NeverSeen

“HOW LONG HAVE WE been here?”

“Dunno, Emma. We’ve been sleepin’ half the time. None of us can keep track of days and nights.” Falcon yawned. It was a day or two after I’d first awakened, and we all had questions. Especially them: first I was a prisoner, then I was dead, then I wasn’t, then I was, and then we were all alive in wherever this place was. I asked about that, too.

Tracer said, “We don’t know that, either. They’ve kept us mostly in our rooms, except for a few tests.” He looked at me carefully, watching my reactions. I blinked slowly. The excruciating pain pulsing through my back at the moment made me want to frantically rip the bandages off and claw it to death. But I couldn’t even move my shoulders. So instead, I asked, “What kind of tests?”

Nobody answered right away. I glanced at each of them. Kael finally spoke up from the corner. “We dunno. Weird tests, like how much stuff we know from school, and training exercises, and questions about everything that happened to us, and all sorts of random stuff like that.” He phased out for a minute. Gator jumped in for him. “I think they’re testing us to see if we can still function properly after…um…you know. What happened.” He scratched the back of his head.

The words took a while to sink in. “Yeah, what did happen?” I murmured.

They all stared at me.

“See, I remember the fire…and running up stairs…to the top…and falling…and, and…” I struggled to recall. “There was a hilltop, and everything was really bright…and somebody called my name…” I squeezed my eyes shut, and I saw the glimpses clearer.

“And I was really cold…somebody was talking to me…and singing…and that’s all I remember from there.”

“From there?” asked Wayk.

“Well, after that I was…um…somewhere else, I guess. It was really nice,” I sighed peacefully. “And nothing hurt, either. I liked it. But I couldn’t stay.”