“Are you sure you are focusing on the right thing?” Kaye whispered, where she stood on Dr. Sirko’s chair, the rickety thing squeaking loudly as she shifted the ceiling tile back into place.

Her mother glanced at her briefly before she went back to her work, her fingers deft as she continued to check my blood pressure and temperature.

“I’m not even sure how to focus,” I said with a growl, my voice tense as I pulled against the restraints.

They would have normally flopped open by now. I could feel my magic spark, feel it flood the air. That’s normally all it took, but today nothing was happening. Today it was only the warmth of my magic and frustration.

“You didn’t dose him with anything yet, did you?” Kaye whispered to her mother as she came to stand right beside me, the loose sole on her shoe slapping loudly against the linoleum.

“No,” the older woman said, gesturing to something that I couldn’t see, something that I didn’t want to. “I always wait until after you two finish whatever you do. There isn’t anything new today anyway. They were talking about a new truth serum…”

“They were talking about what?” I snapped, head turning toward her as my magic flared inside of the agitation. With the angry spark of power, the restraints unbuckled, falling away from me with a soft flop against the bed.

“Why is always anger that triggers your magic?” Kaye whispered as she jumped onto the end of my bed, leaning against the baseboard in the spot that had been occupied by my feet.

“Just because you know the trigger doesn’t make me a reliable weapon,” I reminded her, stretching joints and muscles for the first time today. The ache of the first movement was never my favorite, but today was worse after yesterday's test. I had run on a treadmill for three hours without water, something that had never happened before. I didn’t even know they had a treadmill.

With Katenka's help, I was able to sit up and avoiding the swirling nausea that had normally occupied the movement. Of course, that all depended on what drugs they were testing on me, drugs meant to force honesty, force control, numb senses. They all worked in one degree or another, Katenka and one other nurse tracking effectiveness.

Today it wasn’t so bad, the worst was about two months ago when I had first been able to control my magic enough to pop the locks on my restraints. They weren’t just strapped on, after all. Commander Domor had each one under lock and key, and he was the only one with a key.

Luckily, my magic could pick locks.

Sitting up after spending a solid month on my back, pumped up on various medications, had led to the quick emptying of my stomach and a black out that had both Kaye and Katenka concerned about my safety. Luckily today it was only a slight dizziness that a sip of water chased away.

The fluid ran down my throat, the taste of the cold fluid reminding me of flowers and dew in the spring. I wanted to guzzle more, I only had so much time to take it in before Kaye, Katenka and the water bottles left. But I knew better than to chug. Time had taught me that.

It had been three months since the Vilỳ attack, since my magic had exploded out of me for the first time and I had woken in the world controlled by the SSU. Three months of the same routine. Kaye sneaking in through the roof while her mother made her rounds, leaving only when her shift was over.

“Thank you, Katenka,” I whispered, holding her back the styrofoam cup so she could refill it. “Now will you tell me what I am on?”

Katenka smiled, the tiny look earning me a wide-eyed stare from Kaye. I glared at the girl, not appreciative of the reminder that her mother thought I was hot. Unfortunately, Kaye’s smile only widened at the glare I gave her. She looked so much like a child right then, you would have never guessed she was almost twenty-one. I fixed her with a scowl before turning back to her mother, the woman now preparing to draw blood from me.

More blood.

Every day it was more blood. One of these days she would only get dust.

“And what that is going to be used for,” I sighed, hating the daily guinea pig routine.

“They have you on Midazolam,” Katenka provided, casting one quick glance at me before she tied the heavy elastic around my tricep, the lean muscle flexing in agitation. “It’s a sedative. Based on that, as well as the Serax and the Klonopin that you have been on the last few months, I would say that they are trying to find a mixture that they can use to control you.”

It wasn’t necessarily new information, Kaye and I had surmised as much a few weeks ago when she had overheard Domor and another officer she hadn’t seen before talking about “breaking through” and “taking control”.

It was sinister then and it was sinister now. Knowing that someone wanted to control you would never bode well.

I exchanged a glance with Kaye as Katenka plunged the needle into my arm, the tiny prick stinging briefly. I didn’t flinch.

“And you know I can’t tell you what the blood is used for, Jan, even I don’t know that,” I bristled at her use of the name, but let it go.

Kaye’s brown eyes were widened from where she lay, curled up on the foot of my bed. Her lips pinched together as her nose wrinkled, the look one I had seen a million times before.

If I had to venture a guess, she knew what they were doing with my blood, and she didn’t want her mother to know about it.

Not that I blamed her, the woman had a habit of getting frustrated and overly worried. Even though she knew who I was, and what we were doing here, she wanted no part, not until the actual moment that we would make our escape.

“I have one more spot check in the room at the end of my rounds,” Katenka announced, pulling my focus as she set a third blood-filled vial on the metal tray. “I will wait to give you any medications then, just in case…”

She stopped mid-sentence as she switched out the still full syringes with the empty ones from yesterday, placing the new ones on the ledge underneath the table that we had been utilizing.

The empty syringes hit the tray with a loud smack that caused Kaye to jump, the whole bed jerking with her movement.

I, however, sat still rubbing the sore spots on my wrist as I watched the woman who had become so much of an advocate for me.

“Katenka?” I asked, Kaye finally sitting up as the frustration of her mother hit her.

“Please be careful,” she began, Kaye instantly opened her mouth to retort, as if she knew what was to be said after only three words.

I held up my hand to the girl in warning, the single finger one she had seen enough to know better than to defy.

I did, however, earn myself an eye roll.

“One of the orderlies,” she continued, her voice growing stronger now, “a new one from a military village near the border said he heard voices in here the other day.”

There was a pause, Kaye and I exchanging a look. While ‘the other day’ was vague enough there was no way of knowing what it could have been, we knew.

Kaye’s eyes looked right to the deep grey smudge on the wall where I had accidentally set it on fire.

“Everyone hears voices in here, mom,” Kaye whispered, her voice strained as she tried to calm her mother down. “They all just think Jan…”

“Not my name,” I mumbled under my breath, Kaye continued on.

“Talks to himself.”

“I know,” Katenka sighed, now holding the tray as she prepared to leave, “But new people talk more, and he’s curious. You know they don’t tell anyone what’s in here, even many of the guards don’t know.”

“Ukraine’s best-kept secret,” I glowered, wondering for the millionth time if Joclyn was alive, and not dead as I had assumed. Perhaps she was just trapped in another prison, in another country.

Another person’s guinea pig.

My magic bristled, the heat running through me in a deep agitation that just the possibility gave me. I could feel the magic needing to escape, but I kept it restrained, only one pop of silver light erupting near my index fingers.

“Hey now!” Kaye interrupted, her perky response drenching my worry in sugar. “I like to think that’s me…”

Kaye’s mother visibly flinched, “I would like you to be a bit more serious about that. Be back to our dorm on time tonight or you are going to need to sleep on the roof. Last night was too close, and one of the doctors two doors down heard you…” She paused, her voice raising an octave before her emotions and frustrations burst out in the form of tears. “He heard the door. He could know Kaye.”

I stood, legs shaking as I took one step toward the woman, towering over her as I pulled her into an awkward hug, the motion even more so due to the tray of blood and syringes she still carried.

“I’ll talk to her about it,” I whispered, sure the promise was gaining me another eye roll from the child in question.

“Thank you, Jan,” she whispered, before, with a sigh and a glance toward Kaye, she shuffled away and out the door, the faint click of the lock the last echo of sound before Kaye turned the TV on.

It had been nearly six years since the attack in Prague, and while the news had shifted from that war and destruction, it had moved to another. Thanks to the still present plague of Vilỳs, the world was in disarray, people exploding, underground factions taking shape, governments falling.

We saw none of that. The only reason we knew was because of Kaye’s illegal cell phone and non-registered existence. Everything outside of the Tor browser on her magic box was controlled by the SSU, and it showed.

Last month the morning news featured the report “Inside the Dictatorship: How America’s Religions took Control to Protect their People.” It painted a beautiful picture of how regimes and control can help a society. It was utter bull.

Today, Kaye was cranking the volume on some odd sitcom about teenagers growing up in an academy run by the SSU, For The Love of Country.

The whole thing was propaganda mixed with teenage angst and drama. It ground on me in a way that my magic would easily rise to. So, not only was it fodder, it provided the perfect audio cover.

“What happened last night?” I asked before Kaye could change the subject, her deep sigh turning into a grunt as she peeled herself off the bed.

“I got stuck in a wall,” she said as she took my arm, beginning the few tentative steps of our well worn path around the room.

To anyone else that statement might sound purely ridiculous, but to Kaye it made sense. Years before she could wander through unused corridors, read books on the roof, steal food from the cafeteria. She was hiding, she wasn’t supposed to be here, yes, but people knew.

They just didn’t care.

Once the SSU took control things became more difficult. Now that the military was boarded in the old surgery wing she was trapped in her own prison. Her existence now relied on crawling around through the ceilings as I had shown her, utilizing old rooms and still unrepaired destruction from the Vilỳ attack as places to hide. She slept on the floor under her mother's bed and would read in the old pigeon shack on the roof.

Her getting trapped in a wall literally meant she was trapped in a wall.

“They probably think there is a ghost with how much drywall I have had to rip apart to get out,” She said, the image of her busting out of walls causing me to chuckle. “Maybe I can use that to my advantage.”

“I think that might just worry your poor mother more.”

She sighed, the truth as much a heavy burden on her as her mother, no matter how much she tried to fight it. She pulled us to a stop, her back tensing as she exhaled deeply, her focus on the stained and ripped wallpaper that covered my room.

“Kaye?” I asked, my fingers soft against her forearm as I tried to get her attention.

“We are trying to figure out how to get me papers,” she finally admitted, as we began to pace the floor again, the sadness behind her statement confusing to me. “How to get me registered.”

“That should be a good thing, shouldn’t it?”

She nodded once, “I have gotten through the last few years on luck… well, and a bumbling government. Once they moved the employees into the hospital I had no choice to come here with my mother. It was that or go to the boarding school for survival children.”

“Survival children?”

“Yeah,” she stalled, swallowing hard as she pulled us to a stop again, her focus dropping to her broken and ripped shoes. “I’ve told you I’ve seen someone get bit before. I told you I saw him explode.”

“Him.” That information was new. “It was your father.”

She could only nod.

“The school they tried to send me to was attacked only months after Prague fell. I was supposed to be there. We got a letter in the mail announcing my death and everything.”

“And here I was thinking when you said you don’t exist…”

She smiled

“It got worse with the SSU because they track everything.”

“So you need to get registered.”

“I at least need papers. We think we found a man that can make them, but we aren’t sure. We get me papers and maybe I can get a job here and then my mom can get rid of that ulcer.”

She tried to force a smile, but the look was sad, broken. The failed joke only slammed harder against her, the impact setting the flood waters free.

I had only seen her cry once before, but then it was angry frustrated tears right before the Vilỳ had broken in. These were different. These were pain, these clung to her heart and dripped directly from her soul in little agonizing drops.

“Kaye?” I whispered as I turned, taking a step toward her.

Tears rolled over her cheeks as she looked at me, pain and heartbreak bubbling through as she shook her head in embarrassment, reaching up to wipe the treacherous things away.

“No,” I whispered, grabbing her hand in mine as I stopped the progression. “It’s okay to cry. It’s okay.”

“No, Jan, it’s not okay” she sobbed, trying to break her hand away from mine, something I didn’t fight, I let her go, the pressure in my chest expanding as she stepped away, wiping her dirty arm over her face, leaving smudges of grey behind. I could feel my magic heat and warm as it tried to break from me, as it tried to soar away from me.

The pressure, the warmth, there was something about my power that was different, a different feeling.

It wasn’t angry.

“You’re right,” I said, taking a step closer that only ignited my magic more. “It’s not okay. And we can’t make it okay. But we can fight. We can protect ourselves, and…”

“No one protected my father,” she interrupted her voice so broken by a sob that I could barely make it out.

Her back shivered in her tears, her hair falling over her stained and ripped shirt in waves that shivered with each gasp of breath. I watched her, unsure of what to do, of how to comfort her. But I did know, I realized, or perhaps my magic did. The power continued to press against me, heat growing as my own pain began to echo hers, as I longed to reach for her, to help her. The strength of my magic surged as I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her back into my chest. She spun in my arms in response, her own arms pulling me against her as her tears picked up.

“It will be okay,” I whispered into her hair as the palms of my hands pressed against her arms, and my magic flooded into her.

Her sobs stopped with a gasp, her body stiffening in a way that made me sure I had hurt her. I tried to pull away, but she held on tighter, pressing me against her as she buried her face in my chest.

My magic continued to swell, the power strong as it filled her, as it felt her, as I began to understand her.

The power pressed against my heart in pulses of emotion, brief little whispers of sadness, and joy, sorrow. The emotions flowed without reason, each one making no sense without the thoughts behind it. But it didn’t matter.

The more magic that flowed into her, the calmer she was.

The more comfort my magic was able to bring her.

I was able to bring her.

When all of the emotions had ebbed, only one stood out, a faint whisper of pain that I didn’t fully understand. My magic reacted on its own, flooding through her as it sought out the pain, sought out injury, and finding it in a cut just below her shoulder blade.

I could see it clearly in my mind, the gash was deep and had obviously become infected.

Shock and confusion filled me as I pulled her away, her few words of gratitude stifled as I lifted the torn sleeve of her shirt to reveal the large gash, the angry red skin and puss only spelling danger.

“How did…” I asked, not sure if I was asking her how it happened, or how I knew.

Holding her sleeve up, seeing the angry gash flashed against my soul in a moment that I had seen in a dream once before. Joclyn in a cave, blood pouring from a gash in her stomach.

“I’ll be fine,” she had said, her voice distorted in my recall. But it wasn’t her voice that stuck with me, it was how my magic surged, just as it did now. It was my hand pressing against her skin.

A rock formed in my chest as I lifted my hand, placing the palm over the cut without a word. Magic surged at the contact, flooding through me as it burst into her. She gasped at the contact, the sound full of fear as she tried to step away.

This time I wouldn’t let her.

This time I held her still as my magic moved, as I felt it grow warm and hot against my palm, as I felt her skin began to knit itself together.

I fought my own fear, fought my own need to pull away as I felt it, everything beginning to shake as an exhaustion I hadn’t expected took over.

Falling back on the bed, the connection left as I gasped for air, my body physically unable to hold my own weight anymore.

Kaye dropped to her knees with a heave, hand fluttering over her shoulder in a reaction that I wasn’t sure was done in pain or fear.

“Are you okay?” I asked, voice broken by my strangled puffs.

Her hand was flat against her shirt as she looked at me, breath held in her chest as she turned, lifting her shirt to reveal perfectly smooth and healed skin.

Only the dried blood remained.

“How did you do that?” Her voice was an amazement that I felt mirrored in myself, my own awe breaking free as I lifted my hands from where they were tangled in my short hair, staring at my palms, one smooth, one rough, as if they would show me what had happened, show me what I did.

“I don’t know,” but for the first time I wished it was a lie. I wished I could do it again. This, I wished I could control.

This magic was not done in death or destruction - it was beautiful. I wanted to master it.

“You healed me,” her awe was a wash of emotion as I tried to work through what had just happened, as I tried to understand it.

“I didn’t know I could do that…”

“I’m starting to wonder what you can’t do,” Kaye said as she stood, glancing at the smoke stain on the wall before she stepped to stand over where I had collapsed. “We have got to get you figuring this out. More than just to get out of here, we have got to figure it out before they do.”

Her hand reached to cup around mine, the soft touch one I would normally jerk away from, but this time I froze, eyes narrowing at the sudden change in tone.

The awe was laced with that determination I saw in her from time to time, her eyes taking on the far away look of a girl with a plan. No, A girl who knew something. It was the same look she had given me when I had asked her mother about the blood.

“Why did you get stuck in a wall, Kaye?” I asked carefully as I pulled myself to sitting, she flushed instantly.

“I heard Domor talk about you.”

“You were eavesdropping on Domor!” All exhaustion left as my magic surged, the strong pulse sending me to stand as sparks erupted around my fingertips.

I knew I was too loud, but luckily so was the dramatic teenager on the TV who was now talking about ‘those dangerous Hungarians’.

“Yes…”

“We talked about this Kaye,” I interrupted her.

Her childish impulses were going to give both me and her mother ulcers. My magic flooded me as my irritation did, the warm power stifling the emotion, although just barely. “Listen where you can, but right now you need to find us a clear, gun-free, path out of here.”

“Or you can just learn to stop bullets.”

“I’m not even sure if I can do that.”

“You just healed me, Jan!” She hissed stepping toward me until she was inches away.

“Yes, but I’m not dumb enough to try. I’m not even sure how we would test that.”

“I could throw a chair at your head.” She offered, the offer laced with far too much malice. Even then it stopped me short, the ridiculousness pulling me back down to reality.

“Kaye. We need a gun-free path. I couldn’t remove the locks on my restraints this morning, I’m not consistent, and I am not…”

“Stop with the lecture. It’s not like you are that much older than me. Not like anyone could tell Mr. ‘Always-look-fabulous-even-though-I’ve-been-locked-in-a-prison-hospital-for-six-years-and-still-look-twenty-two.”

She spoke very fast, letting the last of her irritation our in a rush.

“Are you quite done?” I asked, perfectly willing to side-step that conversation. It was one we had gotten in before and one I wasn’t interested in repeating. Yes, I didn’t appear to age, everyone had noticed, and I wasn't about to fight them on it. Nor was I about to share the memories that pointed to entire other explanation

From what little I have read on Kaye’s phone, magic comes with immortality. While Kaye wasn’t as apt to believe it, I wasn’t going to dismiss it. I also wasn’t going to entertain her lingering alien theory either. None of my memories occurred on another planet, as I had told her many times.

“Quite.”

“Good,” I sighed, leading her over to the bed to sit her down. “Now tell me what your journey into the wall revealed.”

Kaye crossed her legs on the bed, her shoes leaving brown smudges over the white sheet, with her lips pinched together she looked up to me.

“They are using your blood to try to find a way to control your power. To replicate it.”

Ice water ran over me, any response that I may have had washed away as what she just said hit me head on.

“How close are they?” The words felt distant, far away, as though they came from someone else.

“Not close as far as I can tell,” She sighed, her hand reaching for me before moving back to tangle in her lap, obviously having thought better of it. I stood up anyway, thankful my legs had recovered enough that I could pace.

“It’s not like I can ask questions though. But,” she continued, cutting me off at the intense look I had given her. “From what they are saying they have identified a few things that “slow down” what they think is the power in your blood. It’s been hard work because of your transplant medication… I guess that has slowed them down for some reason.”

I stopped pacing, my eyes drifting toward the movement on the screen and the teenagers who laughing beneath a giant painting of the purple sinister star.

“So they have found what they think is my power,” I spoke more to myself than to her. “But they can’t get it out.”

It made sense. As much as Kaye had told me they had experimented on me while I was in a coma, and as much as Commander Domor talked up his control, the last few months had been little more than weekly CAT scans, new medications, and odd interrogations that circled over the same information. What do you know of Prague? How would you get a new heart? Do you know who this is...

They were testing my resolve. Testing medications. Testing me.

“No wonder they always keep me restrained, “I laughed, looking to the filthy restrains that still lied open on the bed.

“So they can test you?” Kaye asked, clearly not understanding.

“So they can control me.” I clarified, still watching the characters on the television, their characters whispering in class while the teacher in the background spoke of proper extermination techniques for people bitten by a Chrlič.

“It makes them feel safer, thinking that they have control, that I can’t break out.” Kaye snorted a bit at that, the ridiculousness not lost on either of us. “They are scared of me. And like any good dictatorship, they control what frightens them.”

“Do I frighten them?” It was obvious the reason that she wanted, her eyebrows had perked up again, her eagerness snapping right back into place.

“Oh yes,” I said, stopping my pace to look at her. “All of their people do.”

“Does that mean it’s time to fight back?” She asked, the eagerness expanding into a bubble that I truly hated to defuse.

For the first time, I wished I could agree with her.

“Not yet.”

“I can’t help but think that we are running out of time, Jan,” She snapped, folding her arms over her chest.

“That’s not my name.” While often the response was in jest, this time it wasn’t, this time it grated against me.

“Does it even matter?” She snapped, her fists hitting against her things as she came to stand before me. “You may never know your name if we don’t get out of here. We have to fight back.”

“You can still fight even when you are in chains,” I said, my calm response catching her off guard and she recoiled. “You are about to put your chains on too, Kaye. But I know you will still fight too.”

“My registration,” The cruel reality smacked her hard and she sat still, any frustration vanishing as pure shock took over, widening her eyes.

“We will fight even in chains,” I said as I kneeled before her, my heart constricting as I took her hands in mine. “We will get out of her.”

She nodded once.

“You need to control that power before they do.”

“And you need to find us a safe escape route,” I responded, squeezing her hands before I released them, standing before her in the tower that I was.

“Do you remember the last two lines of the Ukrainian Anthem?” I asked after a moment, the images on the television sparking my frustrations.

“No one is allowed to sing that anymore,” Kaye responded with a hiss. “It is forbidden.”

“And for good reason,” I said with a smile, turning back toward the girl who was slowly blossoming into a determined woman. “Ukraine is not yet dead, nor its glory and freedom..”

Her eyes welled with tears as I sang the song, my voice quiet as the last few lines of the song rang clear, even the television silencing to hear.

“We'll not spare either our souls or bodies to get freedom, and we'll prove that we brothers are of Kozak kin.”

“Are you ready to fight?” She asked, her question honest as we faced a battle we had expected, with a timeline we had not.

“No matter the chains they bring.”