Chapter 1
My training today didn’t go as expected. Neither did the screaming match I had with Devlan. He never wants to explain anything fully to me. No matter how many times I ask about my past, the nightmares I keep having, or my ability to heal from any injury in minutes, he skirts the topics. I know I’m not a typical person, but I’d at least like to know something about where I come from.
It’s well past midnight when I finally walk through the door, returning after spending the last several hours cooling off. My temper can get the best of me. It can get to the point of pure rage, exploding, so much so that I could kill someone. This scares me as I don’t know what causes such anger to develop.
I know Devlan isn’t asleep, but working below the kitchen in his workshop. A pinch of light is visible between the floor boards under the kitchen table, so I stomp my foot three times, alerting him that I’m safely home.
“Come down here,” he shouts in response.
I open the door to the pantry next to the stove, lift up the trap door, and climb down, making sure to pull close the pantry door behind me.
The workshop is a narrow rectangular room lined with shelves covered in pieces of scrap metal, several soldering torches, wires, blades of varying lengths, remnants of battle droids I have destroyed in my training, and several Levin guns in various stages of repair. The entire room is lit by two rush lights, small boxes with outdated bulbs carelessly secured into an outlet and run on solar power because the generator is currently off.
Devlan is sitting on his workbench at the end of the room, hunched over the Levin gun I used earlier in the day.
“You keep frying the conductor nodules in the grip,” he snarls at me, not bothering to look up.
“It’s not my fault,” I exclaim, annoyed by his continual harshness of my weapons use. “I can’t get any power from this gun and when I do, it burns up. The Beta gun is a lot easier to use.”
“The Beta gun is a child’s toy. You need to figure out how to operate the Levin gun without destroying it.” He sets down his tools, turns around in his seat raising his tired gray eyes to meet my gaze, and scratches his crinkly forehead. “I know how this is supposed to work… theoretically. We’ll try again tomorrow.” He sighs, gesturing that I’m dismissed.
I climb back up the ladder, closing both the trap door and pantry door behind me, then head into my room where I rummage through the dresser extracting clothes to wear, choosing items based on their texture. The clothes I finally pick feel soft against my skin. The sheets and blankets are not as comfortable, but I’m really too tired to care.
“You can’t take her,” my mother screams from somewhere outside my bedroom door.
I keep still, lying curled up under my blanket, eyes glued to the door. Shadows move between the floor and the threshold as the light in the hallway flickers on.
“We don’t have a choice,” a man shouts back. The voice is deep and rough.
I don’t recognize it.
“It’s not safe anymore. I have to take her,” he speaks again, this time a little more calmly.
“I thought we had more time,” my mother cries. The sound of her voice getting closer, echoing those of the footsteps that approaches.
“You’ve had six and half years. I know you expected more time, as did I, but somehow they’ve found out. We’re not safe anymore.”
The hinges of my bedroom door creak as it swings open. The light from the hallway blinds me momentarily, but I don’t shut my eyes. The older man and my mother stand in the doorframe, staring me.
“She’s not ready,” my mother whispers.
“She will be,” the man says as he walks over to my bed, picking me up, blankets and all.
I wake up at my usual time of five a.m., trying to shake my head free of the dream that continues to permeate my mind almost every night. I slide out of bed, throw my long auburn hair into a ponytail, then grab my running shoes and a clean pair of socks. As I lace up my shoes I can hear Devlan moving about in the living room, his footsteps causing the floorboards to creak as he goes through the kitchen and out the back door to start the generator. I follow in his steps and pause on the lower step of the back porch, waiting for him to begin my count.
“Five minutes,” he says as he starts the timer.
I bolt off the step running my hardest, heart pumping in rhythm with my legs, reaching the first marker in about one minute. The second marker is over a mile away so getting there in two minutes is going to be tricky; however the real issue is getting back to the house in the remaining two minutes. I know the course by memory. I know exactly where every boulder, cactus, and animal burrow is. I can run it blindfolded, but run two and a quarter mile course in under five minutes?
That I don’t know.
Rounding the second marker, I know I’m not going to make it back in the five minutes Devlan instructed me to. I always feel he asks too much of me, pushes me too hard, but I never argue since it won’t do any good. He is never cruel when I can’t meet his demands, he just simply makes me do it again until I learn the tricks, the methods needed to achieve my goals and exceed them. I have yet to figure out the trick to this course. It has to be on the route back to the house. The markers Devlan uses are sensors that record my time and speed. He
