Page 26

Malia

I’m silent now as I sit in a dark room.

Not a room, exactly.

I guess it’s more of a cell. Dried streaks of my tears still mark my cheeks, and as much as the urge to keep crying remains, I physically cannot. I’ve run all out of tears hours ago. Or maybe it’s only been a couple of minutes.

I don’t know what I’m doing here or what my captors could possibly want from me.

By now, I’ve figured out who my captors are.

The Dark Fraction. The expression on Kaz’ face when he tried to plead with them, their uniforms, along with the fact that they are handlers are enough hints for me to be sure.

I hear steps approach and stand up, hoping to appear less like the little, lost kid I feel like.

A tall woman enters my cell, followed by a man.

"Oh, look at you!" the woman gushes, cupping my face and smiling at me.

My skin starts itching beneath her touch, and I pull away to back up against the wall.

"I’m so sorry about the cell, my dear.

The guards didn’t know where to bring you since you were struggling so hard," she goes on.

My dear? I suppress the urge to snap at her and ball my hands into fists.

"You look just like your mother," the man says almost lovingly.

It gives me a short pause.

These people knew my mother? I look between the two of them.

"My mother?" My voice is shaky, but I stand tall.

They exchange a confused look before turning to study me closely.

"You don’t remember us?" the man asks.

I shake my head, weary.

"Malia, we are your parents." The woman takes my hands into hers, but I keep shaking my head and try to snatch it back.

That can’t be true.

"You’re lying.

My parents died in a car crash over five years ago."

"What makes you think that?" asks the man.

"I remember.

Before the academy took me in." They exchanged another look.

"They must have messed with your memory.

Malia, whatever they told you is a lie," the woman tells me with a sudden intensity while the man slams a fist into the wall.

If I thought they were unnerving acting calm and compassionate, I’ve just made it so much worse.

"No, we were in Sicily, and it was my birthday." I shake my head.

They are trying to manipulate me.

And it’s so confusing. This is not the way I expected my first interaction with members of the Dark Fraction to go.

"We’ve never been to Italy.

These are all lies! We were on our way to your official initiation when we were attacked.

The academy didn’t take you in, they kidnapped you! Can’t you remember?" The man’s voice is shaking slightly with unrestrained anger.

I shake my head and press myself deeper into the wall.

I need to get out of here before these lunatics do Stars-know-what to me.

These people are unstable. I have to leave.

"This is a misunderstanding.

Please, let me go home," I beg them.

The woman raises an eyebrow, her expression turning cold.

"You are home.

And it is not a misunderstanding.

We talked to you. Don’t you remember?"

The dreams. Oh stars.

"Please, I just want to go home," I repeat, and before I understand what is happening, a burning sting sears across the side of my face.

My hand flies up to it out of instinct and I gape at the woman who just slapped me.

"You won’t speak of that place like this again.

You are home now," she insists.

"Take that hand off your face! They raised you to be weak in that place, but don’t worry, we will fix you again." I drop my hand at the man’s words.

Fix me? A cold shudder runs down my spine, but the two adults don’t notice, too engaged in their conversation now.

"We need to get her memories back first," the man mutters to the woman.

She nods and with just a look, everything around me disappears.

I wake up to blinding agony splitting me open along my hairline.

I try to reach for my head to stop whatever it is that’s tearing me apart only to find my hands tied to something.

"She’s waking up.” I hear the words, though I remain unseeing.

"Good." I recognize the voice of the tall woman.

"But Ma’am," the stranger tries to protest but gets caught off.

"I said it’s good.

Continue."

My skull feels like it’s being obliterated by a hammer as a scene comes to focus in front of me and I’m dragged into a different time, a different place.

I try to crawl away or curl into a ball, scream, or do just anything that can make this stop.

It’s all to no avail.

There’s water above my head.

Water all around me.

I’m surrounded by darkness, feeling weightless. I’m untethered, but not wholly. There’s something hard and solid pressing onto the top of my head. Keeping me down. My panic rises and my limbs start to thrash, but I stand no chance against my father’s strength as he pushes the object down on me. I can’t touch the bottom of the lake for leverage. I am trapped and I’m drowning.

They hadn’t given me instructions before they shoved me into the deep end.

They only told me to relax and focus, but I don’t know what to focus on.

My lungs start burning, my head feels light, and I really want to take a deep breath. Usually, they tell me what I have to do during my exercises. Maybe this isn’t a test at all. Maybe they really are drowning me, getting rid of me because I’m useless to them if I can’t control my element.

Just when I think about giving in and just opening my mouth to end this pain, a strange tingle awakens in my chest.

I cannot really place it, but I focus on it as it spreads through me.

My fingers flex as it reaches them, and I let them move on their own accord. An image flashes before my mind’s eye, something that looks like a ball of clear water floating in a black abyss. Then, there’s what feels like a small explosion in the palm of my hands, and I’m being shoved upwards by an invisible force. My father removes the board over my head, or maybe I push through it, and I finally reach the surface.

I sputter and shake uncontrollably as my father takes me by the arm and lifts me up onto the dock.

My shoulder feels like it’s about to be pulled out of its socket for the seconds I’m suspended in the air, but I know better than to cry out.

Instead, I double over on my hands and knees, pressing my forehead onto the wood beneath me as I take a deep breath.

“There, there,” my mother tuts.

“No need to be so dramatic.

You could have been out of the water in a second if you had just done what you needed to sooner.” That being activating my powers. I don’t protest and say she never told me there was a rush. Or that they didn’t give me instructions before throwing me into the water. I learned how to swim just last summer, in time for my fourth birthday. I’ve never been in water this deep.

Protesting never works in my favor, so I stay silent with my forehead pressed to the dock.

Finally, there’s a rough hand on the back of my neck, squeezing so hard that I cannot breathe until I lift my head.

“That is enough, Malia. Sit up straight,” my father chides, and I do as I’m told, blinking away the insistent sting in my eyes.

The scene blurs.

I’m restrained on the bed again, fully dry and with an even worse headache.

It was a memory. They weren’t lying. They’d pushed me underwater as a child to trigger my powers.

"Her vitals are not looking good, ma’am." The voice sounds anxious.

I can only take one shaky breath before I’m forced into another memory.

I’m in a dark room with my mother behind me.

I’m wearing the clothes I had on when I arrived at the academy.

The ones I’d thought I had gotten at the hospital.

I recognize the day as my tenth birthday.

My mother and I walk outside, and dozens of people suddenly attack us.

People wearing the Arcane uniform. They sedate my mom somehow, quickly making her drop limp before one of them crouches down in front of me.

The stranger smiles warmly and tells me to take her hand.

I do it.

Maybe I shouldn’t, but these people just took out my mother and are offering me an out. I never thought running away was an option; my parents are too strong to outrun, but maybe these people are stronger. Maybe I’ll be safe with them.

The scene blurs and darkness takes over.

I’m no longer restrained.

Instead, I lie in a dark and damp room, alone. I have no clue what time it is, but I feel different. I remember. I wish I didn’t.

The memories the academy gave me of my childhood were bright and beautiful while the reality is cruel and sickening.

The two adults that I met in the cell truly are my parents, but they shouldn’t be.

They didn’t raise me like the made-up ones did, they used harsh methods to make me strong.

I sit up and look around.

I’m in another dark cell with mud walls and an uncomfortable bed.

My head is throbbing but it’s not the worst part. I feel like there are two people trapped inside my body. There’s me, who grew up in Italy with loving parents and got adopted by the institute, and there’s old Malia.

She doesn’t have friends and is nothing more than a weapon in process.

That’s not me, I try to reassure myself even as doubts creep up on me.

Maybe it is. Maybe she is what I am, and the past five years were an illusion. Someone had changed my memories and shaped me to be who they wanted.

I don’t want to be the other me.

I’m back in her home, with her people and I hate it.

I was her for much longer than I was the made-up Malia, and now contradicting emotions of the two versions are messing with me.

At least some things make sense now, like me being a “fast learner”.

I wasn’t a fast learner, I’d already learned what they tried to teach me, even if I didn’t remember