SNOWLOCK LABORATORIES: A BETTER FUTURE, TODAY!

  Luna stared up at the massive digital billboard in front of her. It was by far the biggest one she had seen in the city. After running away from the party, she had managed to make her way further down in the city where she could no longer see the stars. From where she stood now, the stars on this billboard shined even more brightly. It was the only glimpse of the stars that most of the citizens could ever hope to see, and most of it was covered up by the face of a smiling man. His hair was slicked back and he wore a white lab coat. His smile looked perfect with pristine white teeth that shined brighter than the stars around it. Everything on the man was straight and orderly without even a single hair out of place.

  Luna looked down at the hand that she had broken before. She inspected it carefully, turning it to give her a view from every angle. She felt a soft, throbbing pain, and it was sensitive to the touch. Still, she could feel that the fracture had fixed itself. She could move each of her fingers. It had only been a few hours, but the only clear evidence of what had transpired was the dried blood on her knuckles. “What the hell happened to me…?”

  Luna felt a buzzing come from her pocket. She sighed and rolled her eyes as she reached into it and pulled out the phone that her mother had given her before she left for the party. She stared at the text on screen that read “Your Loving Mother.” She had to change that later. She pressed the green button and raised it to her ear.

  “Where the hell are you? I got a call that Olivia is in the hospital, what happened?” The voice coming from the phone was so loud that Luna had to pull it away from her ear.

  Luna considered her response for a moment as she looked down at her knuckles. “I left early.” She sighed and looked up at the billboard again. “Party was a bust. Figured I could find something better to do. Is Olivia ok?”

  “You figured you could find something better to do? What does that even mean?”

  “Do you care?” Luna responded calmly and assuredly.

  There was a brief pause before her mother continued. “Olivia will be fine. She just got too drunk.”

  Luna felt the pain in her hand worsen. She looked down to see that she was clenching the fist. Instead of stopping, she just gritted her teeth and looked away again.

  “I am more worried about poor Theo. Some lunatic broke his arm and his ribs and… honestly, from what I heard, most of him! They say he should make a full recovery but not for a while!”

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Luna shut her eyes and sighed. No matter how much time he spent in pain, it wouldn’t be enough. “Damn.”

  “Right? I was afraid that you might have gotten caught up in all of that mess too! God forbid you’re dead in a dumpster somewhere because of that reckl-”

  Luna rolled her eyes and hung up. She replaced the phone in her pocket and leaned back, letting out a long, dramatic sigh.

  Her gaze slowly drooped down until she was staring at the other nearby rooftops and catwalks that connected various buildings and walkways. As she looked between them, her eyes started to dart around, taking note of the intricacies of each. She could practically envision herself jumping from roof to roof. She raised her eyebrows at the thought. She knew getting down here was easy for her, but she had never taken the time to process what she was doing. She slowly pushed herself to her feet and stood on the edge of the roof she was on, pressing her feet against it anxiously.

  She took a deep breath as she started to envision herself jumping between them again. This time, she focused on each jump individually. Some, as she focused on them, were clearly not possible. She could envision herself missing the jump entirely and plummeting. She didn’t know why, but she knew exactly how much strength she had and exactly how far she could jump. Others, as she focused on them, it was clear that she could make it if she exerted just the right amount of energy and caught herself just the right way.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she mumbled to herself as she looked down to the streets below. If she missed, it was over. She looked up again and took a deep breath. She wouldn’t miss.

  Luna turned and took just as many steps back as she needed to. She then turned back around and looked out from the rooftop to the next one. In an instant, she mapped out exactly what path she was going to take. Without wasting another moment, she sprinted forward.

  Luna leaped off the edge of the roof, catching herself on the next with little issue. She twisted around and used an exposed vent to spring herself up to catch the railing of a catwalk. She swung under the railing and slid along it then leaped her feet and kept her sprint. She ran further down the catwalk before using the railing on the other side to spring toward the next building, running along the wall to keep her airborne for longer.

  Every step was predetermined and every jump was made with confidence. It felt like she had done it a million times before, but she had no memory of the feeling. She kept leaping from building to building with precision she never thought possible, climbing higher and higher with each passing moment.

  As she sprinted toward the edge of her current rooftop, something within her felt like it was screaming for her to stop. She dug her feet into the ground, grinding to a halt just before the edge. As she looked off into the city below, she finally realized how tired she was. Her heart was pounding so fast, she could hardly think. She turned around and looked behind her. She had no idea how far she had actually gone, but she knew that billboard was nowhere to be seen.

  “Fuck…” she heaved. She lifted her hands up and looked down at them. “What the hell was that…?”

  As she stared and tried to catch her breath, she could hear a voice over her shoulder. “Perfection.” She whipped her body around instantly with wild panic, but nothing was there. She stood on the rooftop just as alone as she had been all night.