405 SOUTH LONG BEACH
—and I stop.
I fall forward, elbows on my knees, hands clasped behind my head, and fight the urge to tumble to the ground.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Over and over and over
I look up, look around.
An old bus sits not far from me, its many wheels mired in a pool of still water, rotting, half rusted, like an abandoned child steeping in its own filth. Freeway signs, shattered glass, shredded rubber, and forgotten bumpers litter what’s left of the broken pavement.
The sun finds me and shines in my direction, a spotlight for the fraying girl stopped in the middle of nowhere and I’m caught in its focused rays of heat, melting slowly from within, quietly collapsing as my mind catches up to my body like an asteroid barreling to earth.
And then it hits me—
The reminders like reverberations
The memories like hands around my throat
There it is
There she is
shattered again.
I’m curled into myself against the back of the filthy bus and I’ve got a hand clamped over my mouth to try and trap the screams but their desperate attempts to escape my lips are fighting a tide of unshed tears I cannot allow and—
breathe
My body shakes with unspent emotion.
Vomit inches up my oesophagus.
Go away, I whisper, but only in my head
go away, I say
Please die
I’d chained the terrified little girl of my past in some unknowable dungeon inside of me where she and her fears had been carefully stored, sealed away.
Her memories, suffocated.
Her anger, ignored.
I do not speak to her. I don’t dare look in her direction. I hate her.
But right now I can hear her crying.
Right now I can see her, this other version of myself, I can see her dragging her dirty fingernails against the chambers of my heart, drawing blood. And if I could reach inside myself and rip her out of me with my own two hands, I would.
I would snap her little body in half.
I would toss her mangled limbs out to sea.
I would be rid of her then, fully and truly, bleached forevermore of her stains on my soul. But she refuses to die. She remains within me, an echo. She haunts the halls of my heart and mind and though I’d gladly murder her for a chance at freedom, I cannot. It’s like trying to choke a ghost.
So I close my eyes and beg myself to be brave. I take deep breaths. I cannot let the broken girl inside of me inhale all that I’ve become. I cannot revert back to another version of myself. I will not shatter, not again, in the wake of an emotional earthquake.
But where do I even begin?
How do I deal with any of this? These past weeks had already been too much for me; too much to handle; too much to juggle. It’s been hard to admit that I’m unqualified, that I’m in way over my head, but I got there. I was willing to recognize that all this—this new life, this new world—would take time and experience. I was willing to put in the hours, to trust my team, to try to be diplomatic. But now, in light of everything—
My entire life has been an experiment.
I have a sibling. A sister. And an altogether different set of parents, biological parents, who treated me no differently than my adoptive ones did, donating my body to research as if I were nothing more than a science experiment.
Anderson and the other supreme commanders have always known me. Castle has always known the truth about me. Warner knew I’d been adopted.
And now, to know that those I’ve trusted most have been lying to me—manipulating me—
Everyone has been using me—
It rips itself from my lungs, the sudden scream. It wrenches free from my chest without warning, without permission, and it’s a scream so loud, so harsh and violent it brings me to my knees. My hands are pressed against the pavement, my head half bent between my legs. The sound of my agony is lost in the wind, carried off by the clouds.
But here, between my feet, the ground has fissured open.
I jump up, surprised, and look down, spin around. I suddenly can’t remember if that crack was there before.
The force of my frustration and confusion sends me back to the bus, where I exhale and lean against the back doors, hoping for a place to rest my head—except that my hands and head rip through the exterior wall as though it were made of tissue, and I fall hard on the filthy floor, my hands and knees going straight through the metal underfoot.
Somehow this only makes me angrier.
My power is out of control, stoked by my reckless mind, my wild thoughts. I can’t focus my energy the way Kenji taught me to, and it’s everywhere, all around me, within and without me and the problem is, I don’t care anymore.
I don’t care, not right now.
I reach without thinking and rip one of the bus seats from its bolts, and throw it, hard, through the windshield. Glass splinters everywhere; a large shard hits me in the eye and several more fly into my open, angry mouth; I lift a hand to find slivers stuck in my sleeve, glittering like miniature icicles. I spit the spare bits from my mouth. Remove the glass shards from my shirt. And then I pull an inch-long piece of glass out of the inside of my eyelid and toss it, with a small clatter, to the ground.
My chest is heaving.
What, I think, as I rip another seat from its bolts, do I do now? I throw this seat straight through a window, shattering more glass and ripping open more metal innards. Instinct alone moves my arm up to protect my face from the flying debris, but I don’t flinch. I’m too angry to care. I’m too powerful at the moment to feel pain. Glass ricochets off my body. Razor-thin ribbons of steel bounce off my skin. I almost wish I felt something. Anything.
What do I do?
I punch the wall and there’s no relief in it; my hand goes straight through. I kick a chair and there’s no comfort in it; my foot rips through the cheap upholstery. I scream again, half outrage, half heartbreak, and watch this time as a long, dangerous crack forms along the ceiling.
That’s new.
And I’ve hardly had time to think the thought when the bus gives a sudden, lurching heave, yawns itself into a deep shudder, and splits clean in half.
The two halves collapse on either side of me, tripping me backward. I fall into a pile of shredded metal and wet, dirty glass and, stunned, I stumble up to my feet.
I don’t know what just happened.
I knew I was able to project my abilities—my strength, for certain—but I didn’t know that there was any projectional power in my voice. Old impulses make me wish I had someone to discuss this with. But I have no one to talk to anymore.
Warner is out of the question.
Castle is complicit.
And Kenji—what about Kenji? Did he know about my parents—my sister—too? Surely, Castle would’ve told him?
The problem is, I can’t be sure of anything anymore.
There’s no one left to trust.
But those words—that simple thought—suddenly inspires in me a memory. It’s something hazy I have to reach for. I wrap my hands around it and pull. A voice? A female voice, I remember now. Telling me—
I gasp.
It was Nazeera. Last night. In the medical wing. It was her. I remember her voice now—I remember reaching out and touching her hand, I remember the feel of the metal knuckles she’s always wearing and she said—
“. . . the people you trust are lying to you—and the other supreme commanders only want to kill you . . .”
I spin around too fast, searching for something I cannot name.
Nazeera was trying to warn me. Last night—she’s barely known me and she was trying to tell me the truth long before any of the others ever did—
But why?
Just then, something hard and loud lands heavily on the half-bent steel structure blocking the road. The old freeway signs shudder and sway.
I’m looking straight at it as it happens. I’m watching this in real time, frame by frame, and yet, I’m still so shocked by what I see that I forget to speak.
It’s Nazeera, fifty feet in the air, sitting calmly atop a sign that says—
10 EAST LOS ANGELES
—and she’s waving at me. She’s wearing a loose, brown leather hood attached to a holster that fits snugly around her shoulders. The leather hood covers her hair and shades her eyes so that only the bottom half of her face is visible from where I stand. The diamond piercing under her bottom lip catches fire in the sunlight.
—and I stop.
I fall forward, elbows on my knees, hands clasped behind my head, and fight the urge to tumble to the ground.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Over and over and over
I look up, look around.
An old bus sits not far from me, its many wheels mired in a pool of still water, rotting, half rusted, like an abandoned child steeping in its own filth. Freeway signs, shattered glass, shredded rubber, and forgotten bumpers litter what’s left of the broken pavement.
The sun finds me and shines in my direction, a spotlight for the fraying girl stopped in the middle of nowhere and I’m caught in its focused rays of heat, melting slowly from within, quietly collapsing as my mind catches up to my body like an asteroid barreling to earth.
And then it hits me—
The reminders like reverberations
The memories like hands around my throat
There it is
There she is
shattered again.
I’m curled into myself against the back of the filthy bus and I’ve got a hand clamped over my mouth to try and trap the screams but their desperate attempts to escape my lips are fighting a tide of unshed tears I cannot allow and—
breathe
My body shakes with unspent emotion.
Vomit inches up my oesophagus.
Go away, I whisper, but only in my head
go away, I say
Please die
I’d chained the terrified little girl of my past in some unknowable dungeon inside of me where she and her fears had been carefully stored, sealed away.
Her memories, suffocated.
Her anger, ignored.
I do not speak to her. I don’t dare look in her direction. I hate her.
But right now I can hear her crying.
Right now I can see her, this other version of myself, I can see her dragging her dirty fingernails against the chambers of my heart, drawing blood. And if I could reach inside myself and rip her out of me with my own two hands, I would.
I would snap her little body in half.
I would toss her mangled limbs out to sea.
I would be rid of her then, fully and truly, bleached forevermore of her stains on my soul. But she refuses to die. She remains within me, an echo. She haunts the halls of my heart and mind and though I’d gladly murder her for a chance at freedom, I cannot. It’s like trying to choke a ghost.
So I close my eyes and beg myself to be brave. I take deep breaths. I cannot let the broken girl inside of me inhale all that I’ve become. I cannot revert back to another version of myself. I will not shatter, not again, in the wake of an emotional earthquake.
But where do I even begin?
How do I deal with any of this? These past weeks had already been too much for me; too much to handle; too much to juggle. It’s been hard to admit that I’m unqualified, that I’m in way over my head, but I got there. I was willing to recognize that all this—this new life, this new world—would take time and experience. I was willing to put in the hours, to trust my team, to try to be diplomatic. But now, in light of everything—
My entire life has been an experiment.
I have a sibling. A sister. And an altogether different set of parents, biological parents, who treated me no differently than my adoptive ones did, donating my body to research as if I were nothing more than a science experiment.
Anderson and the other supreme commanders have always known me. Castle has always known the truth about me. Warner knew I’d been adopted.
And now, to know that those I’ve trusted most have been lying to me—manipulating me—
Everyone has been using me—
It rips itself from my lungs, the sudden scream. It wrenches free from my chest without warning, without permission, and it’s a scream so loud, so harsh and violent it brings me to my knees. My hands are pressed against the pavement, my head half bent between my legs. The sound of my agony is lost in the wind, carried off by the clouds.
But here, between my feet, the ground has fissured open.
I jump up, surprised, and look down, spin around. I suddenly can’t remember if that crack was there before.
The force of my frustration and confusion sends me back to the bus, where I exhale and lean against the back doors, hoping for a place to rest my head—except that my hands and head rip through the exterior wall as though it were made of tissue, and I fall hard on the filthy floor, my hands and knees going straight through the metal underfoot.
Somehow this only makes me angrier.
My power is out of control, stoked by my reckless mind, my wild thoughts. I can’t focus my energy the way Kenji taught me to, and it’s everywhere, all around me, within and without me and the problem is, I don’t care anymore.
I don’t care, not right now.
I reach without thinking and rip one of the bus seats from its bolts, and throw it, hard, through the windshield. Glass splinters everywhere; a large shard hits me in the eye and several more fly into my open, angry mouth; I lift a hand to find slivers stuck in my sleeve, glittering like miniature icicles. I spit the spare bits from my mouth. Remove the glass shards from my shirt. And then I pull an inch-long piece of glass out of the inside of my eyelid and toss it, with a small clatter, to the ground.
My chest is heaving.
What, I think, as I rip another seat from its bolts, do I do now? I throw this seat straight through a window, shattering more glass and ripping open more metal innards. Instinct alone moves my arm up to protect my face from the flying debris, but I don’t flinch. I’m too angry to care. I’m too powerful at the moment to feel pain. Glass ricochets off my body. Razor-thin ribbons of steel bounce off my skin. I almost wish I felt something. Anything.
What do I do?
I punch the wall and there’s no relief in it; my hand goes straight through. I kick a chair and there’s no comfort in it; my foot rips through the cheap upholstery. I scream again, half outrage, half heartbreak, and watch this time as a long, dangerous crack forms along the ceiling.
That’s new.
And I’ve hardly had time to think the thought when the bus gives a sudden, lurching heave, yawns itself into a deep shudder, and splits clean in half.
The two halves collapse on either side of me, tripping me backward. I fall into a pile of shredded metal and wet, dirty glass and, stunned, I stumble up to my feet.
I don’t know what just happened.
I knew I was able to project my abilities—my strength, for certain—but I didn’t know that there was any projectional power in my voice. Old impulses make me wish I had someone to discuss this with. But I have no one to talk to anymore.
Warner is out of the question.
Castle is complicit.
And Kenji—what about Kenji? Did he know about my parents—my sister—too? Surely, Castle would’ve told him?
The problem is, I can’t be sure of anything anymore.
There’s no one left to trust.
But those words—that simple thought—suddenly inspires in me a memory. It’s something hazy I have to reach for. I wrap my hands around it and pull. A voice? A female voice, I remember now. Telling me—
I gasp.
It was Nazeera. Last night. In the medical wing. It was her. I remember her voice now—I remember reaching out and touching her hand, I remember the feel of the metal knuckles she’s always wearing and she said—
“. . . the people you trust are lying to you—and the other supreme commanders only want to kill you . . .”
I spin around too fast, searching for something I cannot name.
Nazeera was trying to warn me. Last night—she’s barely known me and she was trying to tell me the truth long before any of the others ever did—
But why?
Just then, something hard and loud lands heavily on the half-bent steel structure blocking the road. The old freeway signs shudder and sway.
I’m looking straight at it as it happens. I’m watching this in real time, frame by frame, and yet, I’m still so shocked by what I see that I forget to speak.
It’s Nazeera, fifty feet in the air, sitting calmly atop a sign that says—
10 EAST LOS ANGELES
—and she’s waving at me. She’s wearing a loose, brown leather hood attached to a holster that fits snugly around her shoulders. The leather hood covers her hair and shades her eyes so that only the bottom half of her face is visible from where I stand. The diamond piercing under her bottom lip catches fire in the sunlight.
