Page 29

Malia

Drip, drip

The sound of the unknown liquid gradually falling onto my skin, one drop at a time, fills the space around me.

There’s a bright light shining in my face, one my parents forgot to turn off after their last visit when they asked me whether I was ready to bend to their will and submit fully yet.

I ignored them despite the part of me that wanted to concede. I’m a fighter. I can’t cave.

I don’t remember if they set my broken finger or not.

I’d long since stopped noticing the pain in the face of my other hand’s agony.

I’ve been here like this for days.

Has it been days? It’s impossible to keep track.

There’s no window here, just the bright light shining in my face.

A bright light...

As I squint at it, my vision blurs, an ache building behind my eyes at the effort to keep them open.

I grit my teeth and try to keep myself tethered to reality.

I should know better by now. I can’t fight the memories when they swarm me. They always drag me under, no matter how small the trigger, and I’m helpless to do anything but hang on for the ride. With nothing else to do in this endless silence, my mind has taken to sifting through my confusing memories, real and fake.

I’m brought back to when I arrived at Arcane.

Back when the memories they planted of my parents developed fully overnight, filling any gaps there might have been after I’d just woken up.

As always, the memory eventually fades and I’m back in this cursed cell my parents left me in.

My real parents that are very much alive and always have been, not the ones the academy created for the picture perfect childhood memories they planted in my head after kidnapping me.

My head pounds harder.

I can’t believe the academy would manipulate me like that.

I can’t believe they kidnapped me.

They’re supposed to be the good guys. There’s so much that doesn’t make sense. I want to believe that Adira wanted to do me a favor, that growing up in one of these camps as my mother’s sister was bad enough that she wanted to save me from it and take away all the bad memories I’d acquired before, but the fact remains that all she’s ever done was lie to me. And she hasn’t come to get me back since I was taken.

Drip, drip

As I regain consciousness, I’m reminded of the upside of sifting endlessly through old memories.

It takes away the pain.

It takes me to a time and place where I wasn’t tied to this chair experiencing this twisted form of torture. The distinguishing sound alone reminds me it’s just an unknown liquid falling down onto the same patch of skin on the back of my hand, again and again, not a ten pound sledgehammer. Still, with every drop, my mind tries to trick me into thinking that my bones are being shattered by the force of it. That they must be, considering the wide net of agony that ripples along the limb.

The door to this hellhole opens and I’m flooded with dread.

Being left alone with the never-ending liquid penetrating my hand is a certain kind of nightmare, but having my parents come in here to question me is worse.

They want to know everything I’ve learned about the academy to plan another attack, but I haven’t told them anything. No matter what tools they’ve used to carve me open or break my bones. No matter how many times they’ve dry drowned me with their powers. I haven’t caved, and I won’t. I could never look my peers in the eyes again after they’ve rescued me if I spoke now, so I’ll keep gritting my teeth and screaming until my voice is too raw to make a sound either way.

“So, Child, have you come to your senses already? There’s no use in protecting those people after they lied to you, don’t you understand? They never cared about you.

Adira only ever wanted to hurt me by taking you.

Why else do you think they haven’t come to your rescue?” my mother coos in that soft voice she starts every session with. I ignore her, keeping my eyes shut as if I were asleep even though there’s no way I’m fooling anyone. They can feel my accelerated heartbeat with just a thought. They can also feel my heart skip a beat every time my mother mentions them abandoning me, so she does it repeatedly. She wants to cut me down emotionally as much as my father enjoys hurting me physically.

They haven’t found the camp yet.

It is hidden well in these ruins of a city long fallen surrounded by miles of forest.

It’s understandable that they would need time to find it. I reassure myself mentally that that’s why I’m still here. They’re still looking for me. They must be. All the times they referred to me as their star pupil, the biggest hope against the Dark Fraction... they must have meant something. Kaz would never leave me here. Neither would Wystan or Dustin. Hell, my classmates all liked me. They would never agree to let me rot here.

In the silence that follows my refusal to reply, I can hear my father moving his tools around.

He’s making as much noise with it as possible.

He wants me to dread this to the point where I’m shaking before he first draws blood.

It’s always like this.

My mother lashing out with her words the longer I stay silent, my father enjoying my screams until my body mercifully gives out and I drift into the sweet relief of unconsciousness.

Drip, drip

I don’t know how much time has passed since I was locked in here, this dark, bottomless cell that smells of blood and feces and sweat.

Long enough for the pain in my mutilated legs to subside to a mere tingle, trumped by the ache in my hand that makes it hard to think of anything else.

The tingles are but an inconvenience, an itch in the back of my mind that makes me want to apply any sort of pressure to wipe them away. But I can’t. Not with the restraints bound so tightly around every other inch of my body, tying me to the prickly chair at my back.

Whether the restraints around my thighs help reduce the blood loss or only increase the tingles, I’m not sure.

They could be there to make the quiet periods of waiting between my interrogations, like this one, more uncomfortable or to ensure that I stay alive despite the deep cuts marring my legs.

They’re not necessary as restraints. Not in this excessive manner. Not when my parents’ power exceeds mine so vastly, as they’ve proven repeatedly in a show of my own failure. Mine and the trainers’ at Arcane.

They’d failed to teach me how to use my powers in the years I was with them, making me start from the top at ten when I’d already learned much more as a child, only to keep the cover of my new identity.

I thought I was doing enough there, every small achievement feeling like a huge success, but I know now that we’ve only ever scratched the surface of what handlers could really do.

Drip, drip

My head swims with dizziness.

When was the last time I was fed? I can’t remember.

It doesn’t matter though, the dizziness distracts me from the liquid dripping onto my hand. I’ve lost sensation over my fingers a long time ago. I sometimes wonder if my hand is even still there, attached to the rest of me, but I cannot turn my head to check. At least the memories are coming less frequently now than when I first arrived here. How long ago was that?

I don’t know.

Drip, drip

If only the liquid were water.

I could have manipulated it to stop hurting me a long time ago.

At first, I thought this was a test for me to rise to and prove something to my parents. They always did like to throw me into the cold water and make me figure out how to get out myself, I know that now, but I’m sure that whatever it is that’s dripping onto my skin relentlessly doesn’t have any water in it for me to control.

As I listen to the dripping noise and stare into the darkness that surrounds me, another memory tickles at the corner of my mind.

One that was restored recently.

The one of my parents nearly drowning me in their mission to wake my powers.

That was a horrible day, but it taught me more than one valuable lesson.

Not only did it trigger my powers, but it showed me that I could save myself.

That I had to save myself because no one else had my back. I forgot that lesson like the rest of my childhood memories when I was taken by Arcane and got used to being pampered.

Still, I saved myself from drowning that day when I was five.

Maybe it’s time that I stop waiting for Arcane to save me now and do what I did back then.

Figure it out. I’m sure they’re still looking for me, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try to get out of this place myself. That way, I could meet my rescue team somewhere in the middle. They would probably appreciate finally getting to rest. I don’t know how much time has passed since I was locked in here, this dark, bottomless cell that smells of blood and feces and sweat, but it must have been a while. The rescue team must be about as tired as I am. I am getting really tired.

Drip, drip

I recall drops of blood on the pavement.

My blood.

The day I nearly died from a gunshot wound to the stomach.

Had Keahi not brought me straight back to the academy’s infirmary, I probably would have been too far gone for the healers to save.

I thought that was the worst pain I’d ever be in, but I could laugh at that notion now.

What I wouldn’t give for Keahi to burst through that creaky door of my cell right now to bring me back to the infirmary again. Or any other Arcanian, really. I’m not picky. I just need them to find me already.

It's hard to admit to myself how close I am to cracking.

To giving my parents anything and everything just so I could get a quick break from this room and all the horrors it brings with itself.

But I can’t rat them out. They’ve given everything to save my life before. They’ll do it again. There’s no way they would let me die here after all their efforts to keep me alive.

Right?

I’m not as confident in that fact as I was before.

Drip, drip

I’m losing my mind.

I don’t know how much time has passed since I was locked in here, this dark, bottomless cell that smells of blood and feces and sweat.

Long enough for the memories to come less frequently and the feeling that there are two people squashed into one body to move to the back of my mind.

They’re still in there, the bubbly pupil the Arcane Academy created to their liking and the little girl that was raised in the camp of the Dark Fraction, waging a war against one another that most likely won’t end until one has proven more resilient than the other.

And if neither can get me out of here, then it might be time to cut them both out and create a third person.

One that is strong enough to get out of this damned chair. One that isn’t held back by misplaced loyalty or fear. One that isn’t haunted by memories.

It must have been months that I’ve been rotting here.

My body doesn’t feel like mine, my mind is fragile, and my emotions are so thoroughly wrought out that I’m not sure if there’s any distinguishable feeling left inside of me.

I don’t think they’re coming for me. I don’t think anyone is coming.

Drip, drip

My parents are here, talking amongst themselves as I stare at the back of my eyelids.

I don’t have enough strength left in me to open them.

I barely even hear the conversation being held two feet away from me, but there’s a word that registers. They’re talking about my seventeenth birthday. It was yesterday. They’re frustrated that I’m still acting like a stubborn child when I’m so close to being of age, but I tune them out again.

I’m seventeen.

That means, Keahi has been eighteen for months.

He’s been on the force for months, free of any shackles the academy might have had on him, and he hasn’t come to save me.

The last strings holding my mind together unravel as something in my chest fractures.

I’ve been rotting here for a year and a half.

Oh, Stars.

I feel sick to my stomach.

They left me here to die.

All of them did.

My parents were right.

They never cared.

I was about as important to them as I am to my parents; a means to an end and nice to use while around but not enough to care for.

A memory I’ve tried my hardest to ignore so far finally catches up with me, demonstrating just how foolish I’ve been to stay hopeful for as long as I was.

I mean, Keahi told me clear as day what I meant to him the last time we talked, didn’t he? “Of course, she means nothing!” That’s what he had last said about me before I was taken.

I was silly enough to make excuses for it, to not believe the words, but now that I know he left me here to rot, I think that he was right.

I mean nothing to the people I grew up with and nothing to the people that created me.

I mean nothing to him, to everyone, so it might be time to leave any unrequited loyalty behind so that they become nothing to me.

All of them. Both sides. I will be part of nothing, after they all proved to me that I will never belong

There’s a fire in my chest, a burning sensation that wants to spread through me, to fill me up until I burst with it, but I am done with fire.

I hate fire.

I reach for my source, the crystal blue well inside of me that stores my powers, and let it quench the fire in my veins. I keep my eyes closed as if I could see the water eating the flames alive, and once every last ember has been extinguished, I let it freeze over.

I enjoy the absence of any physical pain for a beat, but it’s the utter lack of any emotional fatigue I relish in.

This is it.

The fire is gone, my water in its place, and I let it cover any wounds and weaknesses until there’s nothing left but the cold, impenetrable surface of the ice. I keep my eyes closed, and I feel the ice changing, my source with it until everything that was once crystal-clear blue turns the shade of the darkest of night skies. Good, I think. I always felt most comfortable among the moon and the stars.

Drip, drip

The next time the door opens, I’m not scared.

When my father starts singing his sadistic tunes, filling the dark space with promises of unending pain, there’s no dread.

When my mother stands at his side, preparing his tools, I feel no need to whimper or fight against my restraints. They want the soldier that was taken from them seven years ago, the perfect weapon. I didn’t understand before, lacking the strength to see it, but I see now. I will let them have what they want, I will play along and let them mold me into yet another version of myself. One I can add to my collection of failed pet-projects, one I will become so good at impersonating that they won’t know what hit them when I turn on them, too.

I am nothing, belonging to neither side of this war, but I’ll let them think they’ve won.

I’ll become their perfect weapon, so perfect that the next time I fight them, there will be no question left as to who is the strongest.

I will be patient, I will learn whatever they offer to teach me, and I will make them all pay.

My parents don’t taunt me this time.

Not when I stay as silent as a ghost while my father hurts me.

Instead, my mother eventually hums in satisfaction and my father sets down his tools with a loud clunk. “There she is. Welcome back, Malia. I’m glad to see you’re finally ready to get back on track. Your training starts tomorrow, you’re free to heal any lingering aches if you can in the meantime. Sleep tight.”

They take off my restraints for the first time in a year, but I don’t attempt to move until I’m alone.

I know this will hurt.

It must when the dull spikes have basically become a part of my backside over the last year, imbedding themselves deeper and deeper into my flesh the more I writhed in pain. A part of me doesn’t want to try and get up at all, but I have to do it and be ready to face my father in the morning. This is what I wanted; to get out of this hellhole. Now I’m so close to getting it, all I have to do is tear my blistered, raw skin off this chair of nightmares and heal any wound or scar that’ll present me with lasting aches.

In a slow motion, I turn my head and finally glance at the hand that’d been assaulted by the liquid for over a year straight.

The skin looks weathered a little irritated, but there’s nothing more to it.

I tear my gaze away and look at my other hand to find my index finger still sticking out at a weird angle. So I guess they healed nothing of all the things they’ve done to me. My shredded Arcane uniform and the scars peeking out from beneath the scraps are further proof.

A lump forms in my throat, and it’s then that I take stock of the water and food lying near the entrance of the cell.

I just have to get up first.

With gritted teeth, I move my arms to grip the sides of my chair.

Every weakened muscle groans at the movement, making my eyes water.

What have they done to me? I’m shaking by the time I’m sitting upright but don’t allow myself to stop. A muffled scream locked behind closed lips, I swing my legs off the side and land feet-first on the floor. Before I can declare it a victory, I collapse on all fours and barely catch myself before I face-plant.

I crawl towards my food, easing into the motions slowly until I can feel some of the stiffness alleviate.

Good.

This is good.

When I stuff my face with the first warm meal in over a year, I nearly throw up in the aftermath.

It’s too much, yet not enough after living off of stale rations I barely remember chewing.

Once I’m done, all I want to do is pass out right there and then.

If only I didn’t have to worry about my parents finding me in a compromising position that’ll make them think I’m not strong enough to be out of this cave yet.

No.

I massage my limbs slowly, leaning against a wall, and map all the aches and twinges of pain. Everything that could prove an inconvenience, I heal, but I refuse to touch the other ugly scars marring my skin. Not because I can’t but because I want to look every bit the monster that I need to become. My ravaged skin serves as the reminder that I need.

Part 5

Age: 19