Kijani sighed. She'd figured he wasn't going to let her off that easy, but she'd asked out of sheer desperation. Anything to be free of that memory. But when Mr. Xavier asked if he could see the memories themselves, she physically balked in the chair, edging away from him as if she were to run. She forced herself to relax and sighed softly. "Okay. Do what you have to do."
She shut her eyes and let the memories come forward. Immediately they overwhelmed her, attacking her all at once. She was watching a movie of herself, and it was a horror movie.
The park. She'd always liked the park. But she was always alone, and today was no different. She was alone, with a notebook full of lined paper. The tall, skinny 11 year old Kijani spread the paper around her and shut her eyes, letting it float up and wind around her in a lazy tornado. She opened her arms and spun in circles, a carefree smile on her face. It was the last time she would smile that way.
They had her before she knew what was happening. One moment she was testing her powers in the park, the next she was being smuggled, kicking and fighting, into the back of a dark van. They pricked her with something, and there was darkness.
She woke up on a cold metal table. Her arms and legs were restrained. There was a heavy scent in the air. Like... cleaning products and medicine and copper, all at the same time. There was a man in a mask hovering above her, his head surrounded by a corona of bright light. He had something in his hands, something he flicked with his thumb. A tiny flame poked out of the end. Before Kijani could really understand what was going on, the fire was being put to her fingertips. She screamed, she fought, she tried to make him stop, begged him to stop and there was a stink in the air, like burning meat-
And then darkness.
She woke up in a cot. There were others. Some crying their eyes out, some empty, all in the same white clothes with a white fancy-looking “a” that she was wearing. Sometimes they were taken, and came back pale and shaking, bleeding, weeping. Sometimes they were taken and didn't come back at all.
Life fell into a routine. Sustenance in the morning (it could barely be called food). The lab in the afternoon. (They burned her. They cut her. They held her underwater until she thought she would die.) In the evening, sustenance and forced movie watching for hours on end. (You are the future. You will comply. You are the future. You will comply.) In the night, whatever quiet that passed for sleep. In the morning it started all over again.
Over time, Kijani began to understand. They wanted to see her power, how she reacted to stimuli. If her power could change and adapt. Every child there had a skill of their own. Some mundane, some fantastic. They were to be the future. The army of perfection. The Alpha.
Her powers began to withdraw. She learned to hide them deep, to make them stop. Maybe if she could pretend to be normal, they would leave her alone. The experimentation increased, and then it stopped altogether. She was taken away in the middle of the night. Another van. Somehow, she knew she would not come back from this trip.
The next thing she understood, she was looking down the barrel of a gun. Everything happened at once. She didn't want to die. She didn't. Her power, held deep in her chest, came forth. Tore a paper napkin from breakfast out of her clothing and made it solid enough to block the bullet from coming through her skull. It bounced right off, and there was blood that didn't belong to her.
She ran. She ran and ran.
6 years later in the present, Kijani was shaking in the chair, her eyes wide and blank. She was curled in the chair as tight as possible, as if the very floor was poison and the chair the only safe place. Every scrap of paper in the office was spinning in a tight corona around the room, with Kijani at the center. Her face was wet with tears and she couldn't breathe.
