I remembered my own young reflection, and the pink-painted walls of my room in the hospital. Hollow Ground Medical Centre. One day I needed to question one of the Zevs about the significance of ‘Hollow Ground,’ since they kept naming all of their institutions after it.
I remembered the sound of Jayden’s laugh as he ran down a corridor out of my sight, my favourite toy clutched to his chest; and the beautiful face of a red-headed girl, Eva. The fourth test subject. I remembered my twin, too. I remembered him with a warm, tender feeling in my chest. I loved him; he protected me and kept me company. He was the only one who didn’t look at me as though I were a lab experiment. Wonderkid, Jayden had called me. Eva had called me the same thing. Wonderkid. They were test subjects, and I was Wonderkid. But my brother, my twin… he just called me Lela. I remembered everything but his face and name, and that didn’t surprise me in the least, because Jayden hadn’t kept his identity from me all this time just to reveal everything now.
“Can I sleep in here, Lela?”
I felt a tug on the leg of my pajama pants and I rolled over groggily, seeing my brother by my bedside. I couldn’t seem to focus properly on his face, but I could see his small fingers clutched around the flannel cloth of my pants. I nodded sleepily, and I knew that he smiled, though I couldn’t make it out behind the fuzzy details of his face. He bent and pulled out the sleeping bag that was stored under my bed just for him, rolling it out on the floor and settling comfortably into it.
“Does it still hurt?” I mumbled, coming more awake and finding my voice.
He sighed, and I took that for the answer it was.
“You should tell them,” I urged gently, leaning over the bed to look down at him. “They can help you.”
“It’s a bad power, Lela. It does bad things. I’ll get in trouble. I’ll just look after you instead. That can be my other power. I can have two powers!”
I giggled at his silliness, though I was still scared for him beneath it all. I would always be scared for him. “Just… tell them if it gets worse.”
He was too quiet after that, and awareness settled into me with a sickening heaviness that made my head spin.
It had already gotten worse, and he wasn’t telling me.
Soon… soon… it would destroy him.
The image of my hospital bedroom faded away to be replaced by another; the walls melted into a puddle of pink, only to pull back up again and fade to white, backing away from me and sharpening into the four, flat walls of an empty room.
There was a mirror on one side, and I knew that Weston, Dominic, and the others were behind it. He was also there. My twin. He had been growing jealous of the way the adults treated me, and he had stopped confiding in me about his ability. My pet bunny had even turned up dead, her heart suspiciously halted in her chest as though she had simply decided to stop existing… and while I hadn’t brought it up with him, I knew that my twin was responsible for it. It was his ability after all. It caused the worry to twist inside of me; twisting and morphing, until nothing about this existence of ours seemed simple anymore.
“Lela… concentrate please.” The voice crackled over the intercom and into the room, causing my mouth to twist just like my stomach.
I hunched my shoulders a little bit, but did what they wanted me to do. I turned to a blank wall and held out my hand, furrowing my brow in concentration. The valcrick slithered down my arm, sparking a familiar warmth in my chest and unravelling some of the knots that held me prisoner. I felt the coat of guilt fall from my shoulders, and I held out my other hand, tilting my face up to the ceiling and closing my eyes. The sparks didn’t attack the wall as I had expected them to; instead, they wormed their way up my arms and over my shoulders, gradually embracing my trembling body.
I knew that the doctors and Klovoda representatives on the other side of the mirror would be whispering and gasping and scribbling their notes, but I didn’t care about them anymore. The valcrick eased my sorrow over the pet rabbit, invading my emotions like a vapor and carrying them away, leaving nothing but simple fact. I wasn’t simply healing myself, because I wasn’t hurt in the physical sense… it was something different. Something that went beyond me. The valcrick was a part of something bigger, a power that merely lent itself to me, and it wanted to ease me.
I felt connected.
“Describe what you’re feeling please, Lela,” the crackly voice demanded, severing my ethereal moment.
The little sparks spluttered out, flashing once or twice like faulty lightbulbs before flickering into darkness. I would keep this to myself, because I already knew what they were going to say. They would say that I was ‘exceptional,’ and ‘extraordinary’. They would fight over theories of why my power was so strong, and Dominic would claim responsibility once again, a hand on my shoulder as Weston leaned against the wall, ever the silent watcher.