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  Why would that man go in there so late at night?

  She waited for him to come back out, but minutes went by and he still hadn’t returned.

  Her heart pounded in her chest as she crept across the hallway. She’d never ever, not even once, snuck out of her room after lights-out before, even though she knew how to. She didn’t know what they’d do to her if she got caught. That man was out walking around past lights-out though, so why couldn’t she?

  Her hands shook a little bit as she leaned in and pressed her ear against the cold, white door.

  She heard whimpering—no—crying, and a man’s voice saying something.

  The crying got a bit louder, but the man stopped talking. She heard a deep, guttural grunt and the sound of something shaking, or creaking.

  The grunts got louder and louder and the shaking turned into a steady pound. Finally, she heard a cry, the loudest one yet, that was immediately stifled, like something was put over the mouth, just as the deeper voice cried out as well. The deeper voice was not stifled.

  She heard a rustling and a soft whimper that was followed by footsteps.

  She bolted back across the hallway and slid her door nearly shut just as the one across the hall opened. She peered out the tiny crack she’d left and watched the man walk back down the hallway and into the dark. The hallway lights went completely black, so she closed her door all the way and went back to bed.

  She tossed and turned and simply could not fall asleep that night. Her mind burned and raced with a million different questions.

  Eventually she would learn to pacify her mind, calm herself down, until she forgot to ask the questions in the first place.

  • • •

  Sometime after that she began to notice the way the male caretakers and assistants would look at the other girl in her group. The way they’d stare at the yellow-haired girl from across the hall when they’d all eat together in the commissary. She wondered why they never looked at her like that.

  The feeling it stirred within her was something she wasn’t able to describe. It burned, made her blush, made her angry and hateful and sad and something else so foreign that she didn’t even know what it was called, all at once. For the first time in a very long time, she began to feel like an “it” again.

  She heard noises again that night. They’d happened so frequently since that first night so long ago that she stopped thinking much of it. This time, however, when she got up and slid the door back to look, she saw several men going into the room. There had to have been at least five or six.

  The crying had stopped ages ago, but that night she heard screams.

  The burning feeling came back, and although she knew that whatever was happening across the hall wasn’t good, she lay down in her bed and cried herself to sleep, wondering why no one ever looked at her, feeling guilty that she’d ever let this horrible thing that happened to the girl across the hall make her feel like this, make her burn. Crying because she didn’t know how to help.

  She thought of her first caretaker, the man who wouldn’t look at her, who called America “her” and called her “it.”

  • • •

  The next day at lunch in the commissary, she looked over at the girl with the yellow hair as she sat down with her white tray. She wanted to make eye contact, to say something, anything, to the girl, but she never looked up. She just stared at her tray and didn’t eat.

  Two of the caretakers’ assistants stood in the hallway with two of the men with the decorated suits. They wore strange hats and often had layers of shiny, colorful badges adorning the breasts of their jackets. They’d started coming in and chatting with the others during lunch and often stayed throughout recreation to play games, or talk, or sometimes just watch.

  These four men were all watching the girl with the yellow hair now, and smiling. One said something that made the others laugh. The girl with the yellow hair got up, threw away her untouched meal, and left the commissary.

  The burning came back to her cheeks, and before she even knew what she was doing, she’d knocked her tray off the table, spilling the contents of her half-eaten lunch all over the white tiled floor. She watched as everyone’s eyes shot toward her, including the four men lingering by the doorway, before immediately drifting elsewhere.

  She got up from her seat and began to clean up the mess she’d made, with not a single person watching.

  • • •

  She left the commissary and headed to the new recreational common room, where they were now allowed to spend a portion of their days mingling with one another. She often found herself heading to her own room during this time. She’d rather sit by herself in an empty room and be alone than be forced to sit by herself in a room full of people and feel alone.

  Today, however, she charged through the double doors and went straight for her caretaker. “I want to see a . . .” She searched for the right word. “One of the . . . a . . .”

  Her caretaker and his assistant looked concerned. They’d never seen her like this.

  She scrambled for the word. “I’d like to see a . . . mirror.” That was it. A mirror. “I’d like to look into a mirror, please.”

  The caretaker and his assistant shared a glance over their cups of coffee.

  “Unfortunately there aren’t any mirrors on this floor.”

  “I’ve heard the others talking about them. They have them in their rooms. I don’t.”

  The caretaker looked stumped.

  “I’d like to see one, please.”

  He set down his cup of coffee with a look of defeat and led her into the hallway.

  For the first time in her entire life, she was going to see what she looked like.

  • • •

  The caretaker walked her into a room that wasn’t her own. She’d never seen anyone else’s living quarters before. She was shocked to see color—color everywhere. The couch was olive green, a blue lamp sat on a brown desk in the corner, and on the opposite wall at the far end of the room was a mirror. She approached slowly and tried to calm the thumping of her heart. She didn’t know why she was so afraid.

  She walked up to the glass and beheld a startling being—skin as white as the walls that held her her entire life. Her hair was white and thin. Her white scalp showed in patches. The worst part was her eyes. Like everything else on her body, everything else in her entire life—they were white. Where they should’ve been brown, or blue, or green, or hazel, or any other color in the entire world, there was no color at all. They gave her away, too, these horrible white eyes. Had they not been moving, not flitting around with the exact same motions as the ones she was seeing out from, she would’ve never believed the creature before her was . . . her.

  No, not her, she thought as she crumpled to the floor and began to sob.

  It.

  • • •

  More time passed, and they were gradually sent back into isolation. Time allowed in the common room became less and less frequent. Eventually, all of their meals were spent with only their respective caretakers and caretakers’ assistants. It hadn’t been like this in so long. It felt unnatural.

  She didn’t mind, though. She never enjoyed socializing, and she had a new CA that she enjoyed looking at. His features were so . . . appealing. The sight of him made her blush and feel a different kind of burning—more like a warmth.

  She didn’t know how to describe it.

  Best of all, though, was that every so often, he looked at her and made her feel like he saw a her. She loved it when she caught those glances. His blue eyes, darting quickly away after she caught him looking. She thought of them at night when she lay in bed—of his smile, and how he was the first person to ever talk to her and try to make her laugh—and it all made her so warm she couldn’t sleep.

  Not long after she started feeling this way for the new CA, she was taken through a pair of doors she’d never entered before, down a hallway she’d never seen, and into a room she’d never known existed. The room was l
ined with white padding and completely encircled in a continuous line of mirrored glass placed about halfway from the floor to the ceiling. The caretaker took her inside, told her that he would see her soon, and sealed the door behind him.

  The door sealed so seamlessly into the wall that after a few moments she forgot which wall even held the door to begin with. Everything around her was white, but nothing was more white than the creature in the mirrors along all four walls.

  She hated looking at it.

  She finally sat down so she wouldn’t have to see the reflection anymore and leaned against the thick, padded wall behind her.

  She felt a buzz in the back of her head, like the beginning of a headache.

  One that had been building for days.

  • • •

  Several days later, after an excruciating twenty-four hours in the mirrored chamber and a following day of hunger and sleep, she began a completely new itinerary. Days that were once filled with learning and testing and socializing were now spent in combat training and deeper, more rigorous testing.

  She didn’t know what they were trying to accomplish, or what they were trying to find within her. Her body felt so different now. The world around her felt different. She didn’t know how to describe any of it.

  They were all slowly reintroduced back to one another. Apparently they’d all gone through the same thing, felt the same way. She spent most of her new training time with the other three, holding hands, feeling the surges of energy that connected them now when they touched.

  They ran test after test. After a while she sensed frustration from the caretakers. Whatever was supposed to be happening, wasn’t. For the first time in her life she wasn’t passing any of their tests.

  What do they want?

  She simply could not figure it out.

  • • •

  One night, after yet another long day of testing, she lay in bed and let the questions flow through her. Not the churning rapids of her younger days, but a peaceful, flowing river. She had so many questions.

  She was almost asleep when she heard a knock at her door.

  Startled, she crept up to the glass panel where she used to type in the passcode to unlock the door and let a little energy flow into it through her fingertips. The little light turned green and she slid the door back.

  There he was: the CA.

  Without speaking, she let him into the room and sealed the door. He stared at her in the dim glow of her nighttime lighting, and she felt the warmth bubble up in her stomach. His crystal-blue eyes bore into her, and as his hands wrapped around her waist, she felt the warmth come to a boil.

  She held his face in her hands as he pushed her against the wall and kissed her.

  The warmth boiled over.

  She felt, in that moment, a feeling so intense, so deep and primal, that it threatened to take her over completely. She pushed him back toward her bed and threw him down, amazed and surprised by her newfound strength. He laughed as he pulled her in gently and kissed her again—this time letting his lips linger against hers, his tongue parting them.

  His hands slid around her back, up her smooth, white skin, as he lifted up her plain cotton nightclothes. She pulled back and lifted the rest over her head, exposing her naked body before him. His eyes rapturously took her in, elated, aroused.

  She’d never felt so free in her entire life.

  The primal feeling surged as she ripped off his shirt and kissed his smooth, marble chest. She’d never seen this much of a naked man before, and she wanted more. She took off his pants and felt his foreign anatomy standing at attention beneath his underwear, between her legs. He kicked off the last pant leg and pressed his hips against hers. The sensation was overwhelming. She felt it pulse through her thighs, her waist, up into her spine, and to the very ends of her fingertips.

  She kissed him deeply as he rolled on top of her. She pressed her hands down his back, her fingers gently slipping beneath the elastic waistband of his soft underwear, and slid them down. She grasped the firm muscles and felt his body enter hers.

  She pulsed and vibrated with an electricity she’d never experienced before. There was discomfort at first, but she didn’t care. It was the best thing she’d ever felt. His eyes locked with hers as his hips moved. She saw how much they looked like the oceans in the programs she’d watched as a child. She wished she could swim in them forever. That she could drown in them.

  He started thrusting faster and faster, and the electricity built within her. He made guttural, panting noises now, sweat beading across his brow, and she knew that his ecstasy was about to crest in tandem with her own.

  His jaw locked, open, as he thrust into her, and her toes curled as she felt him pulsate. At the same time, the electric dam within her burst—

  She felt her body convulse and spasm in ecstasy as tall, splintering fingers of real, violet electricity sprouted from her skin. The CA’s eyes rolled into the back of his head as his own body began to convulse violently. The hair on his head began to smoke and smolder, and patches of red began to sprout up along his body where his skin burned away.

  She screamed in horror at the man frying on top of her, inside of her, but she couldn’t get him off. The electricity held him, ensnared him, and jolted through him like a terrible storm.

  By the time she was able to push him away, what had once been the beautiful CA’s body was a horrific, smoldering, lifeless abomination.

  She continued to scream into the dark. When the men came, they didn’t take her away and punish her like she thought they would, like she thought she deserved. Instead, they hurriedly said something about reviewing the footage, and seemed, for the first time in weeks, pleased with her somehow.

  They carted the body away, cleaned the room, and soon she was alone in the dark once again. She held herself and tried to stop from shaking, but she couldn’t. All she could think about was how he’d made her feel, how no one would probably ever look at her like that again.

  No. Not her.

  It.

  His eyes were burned into her mind. Eyes that saw her when no one else’s would. Eyes that looked like the ocean. She wished she could swim in them forever, that she could drown in them.

  She pressed her face into her pillow and cried herself to sleep.

  • • •

  Now she sat on the plane again, about to land in another city, where more people would inevitably die. Every time they sent the four of them on a mission, she knew that people died, and she hated it. She hated herself more than anything. All she knew was death, and she was far too good at dealing it. It disgusted her in a way that her reflection never could.

  New Orleans had been the worst. So many people died. They didn’t tell her, but she found out. She had her ways. Mothers, fathers, families, babies, they all died.

  They expected her to kill. It’s what they’d trained her for. Her team was the deadliest—capable of wiping out entire cities, just the four of them.

  The boy with the red hair mentioned something about how it was all a ploy. That if enough people died, the ones who trained them, the ones in charge, could profit in the end. He tried to convince her that the deaths somehow made them rich and powerful. She didn’t understand it.

  Yet another question to add to the endless list.

  This time they were only going after four people. They’d never gone on a mission for so few, in such a limited range, with such short notice. She’d had to ready herself for transport only ten minutes after receiving the memo in the glass panel on her wall.

  During the brief, they said that the targets had just killed several members of their team and were currently traveling along a busy interstate. There was a detour set up to get them off of the highway and corner them in an isolated area in an effort to reduce civilian casualties. This was odd too. The goal had always been to maximize casualties, not minimize them.

  Something was strange about this mission.

  All she could think of was how much she didn’
t want to do this, how badly she didn’t want to do any of it anymore.

  She thought about the animals, the animated ones in the program she’d watched once so many years prior, and how they escaped during a plane crash. She thought of their own plane crashing, right now, and how maybe the clouds would open up, gently envelop her, and lay her down on an island of her very own. She’d even eat the strange fruit, anything, as long as she could get there someday. She would be so . . . what was the word?

  Happy.

  She desperately did not want to kill these people, but she knew she had to. She knew that there was no way out for them.

  They were going to die.

  She always did what she was told, no matter how much it pained her.

  No, not her.

  It.

  CHAPTER 3

  ISAAK

  Flashes of brilliant purple and white light up everything outside at regular intervals now. There’s no rain yet, but a storm is definitely approaching. I wonder if it will hit us.

  It’s been about an hour since we made it out of Tulsa. A thick silence still weighs heavy on all of us. My heart has finally stopped racing. It seems like we’ve escaped, at least for now. I look over to my left and watch Azure as she stoically surveys the landscape, lit up every now and then by the lightning in the distance. The little patch of blue skin isn’t glowing as brightly as it did before—just a little flicker here and there, reflected onto the black window next to her face.

  “We need to get off the highway before Oklahoma City,” Azure says, finally breaking the silence.

  The girl in the front nods reluctantly. “They’ll be expecting us if we arrive tonight,” she says, as if she mentioned the idea in the first place. “If we wait out the night in the middle of nowhere—”

  “Then we might be able to throw them off our trail and evade them in the city,” Azure finishes.

  Something tells me they are both used to running the ship.

  I keep my mouth shut.

  “Well, ladies, it doesn’t look like we have much of a choice,” the guy says as we enter what appears to be a construction zone. Orange cones narrow the highway down to a single, slow-moving lane.