Chapter 2
M y fingers brush against a softness, a gentle warm feeling shifting beneath me as I move, almost like a cloud.
The Facility only gave clothes for their prisoners, with fabric like a burlap sack. No blankets or pillows sparred for dirty supes in their prison.
So what was this?
Did I really die, and was this heaven or some sort of paradise? Hell couldn’t feel this good.
My body feels light.
There's no pain or heaviness in my chest, no stinging feeling from my fingers and no smokey taste or scent surrounding me.
And although I still feel a little weak, it's nothing compared to before.
It's as if something has been lifted from me, a weight removed, and with it, gone all the aches and pains that pulled at me and held me down each day.
I take a deep breath, the air is light and plentiful as I inhale and exhale. I take a moment to just breathe and enjoy the peace that I haven't been able to in over six years.
Whatever this was, or whatever afterlife I had entered, it was more warm and welcoming than anything I had felt in a very long time.
I slowly open my eyes, a brightness hitting me instantly, so I quickly close them again.
Bright lights were definitely a heavenly thing right?
I mean, it wasn’t a far stretch for me to think I’d make it here. I wasn’t a bad person and I never hurt anyone…anyone innocent anyway.
Guards and beasts that wanted to kill me don't count.
Also, I had suffered a lot in that life.
Over six years imprisoned in a place that could give hell a run for its money, and even before that, I was bruised and beaten down in the mini hell called Wensridge Academy.
It was a private supernatural academy for the elite, filled mainly with malicious, entitled spawns from prestigious and power-mad supernaturals. Ones who tried to break my spirit long before the Facility.
I open my eyes again slowly, squinting as I raise my hand to block the light.
I wondered what heaven looked like. Lots of hot food and some clouds to relax on would be my idea of paradise.
Oh, and television.
Six years was a long time to be without Netflix and chocolate. I have a lot of catching up to do.
My eyes adjust to the light as I slowly glance toward my body. There's no scars, or burn marks covering my skin.
My fingers stroke the soft flesh on my arm. They weren’t as thin anymore and there was even a soft glow to my skin that I hadn't seen since my younger years.
My fingers freeze as I turn my arm around.
There's a large purple bruise down the side of my arm, surrounded by a few smaller ones in shades of yellow and brown.
I look at my other arm, twisting it back and forth finding more bruises.
My body definitely looked better than before, but why would I have bruises in heaven?
I go to move, realising the soft ‘cloud’ underneath me is a bed.
A cream cotton blanket is draped over my legs with a soft matching pillow behind me. I pull myself further up and glance around.
Looking around the space I’m now in, my eyes now fully adjusted as I gaze around a familiar room.
A room I hadn't seen in over seven years after having graduated from the academy.
The small bed I’m lying in is made of old chestnut wood with a worn headboard and scratched legs.
An even older wooden desk sits across from it, and to the left of that, is a large old pinewood dresser and matching wardrobe.
Their wood is worn with small cracks and scrapes, something I’m sure was second hand or to be thrown out before it found its place here.
The walls around the room are painted a drab beige with small water stains dripping from the ceiling in certain corners, and small splotches of mould in the others.
Frail fabric lines the curtain poles sitting beside a small window near the wardrobe, with light cream curtains dusty and fraying at their hems.
I turn to my right, noticing a familiar white door beside me. It’s been left slightly ajar and shows a discoloured tiled floor and a small dingy sink.
I turn back around. The room looks old and empty, and void of any colour or life. Just how I remembered it from seven years ago, when I had to spend my last three academy years in it.
So instead of heaven, it looks like I was sent to hell.
I guess thoughts do carry weight because there's no way that paradise is the place where I spent five years being tormented and isolated.
I push the blankets from me and climb from the bed.
Everything felt so real.
The feel of the cold floor beneath my toes, the air sweeping in through the old and draughty window to my left, and the noise of voices and people moving from the door furthest to my right.
Wait …Voices?
Why would there be any voices here?
I make my way to the door and quickly pull it open.
I’m met with three pairs of eyes as they pass me, a glare set on one as the two others giggle and sneer beside her.
“Going for a walk in your jammies ?” A blonde girl jeers as they pass.
The middle one turns back, her glaring eyes meeting mine as she spits the word ‘ Pathetic’ before they head down the dormitory stairway.
I watch as they disappear down the stairs and to the floor below.
What was happening? Why was I seeing all this, experiencing all this, again ?
I mean, I know I said my academy years were my mini hell, but was I really going through this again as my actual hell?
Or was this some sort of illusion or nightmare?
Because this wasn’t the worst part of my life.
The Facility held first spot on that one. So wouldn’t that be what hell would want me to experience if I had to suffer?
I shake my head.
What was happening here?
Why was I here?
I pinch the bruised skin on my arm, my nose scrunching at the small ache forming there.
Probably not the best test for this.
I look back at my arm and down to my fingers. They were completely free of any scars or calluses.
I flex my fingers, feeling no pain from the once broken and torn tissue there, now only feeling soft and young skin.
Was this a dream?
But I definitely died.
I’d been on the cusp of death many times, especially after their specialised ‘ tests’ , so I know that I took my final breath in that cell.
A small pang lances through my chest with the thought.
All those years of fighting and I’m done in by a fire, and trapped in that horrible fucking cell.
I guess the only relief would be that the Facility itself burned too.
Hopefully to ashes.
I slowly head back into the room, closing the door as I make my way toward the small bathroom, and its mirror.
My breath leaves me as I gaze at the reflection of a young girl.
A girl with familiar blue eyes stares back at me, her long rose gold hair falls down her slender shoulders in light waves.
Her fair skin is bright and unblemished, with two parted full rosy lips.
There's no scars coating her skin, no cuts or burns, only some light bruising here or there. Nothing like before.
This was a different me.
A younger me.
One before the Facility.
What was the point of showing me this?
Of what I had been before? Of a younger and brighter me?
And of one who knew only the agony and taunts from kids her age, but who didn’t yet know true pain and horror.
I place my hands on the sink, tightly gripping the edge while staring into the narrowed eyes gazing back at me.
Why did this feel so real?
Why did everything feel as if it wasn’t a dream, as if it wasn't some illusion made up to make me suffer?
Why did every moment I stand here breathing and moving feel as if this was actually real?
My eyes catch on the corner of the mirror, the edge is broken and jagged.
Taking my finger, I slide it slowly over the sharp edge. A small ache instantly flares from the cut as a trickle of blood falls from the small wound.
I flicker my gaze between the cut and the mirror's reflection.
What kind of illusion, dream or nightmare felt this real?
And if it wasn’t one of those, then was all this somehow… real ?
If it wasn’t some sort of hell or punishment, then was I supposed to believe that I was brought back from dying or being dead…and back to the past?
Time travel wasn't even possible.
There weren't any Back to the Future possibilities. No supernatural had that ability, it would go against nature and its balance. And miracles…if they were real, I should have been saved years ago from everything.
I make my way out of the bathroom and toward the window, pushing the curtains to the side. I look out toward the familiar courtyard that sat in front of the girls dormitory, and toward the trio of girls from before.
They’re surrounded by at least seven or eight boys, all talking and laughing as other students pass them, heading to or from different buildings around the dormitory courtyard.
Behind them sits the forest treeline, where I can see squirrels flitting about the trees and birds flocking above.
Was it really possible? A second chance?
Did God pity my miserable life or had he messed up somewhere and wanted to rectify that shit?
A small dark chuckle leaves my lips before I freeze, the air pulled from my body in one quick breath.
My eyes catch on her long sunshine blonde hair, her small petite nose and her delicate pink lips as they curve up in laughter.
My heart races in my chest as I watch her make her way through the courtyard and toward the main building, surrounded by her usual entourage.
Seria.
My half sister.
And the one who betrayed me and left me broken even before the Facility took me.
For years I believed her sweet whispers, her ‘encouraging’ words. But it was all fake, all orchestrated lies.
She was the reason for my agony and misery in the academy.
The match to the flame that slowly burnt me from the inside out.
She made me believe I was weak, keeping me where she wanted me, so she could reign queen, surrounded by her lackeys and pawns.
Her laughter fades into the distance as a bell rings, pulling me from my thoughts.
Fine.
Illusion, dream, miracle, or hellish curse, I’ll take it.
If this is a chance to relive the life that had been taken from me, then I’ll live it and take both my freedom and revenge.
An image of the last time I saw her flashes in my mind.
She stands over me as I kneel on the ground, tears streaming down my cheeks as she bends down and cups my face in her soft hand.
She brushes a tear away as she leans in closer, calling my name tenderly before slowly whispering gently in my ear words I had never thought would come from her lips.
“Poor Micai, always so pitiful…and pathetic . What did you think was going to happen here?”
My breath freezes in my lungs as she continues, telling me everything I had believed was a lie.
She tells me how she always despised me and how she tried, at every chance she could, to make my life a misery.
That every one of my most painful moments over the years were orchestrated by some plot of hers for her amusement, and my punishment.
That something like me shouldn’t even exist, something so weak, magicless and pathetic.
That I was a stain and a blemish to the Bane family name and should have been snuffed out the moment I took my own mothers life at birth.
Something cracks inside me with her final words, a little voice in the back of my head telling me she’s right. That I shouldn’t be here. That if I wasn’t here, then maybe the one person who could’ve loved me would have still been alive. That my father would have been happy and not lost his mate.
I was an abomination.
Born from a powerful magical clan, with not a lick of power. I was worthless. My father knew it, the family knew it, all the students in the academy knew it, and Seria…
She pulls back, lacing her small fingers around my chin before clutching it with a bruising grip. Her blue eyes meet mine, a look so unfamiliar, so dark, I couldn’t recognize her with it.
A slow, twisted grin pulls at her lips as she smiles, a look of genuine glee twinkling in her eyes as she gazes at my face.
“Now it's all mine.” Her grip becomes tighter and more painful, “As it always should have been.”
She shoves me back and I hit the ground hard, my head spinning and pain slicing through me before everything goes dark around me, only the fading sound of Seria’s heels moving further away from where I lie.
I loosen the grip I have on the window sill, my knuckles white with my hold on it.
I gaze once again toward the main academy building, a small grin pulling at my lips.
“Enjoy it while you can, because this time…I’ll be the one to give you all a taste of real misery.”