for more advanced interrogation is a topic discussed among the jumpers. Camila should be afraid. But not now.

“Shh.” She hushes the rookie paladin and takes off her hoodie by the zip and places it down on the metal chair in the centre of the space. Just to be in her tank top showing off her tattoos over her back and arms. She got a tattoo around the scar Lilith gave her to make it something else rather than a symbol of pain.

“Oh thank god.” Camila phews.

Ava sideways glances back to the beaten and tired paladin. With a little amusement. “You say the lord’s name in vain?”

Camila in her cell on her bed cowers back against the rock and zips her mouth shut, seeing her own slip-up. “Fuck you.”

Ava sniffs unfazed, and she rolls her shoulders, about to speak to the Bearer. “You asked me which one of your insane sisters gave me my scar.”

Beatrice doesn’t answer again.

“Her name was Lilith.” That does gain a response from Camila and Beatrice both.

A shuffle of Camila’s hard bed from Camila and a clearing of the throat from Beatrice.

“So this sister is a friend of yours, is she?” Ava readies to jump.

“She’s killed more of you than any normal paladin. How the fuck did you escape her?” Camila asks with disbelief.

Ava’s hand instinctively goes to her shoulder. Her back. The deep cut that Lilith landed with a swipe of her blade as Ava defied her at last and jumped over and over around Lilith and beat her till she was unconscious in the snow.

“I knocked her out and left her in the snow. So she’s alive, is she then? Resourceful bitch.” She scoffs. Of course a paladin would find a way out of the freezing landscape Ava left Lilith in. Of course. Beatrice is worse. But she’s heard nothing of Lilith since that day. She’s not been active, to Ava’s knowledge from her fellow jumpers.

Beatrice has the gift, but Lilith, without it, seems to be just as harsh as her. That does lessen Ava’s dread. Ava’s beaten similar paladins to Beatrice.

“She’s been inactive for a few years.” Camila confirms Ava’s suspicion.

“Let me guess, she suffered irreparable frostbite damage and lost her hands.” She bitterly makes light of it.

“No.” Beatrice finally speaks up.

Ava turns her gaze back at Beatrice on the floor. Just in a white vest and her orange pants. Unblinking and a monster. “Then what?”

Beatrice’s cold face flickers with something mocking. “She’s my mother’s security now. Maybe I’ll bring you before her to pay for the state you left her in. I’m seeing you more now, Ava. You’re Lilith’s last hunt.”

Ava hums musingly at that. “Sounds like a movie title.”

Beatrice’s jaw sets back into its usual hardness.

Ava takes a few steps forward to Beatrice and her cell. Seeing it. “You know you’ll damage your teeth grinding your teeth so much.”

Beatrice pokes her tongue around her mouth, seemingly affected by the words spoken.

“I have a question for you, Beatrice.”

“I won’t tell you…”

“Shh.” She hushes Beatrice, and Ava enjoys the glaring up in Beatrice’s eyes as she’s again muted by her. She grips the bars of Beatrice’s cell and shares her thoughts. “Before we captured you, we had multiple teams of two trying to draw you out. I and Griffin were sure killing a group of your friends in Egypt would bring you to us, but nothing. Why weren’t you deployed sooner? Surely your mother would send you after seeing us take so many of you down.”

Beatrice’s brow furrows. The cogs are working in that bearer head of hers.

Ava gathers a sort of answer from the look. “You weren’t informed of us. Huh.” She clicks her tongue. Seeing the inward battle she’s stirred in Beatrice. The weapon of the paladins has been kept out of the loop. “Doesn’t make sense if you ask me.”

Beatrice twitches, and Ava lands a blow. Beatrice will be thinking on this in this cell now. Wondering why.

“Mother deploys me on missions she deems fit. It’s not some conspiracy, Ava.”

Ava hums mock thoughtfully. “I guess, but more paladin deaths than usual would’ve surely been a big deal, no?” Ava bats her eyes.

Beatrice huffs with her usual hate. “No. We lose plenty of sisters and brothers to your kind. You’re thinking too hard on it. Don’t worry, I’ll help with that.”

Ava jumps to be directly above Beatrice, and Beatrice flinches. “Don’t be scared.” She mocks.

“You flatter yourself. You’re nothing.” Gripping the smooth hard floor, Beatrice bites back.

Ava jumps again. This time to be sat next to Beatrice with an air of not giving a shit. Her arm rested on a raised knee. “You know what we’re going to do to your friend.”

“Yes.” Beatrice evenly acknowledges.

Ava sighs. “Doesn’t that bother you anymore?”

“It’s my duty to protect her, but she’s keeping her mouth shut till her last breath. It’s expected.”

Another flicker of empathy despite it all for the life forced on Beatrice since birth. “Do you have anyone you love? Other than your crazy mother, I mean.”

Beatrice expels a small exhale through her nose. “You’ve met her.”

That sparks an instant intrigue and a feeling of 'of course' – the two women who haunt her dreams have an entanglement. It’s funny to Ava, but she sees the ice in Beatrice being less over it. “Is it a secret then?”

She gets nothing but an uncomfortable shoulder roll from Beatrice.

Ava tries another line. “You like her, and she doesn’t like you? Or maybe she doesn't know that you like her? Oh no, wait! You like each other, but some stupid oaths you took forbids it? Oh no.” Ava enjoys herself theorising, then despairs mockingly, tutting. “That’s a shame. Seems there’s plenty for you to stew in in here for the rest of your life then, I guess.”

Ava jumps, leaving Beatrice to her confinement again but knowing more about the Bearer than ever. She’s made a little more human, however small. She is.

Chapter Text

Years before

Everything was great. It was incredible. Ava could do whatever she wanted, and she loved it. She stole and had anything she desired. Need money? Just rob some place of cash, and bam, she could stay wherever she liked. Eat in the most luxurious of places. She jumped and jumped to new places every day and stayed in rooms she never dreamed she could stay in and enjoy.

But then she felt this funny chill. Like a foreboding. She brushed it off as much as she could, but she began to feel like someone was watching her. She knew they were. And now as she holds her bleeding arm. Feeling a searing hot agony over her eye as blood drips into her eye that barely escaped the blade that had been swung at her, to her shock, as she was just walking down the street in downtown New York, she feels a fear she’s never known.

She’s never been attacked or hurt like this. She doesn’t understand. Why? How did this cold, stone-faced woman in a trench coat wielding the blade that cut Ava follow her through her teleportation?

She got away as the woman went to impale her, but it doesn’t feel like it now. She doesn’t feel she can escape. No matter where she jumps. If this hunter – for lack of a better term – can follow her, how can she know she’s safe anywhere?

Ava, putting pressure on her arm, frantically searches the train platform she’s on. She sees countless people, and any one of them could be after her, it feels like.

She jumps again, too scared to stay in the dark underground, and lands where she pictured. A spot in Dover on the cliffs where she always jumps to to watch the waves below.

A sharp pain from the cuts makes Ava hiss as she cries uncontrollably and sits on the grass, hoping she’s safe but knowing she isn’t.

She jumps again. To a public toilet nearby and sees the damage. No one uses these toilets a lot, so she’s good.

She sees herself through the crimson. Her face a mask of blood. “Fuck.” She labours for breath and struggles her sticky-with-blood arm out of her zipped-up hoodie to see the damage. It’s surreal to see the blood oozing out of her like this. She feels cold, and like her heart is about to explode from fear. It doesn’t look as bad as it feels over her bicep, but she’s never been cut like this. By someone. By a weapon.

She wipes, reaches back to get some wipes she has, and applies pressure again first to her arm and then tries to dab at her eye.

“What the fuck?” She heaves in shock. She wipes away at the blood over her eyelid, thinking this can’t be real. She didn’t do anything. She just got attacked by a woman with brown eyes and a look of utter steel.

Ava can defend herself; she’s taken defensive classes and more, but she didn’t prepare for anything like that.

She cries heavily. Her shoulders rising and falling fast. Trying to stop the blood from her wounds. What if she appears now? What if? There are so many unknowns, and Ava doesn’t have anyone to help. She’s alone like she’s always truly been, and she has no one to defend her in her petrified state. She feels weak in the moment and afraid. She could jump to a hospital. That would be the best feeling option, but that scares her too. She hears a creak and teleports away instantly, landing back at the cliffs, holding wipes totally red and numerous against herself, trying to calm down, but the fear won’t let her.

She hears a ripple and freezes. Like the grim reaper of death is behind her.

She wants to jump again, but she can’t move. Frozen sat on the damp grass. Haunted and not understanding.

“You’re fast.” The hunter heaves and then, like she’s enjoying herself, huffs out a tired, wicked, low laugh.

Ava, against the fear, jumps to be at her feet and faces the hunter, crying and pleading. “Who are you!? What do you want from me!!? I didn’t do…”

“You exist!” The hunter of Ava snaps sternly. With a machete-like blade in one hand soaked in Ava’s blood and a baton in the other rippling with an electrical current.

“What?” Ava’s voice breaks, not knowing, not registering what this woman means.

The hunter licks her lips. Her eyes on Ava and only Ava, with a relish for this. Whatever this is. “You’re a jumper—a teleporter, and I am a paladin sworn to end your stain on the earth. You don’t know any of this, I see. You’re just a little sheep with no one. You’re nothing. Nothing! You’re unblessed vermin. And unfortunately for you, I’m the best at exterminating your kind.”

Kind? Paladin? Exterminating?

“What do you mean by kind? There’s more like me?” She’s even more confused but feels a burst of kinship with people she doesn’t know. There are people like her. People who know what living with this gift is like.

The hunter breathes the Dover air in deep. Like she’s soaking in the moment. “Yes. But you all meet the same fate. I’m talking with a sin, a vessel of it. You are nothing but that. Your name doesn’t matter; your feelings don’t matter. You are a sin to be…purged!” The hunter throws her baton at speed, but Ava has had so long to practise jumping she can do it in reaction to anything, and she jumps to be behind the paladin.

She drops the wipes as she does. She can’t catch her breath. She needs to jump again anywhere, but the hunter will follow and follow. “How do you follow me through my…”

“Scars!?” The hunter goes to her hip and brandishes a gun. It’s different than a usual handgun. A taser or something like it. Ava sees for herself as the gun is fired and shining blue light heads straight for her but hits her arm before she can jump.

“What the fuck!?” She screams in distress and agony as a wire curls around her arm, and it shocks her over and over, coiling through her body, rooting her in place.

The hunter grins. “Gotcha.”

Ava tries and tries to jump, but she keeps phasing back in place. The electricity deniying her an escape from the vibrating torture.

“Bye.” The hunter utters with victory in it, and then she retrieves another small blade at her hip.

“No!!” Ava screams and shakes and shakes, jumping over and over and over. The blade is thrown heading to be right between her eyes. She uses every inch of the power that’s a part of her. She jumps harder than she’s ever jumped.

No hit. No end. She lands back on the grass, free.

“You’re strong then. It only makes the kill more satisfying for me.” The hunter marches on to Ava, twirling her longer machete type blade by the hilt. Ava’s own grim reaper wanting her blood and enjoying it.

Ava jumps to her feet and throws a wild, adrenaline-fuelled punch to the hunter's cheek.

“Ah!” The hunter shouts mockingly. The punch is blocked by the Hunter's coated arm.

Raged and wanting to be rid of the threat to her. Ava jumps again. She punches again. The hunter dodges and swipes with the blade for Ava’s waist.

Ava jumps fast and punches fast, working through fear and a primal fight inside. “Ahhh!!” She jumps and dodges and punches and lands finally on the hunter's chin.

She jumps to land another against the hunter’s cheek and another against the hunter’s ear. Ragged and messy and desperate, the hunter stumbles back and forth as Ava lands.

“Fuck you!!” She screams through pain and blood and with bruising fists punches another against the hunter's cheeks repeatedly after separate jumps. She kicks the hunter's chest, sending her flailing back against the grass.

The hunter blinks in shock at the flurry gripping the blades of green. As Ava fights for breath. Her heart beating so fast she feels it in her ears.

The hunter with a rapidly rising and falling chest gathers herself little by little. And the horrible grin returns. “You’re really fast, aren’t you? I don’t think I’ve met a jumper like you.”

Ava wipes the blood out of her eyes as the cut above drips again. “And you’ll never meet another.” She surges forward, and the hunter scrambles to her feet. Ava snarls and knows exactly what she’s about to do.

“Ahh!!” They both scream as they collide, and the hunter goes to swipe Ava’s head from her shoulders. Ava jumps behind her, aiming to throttle the hunter by her neck.

She’s met with a shunt to the face by an elbow. A rapid punch to the cheek twists Ava around on the spot, and a quick cut down her back made so fast that Ava barely registers the pain.

She falls face first into the grass in more shock but is too fuelled by adrenaline to stop. She feels the hunter rush to stab her in the spine and jumps again. She grabs the hunter by the arms from behind and jumps to the furthest, coldest place she’s ever been, defying her insane tormenter to be at the top of a mountainside.

She throws the hunter to the snow and jumps to the stricken hunter's hands. She jumps to pin the hunter. She punches and punches, and any weapon she has, Ava takes and jumps away with to leave anywhere but with the Hunter.

Ava stops as the Hunter silences in the snow. Unconscious and beaten. She catches her breath again and again. Her arms sagging tiredly, her fists shaking at how many blows she landed.

“You’re insane.” She spits out with newfound hate for people she didn’t know existed before this. The paladins. Just a name of something, but Ava hates whatever it is. She jumps away from the snow, leaving this one to die.

—

Rigid and at attention Lilith, before Suzanne, in the head of the paladins' office at the Homebase of the paladins, an ancient church in the Andalusian hills, waits for Suzanne to issue more orders. She’s Suzanne’s right hand. She is her watcher and protector, and she instructs the other paladins on Suzanne’s behalf when Suzanne asks it of her. She’d do anything for the mother of the paladins. She’d die for her.

But right now, Lilith is furious and desperate, and so is Suzanne. Everyone is. Bea is gone. Taken. By the Jumpers by a trap set in London.

The clock ticks in the red-carpeted office with a fireplace. The silence is thick as Suzanne, behind her desk, deep in thought, staring at the flames of her fireplace, sits and thinks.

Lilith’s loyalty is absolute. But as she watches the flames as well, with time ticking by and no hope or sign of Beatrice, she wants to rip apart the world to get the Bearer back.

It’s been weeks now and nothing. She accompanied Suzanne to the underground tracks that Beatrice and her charge, Camila, were taken in, and no scars were left behind. No trace of anything other than the clear signs of weapons discharge.

She hasn’t done fieldwork for years now, and the effects of her last hunt will never be undone. The loss of a pinky finger and a few more on either hand and a few toes. She has prosthetics. The consequence of the fastest jumper she’d ever met and couldn’t kill. But now Lilith is itching to get out there again and save Beatrice and bring her home. Suzanne just needs to give her the go-ahead.

Suzanne, in a turtleneck jumper, fingers together, narrows her steely gaze. Lost in the flames.

“Weeks.”

Lilith flicks her sharp attention to her leader. “We should’ve held her back, Mother.”

“Maybe.” Suzanne mulls. She’s the mother to all the paladins, as every paladin refers to her as though Beatrice is the true daughter of Suzanne. Adopted when she was young.

“The jumper traps were growing, and it was obvious what they were trying. It’s been too long now. We know they won’t kill her.” She takes a stiff breath, pushing herself. “Allow me to act. Having Beatrice back is too important. Allow me…”

“You were the one who quit fieldwork, Lilith.” Suzanne states the truth. But these are extreme circumstances. Beatrice is lost to them.

“You know I’m the best of us equipped to hunt.”

“I do, and we already caught one, as you know. She isn’t talking, and I doubt she will by the look in her eyes.” Suzanne pauses. “Oh sorry, I meant in her eye now. She’s not going to break.”

“I’ll break her. Let me. I’ll rip the information we need from her for your daughter.” She raises her chin, determined to do as she says.

Suzanne strokes her chin. “No, I have other uses for that one. She won’t give up anything. Even if she does know anything. She won’t. It’s clear now.”

“What’s more important than...” Suzanne gives the impassioned Lilith a cold hare stare, and Lilith stops. She bows her head apologetically for her impertinence.

“Do you think I’m blind, Lilith?” Suzanne picks her nails, seeing a truth Lilith has kept hidden. It’s exposing and not what she or Beatrice wanted.

“I never said you were Mother.”

Suzanne hums. Keeping her eyes on the flames. “You and my daughter’s little whatever it is has never been unknown to me.”

“It was for warmth, Mother.” She lies.

“So along with being blind, you think I’m a fool? Hm.” Suzanne huffs disdainfully. “You have my permission to hunt again. But I’ll talk about this with you two if you can find her and bring her home.”

Lilith's existence roars into life. She’ll find Beatrice, and she’ll kill jumper after jumper as she used to do to achieve it. “Of course. Thank you.”

“Only God should be in all places at all times.” Suzanne recites the words of the paladins.

Lilith touches her chest and bows her head out of total respect. “Only God should be in all places at all times.” She takes her leave, and the hunt is on. The jumpers who took Beatrice will regret ever being born after Lilith finds them.

Chapter Text

Beatrice is waiting for a moment. When it arrives, she’ll take it. With Ava, the tattooed jumper who comes to watch her most, along with pushing Camila for information about the Paladins' main operations location to other operations from country to country. It’s pointless to scheme against.

Beatrice has seen it.

Ava’s too quick. Like a fly flying around Beatrice’s head, but unlike the usual fly, Beatrice could be fast enough to squash. Ava is beyond Beatrice’s touch.

Some of the other jumpers who come? That’s different for the most part. They’re hesitant and fearful of her, so they don’t enter the cell like Ava does so callously.

Griffin and a few others are strong with their power. Beatrice feels the intenseness of sin from them up close like Ava but in different ways. It’s the weaker ones Beatrice has her eye on. There’s one she’s zeroed in on right now as she stares unblinking from her spot on the ground at them shaking to put a tray of food under her cell bars. Her name, she’s heard, is Zori.

The name is of nothing. Zori is nothing, but Beatrice will use it.

“Zori, isn’t it?” She tilts her head innocently.

The brunette Zori, in a Nike vest and pants, like she’s about to go for a run rather than watch prisoners, flinches back. She’s a sheep. Out of her depth.

“Don’t be scared.” Beatrice, amused like a cat playing with a mouse, bats her eyes at the sin.

On the floor, Zori visibly shakes in fear. “Fuck off,” and spits at the cage and jumps away.

“It’s hopeless. You’re wasting your time, Bearer.” With her back against her cell bars, Camila, defeated and on her bed, bloodied and beaten and awaiting a fate she knows that’s coming, throws a rubber orange ball at the rock, and it bounces back to her to catch.

Beatrice’s deadly calm grin fades, and she shuts her eyes again. “It’s better than giving up.”

“You’re not the one being interrogated. They don’t even bother to ask you anything anymore.” Camila scoffs. Envious of the fact.

“If you say a word about anything…”

“You’ll what? I’m here your there we’re fucked, Beatrice. Fucked. It’s over." Camila’s weak. She may give something up in the end, Beatrice fears.

“Do you truly think Mother hasn’t sent our brothers and sisters to hunt these idiots down? They’ll slip up. Lilith will come.” She says the name, still a little shook that Ava is that jumper that beat Lilith.

They’d always been close, she and Lilith. Training from a young age to be what they’ve become and beating Lilith in a fight was always a 50/50 battle. Lilith grew to become a ruthless jumper hunter, and as she was sent out on missions and Beatrice elsewhere, they drifted. She’s unsure of the tally, but Lilith killing more jumpers than Beatrice wouldn’t be far from the truth.

That changed. Things changed. A jumper bested Lilith, and deep within, Beatrice has wanted to find that jumper and end them for Lilith’s pain. But also a slight dread came over her when thinking of the jumper. If they could beat Lilith after knowing nothing of the war, how would she fare after they did inevitably?

She saw for herself with Ava as she swept her legs, but before Beatrice could move again, Ava jumped away mid-air. It shocked Beatrice.

Ava unnerves her. Her ability, and the understanding Ava has of it, and Ava’s confidence unnerve her.

“So you and Lilith, huh?” Camila pries where she’s not wanted.

“It’s none of your business.” She snaps. She does indeed love Lilith. She’s a sister, but to call her a lover is maybe a step she’s unsure of. They’ve given in to desire against their better judgement, but Beatrice is unsure she can love in that way. If she did, though, it would be Lilith.

“Bet Mother won’t be pleased.” Camila tests Beatrice.

“She’ll never know anything.” That does bring back the dreams Beatrice has been having of late. She hears the same voice saying the same words. ‘I love you, my beautiful Beatrice.’ It’s not Suzanne.

Beatrice’s birth mother, perhaps, but she was thrown away like trash by her. It only confuses Beatrice thinking of it.

Like how Ava tells her the jumpers had been teaming up for a while before they caught her, confuses her. She was unaware. How could she, the bearer—the head of the hunt for jumpers—be unaware of that? She should’ve encountered teams of jumpers before now. Why wasn’t she brought in to deal with a threat like that?

Beatrice adjusts the strap of her vest, sweating in the stifling hot prison cell. But a ripple in the stilled hot air stills her.

“Where is she?” A new voice. Angry and female voices.

Beatrice opens her eyes to meet blue-grey eyes covered on one side by reddish-pink hair just outside her cell. Like Ava, she has tattoos over her arms, but she’s broader. Her arms are thicker. She has a nose piercing and ear piercings over her upper ear. And another tattoo on her cheek. the word 'Vi' on her cheek in red.

Beatrice sneers at the new jumper and dismisses her presence with a shutting of her eyes again. “Lemme guess, one of your friends has been taken.”

“She’s more than a friend, you fucking maniac!” The jumper smashes the cell bars.

Beatrice yawns, unbothered. “I imagine she’s dead. We don’t take prisoners.”

“Well, you did this time!? Where!” A sudden blast of sheer brutal strength smashes against Beatrice’s cheek. The power of it shudders through her unlike any other punch she’s taken. It rocks her so much she falls to the rock-hard floor. “Where!?” Another punch. This time against the side of the head. Her throat is throttled, taking the air from Beatrice’s lungs fast before another lands. “She was taken in Istanbul! Where do you have operations there?!”

Before Beatrice can answer, which she wasn’t going to with anything other than a groan, she’s hit again and smashed against the floor by her head. Smacking her against it.

Tasting blood. Feeling it drop from her nose, Beatrice only laughs. She sees an opportunity. She goes to kick at the butch woman’s ankle for a takedown, but she’s stopped. Her throat gripped so hard as she’s lifted off the ground like she weighs nothing.

“Tell me!” She’s shouted at viciously like the jumpers’ grip.

Beatrice struggles, but she can’t move; she can’t breathe. She’s never felt so utterly powerless.

Another ripple. “Vi? Vi!? Stop!” And the strange feeling of relief that that’s Ava’s voice is instant. Ava jumps into the cell and grabs Vi’s shoulder. “She won’t talk. It’s the other one that’ll talk. We need the bearer to stay alive, remember?”

Beatrice claws at Vi’s wrist, finding no give as Vi’s rage squeezes her throat. “Alright then.” Vi jumps into Camila’s cell above Camila, leaving Beatrice to fold into the ground. She tries to regain her breath, bruising desperately at the intense heat over her throat. Her lungs screaming for oxygen.

“Vi! Later!” Ava commandingly shouts.

“She’ll talk with me, I…”

Ava jumps to Camila’s cell, stopping Vi. “Give me a moment and we’ll start.” Ava stops Vi, and Vi jumps away with a snigger.

Splotches of dots in Beatrice’s view add to the burning as she recovers below. Beatrice is feeling more and more that the lead jumper, however much Ava denies anyone is in charge, is Ava.

Another warping sound, and Ava’s knee rests against the ground with her boot on the ground next to Beatrice hunching her. “How does your power work? Tell me more.”

Ava’s demand confuses Beatrice in the moment. The timing of it. She gives the jumper a hateful glare as she struggles for breath.

Ava’s expression above is like nothing just happened. She’s just asked a question and waits for an answer.

“You’re going to die, Ava. I’ll kill you first when Lilith releases me.” She croaks, and she pictures it. She’ll end Ava and Vi and all of them.

Ava sniffs humourlessly. “No, you won’t. And as for your Lilith. You shouldn’t hope for her. I’ve killed her once, and I’ll do it again. Or maybe…” Ava has a thought, and a cunning look matches her grin. She jumps. Beatrice cottons on. Ava’s a fool. Lilith will come, and any attempts at capturing her won’t be an easy task with Lilith aware of the multiple jumper threats.

Ava jumps back to the same spot with the grin gone.

“What!?” Beatrice snaps as she pinches her nose.

Ava narrows her eyes. Not speaking. Her chest glaringly exposed in her low-neckline tank. Beatrice doesn’t look, and even if she did, Ava’s just a sin. She’ll end that sin soon. A sin with great breasts. Wait, what?

“Why’d you think you aren’t hated by the paladins? Do you think Lilith, if she sees she can’t release you but can be close, would end you?”

Another question, and Beatrice scoffs. She’s not answering like this; she… Ava jumps; she appears after a few moments, handing Beatrice some tissue.

“Clean yourself up and answer.” Ava shakes the tissue demandingly.

Beatrice yanks them from Ava’s hand, grazing Ava’s cold but also smooth fingers, and sits back to squeeze her nose with tissue. “No, she wouldn’t.” She reluctantly gives up the answer. Tilting her head back against the rock behind her.

“You’re meant to lean your head forward.” Ava advises with an unusual calm.

Beatrice glares, but she does as Ava says. “She wouldn’t harm me. None of my people would. I'm the bearer. I’m…”

“Disposal.” Ava flatly. Nothing in her eyes. “You’re disposable. You know you are. You carry the gift, and it passes to the next when you die.”

Beatrice shakes her head in denial. “It’ll manifest in a child; it would take years to get the bearer ready again like I am.”

“It only transfers to a paladin-born baby. Or toddler or whatever – has it ever gone to a normal person?”

“No.” Beatrice dismisses. “It’s passed down from paladin to…”

“Well, that’s not true.” Ava just says with no further explanation.

“What do you mean?” Beatrice baffles at this pest.

“Well.” Ava rests back with her rose-tattooed, hypnotising arm lying on her thigh. “Think about it. You were born away from the paladins. You weren’t born through a paladin parent, yet you have this gift. Why is that? They must’ve taken children in the past for whom the ability was noticeable.”

Beatrice has never really thought about that. It is a truth, she supposes. “I wasn’t taken; my mother adopted me. My parents threw me aside, and Suzanne gave me a home and a purpose.”

Ava’s lips upcurve, mocking Beatrice with it. “Who told you this? Who told you your parents threw you aside? Suzanne? Hm.” Ava frowns unseriously. “I think there’s a lot your mother doesn’t tell you. You’re meant to lead the paladin field operations, but you had no idea about the spike in paladin deaths or us Sins teaming up together. I think you’re a tool. That’s it. You’re a sin like us with a power no normal human should have. Tell me, what’s the life expectancy of a Bearer?”

Squeezing her nose harder at this impertinent bitch who doesn’t know what she’s talking about, Beatrice coldly answers. “They never grow to be old.” She utters the words she’s always been aware of. If you’re at the head of the action against such dangerous opponents, of course it’s more likely for you to die.

Ava’s mind works, and Beatrice hates the look in Ava’s distant eyes.

“I’m not a sin; I’m the gift given to the paladins to kill all of you.” She knows that as fact; Ava’s just trying to unbalance her. It's known in the paladins. The Bearer is a gift with Adriel's power.

Ava tilts her head, analysing Beatrice. “We’ll see. Don’t worry, I’ll be back in a moment. Vi will beat your friend to death if you or Camila don’t answer her questions, and I won’t hold her back." Ava looks set to jump but doesn't. "There's something about your power that intrigues me more by the second. It's a rather specific gift, isn't it? To be able to sense us. It, however much you hate it, suggests a link to my kind." Ava disappears in a jump, and Beatrice is left hating her but, against her will, most definitely with questions on her mind.

Chapter Text

Resting her eyes after Camila endured even more painful torture but gave up nothing again and has seemingly avoided even harsher treatment, as the sins all agreed capturing and torturing an asset like Lilith, who’d undoubtedly come for Beatrice, now with the information Beatrice gave to Ava, would bear better, more important fruit due to Camila’s station. Beatrice rests on her bunk. Her head is still ringing from Vi’s fists, and her nose feels like it’s swelling, so she’s uncomfortable, but pain is nothing like Ava and her kind.

Beatrice is the gift to the paladins, and Ava doesn’t know what the fuck she’s talking about. Beatrice is just trying to block out Ava’s words. She inherited the gift from the previous paladin bearer, whether born from a paladin or not. Her birth parents were awful, horrible people who left her almost literally in the gutter. Lilith is coming. She’s coming. She will come and (shut up) she’ll kill Ava and Vi and all the jumpers, and Beatrice will assist once she’s free.

Lilith wouldn’t harm her if she could only be close but not be able to get her out of here. Yes, the expectation is for Beatrice to die for the cause rather than give up information, but Beatrice doesn’t believe her sisters or brothers would harm her to free the gift inside of her if necessary. She doesn’t. She’s important to the paladins. She is a paladin. They don’t kill their own. They don’t harm the children of God. The jumpers are Sins; they aren’t people, so it’s different.

There’s a shift in the air outside Beatrice’s cell, and she waits for the jumper to appear after. A thud of heavy boots on the ground comes shortly after.

“Lilith will be joining you soon.” Ava. Of course it’s Ava.

Beatrice feels a deep pit inside. “You have her?”

“No, but soon. Your friend here we’ve decided to let live. We’re far from done with her, but you should have a nutjob to live near for the rest of your life. Lilith, on the other hand? Vi’s gonna…”

“Your confidence is misplaced. You won’t get lucky a second time.” She’s not sure she believes herself, but she strongly says the words.

Ava’s boots sound against the ground as she steps to the cell. “No, Beatrice. It’s not. I’m bringing the best of us to deal with her and anyone else she brings, and when we get her, she’ll give us everything, and then? We’ll end the paladins once and for all.”

Beatrice chuckles, mocking the infuriating sin. “You’re a fool. You’ll die screaming.”

Ava grips the cell bars with a clink of something against them as Beatrice stays in place. “I have a theory about you. Your abilities, I mean.”

Beatrice opens her eyes, listening.

“You sense us. You feel us. I don’t know the specifics of how you feel when sensing us, but I have a feeling you’ll put the 'you’ll kill yourself if you were like me' idea to the test.”

That rattles Beatrice, and she sits up to scornfully look the lead jumper in her eyes. Ava’s sporting a bulletproof vest over her hoodie with guns at her hips. Her hair tied back in a ponytail. Ready for a fight.

Beatrice analyses the picture with slight taunting amusement. “You look ridiculous.”

Ava presses her forehead against the bars, unresponsive in her gaze. “You can ask plenty of your sisters and brothers if I looked ridiculous before I blew a big hole in their heads. I hate being a killer. Your people made me become one, but I do it because I have to.” Ava jumps into the cell to be directly above Beatrice’s bunk.

And like every time, Beatrice feels herself flinch. She’s never flinched near a jumper before, but she does near Ava, and she can’t stop herself as she grips her hard bed just as hard by the metal underneath the mattress.

Ava doesn’t say anything; she just, with unblinking eyes, steps forward so she’s closer. Directly above Beatrice. Looking down at her. Her scar creasing on her forehead just above her eye. The slit in her eyebrow creased by it the same.

Beatrice shifts uncomfortably. “What?”

Ava’s lips flick a slight smirk. It’s unnerving, like Ava in general. “Maybe you and Lilith aren't so fucking tight after all. You wanna fuck me, don’t you?”

Speechless and parting her lips slightly and feeling hot, Beatrice laughs a short, disbelieving laugh. All the words Ava spoke are nonsense. Fucking tight. Pfft. In her dreams. “I want to rip out your throat. That’s what I want. You’re a foul thing; you’re a sinful creature, and I…” Beatrice flinches back as Ava jumps again, but this time jumps to be so close and leaning down that Ava’s face fills Beatrice’s view. It’s more of a jump scare than Ava was intending it to be. Beatrice can’t predict this jumper; she can’t see Ava’s thoughts. Everything Ava does feels unpredictable but not at the same time. Like Ava has a very strong sense of what she’ll do, and Beatrice feels it.

Beatrice edges back toward the wall beside her bed. Her heart rattling in her chest. Ava’s hands are on the bed either side of Beatrice’s thighs. Ava’s grin refusing to leave the sin’s lips. “Jump.”

“Huh?” Beatrice lets out a barely audible weak noise she doesn’t understand doing. Her chest rising and falling hard as she makes it.

“You heard me, Bearer. Jump.” Ava demands a ridiculous impossible thing.

Beatrice darts her eyes to one of Ava’s guns.

“Try that and I’ll break your wrist.” Ava warns.

Beatrice reacts with a detesting spit at Ava’s. Ava doesn’t flinch. She just gets hit by the spit, with her brown eyes remaining unmoving.

She slowly wipes away the spit to Beatrice’s heavier beating heart and funny vibrating feeling all over with a closed fist. Toward her lips more than away. Like she wants it. “I said...” Ava crawls above Beatrice more.

Beatrice doesn’t know why she’s allowing it. She should go for the gun, but she inches and inches back to rest back on the bed as Ava threatens in her voice, and her eyes are almost animalistic. Like Ava is the hunter and Beatrice the meek prey. Any defiance is amusing rather than threatening.

Ava appears over Beatrice. Her cheeks a little pink. “Jump.”

“Fuck you, you horrible sinful fuck.” She detests Ava. Hates her. Hates all her kind. “I’m the bearer. I’m not like you.”

Ava hums lowly and cunningly. “For a religious woman, you sure do like to cuss. The potty-mouthed religious paladin bitch.” Ava muses, and inexplicably Beatrice faints a grin at it. She enjoyed that, to her annoyance. “I know you want me, but right now I’m telling you to jump. How do you feel when you sense me and my kin? Or should I say your kin?”

Beatrice pushes her neck back into the mattress at this detestable abomination with cat-like eyes, wanting Beatrice to speak. “I feel hot. I felt pain when I encountered you and your filthy friends in that underground, you saw. And I burn because of you right now with you close like this."

Ava’s eyes go distant for a second and then quickly sharpen again, stifling Beatrice’s breath. “You’re like me. You are. I feel it. You’re a weapon to be used against us because you are us. You can just sense people like you. The paladins somehow find the likes of you. There is no baby born by a paladin with the gift.”

Having had enough of this disgusting claim, Beatrice sneers up at Ava. “Of course there have been; you know nothing of us. The history. Adriel had this power, and it's inherited by the blessed bearers. The gift I have is a gift for the paladins. I am not like you.” She puts her anger into each word, hating the idea of that ever being true. “I’m a paladin, and I kill your kind.” Fuck this. Beatrice reaches for the gun.

She’s stopped by a sharp grasp of her wrist. Beatrice struggles her hand to be free. “I warned you.” And before a thought can pass through Beatrice’s head, her wrist is twisted hard at an angle, and she screams at the instant pain; she screams at Ava, despising her existence. “See you soon. I’ll be back with your girlfriend.” Ava winks and disappears into a jump scar, leaving Beatrice to cradle her twisted, broken wrist.

Chapter Text

This is war. And in war dangerous moves on the chessboard need to be made for victory. This is one such moment.

The Jumpers have made themselves obvious with their movements to lure as many paladins to them as possible. With Lilith expected to be at the head of that hunt, and now as Ava watches from high above a Canadian dockyard lit by orange light, holding tight onto the orange metal railing of a tall, heavy-duty port crane, she’s ready to make this gambit work.

Camila may have broken if they pushed more, but she’s a rookie. Lilith is Suzanne’s right hand. Take her and make her break with every technique Ava’s fellow jumper knows to inflict pain, and they’ll have the opportunity to learn more than just the location of Paladin HQ main operations. Caitlyn. Vi’s Caitlyn; they’ll track down and either save or, more likely, retrieve her body. Beatrice will break too for Lilith. And then Lilith will die.

Vi’s on top of a shipping container beside the water below and going prone on the metal. Vi's refusing to give up on her girlfriend, but the odds are slim. David is directly ahead on top of stacked containers with Griffin, and Mary is the bait. Not what Ava wanted, but Mary was insistent. And Zori is also to Ava’s reluctance is the in crane controls waiting likewise. Zori isn’t experienced, and Ava thought it was an unnecessary risk, but Zori wanted to help, so here she is.

“You doing alright, Mare?” Ava communicates through the comms link they all have.

“Stop checking on me. When I give the signal, we ambush whoever comes.” Mary responds below at the base of the crane, pacing back and forth unfazed.

Ava looks up to Mary, but it’s an undoubted truth Mary thinks she has nothing to lose after Shannon. Ava can’t fathom the pain she’s in. The anger she holds inside. She’s a badass and everything to Ava, and her flippant attitude toward fighting paladins has awed Ava. She's been killing paladins for a long time, but it's been with recklessness. It was a task to get her to join up with a partner to lure Beatrice. She prefers to be alone.

“Okay.” Ava taps her earpiece anxiously. She wants this done with no jumpers getting killed. But capturing Lilith won’t be easy. It won’t be like Beatrice, who didn’t suspect multiple jumpers to come for her. Lilith is fully aware.

The time goes on, and the expected arrival of the paladins after they freaked some dock workers the fuck out multiple times doesn’t come.

“Maybe we weren’t obvious enough?” Zori swings her legs out of the crane control lazily.

Ava rests her elbows against the railing, shaking her head in disagreement. It’s been days now and nothing. But she knows paladins, and she knows they would’ve been alerted to their hijinks in the local area and here. It’s only a matter of time.

“Gum?” Zori, with her bulletproof vest on over her long-sleeved jumper and her locks tied back, waves a pack of strawberry gum temptingly.

Ava hums, and Zori tosses the gum. “Thanks.” She rips the packet to get the gum to chew on. It might help with the nerves.

The night breeze gently hits Ava's skin, feeling like the calm before the storm. She takes in the city in the distance, chewing away, not wanting Zori here. She’s not suited to this.

“You spend a lot of time near the Bearer; it’s like you’re protecting her or something. Should’ve let Vi beat and interrogate her. We already have a key person for intel. The person.”

Ava chews, furrowing her brow. “The last thing I’m doing is protecting Beatrice. She’s been kept out of the loop with her mother. I…”

“Pfft, she knows where the Paladins’ main whatever is, and she’ll know plenty of other places they operate out of. She’d know about Istanbul. She’d know where they’d keep Caitlyn; this is an unnecessary risk for someone who’ll be just as hard to break.” Zori flickers a slight annoyance in Ava, but she pushes it back.

“No, it isn’t. Lilith’s coming for us now, and we need to deal with her either way. And on Beatrice, she won’t break. Camila hasn’t, and she’s not even an experienced nutjob. We need leverage. Me holding a gun to Lilith’s head should give the bearer a push.” She hates herself when she says that. She hates the words. Her theory about Beatrice feels very plausible. Maybe it isn’t. But if it is and Beatrice finds out she can teleport, she feels an odd ache and also a more rational concern about Beatrice’s next move.

“I’d end myself. It’s expected of me.” Beatrice said something like that. If she is some sort of jumper the paladins twisted and used for their own gain, Beatrice might have a death wish for her beliefs and her hatred of the jumpers.

She turns her gaze to Zori, watching the distant lights, feeling more concern over Zori right now. “You should go. I shouldn’t have let you come. You’re not ready for this.”

Zoe creases her brow. “What? No. I want to help.”

Ava softens a tad. “If you get hurt, it’s on me. I don’t like it, Zori. We’ve got this. Go.”

Zori taps her foot looking put out, but she silently nods and doesn’t argue this time. She disappears into a jump, and that eases Ava. The people here are the best equipped to deal with paladins.

“Movement.” David communicates.

Ava readies herself and ducks down to stay out of sight just in case. David and Griffin have a better view of the whole docks.

“I’m counting ten armed paladins so far. Lilith’s at the front. Heading your way, Mary.” David ignites the night. Ava’s old fear resurfaced in her stomach.

That fear she felt as she fled from Lilith is difficult to ever forget. It’s been a long while now, and she doubts Lilith won’t relish a chance at vengeance.

She rests a knee down and focuses on the gaps between the shipping containers. Lilith and more will come out of there.

“Approaching.” Griffin jumps onto another container opposite David’s and gets on one knee to watch.

“On your signal, Mary.” Ava looks below again. Mary’s stopped pacing.

She checks on Vi, and she’s still in the same position. Patient to Ava’s relief.

One paladin, a middle-aged woman clearly not Lilith, appears out from the containers armed with an electrical rifle and in tactical combat clothing. More paladins aiming their weapons appear close by. And then the person Ava has had nightmare after nightmare about appears down the middle of the containers' gaps. She’s in that beige trench coat she wore that day that's plastered into Ava’s memory. It’s not a great view, but it’s Lilith. Not aiming her guns, just holding two weapons in both hands. The silver of the sword, similar to the one she cut Ava with, triggers a burn of Ava’s old scars in one hand and in the other an electrical shock weapon. Just like that day too.

Ava rubs the scar over her eye, hating the pit of dread in her stomach over Lilith.

Lilith spots Mary; she doesn’t react with violence, she just walks with purpose to Ava’s friend.

“I thought you were dead!”

Ava freezes. Thinking she’s been spotted up this high by Lilith. That voice. A voice Ava can’t forget.

“No! Why don’t you come close, and I’ll show you why I’m not!” Mary shouts back, stepping with the same no fear to Lilith. Mary's shotgun directed down at her side. Mary never said she’d met Lilith before.

The other paladins train their weapons on Mary. At least 10, and Lilith moves closer to Mary and stops a few feet away. “Where’s the Bearer? If you give her back, maybe I’ll make your death quick.”

Mary laughs bitterly. “Don’t worry about the Bearer; you’ll be joining her soon.”

Lilith scans the docks Ava sees from above. Knowing they’ll be more jumpers close. “How many of there are you tonight?”

“Enough.” Mary sterns.

Lilith rigidly turns her gaze to Mary. “No.” Lilith’s cold, threatening voice. No enjoyment like the day Ava bested Lilith. Just here for Beatrice. She activates her coiling shock baton, lighting the orange docks with blue light. “There isn’t.”

Zori appears again to Ava’s shock. “What are you doing!?”

Zori stubbornly raises her gun and cocks it. "I'm helping."

Mary whips her shotgun to her hip, and that’s signal enough. Ava takes out her handgun and jumps to ambush. No time for anything else. Having to accept Zori’s determination to assist.

Chapter Text

Back in Black by AC/DC

Chaos reigns, and Ava jumps to ground level, raising both her handguns, dual wielding, and seeing more approaching armed paladin fucks, she storms forward. No hesitation. She fires, aiming at the SWAT-like bunch with no fear and a tiny bit of exhilaration. Zori jumps next to her and fires too. David and Griffin appear in the dark gap of the containers to engage, and Vi and Mary, but Ava can’t focus on that right now. She fires on multiple paladins at once. Bang! Bang! She hits the armour of one, and another one she just misses, who then reacts with the firing of a shock blast from their rifle.

“Jump!” She shouts before the blast hits her and Zori. She pictures being behind the paladin with a combat helmet on and focused dead on Ava. She feels her body tug itself into the rift in reality, a warm tug she always loves. It’s like her whole body is sucked into a wormhole, and when she appears, the ripple in her buzzes her unlike any other feeling she’d felt before these powers. Incredible power like this being eliminated by these bastards is the sin. Not the power. Them. Paladins are sinners.

She points her gun at the spinning paladin's head. She pulls the trigger, and down he goes. Zori dispatches the other paladin, but feeling a weapon discharge behind her, Ava jumps again to her right, where David is hand to hand with multiple paladins. One throws a right cross to the side of his head as Ava arrives. She stops the blow with a forceful kick to the paladin's side. She jumps again and throws herself to whip the paladin's legs from under her. She falls, and Ava jumps to stand before she fires two rounds into her. No hesitation. Hesitate with these religious nutters, and they'll do the same to her in a heartbeat.

“Ahh!!” Vi in both a bulletproof vest and her own screams and opens rapid fire with an assault rifle at the incoming stream of opponents. Expelling her rage. Fighting for Caitlyn. She won’t need Ava’s assistance; she’s more than capable of clearing her side of this fight.

David and she fight together. They’re surrounded with paladins trying to shock them, but rigid and with both hands tight on his gun David fires at the head of one paladin, the knees of another, and then the chest of one more. Total John Wick vibes. Ava spins around his back and fires both ways with both weapons at more paladins, dispatching them fast. Fuck, she shouldn’t enjoy the thrill. But she does. She so fucking does, as they’re fired on by multiple paladins by the containers, and the orange light is taken over by blue.

“David!” She warns, and he clasps her hand to jump together. They appear behind the paladins, and he lets go so they both fire and take down the threats. One by one, shot by shot. They fall. Adrenaline is fuelling Ava’s body. The fear of death is in the background, but she has a worthy cause to fight for against people who kill hers for merely existing. It’s kill or be killed as a jumper. That’s just the reality. It started with Lilith, and it’s continued ever since.

Ava checks on Mary’s position briefly and finds her and Lilith at the base of the crane locked in a fight, with Mary shooting other paladins who try to interfere with shotgun blasts.

“Ava!” Zori screams.

Ava snaps her attention to her right and, of course, sees Zori has been hit and trapped. A paladin aiming a normal handgun at her head. “No!” She jumps, rigidly hits the gun aside, and then smashes at the paladin's arm to buckle it before a stiff discharge of her gun to the paladin's skull. She jumps again and again and again around Zori, fighting off and killing paladin after paladin. One shot in the ribs of one. Another at the head. One more at the feet and then the chest

Zori wilts to the ground with blue shock all rippling around her. Wires wrapping themselves around her body like the web of a spider covering there victim.

“Down!” Ava commands, and Zori lets herself slowly fall to one knee to not get caught in the crossfire.

“You!”

Lilith.

Ava, heaving for breath, lowers her weapon, wanting to help Zori. She turns to the voice. The voice as Mary engages multiple paladins in hand-to-hand combat distracted, and Lilith’s blade is slick with Mary’s blood. The recognition in Lilith at Ava immediate and wanting.

“Go! Ahh! Come on!” Zori focuses and jumps and jumps to fight the current keeping her in place. “It’s fine. Go! Kick her ass!”

Ava hesitates, but she jumps and appears in front of the paladin Ava will always see as her hunter. She overlooks the resourceful hunter for signs of there first fight as the chaos continues to take over the docks.

She has multiple fingers replaced by metal prosthetics. Her fingers froze off rather than her hands, like she joked to Beatrice. And they hold the blade that could cut her back once again in the same way and the baton rippling, ready to shock her.

Lilith clenches her jaw. “I’ve dreamt of this.”

Ava pants, nodding teasingly with no fear at her old foe. “Don’t tell Beatrice; she’ll get jealous. I haven’t thought of you at all, you fucking psycho. I’m not that scared lonely jumper anymore. You’re fucked tonight. Fucked!”

Lilith’s tongue pokes around her cheek like a slithering snake. She enrages. “What have you done to her!”

Ava shrugs. Her hands are shaking, holding her guns, but she hides them as she encircles Lilith. Trying to be aware of any other Paladins approaching. “I should’ve done more. Camila’s had a time; she’s stubborn. But Beatrice? When I have you? She’ll fold for you. She loves you.” She puffs out her hair that’s fallen into her eyes, prodding Lilith’s being. Mocking. “She told me so. But fuck me, she likes the look of me. You should’ve seen her. She almost…”

“Hold your sinful tongue!” Lilith snaps and sideways throws her baton at Ava’s head. Ava jumps. She appears behind Lilith, and fuck, she sees Lilith’s anticipation and her blade aiming to go right into her sternum.

Ava quickly pictures Lilith’s right and disparates to avoid the blade to jump to it.

“Ha!” Lilith’s blade swings upward, and Ava appears right in its path. The steel slices Ava’s chin and then upward to her cheekbone in a shocking and fast blow Ava couldn’t avoid. It jolts Ava to lift off the ground and tumble to it.

She roughly rests on her knees. Guns on the ground. She taps her shredded cheek with her fingers, not feeling the intense pain of it; it landed so quickly, but she feels the heat of her own crimson blood on her fingers. The amount of it as she places a palm over her face shocks her.

Lilith doesn’t laugh or mock; she just steps to Ava as Ava feels a dread and another scar to look at in the mirror, but worse, seeing Lilith for what she is again. The Hunter that almost killed her. She's never faced Beatrice in a fight like she has Lilith. She knows Lilith in that way. She knows who she can be.

Lilith stops above Ava, raising her bloodied sword to her chin. Stone-faced and keen for more of it. “You’ll wish you’d died that day we fought when I’m done with you.”

Pressuring the cut Ava with one hand quickly becoming totally crimson and one on the gravel Ava smiles through it all. Taunting and ready for round 2. She survived before, and she’ll do it again. But this is the last time she’ll need to survive against Lilith. “So many promises. You know I have a theory about your girlfriend. She’s like me, isn’t she? She senses us because deep down she’s one of us. I can feel it. How do you find them? Jumpers who can sense other jumpers? Do you rip them from their parents’ arms?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. She’s the bearer. It’s the gift blessed to us.”

“No.” Ava gulps down the taste of blood seeping onto her lips. “She’s just a manipulated different type of jumper. And when she realises, she’ll want to end herself. Maybe that’s why bearers all die so young – they’ve been warped to think they’re sins! They kill their own fucking kind for you!”

Lilith scoffs and twists her blade by the hilt. “Baseless. This fight has taken its toll on your mind, hasn’t it? Allow me to finish what I should’ve ended a long time ago.”

“Yeah. Try your best, bitch. Where have your fingers gone?” She sticks her tongue out mockingly, sparking more rage in the hunter above.

“Ahh!!” Lilith lunges her blade downward. Ava jumps, grabs Lilith from behind, and jumps again to Vi fighting off some paladins with her rifle.

Ava’s elbowed in the cheek and sent stumbling back.

“Vi! Help me restrain her!” She grips her cheek as Lilith is free and spins around to face them both. Ava has people now. She doesn’t need to face Lilith alone.

Lilith sees Vi, and Ava spots the flicker of something not just hate. Fear. Vi is imposing to anyone. “Who’s this?”

Vi drops her rifle and cracks her knuckles. “What have you done with Caitlyn!?”

Lilith chortles. “Who?”

Vi screams in pain and despair and storms at Lilith. She lunges to land a punch. Lilith goes to block, but the brutal power Vi has smashes Lilith back. Ava follows as Lilith brings out a gun to fire. Vi kicks it aside with a rough roundhouse kick. “Where!?”

Lilith’s shock at Vi’s strength is muted but there and she pushes back. She swings her blade at Ava and Vi at the same time and aims her gun at Vi’s midsection. Vi jumps. Ava ducks. She kicks at Lilith’s knee. “Ahh!!” Lilith buckles. Vi appears and throttles the hunter by her neck, constricting her airway.

“Tell me where she is!?” Vi shouts into Lilith’s ear.

Lilith laughs, choked. “We’ve got… a prisoner… I think Mother took her eye.”

Ava gets to her feet, and she and Vi share an agonised look. Ava likes Caitlyn. She’s a good person. Vi didn’t meet her long ago, but she’s been drawn to her courage and compassionate heart. And the paladins have taken from her. They never take prisoners but Caitlyn. She’s the unfortunate first.

Vi locks her jaw and tightens her tattooed arm. Strangling Lilith more. “Where!?”

Lilith quickly grabs another gun from her hip and fires to her right. Zori. Ava can only watch as Zori is hit at the shoulder, and Zori yelps before a fall. Lilith smashes her head back at the distraction, hitting Vi and pushing Vi back. She sprints. Ava limply watches, seeing Lilith’s intent as she heads to Zori. Ava jumps to block Lilith’s path. “There’s only one way to Beatrice.” She shakes with defiance, and blood drips down to the ground from her cheek.

Lilith goes to lunge at Ava, but a big hand grips Lilith by the back of Lilith’s neck, stunning her. “Tell me where!?”

Lilith frantically reaches back for reprieve from the grip, but she’ll get none from Vi.

Mary appears at Ava’s side with her raised shotgun.

“How’s it going, baby girl?”

Ava side-eyes Mary and shows off the blood. “New scar perhaps.”

Lilith kicks at Vi’s knee behind her, but Vi stays strong.

Vi sneers into Lilith’s ear. “Where is she?”

“Mother has plans for her!” Lilith laughs and struggles.

Shouldn’t have said that. Vi’s eyes flare, and she lifts Lilith high. Again shocking Lilith at the show of strength before Lilith is thrown brutally to the gravel.

“You think you’re going to take me?” Lilith defies and crawls along the ground with a reddened forehead and a bleeding nose. “You’re all nothing! Paladins!” She calls for aid.

Ava pities Lilith like she pities all of the paladins. “You’re not getting out of this…” Lilith reaches for something at her hip again. She raises a gun so fast Mary can’t react as the bullet rips through her leg. “Mary!?”

Ava goes to stamp on Lilith’s hand, but Lilith aims at Mary on the ground. “Take me to Beatrice, or I’ll end her.”

Mary groans, holding her leg, but jumps away, and a moment after, Vi kicks Lilith’s hand to rid her of her weapon before she grips Lilith’s neck and slams Lilith against the ground to silence her.

"I'll take you to her, don't worry." Ava kneels down to the Hunter. She has her. They have her. Ava lifts Lilith by her coat to see her bleeding face, hating her, wanting her gone. "I guess there were enough of us after all, huh?"

Gunfire sounds ahead of Ava. Griffin and David are dispatching the remaining paladins.

"You won't stop me from interrogating her, Ava." Vi declares.

"Of course not. We're getting Caitlyn back. I promise." She promises and means it. They'll find Caitlyn, and they'll end Suzanne in the process. She looks over the beaten Lilith, believing it more than ever.

Chapter Text

Nursing her broken wrist Beatrice made a makeshift wrist support for it with the coat she was brought to this cell in. It does the job. Her wrist is stabilised and resting on her chest. The bruising pain is lingering and won’t go away, to Beatrice’s uncomfortable feeling, but it’s done. She paid for being stupid when she knew Ava could do it.

The pain has masked any thinking for her. She’s just trying to calm down with no way out of this hellhole.

She hates feeling so powerless, though. She hates how Vi made her feel and how she’s become weak around Ava. She shouldn’t have let Ava hover over her like that. She shouldn’t be talking at all to her.

She dabs at her nose with a grimace. It’s still tender.

“What was that with Ava earlier?” Camila chirps up after being silent for hours. A new thing for Camila for sure.

“What’d you mean?” She rests her arm down on the bed, closing her eyes again. Confident Lilith will deal with the jumpers soon.

“It was like you and her wanted to fuck, as you said the usual spiel to her and she had her fun with you.” Camila speaks words Beatrice instantly scoffs at.

“Don’t be so ridiculous; she’s a sin. I’m…”

“She didn’t seem like a sin to you when she basically sat on your lap. I almost covered my ears; it was so obvious.” Camila interrupts. It’s bullshit. Utter nonsense.

“Do me a favour, Camila. Shut up till Lily arrives for us. Ava will be dead soon, so…”

“And you’d be so delighted by that, wouldn’t you?" Camila again stops Beatrice with sarcasm rife in her voice.

Beatrice grits her teeth hard. She has an annoying thought about Ava saying that’s bad for her teeth. She’s of course right. She slowly, against her defiance, stops it. “Yes, I would be. Stop being such…”

“A potty-mouthed religious paladin bitch?” Camila annoys again. It sounded funny from Ava. Camila just says it to mock her.

“Stop interrupting when I’m talking. Remember your place. I’m the Bearer, and if you don’t…”

“Stop talking to a jumper?” That does it.

“Shut up!” Beatrice swings her legs off the bed and quickly grips the bars of her cell. Hating even the insinuation she’s a jumper. It’s nonsense. Utter nonsense.

Camila tosses her stupid orange ball against the rock wall of her cell and catches it. That noise is grinding on Beatrice as the days go by. She despises that orange ball. The noise it makes when it’s the rock and Camila catches it. It's torture to listen to. She’d rather endure actual torture than hear it from Camila anymore.

“Stop throwing that stupid ball, Camila.” She grips the bars of her cell harder and harder, begging to have the strength to bend the bars and take that ball and throw it into the nearby sea she hears outside this place.

“No. You know she’s right, you know?” Camila throws the ball again and catches it. “You do swear a lot. You should hold your tongue.”

Beatrice swirls her tongue around her cheek, staring so hard at Camila like she could set fire to the rookie if she had that power. “You’re one to talk.”

“I guess.” Camila throws the ball in the air before she grabs it. “Are you going to give up everything you know for Lilith if they do capture her?”

Beatrice taps her forehead against the cold steel bars, not expecting the question. “No. It’s what Mother expects of us.”

“And you’d off yourself if you were a jumper, right?” Camila pushes.

“Of course. But it’s not true.” She shifts her shoulder uncomfortably and returns to the bed. Caged and going mad at being so. If she’s here forever, she’ll lose her sanity. Especially with Camila as a cellmate.

“We’ll see. As Ava said. We’ll see.”

The tone irks Beatrice again, but whatever. Camila can think what she likes. When this is over and all these jumpers are dead, Camila can be paired with someone in service at the North Pole for all she cares.

She closes her eyes and tries to get some rest. The wrist doesn’t help, but after a while of silence she falls into it.

A ripple in the air wakes her with a start. A loud thud in her cell jumps her.

An unconscious Lilith face down has entered her cell with Ava panting for breath above her with such a deep cut up Ava’s jaw and then cheek that it makes Beatrice wince. Ava’s hoodie is doused in the blood that drips from it.

“Hey Bearer. Told you I’d get her. Or we…technically, Vi did, but here she is. We’ll…” Ava is more than a little pale as she stumbles on her feet.

It's odd. Beatrice should feel nothing, but this is right. Ava should bleed. She should be purged. Ava’s abducted her and stuffed her in this cell for something like weeks now, or Beatrice has forgotten how long it’s been. But she feels this odd pain. It’s not her nose or her wrist. But it’s not nothing. She doesn't get it.

Ava gulps back something. Maybe sick at the pain of the cut into her flesh.

“You’ll need stitches for that.” She shouldn’t care, but she speaks those words as she sits on her bed.

Ava brings up some red-soaked cloth and covers her wound again. “Yeah, I’m gonna jump to a hospital; I just wanted to be the one to see the look on your face. I got her.” Ava points and tries to be roguish. She just sways after the fact and jumps back into her scar, and Beatrice watches it with the pain. The routine of seeing Ava be unharmed and her usual arrogant, confident self has shifted. Ava’s very much killable.

It should drop this veil that Ava has over Beatrice of power. Ava’s fast, but she bleeds, and Beatrice can make her bleed. But Beatrice doesn’t enjoy the fact. She slowly gets off her bed and steps to the scar, transfixed by it for the first time in a different way. It’s straight and golden but so barely visible, an ethereal cut into the fabric of reality. She waves her hand over it with fingers twirling down it. She burns as usual around jumpers or their scars.

She this time just…feels something tug inside. She feels the scar's warmth touch her skin and glides her gaze up and down the scar, the cut. It pulls Beatrice in and tugs at her in an entrancing manner she can’t get away from.

She feels this need to pinch the golden cut between her fingertips.

She steps back, not checking on Lilith or aware of if Camila has awoken from sleep too after Ava’s arrival. She just takes in the cut and has to pinch it.

She reaches over and tries to pinch the top. It lights at her touch. It doesn’t feel of anything but dust. But she feels she can close it. She feels it.

She starts to drag her pinched fingertips down, and the cut tightens as she goes. There’s no loud electric noise like there is when she uses the warp cannons to open these scars to jump after jumpers through. It just sounds like an echo in her ears, a breeze in the wind, so faint, like a calming breeze in summertime. The cut tickles her fingers. It’s so quickly addictive.

She finishes at the end of the scar, and it ripples like a string on a harp. A breeze touches Beatrice’s face and, as if it was never there disappears into nothingness.

She stares at the space the scar was and misses it. She wants the feeling back. She’d never felt anything like it. It felt like she was touching something spiritual. In tune with the fabric of existence. She’s run through them before, but she only felt the buzz of the cannon to open such a scar and the thrill of the hunt, like Mother taught her to follow and get lost in.

“Urgh.” Lilith groans.

Beatrice blinks repeatedly to be back in the moment and sees Camila hasn’t risen from her bed. She kneels down and turns Lilith over. Blood over Lilith’s nose drenching her lips. Lilith can’t have been beaten again. She’d vowed to never be like Ava made her be once more. She knows Lilith wouldn’t allow herself to be taken without a backup plan. She knows it. But she’s more intrigued by what she just did to Ava’s scar.