I’m running from the only house I’ve ever known. Although, it isn’t a house I will look back on too fondly. In fact, the house is just a cover for what lies beneath. A laboratory where my mother, if you could even call her that after everything she has done, experimented on my twin brother, Liam, and I because of our secret. I’m running through the woods, scared for my life and alone, because Liam was recaptured while we were escaping. He told me to go without him, knowing that if I get recaptured, there would be no more chances at freedom for either of us.

I run without stopping for a little while before taking a break in a clearing deep in the woods. I’m lost, but I don’t care so long as I don’t get caught by my mother. As I sit on a tree stump catching my breath, I hear a noise coming from the woods. Footsteps… I’d better hide I think before climbing up a tree. I climb onto a branch just before a man with light brown hair that is shaved on the sides walks into the clearing.

“If you’re still here, and can hear me, my name is Isaac Gates, and I mean you no harm.“ He says this clearly and confidently. I can tell he’s not lying, so I jump down carefully. He’s facing the opposite direction from me. Unsure of what to do, I speak.

“My name is Amber Valkerie… How long have you been tracking me?” I say as he turns around to face me.

“For at least fifteen minutes, maybe twenty,” he responds with a cocky grin “how long have you been running away from something?”

“What do you mean?” I say calmly, even as my palms grow sweaty, and my heart races, ready to run if he tries to capture me and bring me back to my mother.

“Oh come on,” he says, grinning wider now “no one runs at a dead sprint for almost twenty minutes straight with no breaks unless they are running from something.”

“Actually, I’ve been planning this for most of my life, so I guess you could say That I’ve been running from something for a long time.”

“May I ask what you’re running from?” he questions.

“You may, but I won’t tell you.”

He laughs, and we continue like this for about five more minutes when he asks me if I would like to travel with him around the planet, which I learned was called Chorus. I said yes and we traveled together for about two years. Usually, we called each other by code names. I was Valkyrie, for obvious reasons, and he was Felix. During that time I fell in love with him. Everything was going well, at least for now.

“Isaac… I need to tell you something.” I say as we enter a large city.

“What is it? Is something wrong?”

“No, not exactly. I-” at that moment I see a paper with my face on it hanging on the wall of a building. “Huh. what’s that?”
“What’s what? Oh that wanted poster? Why do you care about- oh. That’s why.”

“What does it say?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Isaac says, pale as a ghost, before dragging me back the way we came.

“Isaac, What does it say?”

“It’s nothing. It’s probably just a lie… right?

“I can’t tell you if it’s the truth if you don’t tell me what it says.”

“Do you… are you... nevermind. We’ll discuss this later.”

“Isaac…”

“Let’s just go home.”

“Ok.”

Home for us isn’t what most people would think of as a home. For us, it’s a small cabin in the woods where he found me. It’s made up of three rooms; a tiny bathroom with a toilet and a shower, a bedroom just barely big enough for a dresser and two beds on opposite walls, a slightly larger kitchen with a gas stove, a sink, and a table with two chairs at it. I follow Isaac inside, and we go to our room. I close the door behind us as he sits on his bed, and I sit on mine. We sit in silence like this for several minutes before he gets a phone call and leaves the room. I lay down on the bed, staring up at the ceiling and trying to figure out what he saw on that poster earlier. Then as suddenly as he left, he’s back in the room and sitting on his bed looking at me. I continue staring up at the ceiling, waiting for him to speak.

“Amber, I need you to be honest with me.”

“Ok,” I say as I turn my head to look at him, “just say the question that’s on your mind, and I promise I will answer it honestly.”

“Do you have psychic powers,” he asks so fast that I almost don’t hear all the words.

“Yes… I do,”

“It’s true… I can’t believe…” He shakes his head slowly as he processes what I said.

“Are you mad?”

“Mad? Of course I’m not mad. I’m furious! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I didn’t want her to hurt you…”

“Who? The person you escaped from? She was trying to help you!”

“What are you talking about? You have no idea what I went through, what I lost, so that I could get free!”

“No, I don’t, although it probably wasn’t all that much, considering.”

“What does that even mean? I can’t believe this… I fell in love with an idiot…”

“I’m not an idiot. The poster was right, you’re mentally unstable, you just can’t admit it. I’m willing to bet you falling in love with me is a lie.”

“What? No it’s-”

“Amber Valkerie! Come out with your hands up!”

“You called her didn’t you?”

“Don’t talk to me and do as they say.”

“Isaac please…”

“Get moving, or I’ll force you to.”

“What did my mother promise you?”

“She didn’t promise me anything. You need help, Amber. I’m trying give it to you.”

“I’m not crazy! Please, you have to believe me! I can prove it to you,” I say between sobs.

“Let’s go,” He says before picking me up and carrying me over his shoulder.

He carries me like this until we reach the door, where he puts me down. He opens the door. Outside waiting for us are my mother’s soldiers, as well as my mother herself in front of all of them. I walk outside, Isaac close behind me. Once we’re clear of the doorway I look at a pile of boulders behind the soldiers, and they float into the air and spread out. I sense Isaac look at me with shock and guilt as he realizes he was wrong, but I don’t care. He sold me out. He’s not much better than my mother at this point. As I rain down the rocks upon the soldiers, my mother runs over and sticks a syringe into my neck. Because I’m too weak to dodge after what I did with the rocks, I just stand there in a daze. As I lie on the ground, paralyzed from the contents of the syringe, I overhear My mother talking to Isaac.

“What did you do to her?”

“Nothing that concerns you, Isaac. Although, if you would like to find out, I strongly recommend you join my ranks. Word has it you can be very charismatic, as well as a good fighter. You’d also be able to see Amber here whenever you want.”

“No thank you. I don’t think she will want to speak to me.”

“As you wish. If you ever change your mind, you have my number.”

“Do… do you think you’ll be able to help her come back?”

“Maybe someday, dear Isaac. It’s quite a shame really. If she weren’t unstable, I think she would have made you a fine wife.

As my mother picks me up and turns to take me back to her ship, I watch him pull a small box out of his pocket.

“I think so too,” Are the last thing I hear him say as my mother walks away.

I don’t know if you can even read minds but I’m sorry… I’m so sorry…

I hear this in Isaac’s head as I’m being strapped down to a table somewhere on the ship. It’s too late for that now. I think bitterly as the ship takes off. Once we’re in the air, my mother comes over to me.

“For the ride home,” She says as if she actually thinks I want to go “home”. Another syringe in my neck sends me to sleep. It’s not peaceful though. It’s never been peaceful.

I wake up groggily in my old room. My mother is standing over me.

“Welcome home Amber. We have a lot of catching up to do.”

“Li… am,” I manage to gasp between the waves of nausea that comes as a side effect from those needles.

“Concerned for your twin brother? Don’t be, he’s in a better place now,” She says in a way that, if I didn’t know any better, would almost seem gentle.

“No,” I whisper, “he can’t be gone.”

“He can and he is.”

“It’s all my fault… It’s all my fault.” As I repeat these words over and over again, my mother pulls out another syringe, this time sticking it in my arm. I fall back asleep.

As soon as I’m asleep, the nightmare starts. It starts out, like the ones in the past, with me in the woods outside the underground lab I’m in. unlike the nightmares in the past though, Liam and Isaac are being tortured slowly by my mother. I’m pleading and screaming for her to stop, but I can’t do anything about it because I’m being held back by two of my mother’s soldiers. I have a metal band around my neck that keeps me from using my powers. My mother nods to the soldiers, and they let me go. I stumble over to where Liam and Isaac are laying on the ground in a pool of their own blood.

“I’m sorry! Please! I promise I won’t attempt to escape again! Just please don’t hurt them anymore,” I yell, my throat hoarse as I kneel sobbing before them

“Oh Amber,” she says, crouching before grabbing my chin and turning my face with a bloody hand so that we’re making eye contact, “You got your freedom, now you’ll suffer the consequences.”

“No,” I scream, throwing myself over top of Liam and Isaac’s barely breathing bodies, “If you want to hurt them, you’ll have to kill me first!”

“If that’s what it will take,” She chuckles. She stabs me in the back, right where my heart is, and as she kills me I wake up.

Every day is the same. I wake up, eat, go through some testing of experimental pills, syringes, and sometimes drinks that are laced with chemicals, eat, go through more testing, eat again, and then I sleep. My biggest relief is when I sleep at the end of the day, because I can finally rest without nightmares. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I can’t escape, so I’d better get some decent sleep while I can.