Arcane

Chapter 32

Malia

I silently sit in a dark room. Not a room, exactly. A cell. Dried steaks of my tears still mark my cheeks, but I can't cry anymore. I don't know what I'm doing here nor what my captors could possibly want from me.

By now, I've figured out who has captured me. The dark fraction. The expression on Kaz's face and their uniforms, along with the fact that they are handlers, are enough hints for me to be sure.

I hear steps approach and stand up, hoping to appear less like the joke I feel like. A tall woman enters my cell, followed by a man.

"Oh, look at you!" The woman cups my face and smiles at me, releasing a bunch of invisible leeches on my skin. I pull away and back up against the wall.

"I'm so sorry about the cell, my dear. The guards didn't know where to bring you since you were struggling so hard," she goes on. My dear? I suppress the urge to snap at her but ball my hands into fists.

"You look just like your mother," the man says lovingly. It gives me a short pause. These people knew my mother? I look between the two of them.

"My mother?" My voice is shaky, but I stand tall. They exchange a confused look before turning to study me closely.

"You don't remember us?" the man asks. I shake my head, weary.

"Malia, we are your parents." The woman takes my hands into hers but I keep shaking my head. That can't be true.

"You're lying. My parents died in a car crash over five years ago."

"What makes you think that?" asks the man.

"I remember. Before the academy took me in." They exchanged another look.

"They messed with your memory. Malia, whatever they told you is a lie!" the woman tells me while the man slams a fist into the wall.

"No, we were in Sicily, and it was my birthday." I shake my head. They are trying to manipulate me. And it's so confusing.

"We've never been to Italy. These are all lies! We were on our way to your initiation when we were attacked. The academy didn't take you in, they kidnapped you! Can't you remember?" The man's voice is shaking slightly with anger.

I shake my head and press myself deeper into the wall. I need to get out of here before these lunatics do heavens-know-what to me. These people are lying. I have to leave.

"This is a misunderstanding. Please, let me go home," I beg them. The woman raises an eyebrow, her expression turning cold.

"You are home. And it is not a misunderstanding. We talked to you. Don't you remember?" The dreams.

"Please, I just want to go home," I repeat and before I understand what is happening, a burning pain sears across my face. My hand flies up to it out of instinct and I gape at the woman who just slapped me.

"You won't speak of that place like this again. You are home now," she insists.

"Take that hand off your face! They raised you to be weak in that place but don't worry, we will fix you." I drop my hand at the man's words. Fix me? A cold shudder runs down my spine, but the two adults don't notice.

"We need to get her memories back first," the man mutters to the woman as if I weren't even here. She nods and with just a look, everything around me disappears.

-

I wake up to blinding agony in my head. I try to reach for it only to find my hands tied to something.

"She's waking up." I hear a voice but remain unseeing.

"Good." I recognize the voice of the tall woman.

"But Ma'am," the stranger tries to protest but gets caught off.

"I said it's good. Continue." Without a warning, I'm dragged into a different place.

My head feels like it's being split by a hammer as a scene comes to focus in front of me. I try to crawl away or curl into a ball, scream, or just anything that can make this stop. It's all to no avail.

I'm surrounded by darkness, feeling weightless. As if I'm floating, only that I'm not. There is something hard above my head, keeping me down in the dark water. I'm in water!

I struggle to break through the surface but can't seem to reach it. "Relax," they'd told me. But how could I relax when I'm drowning? "Focus", they'd said. So, I do. I focus on the feeling in my hands until it feels like I might explode.

I break through the surface, gasping for breath, and the scene blurs. I'm restrained on the bed again, fully dry and with an even worse headache. It was a memory. They'd pushed me underwater as a child to trigger my powers. Fucking psychos.

"Her vitals are not looking good, ma'am." The voice sounds anxious. I can only take one breath before getting forced into another memory.

I'm in a dark room with my mother behind me. I'm wearing the clothes I had on when I arrived at the academy. The ones I'd thought I had gotten at the hospital.

I recognize the day as my tenth birthday. My mother and I walk outside and dozens of people attack us. People in the arcane uniform. They sedate my mom somehow, quickly making her drop limp before one of them crouches down in front of me.

The stranger smiles warmly and tells me to take her hand. The scene blurs and darkness takes over.

I'm no longer restrained. Instead, I lie in a dark and damp room, alone. I have no clue what time it is, but I feel different. I remember. I wish I wouldn't.

The memories the academy gave me are bright and beautiful while the reality is cruel and sickening. The two adults that I've met in the cell are my parents but they shouldn't be. They didn't raise me like the made-up ones did, they used harsh methods to make me strong.

I sit up and look around. I'm in another dark cell with mud walls and an uncomfortable bed. My head is throbbing but it's not the worst part. I feel like there are two people trapped inside my body. There's me, who grew up in Italy with loving parents and got adopted by the institute, and there's old Malia.

She doesn't have friends and is nothing more than a weapon in process. That's not me. I think but doubts creep up on me. Maybe it is. Maybe she is what I am really like, and the past five years have been an illusion. Someone had changed my memories and created me to be who they wanted.

I don't want to be the other me. Still, I'm back in her home, with her people.

The time with my friends in the academy already seems ages ago. I was happy. Now I can barely imagine what it was like. At least some things make sense now, like me being a "fast learner" I wasn't a fast learner, I'd already known what they tried to teach me.

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This feels like a good time to tell y'all that writing this story was to satisfy my need for pain so... y'all are in for a wild ride💀

Have a lovely time<3