Refracted

- - 20 - -

I had no control over mind.

I thought I had left. Had I not left? Was it a trap? Was the Resistance real? Did I ever leave? Did I escape? Did Elyse escape? Was Rachel's warning right? Should I have trusted Elyse? No, I shouldn't have trusted Elyse. She brought me back to a facility. I was attacked. They said by an animal. There was no animal. A person had hurt me. I had broken ribs. I had a concussion. I was in the infirmary. I left. I was in a facility. I was back.

"I have to get out of here," I choked out to a Elyse but she was gone too, lost in her own mind. "Elyse! I need to get out of here!"

My thoughts were racing. I couldn't see; I couldn't hear; I couldn't feel. I was dead. No, that wasn't right. I was alive again. My thoughts were racing. Bad thoughts, bad thoughts, go away.

It took visible effort to push back my thoughts enough to barricade them from my conscious. Elyse was still lost in her own world. I stumbled over her and tugged on her arm. No response. Her GlowStix had fallen in the shock and rolled under the bunk bed. A red mist rose up from underneath the depths, it was blood.

No, it wasn't blood. Just the GlowStix. I clutched my green one and pulled Elyse simultaneously. She moved ever so slightly but was still lost from me. I hooked her arm around my neck and mostly dragged her from the dormitory. We went back through the common room where I played games with my fellow prisoners and passed the auditorium where I had my assemblies. Past the classrooms where I was force fed propaganda and learned useless stuff about the pitiful lives of Earthlings. Back near the footsteps and the blood, mine and Rachel's combined. Away from the trauma and memories and abandoned facility. I carried Elyse back to the infirmary where I handed her to the shocked boy nurse and back to my safe bed where I sank into a dreamless sleep...

***

When I awoke, I couldn't remember what had happened. For a few seconds, my brain attempted to protect me from the forthcoming onslaught of emotional terror. A weak attempt.

My memories came flooding back to me and not just ones from last night. I saw flashes of my childhood in the facility and even at home with my missing brother and missing mother and missing father. They were taken from me. I was back. Back in the facility.

Of course, logically speaking, that wasn't the exact facility that I stayed in. Mine was over on the other side of the construction zone and not this close to the centre of Zyphia. Plus, mine was above ground. But logic wasn't truly my friend right now and the fear was very, very real.

We had learnt about the other facilities in school. The locations were disclosed for safety but we did know of them. It was all part of the propaganda and masterful re-education programme of the government. Our parents were bad, we were told over and over again, but we were learning to be good. We were model citizens of Zyphia and we should have been proud. On the most part, students and prisoners alike believed them  and strived to be the mindless, indoctrinated puppets that the government sought after. But not me, I refused to turn against my family despite their desertion of me. I had faith in them and I would not be convinced otherwise. Because of that, I was deemed a threat to society. And I was due to be transferred to a more 'secure' facility on the day I escaped. Even then, they were lying to me. No one ever left those facilities. Those facilities were for the people who couldn't be fixed.

The facility here was different though. The rooms and furniture were the same, though the technology a little outdated. But that's why it was different. The facility in the compound was abandoned and old, two things that didn't make sense. (1) We had never heard of a facility being deserted before. That meant failure but it begged the question of where did the prisoners go? Why was it abandoned? Why was this facility different to the others? (2) Its evident age meant that the facility had been abandoned long before the Resistance took over, therefore someone here must have known of its previous uses which then introduced more answerless questions. Why were we in a government known location?  Why were yet again contradicting ourselves by living in a place that was traumatic for others and embodied everything we hated?