At nine years old inside solitary confinement, I killed three orderlies the same day as I murdered my teacher’s boss.

Dad was in front of me. His eyes wide and unseeing.

My hands were entangled with his. Dad’s were freezing cold, trembling around mine. While my hands were warm and red. I liked that my hands were able to make handprints in the room of pristine white. In fact, I had already drawn several smiley faces with Mr Haywood’s blood. His son and daughter painted me in glistening, wonderful scarlet, and I only smiled wider at my father, who’s lips contorted in horror.

“Matilda!”

Dad’s head twisted around, and he told the orderlies guarding the door to leave us alone.

I wasn’t a fan of the plastic ties around my wrists. I figured they were there so I didn’t hurt anyone else. Dad wasn’t a bad man, so why was my body twitching around the ties? Why did I want to wrap my hands around his neck and squeeze until he was choking for breath? Was that why the plastic bracelet around my wrist said, “Category 3”? Were these people trying to stop me from killing my father and other bad people? I tried to pull it off numerous times, but the stupid thing was stuck. Maybe that was why my wrists had been tightly bound together.

“Sweetie. I want you to look at me, okay?” Dad didn’t hit me. It was more of a gentle tap. But it was powerful enough to make my head spin.

“Matilda, please look at me.”

I didn’t look at dad. I looked behind him, at the third orderly still splattered across the wall. I could still see his wiggly insides. There were people around me, panicking, attempting to clean up all the red, but the orderly deserved it. He was a bad man. He said my classmates were better off dead. So, I killed him like I killed Thomas Haywood and his family. When I refused to look my father in the eye, instead giggling, tipping my head back and counting the ceiling tiles, my father grasped hold of my face and forced me to look at him. And it was only then when reality was bleeding through, and the world around me grew darker. Less colourful. No longer the daydream my teacher had painted. Finally, I met eyes with my father, and the pain in his eyes, the agony twisted in his lips sliced through me like a blunt knife. I couldn’t look away anymore. I couldn’t ignore what I had done. For a moment, I found solace in my own free thought which began to drift back to fruition.

“What did you…” Dad’s voice was growing progressively more hysterical as he battled to keep hold of my hands. “What did you do?”

“I killed the bad man!”

I laughed, showing him my bound hands. “See!”

The memory slipped away, reality sliding back into place as my head hit the wall with a sickening thunk. The guy’s hands were around my neck, squeezing, choking the breath from my lungs—black spots blossoming behind my eyes. He didn’t have intention to kill me. Not yet. His fingers weren’t quite pressing the right amount of pressure. Through flickering eyes as I fought to keep my breath, I realised I wasn’t looking at a stranger. His style had definitely tripped me up; a trench-coat over jeans and t-shirt. But when I was close enough, I noticed the buttons on the coat were buttoned wrong, and the cigarette he had been holding was just a rolled up piece of toilet paper. It reminded me of a little kid who was playing dress-up in his parents clothes, a shiver slipping down my spine. An identity was bleeding through, though I only knew the version of him from when I was a kid.

A shadow of his former self, Jack Torres may have resembled an eighteen year old, but there was that almost inhuman glitter in his eyes, and the curl in his lip which I remembered from Mrs Teller’s classes. It hit me that this kid had never grown up properly. Kidnapped at the age of eight years old, and raised by a psychopath, it was no wonder why his expression was still that of a child. It took half a minute for me to realise Jack was planning on draining me until my last breath, and then knocking me out. He didn’t speak, his smile growing wider and wider in the glow of the library windows. Jack laughed. Not like a normal laugh. Like a little kid.

His body shook with each giggle, eyes igniting like it thrilled him to cause me pain—to make me suffer.

Well, of course it did.

That is what Mrs Teller taught us, after all.

I spent a year in solitary confinement being rehabilitated back into society. I remember dad referring to it as “reverse brainwashing” so my mind could be purged of all the bad, and I could live as a normal kid again. I do believe that was true—and I was definitely re-educated through mind exercises and daily tests.

I was taught that blood on my hands wasn’t a good thing, and charger wires were in fact NOT used for strangling people. But I can’t say all of the bad was fully removed. For example, when an old classmate was seconds from asphyxiating me, whatever Mrs Teller forced into my brain at the age of eight, snapped back into place. Instantly, I knew how to escape Jack. I slammed my head into his, which at first barely fazed him. He just squeezed tighter, laughing loudly when I managed a strangled cry. I didn’t even notice my surroundings had changed. I had been dragged behind the campus library which made it easier for him to kill me with no witnesses.

“You look at me like you don’t remember me. That's mean." Jack finally spoke, his jaw clenched around a hysterical grin. “Which is a bummer. I’ve really missed you, Matilda.” He pouted. “Where did you go? I told you, didn’t I?” This time he did press pressure to my throat, finger by finger. Jack was strong. It was the kind of strength which didn’t make sense. As a little kid, sure, he had been strong enough to take down fully grown people—but this was something else. From the look on his face he wasn’t even using all of his potential, and already I was losing.

“I told youuuuuuu,” Jack sang, “Not to go with your dad. But what did you do?”

His lip curled, and he spat in my face. Saliva spattered my cheeks, and it was enough to keep me conscious. “Say it. Stupid head.”

I went with my dad.

The words tangled on my tongue, but I refused to say them. I didn’t willingly go with my dad, I was dragged away. And that was the truth. Back then, all I wanted to do was stay with them. I wanted to continue being a family with them, all of us killing bad people together.

When I didn’t reply, instead clawing at my throat, trying to peel his fingers away, Jack slammed me into the wall again.

Stars danced in front of my eyes, and I had to blink rapidly.

Fuck. The asshole was going to kill me.

“Say it!” He whined, emphasising each word with a sucker-punch knock to my skull. “I want you to say it! Say it, say it, say it!”

Agony. A scream ripped from my throat, and he slammed his hand over my mouth. He knew it was agony because we had both perfected the technique. “I told you to wait for us. “Where did you gooooooo? It’s not fair that you left us. We had so much fun." I choked out a breath which was supposed to be words, but I couldn’t speak. Jack liked that. I could see it in the glitter in his eyes.

“We had so many adventures, and you’re going to be super jealous when I tell you about them, Matilda.” His grin grew, ice-cold breath tickling my face. I was all too aware of my dangling legs, and that he was somehow holding me three feet in the air. Which, thankfully, gave me the opportunity to kick him in the face. That got rid of his smile. When Jack let go, being caught off guard when the heel of my converse slammed into his mouth, I dropped to the ground, already propelling myself back to my feet with my hands. My vision was foggy and disjointed, but I didn’t care. I had to get away from him. Running footsteps rumbled in my skull, entangled with the sound of laughing fused with the wind.

They had found me.

Surprisingly, Jack didn’t follow me. When I was halfway down the walk, throwing myself through the late evening commute and trying to keep a straight face, I risked twisting around. He was gone. But I already knew his game. I knew exactly where he was going to go, to strike where it would hurt me. It took me ten minutes to run home, and once I was rounding our street, something caught my eye. A bright yellow school bus. It looked out of place sitting there across the road from our shared house. To anyone else, the sight might have been amusing.

After all, a school bus parked on a college neighborhood in the middle of the night was bound to raise eyebrows—but to me, it was like the ground was coming apart underneath me. Dad had reiterated the same thing since I was eight, fresh out of solitary confinement. If I ever saw a bright yellow school bus, even at my new school, even if I was sure it was okay, and the kids on it were normal—I had to tell him.

And I had. Throughout my high school years, I had reported every school bus I saw to my dad, and dad relayed the information back to the organisation hunting down my estranged classmates. But it was never them. Which implanted a fear inside me, twisting my gut into knots every time I saw one. It started as a wariness, which slowly blossomed into a fear even therapy couldn’t fix.

There was no way I was getting on another fucking school bus. In my senior year, a friend invited me to hang out after school, and the second she hopped onto her school bus, my gut lurched into my throat. They all looked exactly the same. The exact same colour, and paint job, that same pattern on the seats.

I hated them, and that hatred only burned brighter in my gut as I took slow steps towards the bus, my hand fingering my phone, I remembered I’d maxed out the battery during my study session. Which meant there was no way to contact my father unless I used my housemate’s phones. Looking at our house across the street, an awkward Victorian build closed off and private, I knew they had found me.

If Jack Torres had managed to intercept me at the library, I had no doubts the others took their chance to make their move. I had no choice. If I stayed outside any longer, I was risking the lives of my housemates. Dad wasn’t one for sharing information throughout my childhood, though he had made sure to let me know every day that my third grade classmates were still missing, still yet to be found, and each day I could see it was killing him knowing they were out there—and no matter what we did and where we moved, they were going to find us. When I was fifteen years old, a school bus had pulled up in the parking lot of our local target.

I didn’t even notice, completely obliviously hanging out with several of my friends, unaware of my father following my every move. Dad had been ready to move town’s that same day, but it was just a field trip of fourth graders. Now it was the real deal and he was nowhere to be seen. I was already making a plan in my head. All I had to do was get to a phone. I considered the neighbors, but there was a chance each of them had already been intercepted.

In several strides, those of which I counted in my head-- a habit from Mrs Teller's classes, I was standing at our front door, bathed in warm light illuminating the windows. The holiday decorations were still up, strung around the windows. I had told Penny to take them down, though she had argued we should keep them up a little longer. The twinkle of red, blue and green was comforting however, as I wrapped my trembling hands around the door handle and pulled it open. The first thing I saw when I stepped into the hallway was red. And it was enough to bring back memories I had been told to suppress deep, deep down. I wasn't supposed to like the colour red. I wasn't supposed to like it splattering and spattering, pooling, dripping, and exploding from the backs of heads. Once my gaze was on the floor of our hallway, however, registering thick rivulets of intense red bleeding across mahogany floorboards and tainting the edge of Freddie's, "Welcome home, you filthy bastard!" welcome mat, I couldn't resist lowering myself and pressing two fingers into pooling darkness. It was warm and sticky, just how I remembered it.

The body was close by, a person-sized lump sprawled in the middle of the walk like a joke. I could already tell by golden curls stained that same brilliant red illuminated in the dim overhead light, that it was Penny's boyfriend-- and crawling closer on my hands and knees, mesmerised by the sight in front of me, Penny's boyfriend no longer had a head.

I will always remember what one of the doctors told me when I was a kid. It was in the dark days when I craved blood on my hands, and screamed when I didn’t have it.

The doctor with funny eyebrows had crouched in front of me and squeezed my hands. He told me that because my brain had been played around with, it would no longer work like it was supposed to. Normal people’s brains were supposed to hide trauma before fully registering it, as a coping mechanism. While mine had been rewired to showcase trauma like a movie, to ignite my synapses and kick me into gear. Penny’s boyfriend’s head had sort of rolled away. I could see it at the corner of my eye. It was barely even a head anymore, more of a lump of flesh with eyes.

The doctor was right. Even knowing it was horrific and terrifying, and aware that my stomach was trying to projectile from my throat, my childlike self was seeping back into me. I reached out to grab the head, to roll it around in my hands and smother myself with pooling red.

Then, though, my gaze found the trauma around the neck where the head had been removed.

This time I jumped up, snapping back to reality, gagging on barf creeping up my throat. At first I thought it was a weird angle, or the light was playing with my head. But no. Stepping closer to examine it further, the head had been completely removed from the body. It was no technique I remembered learning. We were all taught how to sever tendons and slice arteries, as well as the messy (and not so messy) way to remove a human head, but it looked like someone had removed it with brute force with their own hands, like a plucking off a dolls head.

But that couldn’t be right, I thought dizzily. I knew exactly how to remove a head with the right tools.

With my hands though? There was no way. It was physically impossible to remove a head with your bare hands. The act of dismembering a head needed a certain amount of attention. That’s what Mrs Teller told me when I had struggled to remove my first head, slicing into all the wrong places. Penny’s boyfriend’s head, or what was left of it, had been taken cleanly off. The perfect removal. Which was impossible. You at least needed a good enough knife, or a saw. It wasn’t just the head, though. The body had been mutilated, removing the idea of an identity existing. I was staring at the slew of gore spilling out onto the floor when a familiar voice sliced into the silence. “Mattie? Is that you?” Freddie’s cry was enough to launch me to my feet. I wasted no time, vaulting over the body, and stepping into the downstairs lounge.

I had always found comfort in our downstairs lounge. Even when nightmares of my elementary school classmates eventually catching up to me in our ten year long game of cat and mouse, I could always come into the lounge and chill out with a book or watch Netflix on the TV mounted to the walls. It wasn’t the ideal room. The house was on the market for a cheap price, so there was mould growing in the carpet which we covered with a rug, and our coffee table was dangerously close to tipping over, cigarette stains ingrained into our ratty couch. But it was home. Home was comic books covering every inch of the room, hardback classics and video games piled on the ground.

All of that comfort dissipated the second my feet found the threshold. What I had once called a solace from those nightmares had become one itself.

Immediately, my gaze latched onto my housemates.

Penny knelt on the floor with her hands raised above her head. Her eyes were raw from crying, and I thought back to what was in the hallway. I could only mentally beg she hadn’t seen her boyfriend’s murder. Kneeling next to her was Issac, who looked like he was ready to spring up at any moment, his eyes wide and unseeing. Stopping him, however, were two familiar faces from my childhood.

Evie Clare and Pippa Martin. Neither of them had changed in the slightest. Except maybe their appearance. Pippa’s red hair had grown out. Instead of in its strict ponytail, it hung in her eyes, almost reaching her tailbone. The butterfly slides I remembered her bragging about as a kid were still fitted into her style, clumsily pinning back her fringe. Evie still had her signature blonde pigtails. But without a mother to tie them, or knowing how to do it herself, they were falling out, golden strands dancing in vacant eyes pinpointed on me. I remember taking a step back, startled by the lack of change in them.

Pippa was wearing bright pink as usual, and Evie, a much bigger version of her favourite butterfly dress she always wore to class. I wasn’t looking at two eighteen year old girls. They were still eight years old in their mind, only growing up physically.

For a moment, I was confused. Neither of the girl’s had weapons, so why wasn’t Issac fighting back?

He was twice their size, why was he just sitting there staring at me? When I caught his eye, however, his wild eyes weren’t on me.

“Mattie!” Freddie’s yell was enough to splinter through my skull, and I pivoted, scanning for a weapon.

Something ice cold slid down my spine, and I was quickly reminded of Mrs Teller’s class on getting out of a sticky situation.

Slowly, my gaze travelled around the room, her voice echoing in my skull. “Always check every corner, class! There will always be more enemies than what you can see. When entering a room, and I mean any room, I want you to scan each and every corner for bad people.”

Following her words, I did just that. And found myself face to face with three other members of my class.

Jack Torres. Who had somehow made it to my house before me. Trapped in his chokehold was a struggling Freddie, who stopped squirming when Jack, shooting me a grin, slammed the butt of his gun into my housemate's temple, teasing the trigger with his index. Next to him, Jasper Cox and Sadie Marriot. I remembered the two of them were the quiet ones in the class. Jasper Cox was a comic book kid and wore chunky glasses which took over half of his face. Presently, there was no sign of his glasses, and his hair had grown out thick and dark. I wasn't even sure if he could see me without his glasses.

Sadie had been a horse girl. She loved horses and wanted everyone else to know it. Even her ponytail reminded me of a mane. Jasper brandished a gun at his side, looking less than enthusiastic about using it, while Sadie's weapon was something wrapped around her left arm and entwining between her fingers.

A long winding string of metal which dragged across the floor, already stained old red. A garotte. Sadie looked exactly the same as her eight year old self, straight down to her dark brown hair still tied into a ratty horse-like mane. The two of them acted like guards, with Sadie looking ready to pounce, her bloody fingers clenching around the garotte, and Jasper rolling his eyes like the whole thing was stupid, though the way he held his gun told me he wouldn’t miss a target.

I already knew that, though. Jasper had always been a sharpshooter in class.

Somehow, words came to me. I flinched when Jack seemed to be awaiting my reaction, stabbing his gun harder into Freddie’s temple.

“You…” I drifted off, swallowing sour paste culminating at the back of my throat. “You were at the library.”

Jack shrugged, his lip curving, “And you were too slow.” His grin widened. “Hey again! Nice house.” He gestured with his gun. “It’s… cosy.”

Freddie struggled violently in my classmate’s grasp. “Mattie, what the fuck is going on? Who are these people?”

Jack giggled. “That’s a bad word!” He smacked the gun into my housemate’s face, and Freddie howled in pain. “Bad word! Say it again, and you’ll be sorry.”

“Don’t touch him.” Issac gritted out, “What the hell is going on?” His accusing eyes found mine. “Are these psycho’s related to you?”

Evie stepped forward, resting her elbows on Penny’s head. She jutted her chin. “Well? Aren’t you going to tell them?”

With all eyes on me, I had no choice. “Yes.” I said, my voice strangled. “They’re… they’re my elementary school classmates.” I paused.

“But they’re…”

Jack, still holding onto Freddie, was suddenly in front of me, stabbing the butt of his gun into my housemate’s head. He knew exactly what he was doing. By simply being there, teasing the trigger, Jack was already making me suffer. His eyes darkened, and I could see just how truly twisted he had become, a fully grown adult with the mind of an eight year old child, brainwashed to the point of being unrecognisable.

“We’re what?”

I didn’t reply, swallowing my words.

Jasper Cox spoke up. “Mrs Teller is going to be executed,” he said, his gaze flashing to me. “She is currently locked up inside the facility responsible for taking you, and we’re going to get her out of there.” Jasper’s eyes darkened, his grasp on his weapon tightening. “All of us.”

The boy’s words twisted my gut.

“She’s been with you…?” I choked out. “All this time?”

“Until a week ago.” Jack said, a curl in his lip. “They took her. We managed to get away, but they took…” He drifted off, a certain vulnerability taking over his expression. I knew it well from when we were kids. During our most intense training, Jack was the hardest to crack open. “They took mom.” His voice cracked, but instead of crying, he stabbed his gun into Freddie’s temple. “But we’re going to get her back.”

Something inside me came apart, and I found myself feeling… sympathy for my old classmate. This kid had lost his parents, lost all semblance of a normal life.

He saw a psychopath as a mother figure, as his protector. “No.” the words came out of my mouth in a splutter. “No, Jack, she’s not your mother.” Risking a glance at Freddie, who gave me the nod of approval, I let out a breath. “You have a mom.” I said softly. “You have a mom and a dad, but she made us forget about them, do you remember?” I held his gaze. “I was lucky. My dad found me before it was too late.” I caught myself when his expression twisted, and Freddie shot me an, “Oh, fuck.” Look. “I can help you find your parents.”

“Mattie.” Issac hissed out. “Are you seriously trying to reason with these freaks?!”

Jack blinked at me, his eyes narrowing, and I realised I’d found a wound I could press on and use as leverage.

I said his name as softly as I could with my teeth gritted. “You need to listen to me—”

He cut me off suddenly with a hiss. “No, you need to listen to me!” Clicking the safety off, the boy shoved Freddie to his knees with one hand, and reached into the pocket of his coat with the other. I thought he was going to pull out a knife, but it was a crumpled piece of paper.

When I stared at it stupidly, he gestured for me to take it.

“What is it?”

Jack rolled his eyes, stamping his feet. “Just taaaakeeee itttt!”

I hated that I recognised the handwriting. It was my own cursive in pink crayon. It was the declaration we had been made to sign.

“I, MATILDA POLLUX, SOLOMNLY SWEAR I WILL DO EVERYTHING IN MY POWER TO PROTECT MY TEACHER! AND STAY WITH MY CLASSMATES UNTIL I DIE!”

Signed: Matilda Pollux. 06/02/2009.

Lifting my gaze, I met eyes with a smiling Jack, who pulled out his own declaration. Sadie, Jasper and Evie did too, waving their own.

“You’re kidding.” Scrunching up the paper between my fist, I swallowed a groan. “I was eight.”

Jack shrugged. “You pinkie swore.”

“We were eight!” I couldn’t resist yelling. Shooting a look at Freddie who looked baffled, I shook my head. “You’re insane!”

My classmate cocked his head. “But you promisseeeeed!” He whined, prodding the paper. “See! You wrote it right here!”

“We were kids, Jack! This isn’t…. this is nothing to do with me!”

Jack nodded to my surprise.

“Mmmm kay.” He said.

Then he twisted around and shot Sadie straight through the head. The girl dropped to the ground, showering Jasper in sharp red. The boy didn’t move, his expression stoic. Penny screamed and ducked her head, Issac and Freddie attempting to get up and being shoved down.

“Now it’s something to do with you.” Jack’s grin widened when I had to choke back a scream. “Relax! She was a stupid head, anyway.”

“Mattie!” Isaac’s voice cut through my thoughts. I was watching Sadie’s blood staining our carpet I’d spent half an hour vacuuming the night before.

“Please. Get rid of them. Whoever these people are, they’re not… normal! They’re deranged!”

I can’t.

I wanted to tell him that. I wanted to tell him that my elementary school classmates were more than wrong. More than messed up and deranged. But I couldn’t speak.

“I’m boooored.” Jack announced with an exaggerated groan. Scratching the back of his head with his gun, he sighed. “If you’re not going to come with us, then we can bring someone else instead.” He dragged Freddie to his feet. “It’s never too late for a new classmate, right?”

When Freddie was pulled back, yanked by his hair, I found my voice. But it was choked into the back of my throat when Evie grabbed me, pinning my arms behind my back. Laughing, Jack disappeared with my housemate, with Evie pulling Penny along with them. The last thing I saw was Freddie’s mouth being covered, the look of fright in his eyes. The screams rattling through the house when the two of them reached the hallway told me Penny was yet to witness her boyfriend’s grisly beheading. Before I could fully register what was happening, I was being brought to my knees. Pippa was in front of me, grasping hold of my face and cradling it, giggling, while Jasper wrapped tough rope around my wrists. When Issac was shoved down too, the two of us back to back, I understood what was happening.

Especially when the TV and Freddie’s laptop turned on by themselves, a sickly white light illuminating the room. When Pippa prodded my cheeks, giggling, I screamed. All I could see was the flickering red images in my eyes. All I could feel was my hands being forced down by my teacher, and my crying gradually morphing into laugher, joining a symphony with my classmates. No. I had nightmares about the dancing red dot.

I woke alone in isolation, screaming into my lap. The red dot had twisted my thoughts into cotton candy and made me think blood on my hands was a good thing. It made me think of gore as colourful, like sparkly glitter all over my skin. Dismembered bodies were doll pieces, and the world was a playground I didn’t want to leave. But once I had snapped out of it, once my father’s hands had been grasping hold of mine, the night I had murdered and mutilated Thomas Haywood and his college aged kids, my world had crumbled. Waking up was like being shot in the head.

I woke to red spattering my hands and face, my cheeks. Except I was smiling. I couldn’t stop smiling, even when dad slapped me across the face. I couldn’t go through it again. I couldn’t. I was aware of my mouth open in a silent cry, my back pressed to Isaac’s trembling with every violent thrust. As if Pippa could sense my fear, her smile grew. “Isn’t this exciting?” She squealed. “You get to watch the red video all over again!” The two of them seemed to dance around us, looming figures bleeding into the dark, into that eerie white light which switched to red, automatically dragging my gaze to the screen. “Mattie?” Isaac’s voice felt far-away, like a whisper of wind in my ear. “What’s going on?”

Isaac’s voice shook, his body struggling against mine. “Fuck. I can’t look away.”

Squeezing my eyes shut, I bit into my lower lip so hard I tasted blood. The good thing was that I could no longer sense the others. The bad thing was that they had taken my housemates who knows where, and I was about to enter third grade again. “Close your eyes. Do it. Now.”

“But.. I can’t.”

“Yes you can!” Fighting with the rope entangled around our wrists, I focused on counting how many seconds Issac was exposed to it.

Ten years ago, it had taken multiple sessions and even forcing us to place our hands on the table, for the video to get into our head,.

This one, however, was different.

“Issac?” I said, after a moment of silence.

“Mmm? Yeah, I can’t move,” he stopped wiggling in the restraints. “Mattie, they took Freddie.”

“Yeah.” I heaved out a breath. “I know.”

Fifteen seconds.

I felt him tense up. “They took him… and we’re just sitting here….” He paused. “Just… vibing with these red dots, huh.”

Seventeen seconds.

“Hold on,” I told him. “Just think about Freddie. We’re getting him back.”

Issac didn’t reply.

Nineteen seconds.

Almost there. Pulling my restraints apart, I lunged to my feet, slammed the laptop shut, switched off the TV, and knelt in front of Issac. He looked okay. I mean, I shook him, and he blinked, dragging his gaze to me. His nose was bleeding, thick rivulets of red running down his chin, but I ignored it. I told myself to ignore it. “Isssac.” Once I untied him, he was still sitting cross legged, a frown on his lips. When I caught his eyes creeping towards the Tv screen, I clapped my hands in front of his face. “Hey!” I was panicking. “What’s the capital of Australia?”

“Canberra.”

“Uh-huh.” I had to shove him to stop the boy from turning back to the TV. “Hey, focus! How many fingers am I holding up?”

Issac squinted, and I swiped at his nose with the sleeve of my jacket. “Do thumbs count?” He shooed my hands away, scowling. “Get off me, I’m fine!”

Relief flooded through me when he dived to his feet, swiping at his face. “What the ever-loving FUCK was that about?”

“You don’t need to know.” I managed to get out. “Do you have your phone?”

Issac nodded. “Yeah.” He jutted his head towards the kitchen. “Can you get me a glass of water first? Feels like I’m sucking on sandpaper.”

While he searched for his phone, I hurried into the kitchen, grabbed a glass from the cupboard and filled it with water. I was grabbing another glass for myself, when something moved in the reflection of the glass. Mrs Teller taught us about this. Always look behind you because enemies were closer than you think. Her words rang in my head, when I tightened my grip on my glass, and swung around, smashing it into the side of Isaac’s head. I was too slow. Issac easily stepped out of the way, and the glass shattered once it hit the countertop. His hands were already snaking around my neck and holding me above him, before smashing my head against the counter and sending me to the ground. Starbursts in my vision, a neutron star collision going off in my head.

Mrs Teller told us about surprise attacks, but her words were alphabet soup in the back of my head as I struggled to stay conscious. When I managed to force myself onto my knees, Isaac’s foot was coming down on my neck, pinning me to the floor. I gasped for breath, sensing him looming over me. “I’m sorrrrrry,” he said. “No really, I am sorry,” Issac sounded like himself, which was the worst part. If concentrated hard enough, I could detect a slight whine to his tone.

Like he’d re-entered the third grade.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you, Mattie,” Issac sang. “But we should probably… get to claaaaaaaass.”

If that wasn’t bad enough, with one final kick to my head, I was plunging into the dark, awake enough to feel his hands wrapping around my ankles and dragging….

The memory was quick to take centre stage once I was out of it, and I found myself back inside my little self’s body.

The jello tasted like cardboard candy, but it was the first thing I’d had to eat. So, I plugged my nose and forced it into my mouth, spoonful by spoonful. Each time my hand trembled around the plastic spoon, knowing my father was just outside the door. He was talking about them, and every time that thought slid into my mind, something in my mind snapped. I needed to see them. Like a drug running through my veins, I was desperate to see my classmates. The ones who had gotten away. We were a family. That’s what Mrs Teller told us. All of us were a family, and our own didn’t matter anymore. We were going to do wonderful things for her.

Starting with killing the bad people.

The ones who refused to allow her to use us in her research. They were all bad people—and they were going to die. If I concentrated, I could still feel the blood slick between my palms, and no matter how many tests and scans I had—different people telling me that what I was feeling was BAD and not GOOD, I craved the feeling again. Hot and sticky and wet on my hands and arms, dripping on my skin.

When orange jello began to creep up my throat, I threw it against the wall. My head was doing the scary thing again. It was working ahead of me, moving me before I knew what was happening. Mrs Teller’s voice was cemented inside my brain, a leech refusing to let go. “Move like a slithery snake,” she had told us. “Do not let your pray go. Do you understand me? Never, and I mean NEVER underestimate your enemy. Remember that, class.”

With her words echoing in my skull, I took sharp steps across the room of white, pressing my ear against cold metal, listening out for my father’s voice. Instead though, there was only the strange man with the bald head. I didn’t like him. When we had been alone in his office, the man had leaned forward and asked me if I would be okay with dying for my country. I didn’t like that. So, I blew a big raspberry at him.

“Mr Pollux.” Mr Baldy’s voice came loud and clear. “I want you to stay calm. Do you understand me? Your daughter is safe.”

“She’s not, though!” Dad’s voice made my tummy hurt. I could sense him pacing the white winding corridor, and I wanted to join him. “I want to know. No sugar-coating or hiding, none of that bullshit. I want to know what that psycho has done to my daughter. Right now.”

Dad held his breath. “Or… I go to the press. You have my daughter locked up. I have rights.”

“Mr Pollux, you signed—”

“I don’t care! I want you to see me as a father and nothing else. I just want to know what’s going on.”

Mr Baldy paused. “It’s… what she hasn’t done is what we should think about. Penelope Teller is currently in possession of Protocol Four. Which automatically makes these kids a severe threat if she is to use it. And if she does so, we will unfortunately be greenlighting Shoot To Kill.”

Before my father could speak, the man continued. “You don’t need to know a lot of things, Mr Pollux. Due to health and safety reasons, as well as heavily classified information on the behalf of the United States government, I will tell you from an unprofessional standpoint,” he exhaled out a breath. “I have…a daughter. And a son. In this line of work, I have to keep changing my name, and even the names of my children, to keep them safe. They are both your child’s age. What I will tell you as a father, is that your daughter is incredibly, and I mean incredibly lucky, that you managed to catch her at the most primitive point, when that initial seed was planted. If not, we would be having a very different conversation. But what I can tell you,” he lowered his voice so I had to close my eyes and attempt to break through that barrier Mrs Teller told us about. Which worked with senses too.

“Protocol 4, also known as White Rabbit, is an experimental… uh… mind exercise, which was originally to be tested in prisoners. However, due to the… uh…. Repercussions of the experiment, and the lives lost, including several of our researchers, as questioning the morality of this specific… exercise… the documents were destroyed, and the protocol was shut down.” He cleared his throat.

“That was, until Penelope Teller, one of our ex agents, took it upon herself to test the protocol on a new group of subjects.” Mr Baldy’s voice shook slightly. “Which was of course your daughter and the fourteen missing children.”

“So you’re saying,” my dad’s voice was a yell, and I resisted the urge to slam my hands over my ears. “That one of your people has gone rogue, is currently driving a busload of eight year olds who knows where, and completely fucked up my daughter’s head? How did she even get hold of a school bus?”

“No, no!” Mr Baldy let out a polite laugh. “No, what you’re not understanding, Mr Pollux, is that right now your daughter is right where she needs to be. She is safe and sound.” He did the clear your throat thing again, and I could tell he was hiding something. “It’s the… ahh, it’s the others we need to be worried about. You see, Teller also took an experimental... let’s call it a ‘mind exercise’ which has in fact not been peer reviewed. In fact, it was in its earliest stage of development when stolen. And this, Mr Pollux, is why these children will become Shoot To Kill. If this experimental technology is to be used on them, they will be considered as a Code Black. And disposed of as soon as possible.”

A memory was blooming behind my eyes. I was inside my third grade classroom in front of the red screen.

Jack Torres was in the desk next to me. His hands which were supposed to be pinned in front of him were shaking me. I was looking at the screen, but at the corner of my eye, I could see that he was scared, choking on blood pooling from his nose, his eyes wide. Unlike the others, Jack wasn’t watching the video. “Matilda?”

He twisted around to see if the teacher was looking, before shoving me violently. Jack was always the one who couldn’t hold a knife properly, whose fingers trembled around the trigger when told to shoot a bad man. “Matilda, please!”

I didn’t reply, but his voice never left my ears, until he was caught.

Dad’s voice was back, bringing me back to the initial memory, two separate periods of my life entwining in my mind.

“But—”

Mr Baldy cut dad off. “However.” He said. “That is very unlikely. We have teams looking for them right now and can assure you of their immediate capture and rehabilitation. What we can be thankful for right now, is that these children will not be much of a problem due to their age. We are positive we can round them up as soon as possible. If, and it’s a big if—these children were to grow up with this kind of influence, and protocol 5 in place…”

He drifted off. “Theoretical, of course! Then we will be considering them as a threat to civilian safety. But it’s the newest protocol which we need to look out for. It’s known as the silent killer. It takes a mind within a matter of seconds, subjecting it to ten times the influence the usual protocol. If this is used, Mr Pollux, I want you and your daughter out of this country. Because once these subjects are given a command, whether written or spoken out loud, they will not stop. They will drag anyone in their path to either join them, or blow their brains out with the click of a finger. Protocol Five was made in case we as a country ever became face to face with a war we wouldn’t be able to win—and if I am correct, these children, if they are not captured and rehabilitated, they will become humanity’s greatest threat. Possessing capabilities and strength way beyond our comprehension, what adult men and women soldiers have struggled with during initial testing stages. We didn’t even get inclusive results. That is how new the technology is, and when abused, it will be a matter of national security. Because these children will no longer be ones who we can reason with and talk to, Mr Pollux. Instead, they will be--”

“Weapons.” Dad finished for him, and I stumbled away from the door, pressed my hands over my ears, and screamed.