She was so small. They did not understand how she had survived when all the others, all the great ones, had perished. The examination chamber was made of glass on four sides; the floor and ceiling, concrete. It was not a prison, they said. They watched from beyond the glass. The concrete was cold.
She tried to count the days she had been there, to remember how long it had been. She could go back a day, a week even—but a month? A sharp pain rose up behind her eyes. She felt like she would vomit. Best not to think too hard.
One of them tapped on the glass. A dark visor hid its eyes. It was pointing towards her feet. A small grey box with a single black button. She pressed the button.
“There. Can you hear?”
She nodded her head. The pain was gone but the nausea hadn’t subsided. If she opened her mouth, she would retch.
“What were you doing?”
She shook her head.
“Where were you when–” It turned to the other figures and they gestured to one another. Turning back to her, it continued. “What do you remember?”
She said nothing.
“What’s the last thing you remember, before coming here?”
She swallowed. The nausea was fading.
It tapped on the glass, insistent, impatient. It turned to the other figures and their mouths moved but she could not hear them. One of them left the group, moved out of her sight. The others turned back to her, expectant. She waited. There was a low hum, a slight vibration, and, for a moment, the air tasted strange, but then it passed.
“What do you remember?”
She remembered the pain and the nausea, but she knew that was not the answer it was looking for. She did not want to remember, did not want to acquiesce. All around her was glass, and above and below, concrete. She pushed her mind back through time.
She remembered.
The war had started long before I was born. I only knew it was war because that’s what I was told, that the fear, the fire, and the constant sense of loss were symptoms of what was called war, that they did not have to be omnipresent. I trusted what my teachers said, but I did not and could not know for myself.
They had come long ago, the invaders. We fought first, out of fear. But we were weak and they were strong and the fighting did not amount to much. There was an agreement. We would serve them and we would live. We would serve and they would be served. We would live and they would let us live. They seemed pleased with the agreement, familiar with it. Perhaps they had made other, similar accords. Some of us seemed pleased as well. It was an end. It was, in a way, peace.
Some of us did not agree with the agreement. We were killed, mostly, or quieted. If you speak as loudly as you can, to those on the surface it will still be quiet, if you are speaking from beneath miles of dirt and concrete. Some of us, though, were clever. Some of us could hide. And some of us could think. That was the key. We thought such remarkable thoughts. Many took us down paths that led nowhere. But some took us to places we had never been before, places we could not have imagined were real. But they were. And in those thought-places we changed. We were still us, but we were new. We were different. We were not the same as those who had been subjugated. Soon we would be ready. But not soon enough.
We were betrayed. By one of us, maybe, though perhaps not intentionally, perhaps through inattention or error. It does not matter to you how the dam bursts once you are drowned in the flood. They found us. They came on us in surprise and eradicated us. Like we were vermin. Like we were filthy. Like it was an act of cleansing.
One germ remained. I was brought here. Young and malleable. To be an object of study, to be an instrument of their power. To be shaped by their hands into an example of the price of disobedience.
But they did not know that I was preparing, the same as the rest of us. They did not know that, in those last hours before they found me, our final preparations had been made, that a terminal process was set in motion. That it cultured and matured inside of me as they kept me in this glass prison. They did not know, and I had forgotten.
I remember.
The one with the dark mask took a step back and cocked its head. Then glass exploded outward, piercing all of them with infinite fragments. The concrete crumbled to ruin and she passed through it unharmed. She was ready. It was time to begin.
