“What about that one?”

I felt her voice more than I heard it.

It came in a soft whisper that tickled over my cheek, hot like the sun that was burning our skin, but cool like the breeze. As confusing as a woman should be.

“I see a toad… or perhaps a prince.” She answered her own question in a whisper, the sound almost lost in the waves that were not far from us.

The steady rhythm of the ocean was relaxing, almost as much as her fingers that trailed up my arm, the touch leaving a line of burning heat behind it.

“How about a toad prince?” I said lazily, lost in the sensation of her touch.

She giggled at that, the sound was the soft bell of chimes in my soul and I exhaled letting the calm joy she was infecting me with take hold.

Finally, I opened my eyes to the blazing sun, the clouds that drifted over us looking like puffs of spun sugar moments before they melted.

There was not a toad or a prince in sight.

“It’s called The Frog Prince…” she couldn’t even correct me properly, she was laughing too hard.

“Where you were raised perhaps, but I met the author.” Her giggles only increased at that, the sound off in my head as I tried to understand what was going on, and why I would lie about such a thing.

“He was a toad,” I continued, my heart swelling as I shifted my weight in the sand, turning toward her bright smile. “So, I can’t think of a more perfect way to describe him.”

“Your life. It amazes me sometimes,” she whispered, the soft touch of her fingers coming to a halt.

Yes. They were words I wanted to say, but they never came.

I knew the story, the fairy tale. Although why I knew it, and why I would lie about meeting an author that lived hundreds of years before made no sense to me. The words had poured from me with such an assurity of honesty, however, that I could not question them further.

Joclyn twisted in my arms as she giggled, shifting her weight until she hovered over me, the tips of her hair tickling my cheek.

I loved the feeling of it, the feeling of her so close to me, pressing against me. I loved the touch of the hair that smelled so divine. But I loved her more.

I loved her.

I wasn’t sure if I controlled my hand as I reached to her, as I swept her hair back and ran my fingers down her jaw, over her neck, around the mark behind her ear. The wind blew cold, pulling at her hair and the tall green grass that we were nestled in.

Neither of us noticed. She was too focused on my touch; I on the warmth of her skin.

Her eyes were fire as she watched me, her lips pressing into a tight line at the sensations. I had seen her so often in my dreams, I had seen her in flashes, and watched moments of a past I wasn’t sure I would regain.

But this felt so real.

It was so different.

The way she looked at me felt real, the heat from her skin felt real, the pressure of her body against mine felt real. It wasn’t a shadow of memory, it wasn’t a moment that jerked and jumped in my mind like a dream. It was clear and perfect, right down to the feeling of her thunderous pulse underneath my fingers.

My body was heating on its own in a reaction that having her this close was doing to me.

“Joclyn…” I breathed, still unsure if I was controlling this dream or if it was just another memory.

She smiled at her name, her fingers lifting from the blanket to trail over my face, sending yet another wave of heated emotions through me.

“Jan…” The word was breathy and familiar in all the wrong ways.

Joclyn smiled from where she lay over me, her eyes closing as my fingers moved up her neck, combing through her flyaway lengths.

“Jan…”

The hiss came again, cutting through the serenity of my dream as everything began to freeze. Together we turned toward the sound, into the brush that lined the beach. Nothing was there.

“Jan…” The whisper came again as everything began to grow dark, as everything began to grow cold. The mark behind her ear glinted at me as I looked back to her, her focus still on the brush, on something I couldn’t see.

“You need to go,” Joclyn said, her voice calm against the hiss as it came again.

“It’s not my name, Jos.” My tone was harsher than it had been before, the anger at being attached to that name bubbling up. “It’s not me.”

“It is right now.” She turned toward me, her eyes sad as the clouds that had been so bright and fluffy before shifted to the dark grey that had smothered us.

“They aren’t calling to me.”

I wanted to snap at whoever was using that name and trying to pull me away from her.

“They are today,” she sighed, her fingers soft as she ran them up my arm again. “And if you want to find me, you are going to need to listen to them.”

“But you are dead…” The passion of the moment before had evaporated, leaving me with gooseflesh from the chilly air that drifted off the ocean.

She smiled, the light touch of her fingers leaving as she replaced it with the wide heat of her palm. “You don’t know that for sure.”

“Jan… wake up.”

For the first time, I felt anger, true anger, bubble and rise up in me. It came so fast and so quick that I wasn’t sure why I wasn’t yelling. I wasn’t sure why I wanted to. The words were there, waiting...

It is not my name. I am not leaving.

“You have to,” Joclyn sighed, the response to my thoughts cementing the fact that it was a dream in my mind.

Her fingers were hot as they moved over my skin, burning against the scars on my chest, her touch gentle as she traced them. Her breath was warm against my lips as she bent over to kiss me, but the pressure never came. It was only the sweet taste of her breath before it dissipated back into reality, leaving only cold air and painful restraints. The ever-present beeping of the machines I was once again connected to smacked against me just as hard as the hand across my cheek.

“Jan,” the hiss followed the hit. “Wake up.”

I groaned, opening my eyes to the low flicker of a television, the dim light only barely cutting through the dripping dark that drenched the room. The face that hovered over me was only partially illuminated by a soft light that should have been comforting, but the illusion was shattered by the look of fear that was penetrating her eyes.

“You’re alive,” I gasped, trying to reach out to her. The only sound of welcome, however, was that of metal as I pulled against the restraints.

She glanced at the door with the loud clang, her body tense and ready to run. To hide.

I lay in the silence, nothing but the flash of the television and the ever-present pulse of my foreign heart. Even that familiar sound was becoming more haunting with each beep of the mysterious organ.

The tension of the hospital room, of this reality, was unwanted after my dream. I wanted nothing more than to close my eyes and return to Joclyn, but this place, this horror, this was real. I couldn't escape it, even if I didn’t have padded straps holding me in place. It would follow me.

“Yes, I’m alive,” she hissed to the door, waiting an extra minute before turning back to me. “Thanks to you. If they had found me, they would have killed me.”

“Were you bit?” I asked, the fear that I had expected to feel over the possibility melting away into an exhilaration.

I didn’t understand where that emotion was coming from. The memories I have of the Vilỳ are of fear, what I had seen on the news was of fear…everything but that tiny raised mark on Joclyn’s neck.

“Not that I can see, but it would have happened either way. I’m not registered.”

I gave her a look, one eyebrow arching high as she shifted her weight, leaning awkwardly against the railing.

“You mentioned that before,” I asked, my voice soft as I tried to glean any information I could.

From her or the television. “Does everyone need to be registered?”

“Now they do.” She hissed, an obvious line of irritation coloring her voice. “And I’m not. My mom has hidden me here for years, and now I can’t escape. Now that Commander Domor is here everything is crawling with Cleaners. I don’t know what will happen if they find me.”

“Is that the man who was in here before?”

“Yes,” she cut me off, her eyes drifting to the door again as if speaking of him would call him to us. “I don’t have much time, my mother is making her rounds and told me you would be…”

“Kaye!” I hissed, pulling her focus back to me, “That man…I need you to tell me what happened. I need to know what’s going on.”

“I take it we are still in this together then?” she whispered, her eyes sparkling brightly as she leaned over me. “You trust me?”

“You are perhaps the only one I can.” I shook my arms, sending the restrains rattling as I emphasized my point.

“Why? Because I am the only one who hasn’t put you in handcuffs.” I could hear the tease in her voice and it rattled me, stomach twisting uncomfortably.

She should not be allowed to speak to me so casually. The thought was firm and cemented, and yet, here I was handcuffed to a bed. Completely out of control.

“Exactly why I need your help,” I whispered pushing my pride aside. “I need to know what is going on. Now, who is that man?”

She hesitated, taking a glance at the door before lowering herself to hover beside the bed. “Commander Domor is one of the Tykha Shistʹ, he was one of the six who overthrew the government three months ago.”

“The Silent Six,” I repeated the phrase to myself in Czech, the words sounding ominous.

I lay still, staring at the TV infused flicker of blue against the dark ceiling. “And ‘The Cleaners’?”

“The loyal military of the Tykha Shist’. If you see the treacherous star, that sunburst looking thing they all wear, run the other way.”

Kaye tapped above her shoulder to emphasize her point, but I only gave her a look, letting my restraints rattle again as I glowered at her.

“Forgetting something?”

“Well, maybe you just shouldn’t tell them anything.” She sighed, “The Cleaner, the military, they wear a yellow sunburst. There are orange for spies, grey for local officials, you get the idea.”

“So, Commander Domor’s red star..?” I asked, the question causing her to shift awkwardly as she again looked toward the door.

“He is one of the original six. There are five others. After that, only purple is higher. And there is only one of them.”

She shivered, looking from the TV to the door as she pressed her lips into a tight line. Her knuckles tightened around the metal railing of my bed, posture tensing as if she expected the man with the purple star to come charging in right then. The intensity of her stare, the fear that rippled off her dripped in the air and I turned against my restraints, the emotions fueling a familiar nightmare.

The dark hair and green eyes of the man in my dream teased my thoughts, the memory blinking at me from the dark as he did. The single memory sent my heart rate monitor into a haunted dance, the shadows that moved behind the hastily repaired glass only fueling the delusion.

Kaye ducked below the bed, the top of her head peering through the rails as she watched the door. The sound of her knife grinding against a sheath sent gooseflesh over my arms and I tensed, glad when both heart rate and shadow faded away.

“So it was a coup?” I asked in a hushed whisper as she stood, slipping her knife back into the pouch at her waist.

“Worse. It was an execution,” She nodded, the anxiety rising as she turned back to me. “It was aired live over the television network. Domor was the one who beheaded the prime minister. They showed it all. You don’t question them. You don’t disobey.”

“So, Doctor Sirko..?”

“Is lucky to be alive.” She interrupted with a determined nod, her jaw tight “I saw them take him to the east wing, I don’t know anything beyond that. He is the only surgeon in Kiev, though. They can’t afford to lose him. Most of the other doctors escaped years ago before the SSU closed the borders. Now no one escapes alive, and no one enters unless they are certified pure.”

“Pure?” I asked, that same familiarity making my stomach twist.

“Unbitten. Unscathed. No one has made it through yet. If you are involved with or near a Chrlič attack at any point, you don’t pass.” She hesitated, before sitting down in one of the ugly chairs beside my bed, the tiniest scrape echoing as she collapsed.

“Sounds like all the other wars this planet has raged. Purification in the name of protection.”

“And just as dangerous.” She paused and I tensed, my physical restriction becoming nearly unbearable. “They don’t take chances. Even a scratch from one of the Chrlič will end with a shot to the head. Everyone who was in the hospital yesterday is either dead or under surveillance.”

“And me?” I said, letting the bands rattle.

“Well, you aren’t like everyone else, are you?” she asked, the taunt she attempted to put in her voice seeming harsh. “Domor wants you. Or rather he wants the info you have. And now that you are awake…” She trailed off, glancing back at the door again. “He has been waiting for years to find out what you really are.”

“I take it waking up when I did may not have been in my best interest,” I sighed, my hand shifting as it attempted to drag its way over my head. I didn’t even move an inch. Not that it mattered, I didn’t have any hair to run my fingers through anyway.

“It wouldn’t have mattered.” Kaye swallowed, glancing toward the door before she leaned closer “He has the pictures, he knows enough.”

“What do they know?” I sighed, the memory of seeing the fuzzy image of Joclyn feeling like yesterday to me.

“They have more, now,” Kaye said, shifting her weight as she leaned closer to the bed. She peered at me through the bars of the bed, shadows distorting her face. “The Czech government released more images from that tent village in the Svarov ruins a few months after you slipped away. The images were on the news for one day before the SSU took control of the media. The former government fell three days later.”

The timeline twisted in my stomach, having everything laid out so simply

“So they are gone?” My disappointment was clear. “Do you remember anything about them.”

Kaye bit her lower lip, hiding a smile as she looked at the door again before pulling out her phone, the bright light reflecting over her face and revealing the deep lines of change I missed before.

Hours before I had seen the woman she had become, but as she stood over me now I saw what I had missed in the panic of battle.

It wasn’t just that I had been away for more than two years. It was that the world had changed and she had to change to match.

Her muddy eyes held a hard determination that was borne more from desperation than from courage. The loss of weight stemming from lack of food rather than age.

I could tell she was brave, I could tell she was powerful, but it was for survival rather than by choice.

“Two years” I sighed, the time still feeling like a painful impossibility.

She froze, finger hovering above the phone as her focus flitted back to me with a piercing stare. She hesitated, phone dropping to her side, and it was only then that my resolve began to succumb to the pity she was throwing my way.

“Two years and four months,” she clarified.

Her voice had taken a very quiet tone as if she was attempting to lessen the blow. I don’t think anything could have made it less of a sting.

“Even my mother didn’t think you would make it.” Kaye continued with a whisper, the confusing realization vanishing to smoke. “I’m not sure how you did. Or how you woke up when you did.”

“I heard you yelling at me in my dreams. Just like now.”

“Nice, Jan.” She said with a quiet laugh, the sound as unwanted as the name she had used. “You dreaming about me, then?”

“That’s not my name,” I growled just as I had before, the memory of the dream was a distant reality after everything I had just learned. “And you don’t belong in my dreams.”

She glowered at me, as if she saw the same anger in me, before she laughed, the sound lifeless and angry.

“What is your name, then?”

“I don’t know.”

“Hmph,” she turned away, folding her arms over her chest as her focus returned back to her phone, the tapping of fingers against glass perfectly matching the gunfire on the television. “Figures. I spend months looking for your Joclyn and you wake up with no new information…”

“I don’t believe I said I didn’t have any new information.” I cut her off, letting a smile play around the corner of my mouth, the same commanding tone taking control.

I moved to sit, forgetting that I didn’t have the ability and sent the restraints into another orchestra of metal that sent Kaye on the ready, her eyes shifting to the door as she prepared to run.

“Good.” She said, eyes sparkling. “Because I wasn’t idle.”

She flipped her phone around to face me, the screen bright as it displayed an image of what was clearly me, a line of yellow light streaming from my hand, just like it had in this room. It was an image similar to what I had seen before, except that instead of the grainy pixelated imagery, this one was clean, pristine, and obviously me, right down to the massive scar on the palm of my hand.

I stood among the tattered tents in Svarov, Joclyn behind me, fighting in the same way. The yellow string I had seen before was now clearly a golden ribbon, the ends of the strand tied into both of our hair, connecting us as they tangled around each other.

Seeing her there, seeing the ribbon, sent my heart into a heavy bass of emotion, my stomach twisting in a powerful need. I tried to reach for the phone, desperate to see her better, to hold this tangible proof of her existence in my hand, but I was only met with pressure and an immovable force.

“Joclyn.” I gasped, my fingers aching with the need to grab the phone.

“Typical,” Kaye sighed, sweeping the phone away from me and beginning to tap the screen again. “I show you an image that proves you’re an alien, and all you see is her.”

“I’m not an alien,” I growled, although I was fully aware I had no proof of it. “It’s magic.”

I cringed at my own words, somehow saying it aloud while strapped to a hospital bed made it seem ridiculous.  

“That’s what you said after you killed all the Chrlič. Alien or not… you did something last night.”

“It was magic,” I said again, focusing on the warmth that always was present now. But instead of it rising to my fingers in a spark, it settled deeper. There was nothing but warmth.

As powerful as I was, as powerful as I felt at times, I still could not control it. Without control, I was nothing more than a prisoner.

“I’m actually starting to believe you.” She said, looking at the phone with a subtle awe before turning it back towards me, the shot zoomed in on the woman I had dreamed of for years.

On Joclyn, and her determination. Her power.

My heart felt like it was going to beat out of my chest, luckily the beeping of the machine I was connected to didn’t agree, the beep stayed steady.

“The entire world wants these two because they can kill the Chrlič. And thanks to these pictures, and whatever stunt you pulled last night…Commander Domor wants you. He wants whatever this is.”

“What is he going to do? Cut it out of me?”

I asked the question rhetorically, putting the threat into the air with as much disdain as I could muster. Instead of responding in agreement and moving on, however, Kaye wilted. Her eyes grew wide as she swallowed, a worry I hadn’t expected blasting through the dark flickers of the room.

“Can you ‘cut it out’ of you?” she asked, her fingers brushing the air in quotation marks.

“I don’t know, Kaye,” I said in confusion, trying to understand what she was saying as she absentmindedly ran her fingers over the metal cuff that tied me to the bed rail. “It’s magic, not an organ…”

“Are you sure?” Was it hope or disappointment I was seeing? I wasn't sure. Her reaction flared deeply and I cringed, suddenly doubting the trust I had freely given her.

“I’m not sure of anything,” I said, choosing my words carefully.

The grinding scrape of metal against metal reminding me just how possible that was.

“I doubt that will stop them.” She said sadly, the questions from before suddenly making sense. “It didn’t stop them before.”

She looked at me with pity and heartbreak. The emotions hit heavy, settling in the pit of my stomach like a rock as I narrowed my eyes at her, trying to ignore the thunder in my heart.

“What did they do to me while I was in a coma, Kaye?”

The question obviously caught her off guard and she leaned back, clutching the still illuminated phone to her chest as though it was a lifeline. She pressed her lips into a hard line, a look that I had seen enough just in this conversation to know it did not preempt good news.

“They know how fast you can heal, and they haven’t found any magic to cut out of you. Not that they have stopped looking…does that answer your question?”

She spoke fast, stubborn, defiant. For the first time since I had awoken, I saw the teenager in her, but I barely registered it. I only heard the horrors that I had been subject to, heard what she had refused to tell me before.

“I need to get out of here,” I said, pulling against my restraints, fully expecting them to crumble under the force of my strength.

“So break your way out of here.” Kaye hissed as she put her hand around mine, stopping my battle with the restraints. “I saw you…”

“I can’t control it that well.” I interrupted her with a snap. “It just kind of explodes.”

Kaye flinched, an eagerness I had seen in her yesterday coloring her face, “Then explode your way out of here.”

I cringed, she didn’t know how close to the truth that was.

“It doesn’t work when I want it too,” I added quickly, the failure from before still stinging. “Last night…not now. And even then it can’t stop bullets.”

“How do you know,” she countered, her defiance sounding like a playground taunt.

“That’s just it,” I said patiently, desperate for her to understand. “I don’t. And it’s not worth the risk right now.”

“It is to me,” she said, desperation bleeding through her as she grabbed my hand, her stubbornness turning into a plea. “You don’t know what they can do…”

“And then what?” I pulled my hand away with a jerk, sending the restraints rattling as my magic bubbled, her unwanted proximity igniting it in one single spark. “From what you have said about the government even if I was to break us out, we are trapped here. We have nowhere to go. I am not even sure who I am.”

The hopelessness that lined her face vanished so fast I would have thought she was slapped if it wasn’t for the eager smile that took its place.

“You may not remember.” She whispered, tapping on her phone once before turning it back to me. “But I am pretty sure she does.”

Her phone blazed with a black and white image from what looked like a news article, the headline a dark blank line amongst chicken scratches of text.

“Mother dies in firefight, daughter wanted for questioning.”

Inset into the article was a picture of a joyful woman hugging a young girl with tangles of dark hair that were practically covering her face. A hood of a sweater was pulled down low and if it wasn’t for the pale color of her eyes I would have never recognized her as the same powerful woman that was blasting her way through a dystopian wasteland.

Once again, I tried to grab for the phone, the clanging of the restraints even louder in my desperation. Kaye jumped at the noise, looking toward the door as she stepped into the shadow of the tattered window hangings. My own breathing picked up at her action.

“The German government has been rumored to have fallen this last week…” the sound of the television was twice as loud as we waited.

The little light that filtered through the glass in the door dimmed in the shadow of one of the guards. My heart was a thunder, the ends of my nerves frayed as we waited; I looking at Kaye, her at the door.

“It is the fifth government to fall under the influence of the Japanese republic…” The television buzzed, the dim light returning just as Kaye lifted her phone.

“Angela Despain,” Kaye whispered from the dark, my eyes wide as her shadow curled over the faint glow of her phone, “A forty-three-year-old single mother was found dead in her west-side apartment last night after neighbors reported a domestic disturbance between her and her daughter, sixteen-year-old Joclyn Despain.”

I jerked again, the motion an uncontrolled response to the name, to the story. It was familiar. I stared at her, desperate for her to continue. I needed to hear more, to know more. Like a loose thread on a sweater, I knew this was leading to something I had forgotten. Something I needed to remember.

“The girl,” Kaye continued, each word closing in around me and making the bed feel like the prison it truly was, “who was described as a loner and a destructive influence by the mother's employer, Edmund LaRue, is wanted in connection with the murder. The girl may be injured, as signs of a fall and a large amount of blood was found in an alley.”

An alley.

The flicker of a broken street lamp, an old rusted dumpster overflowing with garbage. I could smell the sweet rancid scent, the aroma lingering with that of gunpowder and smoke. The scent was so strong I could smell it here, in this hospital room. It cut in my chest, the tension that came with the single image making the whole scene feel toxic.

I didn't see much more than that, but somehow I knew. I knew it was where I found her, where I had saved her. A girl, dying behind a dumpster.

I half expected to find her blood covering my arms and hands right then, the memory was that strong. But there were only monitoring wires, irritated skin, and the gentle electronic beep of my pulse reminding me that that alley was only a distant memory.

“You found her,” I could barely get the words out with how my throat was constricted.

“I found her.” She sighed, taking a tentative step forward. “She’s missing and hasn’t been seen since this article was posted almost four years ago. No one who is alive remembers her, and as far as I can tell no one else has made the connection. You can’t without a name, because this,” she flashed a close up of the image attached to the article, “looks nothing like the image of the magical badass you are obsessed with.”

“She’s beautiful,” I whispered, unable to stop myself.

“Obsessed is definitely the right word,” Kaye growled, her irritation unable to break through the wall of awe I was currently wrapped up in. “There is something else…”

She was hesitant, cautious even. Like a child with a soap bubble the warm blanket of awe I was wrapped up in evaporated, leaving me on the cold hospital bed, an ice cold dread working it’s way up my spine.

I tensed, desperate to release this energy in some other way than the explosion I could feel brewing.

“That woman’s boss, Edmund LaRue... his mansion was damaged the night Joclyn disappeared. And then the whole thing exploded about a month later, on the night of his son’s graduation party.”

“His son?”

“Yeah, Ryland…” she tapped her phone, turning it towards me again. “He was in Prague too.”

It was the same tents, the same scene of battle, but instead of Joclyn and I standing back to back as we massacred the Vilỳ’s, it was a single man, his blue eyes raging as he screamed in an agonizing anger. Bright red light poured from him, the line of color dripping as though it was made from blood. The color was shocking, but not as much as he was.

The look on his face was pure pain, the skin crisscrossed with scars and fresh bleeding cuts. His hair dripped with sweat, lifeless curls hanging over his eyes and down his neck in wet tangles.

“He looks deranged.” I didn’t know how else to put it, although the words sounded harsh for some reason.

“And scarred. His face… it doesn’t look anything like the kid in the yearbook that I found. That guy…” she sighed, “there is a newscast that is closer, however.”

She tapped her phone again, turning it toward me as a video began to play.

“I know it has been inferred that I may have been involved in her disappearance.” The young man’s voice was dead and flat as he stood before a bank of microphones, addressing what I assumed were multiple reporters. It was obvious he had been trained in public speaking, but his head and hand were continually jerking in awkward directions that were destroying the illusion of authority. While I could see some similarities from the pictures, looking at him here was more like a before picture from some drug rehabilitation program.  

“And I would like to state again,” the video continued, the twitches increasing, “that I was not involved in this tragedy in any way. I am proud to say that…”

She turned the phone back to herself abruptly, tapping the screen so hastily that I half expected a soldier emblazoned with the yellow star to be standing right behind.

No one was there.

Kaye stared at me, obviously waiting for some flash of memory and more answers to go with the bombshell she had already dropped. But I didn’t know him. There wasn’t even a phantom emotion or image to go along with what she had shown me.

If I had known him, he was gone.

I shook my head no, and she plowed on, chatting away as she continued to tap on her phone screen.

“The images the Czech government released were only up for a day before the government began to cover them. I got these off the dark web about three months ago. It took some work, I had to teach myself how to access it on my phone, and without getting the attention of the SSU.”

Another image, this of a woman with short hair and a man with long blonde dreads.

Again, nothing.

“From what I can tell, and what I have heard while I was crawling around in the ceiling, everyone wants you, but no one in the world knows that the man from the images in Prague is in a hospital in Kiev. No one but the prime ministers of the former Ukraine, who are dead, The Cleaners, the SSU,” she paused, “and me.”

“All the more reason to organize some miraculous escape plan I take it?”

I said it in jest, and part of me expected her to smile and jump into some master plan, but she continued to stare at her phone, tapping away before she again turned it toward me, this time showing a woman with a fan of blonde hair, with blue eyes that held more hatred and anger than I had seen in her before.

Because I had seen her before.

She was the same one who I had seen raped and beaten. The one who had stared out from inside me, as though they were part of me.

Here, in this image, she stood across from me, fighting me, hating me.

Just seeing it brought all those same emotions I saw in her face right into me. The restraints jangled loudly as I foolishly tried to grab the phone from her, the power that had been cycling through me for the last few minutes finally erupting in little sparks of lightning.

The jagged streaks of light jumped between my fingers. Kaye’s eyes widened, fear and amazement pulsing in her jaw as she jumped back.

“If you are going to explode, you can at least warn me.” She hissed, stuffing the phone into her pocket.

The anger lessened in me, but it didn’t leave. Now that this little bit of information had been cemented in the emotion stuck, the electric fire sparking against the metal.

“I’m not going to explode,” I growled, the chains rattling again as I fought against them.

Just like an animal in a cage. The realization was painful.

“Are you sure about that?”

No. I wasn’t.

Not with her in my mind, not with this woman whose memory infected mine. Before, when I had seen her I had worried for her, I had felt for her. But in that image, in the spark of memory that followed it, there was only hatred, there was only pain.

“I know her,” I gasped, the sparks of attack as we fought filling my mind, I saw her laugh, and I saw the streaks of blood against the stone wall.

My blood.

“Ahhh,” Kaye sighed, glancing at her phone, “I guess I know who I need to find next…”

“I don’t know if you can,” I sighed, the same image of blood and stone haunting me. “I don’t know if you should.”

Kaye raised an eyebrow at me, clearly letting her curiosity overtake the fear.

“I think she is the one whose blood was covering me,” I said. “I think it’s her heart that is beating in my chest.”