Josin L McQuein - Arclight

Halfway to the door, Anne-Marie shrieks “Mom!” as her mother resumes her attempt to strip her in public.

“Do you need any help?” Tobin asks Mr. Pace once they’re gone.

“I think you’ve done enough.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“You never mean it, Tobin. But that doesn’t make the damage any less, and it doesn’t deal with what you refuse to. Deal with it! I’m tired of cleaning up what happens because you won’t.”

“Jove attacked her, and no one made a move to stop it, so I did.” Tobin meets our teacher’s accusation without flinching. This time he wins over the rage; his hands never quite make the transition into fists. He stomps up the ramp and out of sight.

“You, too,” Mr. Pace says to me. “Get out of here.” He twitches his head toward the exit.

“He wasn’t lying,” I say. “Jove snapped. He was about to choke me.”

Mr. Pace takes a quick look at my throat, drawing in a hiss when he touches the cord marks left from my inhaler. He inspects my arm where the burn’s spread from under my alarm band.

“Get yourself checked out before you turn in for the day.”

“It’s not bad,” I protest. “Doctor Wolff has his hands full without me taking up space.”

Mr. Pace straightens into his “lecture” posture. Then he sighs, and lets it go. He’s not in the mood for another argument, and he knows there’ll be one if he tries to force me into the hospital. I’d hate that place even if Jove wasn’t there to remind me of what happened last night.

“Go straight to your room, and don’t tell Honoria I did this.” He overrides the code on my wristband, unlocking it, before pulling a small tube out of one of the pockets on his vest and squeezing cold, blue gel onto my skin.

“It tingles.”

“Good. That means the burn didn’t damage your nerves.” He caps the tube and hands it to me. “Keep the alarm in reach, on the other wrist or in your pocket, but not over the burn. If it bleeds or goes numb, promise me you’ll get it looked at.”

“I promise.”

“Good. Now get out of here. I don’t want to see you again until twenty-one hundred, got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

When we entered the bunker, all I wanted was a way out and fresh air. But now my leg’s heavy and uncoordinated; it drags with an ache I thought I’d healed past having to feel again. One side of me wants to run, the other can hardly walk.

By the time I’m back to the domicile halls, following the green line on the floor toward my room, I’m pulling myself along the rails. I pass people at intervals, but most pretend they can’t see me. They certainly don’t offer to help.

I pause to rest against the sign listing the procedure for finding a broken light, and spare a quick glance to the station at the middle of the hall to make sure the emergency call’s still in one piece. It’s weird not to have my alarm on my wrist. The band isn’t heavy, but it’s always there. The steady bump of the bracelet in my pocket with each step becomes a talisman to keep me focused until I reach my door and lock myself inside.

I dispose of my blood-soaked clothes and wash off before digging out the blue pajama shirt and pants assigned to kids in my year. I fall into bed and close my eyes, but the individual generators are louder than the main power supply, causing slight vibrations through the wall.

My brain refuses to calm, jumping from one frantic thought to another. If the Fade can make it through the Arc at high power, what’s to stop them from coming in during the day while we’re all asleep? In the place I came from, did we live our lives at night the way we do here? Was I odd there, too? Did I have friends?

I lie awake counting holes in ceiling tiles, and wonder how old I am. Fifteen to seventeen is Dr. Wolff’s best guess. Two years isn’t a wide spread, but it seems wrong to not know.

Everything seems wrong.

I pull my blankets over my head and try to shut the world out, but it blocks the thrum of machinery within the walls, and I can’t stand the silence, so I kick the covers loose and climb out of bed in the dark.

The Arclight trains its children to fear the dark, but I can’t fear the familiar. Darkness is all I know, and the passing weeks don’t change that. I don’t remember a world before the fluke of my survival was deemed a miracle.

I don’t feel like a miracle. I feel like a scared and lost little girl who doesn’t remember how to find her way home.

It has to be a mistake—the Fade are too powerful. They rip down walls with their bare hands. I can’t be stronger than that. No one can.

I stare at myself in the mirror and don’t know what I’m looking at. A face, of course. Eyes for seeing, a mouth for talking, and nose and ears for all the rest. The parts I get, but not the whole. I’m a puzzle with the pieces still jumbled.

Everyone looks like someone here. Anne-Marie has dark skin like her mother and brother, with the same eyes and mouth. My yearmates share features common among themselves, but no one looks like me. Silver’s hair is blonde, but not the white of sun-bleached stone. Dante’s eyes are blue, but his are dark and wide; mine aren’t. Honoria and Lt. Sykes are fair, but at least they have freckles. A paleness clings to my skin, no matter how long I stay in the sun.

How far did I run to be so different?

I don’t know, and that’s terrifying.

My first memory is throwing up. Retching over the bed rail in what they later told me was the hospital. I sat up and looked around a room I didn’t know, saw the backs of people I couldn’t name. I couldn’t even name myself.

“Where was she found?” Honoria’s voice was the first sound I heard other than my own sickness.

“Klick and a half into the Grey, on the short side. She was hiding in the water.”

Honoria talked with others in a huddle off to the side. A fog around my brain made it impossible to think straight or understand what they were saying. It was only later that I was able to sort the words into real sentences.

Putrid water and black bile hemorrhaged out of my mouth, clearing the Dark from my body, and by the time the spasms calmed, I barely had the strength to wipe my face, so someone else did it for me. That was my introduction to Dr. Wolff.

“Easy there.” He peeled me off the bed rail, laying me back against a pillow, but I was convulsing too hard to lie still. “It’s the medicine, but it’ll get better. I promise.”

All I could see clearly was white clothes and a man with brown skin and no hair. Everything else was a blur of flat walls and the intrusion of shapes in front of them.

Where am I?

The words sounded right in my head, but when I tried to speak, it didn’t work. I knew what I wanted to say, but my tongue was too heavy to twist around the syllables.

Why am I here?

“Don’t try to talk, yet,” Dr. Wolff said. “Your vocal cords are raw.”

I didn’t know what that meant, and couldn’t ask, but I still tried.

Where are the others?

There had to be others. I couldn’t be the only one left.

A glass came close to my mouth, resting on my lips to give me a drink. Fresh water was a foreign thing after what I’d thrown up. I couldn’t get the bitter taste of the Dark out of my mouth, or the smell out of my nose.

Why am I alone?

My questions came with tears that did nothing to cool my cheeks. My leg burned where it was bandaged, my throat was seared from screaming questions, and my skin flared every time someone touched me. I was on fire.

“Calm down, sweetheart, no one wants to hurt you.”

Please . . . let me go . . .

“Do you remember me?” another voice asked. Now I know it was Mr. Pace, but then it was just more noise.