Cracked plaster. Cobwebs. Snot green paint. Every morning she noticed something new to hate about her room. Her room. It was more like a cage with a desk. She closed her eyes and tried to force herself back to sleep. Please, she begged, Let me go.
Seraphina shot a look at the door, the dead light above it and scowled. Her room had no clock; just a bed, desk, sink and toilet. A wooden stool meant for the desk was placed against the wall, beneath a window which was no more than a slit of glass at the top of the wall out of reach. The light allowed in was dim and blue and Seraphina knew by the colour she had about an hour until the bulb above the door turned green.
She kicked away the bedsheet, swung her legs off the bed and swore to herself aloud that she would leave there soon. That they couldn’t hold her forever. Not yet, she reminded herself quietly. She had a plan brewing but it was far from complete. Seraphina knocked once on the wall next to her bed, then took two steps toward the toilet and pulled the handle, flushing nothing. She lifted the stool from below the window and placed it gently in the corner of her room. Seraphina balanced on it easily as she stood on the tips of her toes, pressing her ear against a small vent the size of her fist, she knocked once more.
“You’re up early,” Tallie whispered through the vent. Water travelling through the pipes from the toilet muffled the sound of her voice to everyone except Seraphina.
“I want to leave, Tallie,” Seraphina begged, even though she knew it was not Tallie who was keeping her there. Tallie didn’t force her here two years, two months and eighteen days ago. Do schoolwork alone. Eat breakfast, lunch and dinner alone. Go to sleep and wake up every morning alone. In fact, if it wasn’t for Tallie having created their signal to speak to each other through the vent, Seraphina believed she would have lost her mind a long time ago.
Tallie said nothing, but Seraphina heard her sigh through the vent. The gushing of the toilet water through the pipes was coming to a screeching end, and in a moment a final groan in the walls would signal them to stop speaking. Wake up. Hate the wall. Complain to Tallie through the vent. It was this routine that kept Seraphina’s mind intact, concentrating on a simple set of actions that stopped her from lashing out.
Seraphina ignored her schoolwork, practise tests and textbooks scattered across her desk, and took three steps to the sink basin. She combed through her thick, dark hair with her fingers and pulled out the lumps and strands from the ends. She smoothed over the rest, shook the choppy strands out of her eyes, and stared into her reflection in the porcelain sink for what felt like hours but must have only been a few minutes because-
Tallie knocked once on the wall and Seraphina was on the stool, ear pressed against the vent, ready before the toilet had even flushed. Tallie muttered one word through the wall, a word that although Seraphina had gotten used to, still sent a tingle down her spine when she heard it. Inspection.
It was one of the few things about the so-called ‘school’ that made it obvious that it was more than that. Whilst some schools might have casual dormitory inspections, like the one Seraphina had been sent to before this, these inspections felt like captives being searched for any secrets they were hiding.
But Seraphina was fast. Her spindly frame and long arms allowed her to drag her stool with one hand whilst preparing the textbooks on her desk with the other. With Tallie’s warning, Seraphina had managed to rearrange her room to look like she’d been studying just as the first lock on her door came undone.
By the time the door was open, Seraphina sat promptly on her stool, a book open at her desk on a practice test she filled out weeks ago. She even had a pencil in her hand. The two inspectors came in and Seraphina recognised them. They were always in a pair, all guards were, and Seraphina named this couple ‘Tall’ and ‘Short’. Short said nothing, pointing her stubby old finger to demand Seraphina stand against the wall. Seraphina obliged as Tall added, “This shouldn’t take long,” before flippantly rummaging through her bedsheet and pillow. Whilst Tall was on her knees looking under the bed, Short hunched over the desk and rummaged through the two drawers full of scrap papers and the blunt graphite sticks they called pencils. Seraphina watched intensely and tried to burn a hole through the back of her head with her mind, but nothing happened.
Tall shook out the bed sheet of dust and laid it back neatly onto the bed. She gave the pillow a final pat and must have considered her job done because she went and stood beside Short, who had stopped doing anything at all.
Finally, Seraphina thought. Now she could eat. When the light above the door turned green, every student had a ten-minute limit to ring the bell beside the door to request a breakfast meal. Yesterday, Seraphina woke up late and missed her chance to order food, which was the same for everyone. She ate nothing until the evening meal, which was a meagre combination of salted boiled potatoes and a fried carrot. She wasn’t going to let the inspection stop her from getting her meal.
“What is it?” Tall said to Short and Seraphina watched.
“This book,” Short began in her crooked voice, “It was open on this same page the last time we were here. I remember it, look, how often do we see the students actually study?”
Seraphina’s palms began to sweat but resisted the urge to wipe them off on her trousers. She had to think of an excuse. How could that wicked guard remember something so small? How had Seraphina overlooked something so big? She just opened the book on any odd page, how was she to know that Short had some super-memory? Then Seraphina came to think, was Short gifted? Did Short have some gifted memory? It would make more sense why they’d let someone so small become a guard in the first place.
The way that Tall doesn’t question her just adds to Seraphina’s belief. As Seraphina lifted her hands to explain herself, Short withdrew her bat surprisingly fast. These bats were electrified and one hit could knock a person out. Seraphina heard the hum of the bat and saw in Short’s eyes that she meant to use it. They knew what Seraphina knew. That there was only one reason anybody would have to hide something here. And that’s because they are gifted.
Seraphina thrust out her arms, fingers spread. From her palms, a jet of gas erupted and engulfed the pair of guards. Their features began to melt off their faces, and as Short went to raise her bat, her arm fell apart and Seraphina swore she saw bone.
Tall dove out the way of the worst of it, as Seraphina had mostly been aiming for Short, but as she struggled to pull open the door with her bubbling fingers, Seraphina directed a second wave of gas toward her. Tall had never done much to Seraphina, but she was still a guard. Still one of them.
The heat from the gas became too much for Seraphina and she lowered her arms, feeling a burn in her shoulders from having held them up high for so long. Short and Tall hadn’t screamed for long, as their mouths were one of the first to go. Seraphina stared down at the bubbling puddles they’d become. Her eyes unfocused and the ringing in her ears turned into a pounding sound that must be her heartbeat. Then she realised the pounding was real. And it was coming from the wall across from her.
Seraphina forwent the vent and rushed to the door. The handle was sticky from Tall’s touch but Seraphina tried to ignore that as she forced it open anyway. On the other side, she expected at least one or two more guards to stop her, but the corridor was empty.
Tallie’s door was a few feet away. After trying the handle and attempting the locks herself, Seraphina focused her hands toward where the locks met the metal frame and unleashed a blast of gas from her palms. The molten metal pooled before Seraphina’s feet and she stepped back, but never relenting on the seemingly endless amount of fuel that burned from her hands. Beads of sweat rolled through her brows and into her eyes, her lashes quickly swiped them away and she pressed harder. A hole began to widen in the door, and with a well-aimed kick, Seraphina caused to door to collapse inwards where it would usually open outward.
Tallie was at the far end of her room, with her back pressed against the wall she had done nothing to help Seraphina break her out. She darted across the room, leapt the steaming puddle of metal and wrapped her arms around Seraphina. Seraphina easily pried her off, “Which way now?” Seraphina demanded.
Tallie’s mouth was open but no words came out. For the first time, Seraphina could finally match a face with the voice she’d gotten to know through the vent. Tallie was short, half the height of Seraphina, and although she was dangerously thin, her face retained a fullness that Seraphina had lost years ago. Tallie’s eyes were blue and full of tears, and her freckled nose snivelled as she wiped away snot.
Seraphina’s neck ached from checking both ends of the hallway for any signs of guards, her hands raised to respond. At any moment, someone would realise Tall and Short hadn’t returned and they would know what it meant.
“You said that if I got you out, you’d know the way,” Seraphina began but the presence of her voice outside her room began to stir up the students who were still trapped, and she stopped speaking. Tallie’s eyes widened as if remembering something before squeezing shut.
“I’m listening,” Tallie said. Seraphina thought she saw the door open at one end of the corridor and readied herself to fight, but she had been mistaken. She wanted to shake Tallie until she figured it out but decided against it. The trapped children in their rooms began pounding on the walls, pleading through their doors. Any second now, the guards would hear the cries and come running. And Seraphina would have to burn them all. She turned to Tallie, hand raised to slap her, but the girl’s blue eyes opened again and Tallie pointed left. “That way.”
Tallie led the way through an endless series of connected grey hallways, lined with identical doors that must house dozens of potentially gifted kids. Constantly checking with the spirits who spoke to her, Tallie kept calling out to Seraphina which way to go, even though the girls were next to each other. They went up two flights of stairs before descending again, and when Seraphina swore she remembered them travelling the same corridor with similar signage, a cloud of doubt began to cast over Tallie.
Seraphina’s long legs were much faster than Tallie’s, but Seraphina reduced her pace to rely on the girl to know which way to go. They passed through a set of double doors and reached a blank wall at the end of the corridor. A pair of guards were finishing up the locks on a student’s door when one of them saw the two girls. His eyes seemed to widen not by surprise, but rather Seraphina recognised the same expression that had been on the faces of Tall and Short shortly before her gas had eradicated any expression at all. It was fear.
Before either guard or Seraphina could react, Tallie turned on her heels and sprinted back the way they came. Seraphina ran after her, somehow with a sneaking suspicion that the two guards wouldn’t pursue them. While Tall and Short were protecting themselves against Seraphina, it didn’t seem wise for the non-gifted guards to engage with potentially furious, newly-gifted children. Seraphina wondered if they’d all just step aside and let her and Tallie leave, especially once they saw what she did to the last two guards who tried to get in her way.
In a matter of seconds, Seraphina caught up to Tallie, who was muttering to herself. The two girls jogged aimlessly through the halls. There were no windows to know which floor they were on, nor any exit signs to know which way to escape. Tallie had said she would know which way to go, that Seraphina should risk her survival to help break Tallie out because she could lead the way. Now Seraphina was realising that it was all just a lie, a scheme to get her to do all the dirty work whilst Tallie just guessed and hoped which way led to freedom.
Tallie was still talking to herself when Seraphina grabbed her shoulders and pinned her against the wall between two cell doors, which was remarkably easy given their difference in size. “Tell me, Tallie, what do you hear now?” Seraphina said in the same lowered tone she used to speak through the vent. Tallie was staring down at her feet, still muttering words to herself that Seraphina couldn’t make out. In the silence that followed, Seraphina heard several things herself.
A dozen pairs of heavy boots pounded down a staircase nearby, probably in the next corridor, and were more than likely heading their way. Then Seraphina realised something else. By causing the commotion back in the corridor she shared with Tallie, the guards were going to start from there. They would see the melted doors and the remains of Tall and Short and would have to go from there. Although every corridor and stairwell looked the same, other than differences in signage on some walls and doors, Seraphina felt like she and Tallie had covered a great distance across the school. It would take the guards a lot more time to search for them if they were scared of what Seraphina could do. They might even be hiding away, waiting for them to leave. If only there was a way to find the exit.
Tallie shook her head over and over again. Her eyes were dried of tears but rather something else was standing out instead. Where before a pair of blue was enveloped in a sea of white, her pupils were now dilated enough to reflect Seraphina’s entire face in them and surrounded by cobwebs of red. “We’re almost there,” Tallie said several times. Seraphina decided she had no choice but to believe her. When she heard the last of the guard’s footsteps fade away, Seraphina let go of Tallie and let her lead the way.
Seraphina’s doubts were soon washed away when Tallie led her down the staircase the guards had just been on, and into a much tighter corridor that was lined with notice boards with reminders and memos for the guards that worked there. Many of them were about the necessary precautions to take when dealing with a gifted person, as well as ways to neutralise them if they become out of control. Through a large pane of glass on one side of the wall, an open room lined with tables and chairs looked more like a classroom than a break room for the guards, and for the first time, Seraphina began to question what it was that the school was actually built for.
Other than to house potentially gifted children, to protect society from them unleashing their gifts, the place was first sold to Seraphina’s parents as an opportunity for her to continue her studies in solitude whilst she awaited to find out whether she had a gift or not. This was, of course, due to the fact Seraphina was adopted. Although her parents spent hundreds of coins to try to find her birth parents through private investigations and public appeals, they ultimately couldn’t discover whether Seraphina’s birth parents were gifted or not and thus were approached by the school and here she was. Of course, when Seraphina discovered her gift, she knew she had to hide it or else her parents would never accept her back. Especially with an ability so destructive. She had to keep pretending until they decided enough time had passed and it was more likely than not that she wasn’t, in fact, a gifted monster. But what Seraphina had never thought about was what happened to the children who did turn out to be gifted, and other than being permanently kept at the school, she didn’t know the answer.
Around the corner, a wall of iron poles restricted access to the other end of the corridor, where Seraphina saw a single metal door with a small square window at the top of it. In a tiny glimpse through that small window, she saw a flash of the blue sky outside. A new wave of determination spread through her body like heightening flames, and as Seraphina broke out into a run, a piercing pain shot through the back of her shoulder, almost causing her to fall.
Tallie screamed as a second bolt passed her by, just about missing her face. Seraphina looked over her shoulder and saw rather than felt the bolt wedged in her back. Without knowing what else to do, Seraphina turned around and raised both her arms. The gas that shot out was unlike anything she’d done before, as it filled the entire corridor from height to width and spread toward the cluster of guards before any of them could react. Although she couldn’t hold it for long, Seraphina listened to their cries to know when to stop. She saw Tallie struggling to crawl through the gaps of the metal fence. With many more guards approaching, their calls to each other and the sounds of pounding footsteps now filling the corridors above and below, Seraphina wasted no time in melting away a large enough chunk of the fence to fit through. As she crawled through, however, several drops of molten metal landed on her and ferociously burned through her clothes and skin. Seraphina forced herself to keep going and when she reached the door at the end, she didn’t stop once to check to see where Tallie had made it through as well.
She span the locks, lifted a latch and the door to outside reluctantly groaned open. Once Seraphina was through, the weight of the door caused it to slam shut and in that moment, Seraphina made a decision. She lifted her hands to the seam of the door and from her palms unleashed a stream of gas that was much thinner, more controlled than any other she’d done before. The effect was immediate, and the door began to weld shut despite Tallie’s protests to try and force it open. Even through the thick metal, Seraphina heard the strained groans on the other side, followed by the hysterical resistance to the guards catching up to her.
When Seraphina was sure the door was sealed shut, she turned to see that only a few layers of fencing remained between her and the woods beyond the school. A few layers of what amounted to chicken wire against her gas separated Seraphina from freedom. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do next. Her skin ached and itched from the burns, and the bolt wedged in her shoulder was now bleeding down her back. But Seraphina finally escaped, the bare sunlight bathed her ashen skin, and for the first time in two years, and she swore to herself she was never going to be held in captivity ever again. She was going to make sure of it.