Sparks Rise

Glad to, ass**le. She’s trying to buck me off, and the movement is enough to hide how bad my hands are shaking. I manage to get her arms behind her and reach for one of the zip ties in the pouch of my belt. Even the rain outside disappears under the PSF’s hollering to the others, his wild gesturing, as the woman I saw before, her stance and face rigid, listens with one hand on his shoulder. The girls, the poor kids, are braced on the ground with their hands over their ears, like they’re waiting for a bomb to drop. If they weren’t scared of the Reds invading their hellhole, they are now.

I know it’s a risk, but I have to try—if she keeps thrashing and struggling to knock me off of her, someone will take my place. And that someone won’t care whether she walks out of this building in one piece.

I lean down, pressing a hand harder against her bound wrists. When did Sammy get to be so much smaller than me? Her wrists are like flower stems. I feel how easy it would be to break them.

Damn. I don’t know if God still listens to me when I try talking to him. I don’t know if he really knows the thoughts inside our heads or hears silent prayers. But please—please let this work. Let me get Sam out of here.

“Sammy.” It’s one word, spoken so quickly, so quietly near her ear, I don’t know that you could count it as a whisper.

But she hears me. Her long body relaxes under where I’ve straddled her, and I pull back just as the woman PSF comes forward. Psi Special Forces Officer Olsen. Her dark skin is taut against the bones of her face as she cuts off Tildon’s path toward us and looks between my carefully arranged face and where Sam’s is pressed against the filthy floor. There are two horns that come over the speakers, one long, one short, and the two girls next to us each suck in a shuddering breath.

My head jerks up. I scan the room for the other Reds and see them reaching into the pouches on their belts—earplugs. Dammit. I was right. I release my grip on Sam long enough to pull mine out, jam them into my ears as far as they can go, and brace myself for impact.

A hit of Calm Control is like taking an icy cold bath where the water’s been spiked with razors. The Trainers used it on us in the beginning, on and off and on and off for hours, but stopped a year in, when they realized daily use was making too many kids crack. And, let me tell you, you can reset broken bones and stitch up too-deep cuts, but you can’t piece a mind back together after it shatters into a thousand, flaming, furious pieces.

I remember those first days though. They’d keep the floodlights in our white cells on all day and all night, watch for the moments it seemed like you were about to finally pass out and sleep and then...the explosion of blinding hurt. No matter how deep I was in my own head, I could hear it muffled, the way I do now—growling static broken up by piercing screams that knock the breath out of you.

I hurt all over, a dull ache that turns into a chill rippling up and down my spine, but Sam—she’s convulsing. Her breath rips in and out of her in sobs. It’s the same for the other girls. The Factory fills with these horrible, breathy moans of pain; some of them sound like they’re being eaten alive by it.

Olsen nods at me, signaling that I need to get up and move. I can’t. For a second, it feels like my knees and feet have been cemented to the ground; it feels like if I don’t keep a hold on Sam’s wrists, her fingers, she’s going to blow apart.

Get up, I command myself. Don’t look at her. They would know—that I wasn’t in their grip, that there was something between me and this girl. I keep my eyes focused on the PSF as I return to my full, stiff-backed height. For a moment, she studies the letter and numbers stitched over my uniform’s pocket: M27.

“Situation under control.” Olsen speaks into her comm unit; I can hear it in the one in my ear with a half-second delay. “Disable Calm Control.”

Don’t look at her. It is almost impossible. Panic sends my pulse through the roof. The PSFs swarm where Sam is on the ground, locking her inside a ring of black. I yank out my earplugs as the kids around me start to stir.

“You know what’s supposed to happen, goddammit!” Tildon is shouting. “She assaulted me! It’s my job—”

Olsen’s gaze is so cold, it freezes the words in his throat. She knows, I think. She saw what happened, and for the first time I wonder if all of this has happened before, if the resignation in her eyes means she knows it’ll happen again. And again. And again. But what can she do? There are tiers of punishments in this place—the Trainers made us memorize them. Additional work, missed meals, exposure, isolation, corporal punishment. They could pick and choose from the list, combine them, if that’s what gets them off. What Sam has done is so far beyond being forced to skip dinner, I’m actually terrified I did the wrong thing in saving her.

Four minutes pass. No one moves. I breathe in. I breathe out. I try to dispel the heat trapped inside of my head. I’m afraid if I take a single step, I’m going to borrow the heat from the electricity powering the lights and send showers of sparks down over everyone’s heads. Control. Nothing. Numb. Control. Nothing. Numb. I can’t get a grip on my heart. It just wants to gallop. I have to slip inside my head, just to get away from this moment. But even my brain doesn’t cut me any slack—the first memory that stirs up, meeting me, is Sammy, age eight, informing me she doesn’t want to be a princess of Greenwood, she wants to be a knight, thank you very much. I laughed. She cracked a wooden sword against my head.