The Darkest Minds - "I'm a red,"

11.

The team to retrieve supplies leaves as the sun sets, the plus side about winter approaching so fast is the quick sunset.

Once they're gone it's Vida and I's job to help Charles tend to the sicker kids scattered around, try to get them to drink water and move around.

The more time I've been out of the coma the trainers put me in, the more my fire starts to rekindle. It was an ember before when I'd first come out. But now I'm no longer afraid to defend myself, I'm more confident and I love the feeling of becoming myself again.

The trainers- they made me hate who I was, the power I had. They made me despise it and convinced me I was wrong. I'm not wrong.

After everything's done and tended to, we sit together in silence, a trash can of fire in front of us.

"So... what was operation jamboree like? I heard it was a red camp but none of us outside kids have heard of it," Charles asks after minutes of unbearable silence.

"I don't wanna talk about it," I respond, bringing my knees closer to my chest. I don't know him and he's not part of my team, he doesn't even want us here. Telling Vida about what happened was so much different, she knows me. I'm not comfortable sharing this with someone else, especially someone I don't know.

"What? Come on, I was in a camp too, it's not like I don't how it felt to be in one-" my anger grows to immeasurable heights at his statement. He may have been in a camp, but not one like mine.

I stand quickly, my left arm giving a sharp jerk.

"You think it was "just another camp"? Yeah? Were your legs and feet tied together? We're you thrown in a cell and tortured? Told you were a mistake that needed fixing? Electrocuted, cut, lashed, beaten? Not allowed to show any emotion, not even as they beat you because it would make it worse?" I'm practically yelling now, the other kids in the warehouse looking at me. Charles tries to butt in but I don't let him.

"I didn't know-"

"No, you didn't. And yet you assumed. That I was weak for becoming that way. They drained every ounce of will and hope out of my body, snapped the connection between my brain and heart, made me something that followed orders, believed I was wrong and that they could fix me. So no. It's not another camp. I said I don't want to talk about it," I finish before walking off, my bones are practically melting from the heat inside of me.

"Jia! Wait!" Vida calls after me but I ignore her, ripping the warehouse door open and stepping outside into the nice cold air.

Using my fire as a guide, I walk across the parking lot and down the small trail toward the building that once served as a fighting ring.

The trash cans are still in the mismatched ring they were when we left, the fires burnt out.

I sit in the middle of the ring, head in my knees. I feel like a child, storming out like that. But they just don't get it. They don't get what it's like to be treated like an animal. Like you're a savage, a failure.

Footsteps sound outside the broken wall. It's probably Vida. "Vi I'm fine. Just go back inside," I call out, looking up.

But who I see isn't Vida. It's Charles.

"Oh," is all I say as Charles enters the building, shivering.