Hey guys! Thanks for your patience with this update. Classes are about to start again for me so I'll try to update as regularly as possible. This chapter is a bit different...but hopefully it'll explain a lot. Let me know what you think! xx

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(Approximately 2 Years Ago...)

A tall woman, probably in her mid-twenties, entered Mina’s cell room—the room she’d gotten to know quite well over the past few weeks. With only a small twin mattress on a metal stand, the room was devoid of anything else. The cell’s glass walls let her see her surroundings, which were complicated looking equipment and occasionally various men in labcoats. To entertain herself after she had given up trying to pull the chip from her head, she counted the tiles on the floor. 118 to be exact. Once, twice, three times. It became a daily ritual.

She’d been taken from the cell to visit a few other rooms from time to time, all equally as obnoxiously bright with florescent lights shining down from the ceilings. The men wearing masks looking at her beyond dark glasses would strap her to a metal operating table, which was uncomfortably cold, and poke and prod her with sharp tools. They murmured things in whispers to each other, but never once addressed her.

Now, another soul had entered the cell she called her room, and this person was much different from the other men who occasionally dropped off food or gave her injections of vile looking liquid that made her feel nauseous.

Mina sat up, scanning her eyes over the stranger. She was wearing the familiar uniform of the other employees that came into her cell, although she looked much gentler. Her features weren’t all hard, sharp lines, but were rounded and soft. Though it was Mina’s first instinct to tense up when someone entered, she relaxed slightly at the sight of the woman with a slight release of breath.

“Hello Mina,” she said in Japanese. Her voice was quite lovely. Mina felt herself feeling safe, but quickly reminded herself to always stay on guard. “I’m Doctor Tanaka. I’m here to teach you Korean.”

Mina said nothing and simply turned away. Doctor Tanaka stood there patiently, regarding her with a small smile. “I’ll be your tutor for the next few weeks. Once a day. We’ll have one on one sessions. You’ll have reading assignments as well, to ensure you’ll be fluent as soon as possible.”

“Why?” Mina asked, still not making eye contact with the woman.

The doctor hesitated. “We—er, well, they, want you to be ready to go out in the field. Perform tasks for your government.”

Mina sighed, guessing what some of those tasks were, but not bothering to detest. There was nothing she could do with the chip in her head blocking her powers anyway. She was so desperate for fresh air that she’d be willing to do nearly anything.

“For now, I brought you a textbook. We’ll start off simple. I know you’ve probably picked up some basics from living here for a few weeks but, we’ll cover more ground. You’ll be fluent in no time!” The doctor spoke very cheerily, and for some reason it made Mina angry. And yet, another part of her found comfort in the woman’s soft mannerisms. Tanaka wasn’t looking at Mina like she was an experiment. It seemed the doctor actually viewed Mina as a human being.
 

Mina grew to look forward to her sessions with Doctor Tanaka. They were the highlight of her day; a glimpse of entertainment amid boring, grey hours which dragged on endlessly. She was even given more reading material. Granted, they were more textbooks, but Mina read them vigorously. Doctor Tanaka was a good teacher, and Mina was a fast learner. Within a month, Mina was able to form sentences quite well and understand Korean spoken to her almost perfectly. The men in labcoats who watched her were quite pleased with her progress.

“She’ll be ready for the field soon, then?” a man asked Doctor Tanaka, standing outside of Mina’s cell, looking in through the glass walls. Mina was perched on her bed, bent over another textbook that Tanaka had given her yesterday.

“Yes, within a few months she’ll be totally fluent.”

“She doesn’t need to be fluent, just competent,” the man remarked. “We need her out there as soon as possible with Akari. She’s getting too sloppy, leaving too many casualties behind. Mina will help stop that.”

Mina could slightly make out the words of the two people watching her outside, although she pretended not to be listening. At the sound of an unknown name, her eyes lifted though, and she briefly made eye contact with Doctor Tanaka before looking back down at her book. Akari? Casualties?

A few weeks passed before Mina was brought out of her cell more frequently to other rooms where she could actually use her powers. Despite having a new sense of freedom, the rooms around her were heavily outfitted with a material that limited the distance to which her powers could extend. The chip implanted in her head was removed and a test subject would be sent in. She was to use her powers to the fullest extent, constantly pushing her limit to immediately render the subject completely under her control.

Sometimes the amount of effort it took was enough to make her pass out, and she’d wake up in her cell once again, but eventually she grew more used to the pounding headache using her powers gave her. She could make someone do anything, whatever was instructed of her from the speaker overhead. Because Mina was to be sent out into the field to act as damage control, she was to prevent her partner—she assumed this mysterious Akari person whose name she had heard earlier—from leaving a wake of destruction in her path.

Wiping memories became a common drill. Mina could make someone forget recent events, even who they were entirely. She could even forge false memories, but that was quite difficult and straining. Causing people to pass out was a quick and easy way to stop threatening enemies without hurting them. However, Mina was made aware that casualties were sometimes an unavoidable part of an operation. “Let your partner worry about that,” the man over the loud speaker said. There was a sense of relief, knowing that she wouldn’t be forced to take someone’s life. But there was also a terror in knowing she was working with someone who might have to do that on occasion.

A month later, Mina was brought down a series of hallways, expecting to be taken to the usual testing room, but instead she was dragged further into the complex. Eventually she was brought into a room that was decorated like a living room, with a coffee table, couches and chairs. It looked almost as if it were the interior of a family’s home, except the standard glass walls stood in place, allowing everything inside to be seen.

There was a girl, perhaps a few years older, sitting in the room on a couch. She had dark brown hair that was cut short, just above her shoulders. On the table in front of her was a mug, which she had her hand wrapped around.

Mina was pushed into the room and then the glass doors slid closed behind her automatically. She stumbled a bit before looking at the girl before her in surprise. The girl looked slightly amused at the sight of Mina, with the corner of curving upward.

“Hello,” the girl said in Japanese, leaning back against the couch. “So you’re the other one.”

The other one? Mina stood with her arms crossed, unsure of what to say to the girl in front of her. She had almost forgotten how to converse normally with someone, especially someone close to her age.

“I’m Akari,” the girl said, standing up and extending a hand. Mina’s eyes widened at the sound of the familiar name. She hesitantly took the girl’s hand shook it. So this was her infamous partner, the killer. “And your name is...?”

“Mina.”

Akari nodded. “Looks like we’ll be seeing a lot of each other nowadays. I’ve been going out on field missions on my own for awhile but they’ve told me they were preparing someone that would make the jobs go more smoothly. I think I was doing pretty well on my own but, I guess they figured I could use some company.”

Mina bit her tongue and looked down at her hands. The way Akari was staring at her intensely was making her slightly uncomfortable. “You...can do things too?” Mina finally asked.

Akari laughed, and it was a surprisingly pleasant laugh. “Yeah, I can do a lot of things. Let’s sit down,” she motioned to the couch where she had been sitting only seconds before. “We won’t be in this room often. Better take advantage of it. This couch is surprisingly comfortable. Beats that springy mattress back in my cell anyway.”

Akari sat down and looked up at Mina expectantly. After a moment Mina sat down as well, leaning against the arm of the couch, trying to put a good amount of distance between the herself and the girl sitting next to her.

“So you can hypnotize people?” Akari asked. Mina simply nodded.

“Man, if I had that power I’d be unstoppable.” The older girl smiled at Mina. “I take powers, that’s what I do. I collect them and use them as my own. I could take yours…” she said, leaning forward suddenly, causing Mina to lean farther back into her seat. “It never ends well though, for the other person involved that is. They have a habit of dying after I them dry.”

Akari said it so coolly and casually that Mina’s eyes widened, and she turned a ghostly shade of white. Had she simply been brought here to die? All of her training for nothing? Would she never get to see her family again?

“I’m only kidding,” Akari assured, gently reaching a hand toward Mina’s arm. The older girl’s fingers pressed against her skin and Mina could feel her skin crawl. “I need you around here. It’s nice to have someone else to talk to and suffer with. No one else understands. And besides, this room renders any power unusable, so I couldn’t take your powers even if I wanted to.”

Akari removed her hand and sat back against the couch, sighing. She stared at Mina intently again, perhaps enjoying seeing the younger girl squirm, and smiled. “I have a feeling we’re going to be great friends.”

Mina and Akari were friends in the loosest version of the word. They worked together on field missions, but that was usually all they saw of each other. Often Mina could get Akari into restricted government areas and then Akari could infiltrate information from there. Akari was not afraid to get her hands dirty, Mina would soon find out. Mina watched as the older girl ended a few lives. With fire, ice, even her bare hands, all different powers she acquired over the years. Each power represented a different life she’d taken, and although Mina thought about whom each power had once belonged to, she didn’t dare ask Akari about it.

“It’ll get easier, believe me,” Akari assured Mina, who trembled at the sight of the first man that fell to Akari’s abilities. Before Mina could stop him, Akari had lashed out. The older girl shrugged apologetically. “I felt terrible about it at first, but you can’t let yourself think about it. It’ll consume you. Focus on the mission instead. Don’t think of them as people, only targets.”

Akari kicked the man’s limp body out of the way, sliding him across the tile floor like nothing. “If you don’t, you’ll lose your mind.”  

The second death. Another man, younger this time, who got in their way. “Humans are all despicable things. They destroy and they hurt without care.” Akari was bent over the man, grasping the man’s face in her hands and sneering at him. The warm tone that Akari sometime had when speaking was gone, replaced by a cold demeanor that made Mina step back in fear. It was chilling how quickly the older girl could switch back and forth between the seemingly polar opposite personalities she carried.

“When I’m out of here I’ll hurt them all,” Akari whispered, staring down at the man’s limp body. Then, softer. “Like they’ve hurt me.”

Despite scaring Mina most of the time, Akari did look out for Mina in her own way. Mina felt a strange sort of respect and fondness for the girl; a girl, whom she would soon learn, had been held prisoner for nearly five years. Mina could not even imagine being held captive for that long, as her time of being in the facility of about a year had already seemed like a century.

The first time Mina disobeyed orders on a mission and attempted to escape, the shocks came. Her supervisors, men with hard faces and square shoulders, told her that the headset installed would be a precaution measure of sorts to keep her in line while she was outside of the building.

“Do as we say and you’ll be fine,” a man told her, face covered in shadow. “Try anything, and you’ll receive a high voltage shock. We’ll have eyes on you at all times, watching your every move. The shock isn’t deadly, but it is excruciatingly painful, I promise you that.”

She thought she could overcome the shocks. What could be more painful than staying here, a prisoner, forced to commit crimes? But the moment she tried to talk someone into giving them her car, there was a jolt so piercing it clouded her vision and consumed her thoughts, saturating them solely with pain. This pain was not red hot, but blindingly bright. White. As Mina cried out and clutched at her head, Akari watched with a frown on her face. “Don’t be stupid,” the girl muttered to Mina, after the shocks had finally stopped. She picked the younger girl up off the sidewalk where she had collapsed. The woman Mina had been talking to had backed away and eventually fled in terror at Mina’s screams and Akari’s warning glares. “You can’t escape. Do yourself a favor and do as they say.”

And so Mina did, eventually, after a few more failed attempts to hypnotize her way out of captivity. Any attempt seemed futile, and Mina could feel herself surrendering all hope with every blindingly bright shock. After all, if Akari—a girl with a handful of unexplainable powers at her fingertips—couldn’t escape, how could she?

“How could you just give up?” Mina asked Akari one day. They were returning from a mission, riding in the back of a black van. The doors were locked, preventing either girl from jumping out of the moving vehicle, and the van was made of the same material which the power-proof rooms back at the facility were made of. Had the van been normal, Akari would have surely teleported out of it by now.  

Akari regarded Mina solemnly. They had just copied some intel onto a hard drive, state secrets that Mina didn’t care to know more about or understand. There had been no fatalities this time, which was what Mina prefered. It sometimes allowed her to sleep peacefully at night.

“I haven’t, I’m just waiting for the right opportunity,” Akari whispered, eyes twinkling. “Good things come to those who wait and you know we only have one shot.”

“You have a plan?” Mina asked, heart rate increasing. She still thought of escape every day.

Akari simply winked and Mina internally groaned. The girl was way too secretive. Whatever Akari had planned, she wanted in. However, there was rarely ever a time when they could talk without being monitored and recorded.

They had a few private moments together in the room where they had first met, often as a reward for another successful mission. They were even given coffee or tea, and the food they were served tastes better than normal. One time, a few months after Mina had met Akari, the older girl curled herself up in a ball on the couch in this room and began silently weeping. Mina hesitated but began to rub the girl’s back soothingly.

“What is it?” Mina asked, surprised at this sudden display of emotion. Akari was always cold or sarcastic, she was never sad.

“Sometimes I worry I’ve let them turn me into a monster.”

Her words were soft beneath her tears. Mina could feel her chest tighten as her heart broke for the girl. Mina didn’t know what to say, so instead she continued to rub the girl’s back, hoping it brought her some comfort. Akari moved closer to Mina, eventually burying her face into Mina’s neck. Mina stiffened at the closeness, but relaxed slightly when the older girl’s body stopped trembling. Would Mina one day end up this way too?

This was the one and only time Mina had seen Akari cry. When they were out on the field the next day, she’d become the cold Akari who cared only about her mission. The girl Mina had seen yesterday was gone. Mina wasn’t sure which Akari was the real one, or if there was even a real Akari at all.
 

Mina was able to hold onto her sanity through Doctor Tanaka’s visits, along with the few moments where Akari looked at her fondly. Although every day she felt herself slipping further into an abyss, turning into a person she didn’t want to be. An incredible anger was boiling in the pit of her stomach. A hatred. She thought of her father. She wondered if he was even still alive.

“How did you get started in all this?” Mina asked during a session with Doctor Tanaka one day. After about a year of Korean lessons, Tanaka had moved onto teaching Mina English, which Tanaka explained would be useful for missions in the future, when Mina and Akari were moved to different countries. The doctor looked down at the table in front of her, becoming still. “How did you become involved with…” Mina’s voice trailed off.

“I wanted to serve my country,” Tanaka explained. “I love language, you know, it’s part of the human connection. It’s fascinating.” And suddenly Tanaka’s eyes lit up, as they often did when she spoke about her passion. Mina was staring at her, watching her closely. Tanaka suddenly turned to looked at Mina before she sighed and looked back down at her hands. “I thought I could do something good by doing what I loved. That’s why I’m here.”

“And are you happy?” Mina asked. “Being here, doing this?”

“I’m happy to be here with you,” Tanaka replied. “Mina, I know it might not seem like it, but you’re protecting our home. This intel is important.”

“Is that what you tell yourself?” Mina asked. “So you can sleep at night? Do you know what they’ve done to me...to Akari...the people she’s killed—” her voice broke off, and she was trembling. “I don’t want to do this. I want to go home.” Mina couldn’t stop the tears from flowing now. She buried her face in her hands, sobbing quietly.

Tanaka blinked, mouth parting, looking like the wind had just been knocked out of her. She tentatively lifted a hand and placed it on Mina’s shoulder. The girl continued to cry though, quietly, to herself. Doctor Tanaka lifted her head and looked to her right, where there were men on the other side of the glass wall, watching. They were always watching. “Mina,” Tanaka whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

Then she stood up abruptly, adjusting her blazer, trying to not look frazzled. She knew if she stayed any longer her own tears might threaten to spill, and she couldn’t have that. “I think that’s been enough for today. We’ll meet again tomorrow.” Mina looked up at her, eyes red rimmed and incredibly sad. Tanaka tore her eyes away, biting her lip. She took her things in a hurry and walked towards the door. She paused as the door slid open, but didn’t dare look back before she exited the room.  

Mina watched Tanaka go, still trembling slightly. She knew Tanaka was a good person, and that if she pushed her enough, she could be her key out of here.

Surely enough, Mina was right. The escape plot began in whispers and codes hidden in books. Scraps of paper tucked in between pages of textbooks.

“I’ll help you.” A note, written in scrawling black letters, thick and prominent, came to Mina’s attention the next day during their session. There was a small smile on Tanaka’s face as Mina looked up at her with wide eyes. There was hope after all. Mina allowed herself a small smile back.

Tanaka had no idea where to begin with breaking Mina out the facility. The security there was extremely secure, being the holding place of two mutants, they’d followed every precaution in its layout to ensure the prisoners could not escape. However, what they didn’t count on was someone on the inside working to break someone out, certainly not of their own free will.

Tanaka had thought about it of course, the risk she’d be taking in helping this girl out. This girl she’d known for nearly two years. Her life would be on the line, surely. But each session with Mina softened her heart. The girl was gentle and fragile and certainly did not deserve to be treated as a weapon. Tanaka felt a responsibility to help. She thought showing the girl kindness would be enough, but seeing Mina cry in front of her truly reminded Tanaka that the girl was human. Nothing more than a child.

Tanaka had wanted to do good. She wanted to make her parents proud. But this line of work that she’d stumbled into, been recruited for, was immoral. Each day Tanaka left the building with a bad taste in . The least she could do was set Mina free. She knew that saying that she was hypnotized wouldn’t be a stretch. If she could play dumb, she could get out of this alive. Maybe.

Akari on the other hand...the girl was unpredictable and dangerous. Mina could be dangerous too, but she did not have the capacity to kill for sport, Tanaka knew. Mina would be responsible with her powers, while Akari would not. Setting Akari lose was something Tanaka worried about, however the only chance they’d have to escape would be out in the field, when both of them were there.

More notes were exchanged. Mina would be given a time. A window to escape while out on the field. The headsets which electrocuted both Akari and Mina would go down for a short amount of time thanks to some planning and talking with like-minded employees who agreed their work was not moral. Tanaka would send someone to Mina and Akari to pry the headsets off before the electrocution function returned and they’d be free.

However, perhaps no one expected Akari’s first destination after receiving her new found freedom would be the facility once again. As soon as the headset was taken off, and Mina nearly cried with relief, Akari began walking away.  

“Where are you going?” Mina yelled. The man who had taken off their headsets was supposed to take them somewhere safe, at least temporarily, but Akari had refused passage in the car.

“There’s something I need to do,” the girl yelled back. “They need to pay for what they did.” Akari began running, taking a moment to charge her focus, and then disappeared in a flash. She could teleport, not instantaneously, but with time and energy. Mina yelled after the girl, but wasn’t fast enough to stop her. She knew where Akari was going—back to the facility where it all began.

The driver refused to take Mina back there, but Mina quickly made him think it was actually a good idea. She’d send him away as soon as they reached the destination. Have him drop her off far enough away so that he wouldn’t be caught. The drive was fast, but not fast enough.

As Mina ran up to the gate, where a guard was situated at, she found the man in uniform splayed out on the ground. She sprinted inside, past him. The side entrance of the facility was left ajar, which was never a good sign. Mina hesitantly entered, prepared to use her powers if she encountered anyone.

In the hallways of the facility she saw people splayed out everywhere. Eyes wide open in fear, mouths open mid-scream, guns bent out of shape, blood splattered near and far. Red everywhere. It looked like a scene out of a horror movie, so disturbing that it didn’t seem real. An alarm was blaring, loud and heavy, over the loud speakers, and the sirens on the walls bathed the interior of the building in a deep, flashing red. Mina fought the urge to cover her ears as she ran blindly forward. There was one person on her mind, one person she wanted to protect.

She turned down corridors, looking for anything familiar. She’d never been to this part of the building before though. Eventually she found her cell, and some of the rooms adjacent to it. She stopped short once she saw a head of long, light brown hair inside on of the side rooms, an office of sorts, with the same glass walls. A body was laid out on the floor, like all the rest, except this one was all too familiar. Mina pounded on the switch to the side of the door and it slid open, allowing her access.

“Miss Tanaka?” Mina bent down beside the woman, hand over , in an attempt to keep from gagging. Tears were forming in her eyes as they fell on the woman’s face, eyes open, glossy and unalert. Lifeless. Her neck was bent at an odd, inhuman angle.

The alarm overhead continued to blare, and Mina felt a pulse from head to toe each time it sounded, jarringly loud. She gritted her teeth and continued to stare at Miss Tanaka until her vision blurred from tears. Mina couldn’t bring herself to close the woman’s eyes, even though she knew it was the respectful thing to do.

She stood up, in shock, and backed away from the body. She turned to the sounds of crying, screaming and gunfire coming from another room. Moving towards the sounds, she saw Akari snapping the neck of an employee without so much as a flinch. Mina’s mind felt numb, and she was moving on autopilot. Stepping around a few bodies, she managed to make it to a control panel. Without second thought, she quickly closed the door to the room Akari was in and locked it. The employee had perhaps thought they were safe in a room that blocked their powers, but what they forget is that Akari was skilled in hand-to-hand combat as well. The girl didn’t need her powers to be deadly.

As the doors closed, Akari spun around and peered out from the glass at Mina, looking confused. She stepped toward Mina until she was close enough that her breath fogged the glass pane between them.

“Mina?” she asked. Her hands pressed against the clear glass window of the cell, leaving smudges. “Mina, what are you doing?” Her voice was more high pitched than usual, and lacking its normal bravado.

“Mina, let me out.” Her voice was deadpan. Her eyes, moments ago shining with madness, had cleared.

Mina hesitated, hand lingering over the button she had pushed to shut the door to the room. She had locked her in without thinking, but now the gravity of her choice began to sink in. The voice in her head was screaming and the reality of all she had just witnessed came crashing down upon her. She leaned against the control panel for her support, it was the only thing keeping her from sinking to the ground in pure disbelief and terror.

“Mina, what are you doing?” Akari repeated. Her voice rose again, unable to hide her panic any longer. “Mina, please let me out.” Mina realized that, for the first time since she’d known her, Akari was truly afraid.

Mina dropped her hand and turned away. She could see Miss Tanaka on the ground in the corner of her vision.  

“Mina!” Akari was practically spitting now. Her face turned into a mask of rage. “Don’t you dare walk away! Let me out!”

Mina stopped and spun around to face Akari again, trembling. “Akari, you just killed so many people. Innocent people.”

“They tortured us and made us puppets for years!” she yelled. “I’m giving us a chance to get out of here and be free. Don’t you understand?”

“They weren’t all bad, they were just doing their job...Doctor Tanaka was the one that orchestrated our escape!” Mina yelled back. “If you had just stuck around for another minute outside I would’ve told you and we would’ve been far away from this place…”

“Mina, you can’t be so delusional! Survival of the fittest. We have to show them what we are capable of, truly. This will send a message to their superiors. We are not to be caged like rats in a lab. We are so much more! And Doctor Tanaka? She was just another casualty...but she was as guilty as the rest of them.”

Mina was outraged. Her vision was spotted with black. “They’ve turned you into a monster. You’ve lost your humanity, Akari. Outside, in the real world with other people, what would you do? Who else would you kill? And it’d be my fault…my fault for letting you escape...”

“Are you even listening to yourself right now? Mina, I won’t kill anyone else—”

“You told me about all the things you’d do when you got out...I just can’t let that happen.”

Akari scoffed. “Mina, if you don’t let me out of here they’ll kill me. Do you understand? They’ll kill me,” she was banging on the glass now, seething.

Mina was shaking her head, backing away from the panel. She stumbled into a body on the ground and nearly cried out. It took every ounce of her self control to take a breath.

“You’ll have blood on your hands!” Akari yelled.

“I already do,” Mina responded.

Akari took a breath, and tears were beginning to visibly form in her eyes. Her anger was turning to despair. “Mina...I...I love you.”

Akari’s voice broke and Mina froze, eyes widening. “I love you,” she repeated. “I’ll protect you out there...the two of us...we’ll be unstoppable. You won’t have to live in fear...you won’t have to run. We don’t have to be afraid anymore." Akari pressed her forehead up against the glass. "You’re all I have.”

Mina closed her eyes and took a breath. She could imagine a future where she didn’t have to run, where she could live as she pleased, perhaps even see her family again. But how could she be certain Akari was telling the truth? How did she know that the moment she opened the doors that Akari wouldn’t take her powers and kill her then and there?

She could hypnotize Akari maybe, to do good and not kill anyone, but could she contain the older girl for long? What kind of life was that, moving her from one cage to another? Mina could take a chance on Akari, but what if something happened? What if someone else died? That thought scared her way more than her losing her own life. She couldn’t be responsible for someone else’s death. She just couldn’t.

Mina took a step toward the exit.

“Mina! You’ll regret this!” Akari yelled, sounding like an animal, and Mina, through her tears, managed to pull herself away, attempting to block out Akari’s screams as she walked down the narrow hallway in the direction of the open door spilling sunlight into the dim facility.