She had lost consciousness in the dark, burned alive from the inside out.

Artificial light and spotless white walls greeted her when she reopened her eyes and realised she was breathing in cool oxygen via a silicone mask.

She blinked several times and turned her face away from the unfamiliar ceiling. A nurse paused in the middle of writing on a green clipboard and briefly drew aside the blue curtain hanging around the bed.

“She's awake. Could you let Doctor Jan know?” she said to someone out of sight, her movements swift but controlled as she moved to stand beside Satara. “Hello, lovely. How are you feeling?”

She tried to pull the mask off. Her left arm wouldn't move. She tried with her right despite the heavy imprint of her attacker's fingers on her palm and around the back of her hand.

The nurse aided her with a pained smile as she sat down. “Can you tell me what your name is, lovely?”

“Satara,” she croaked.

“Well done. And how do you feel right now, Satara?”

“Cold.” The inside of her head and chest seemed full of ice that spread all the way to her fingers and toes.

“Let me get you another blanket.” The nurse patted her left elbow but stopped in the middle of standing as Satara spoke again.

“Don't.”

“I'll be right back, lovely. Don't worry –”

“Did she get everyone?”

“I'm not sure what you mean?” The lady glanced towards the curtains but didn't move.

“That girl. The one who killed –” Her throat tightened and trapped the question.

The nurse sat back down and gently squeezed her elbow, eyes watering. “Yes, lovely, I'm afraid so.”

Satara clenched the cotton sheets over her stomach with her right hand. “Everyone?”

“Yes.” She swallowed hard and covered Satara's left hand with her own. “I'm so sorry.”

Her unfamiliar skin drove needles of ice into Satara's nerves but the pain drifted out of range in seconds. A frozen hand had torn her heart out and the emptiness it left behind leaked out through her ribcage and closed eyes. Mere drops from the ocean inside her.

“Is there anything I can do for you, lovely?” The nurse's breathing faltered.

“No,” she whispered. Her confession ripped through the paper-thin remains of her composure. “No one can … nothing …”

She pressed her forearm over her eyes and the tidal wave broke free, shaking up the silence of the room with the ferocity of her sobs. Everything that happened to her family had been real.

And the truth hurt more than she ever imagined it would.

<><><><><>

I hate hospitals.

“You okay?” asked Jason as he returned from the water dispenser with two plastic cups.

“Yeah?” She accepted one and finished it in a single gulp. The water cooled her thoughts.

“I won't judge you.” His laughter trembled as he sat on the seat right next to hers. “I'm so bored I could cry too.”

“Who's cryi-” She blinked and warmth trickled down her left cheek. She brushed the back of a hand against it and jerked back as if the moisture was smudged spider entrails on her skin. “What the hell?”

When did I become a cry baby?

“Is it because of Sin?” Jason's gaze strayed from her for a second. “Because he's taking so long?”

“What's that got to do with anything? I was daydreaming.” She pawed at both eyes and offered him a crooked smile. “I guess I forgot to blink, that's all.”

“You do do that sometimes.” He hastily lowered the hand extended towards her and shuddered. “It's kinda scary being on the wrong end of it, to be honest.”

“Really?” She cleared the hoarseness from her throat and reached up for her phantom hoodie strings. “I'll have to remember that.”

He grinned but his eyes lingered on the left side of her face. He fiddled with his white cap then removed it, turning it in both hands.

“Sin never did tell me what happened the first time.” He shifted his attention from her unspoken question to the cap. “When Saytarnia attacked the kidn – the other family.”

“That's probably because he wasn't there,” she said dryly.

“Even if he was, I bet he still wouldn't have told me anything.” He paused. “He'd say you'd tell me yourself if you wanted me to know.”

“I think he'd put it a little nicer though.”

“True.” He nodded as if she had answered a long standing question and angled his body away from hers. “Do you know you've both got scars in the same place?”

I know because I saw Sin's memories. She stopped her fingers from clamping over the plasters on her neck. How do you know that?

“I saw it once on the bus, right before the summer holidays,” he said before she could ask. “You had a T-shirt on and your bag kinda pulled it down but only a little bit, I swear. I didn't see anything else.”

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“And Sin's?” She wanted to pull her hood back up.

“Today. His hair or coat always got in the way before.” He flipped his non existent long hair with a hand.

“Oh? Got in the way of what exactly, Jayce?” She muted a suspicious smile.

“Oh my god, can you stop that already?” he groaned.

An expectant silence followed his request. I don't have to tell him anything.

“Saytarnia gave them to us.” She waited for him to look surprised. “Sin already told you?”

“No, I just figured it out by myself.” The smile didn't reach his eyes. “I can do that too sometimes, you know.”

“I know.”

“You don't want to tell me what happened that day, do you?”

“Do you remember what you said two seconds ago?”

“Right. Was it that bad?” He smothered a grin behind his hand as she stared at him. “Look, I didn't say I was smart all the time, okay?”

“Imagine coming back home and finding your mum and dad sliced up, then hearing that Dan, Marie, and Nico were all killed in their sleep.” Grim satisfaction twisted in her stomach as his eyes enlarged. She smelt burned flesh. “How's that?”

“She sliced them up?” he murmured. She nodded. “And killed someone while they were sleeping?”

“Quite a few people actually. My younger cousins.” She forced her hands back onto the wooden arm rests. “My fake cousins, of course.”

“Kids?” He shook his head and his disbelief rearranged her perspective a little. “Did she –?”

“She didn't – kill them like she killed the rest. There were no marks on them as far as I know. I'm not sure how she did it.” She frowned, distracted from the pressure behind her breastbone. “She must've used zai to stop their hearts or something.”

Jason hesitated before he spoke again. “As far as you know?”

“I didn't see the reports and I was in the hospital so I can't say for sure.” She shrugged. The altered scar on her neck itched.

“Sin said she left to save you.” His expression darkened. “But she let you see all that when you were small, cut you open, and left you to die. Then she comes back and – and attacks you out of nowhere and disappears again.”

“She's almost starting to get predictable, isn't she?” She tapped the arm of the chair beside hers with a finger. “We'll start getting bored if she's not careful.”

Jason laughed, a brittle high pitched sound that coloured his cheeks. “Sister or not, cousin or not, I might just have to kill her, you know?”

“Then you'll have to get in line.” The staccato of her fingernail sped up. A distant noise caught her attention.

“Should we race?” he suggested with a wicked giggle. “Loser buys Sin noodles and ginger tea to make up for it.”

“Wait.” Satara sat up.

“Awh come on. Don't change your mind now –” He broke off as she stopped tapping the wood and held up a hand.

The doorway leading to the alley remained empty but the lack of extra noise revealed a series of sounds that reminded her of the squeak of footsteps.

“Can you hear that too?” she murmured.

<><><><><>

“I think I've found a way to store zai outside the body,” said Judy.

“Outside the body?” Sinastar followed her into one of the treatment rooms.

A cushioned chair with ominously placed straps had replaced the usual therapy bed. It looked like it belonged in a prison facility.

“Zai is a combination of psychological and physical energy, right?” She lingered beside a white medical trolley and assessed the items spread across it, occasionally reaching into a drawer to add others. “And you can draw in out at will, where it takes the form of an element, right?”

“Something like that.”

She sounded like a teacher instead of a woman crestfallen by his response to her earlier advances. A distraction?

“With the exception of the more kinetic-type forms of zai, I think you can store them in the same way you would the element it appears as.” She gestured towards the chair and Sinastar sat down. “For example, you could keep things like water or earth in a glass jar or even a metal container.”

“What about fire?” The security camera above the only door hadn't been there when he last visited.

“You could probably retain the heat but I'm not sure about fire.” She rolled the trolley over to the right side of the chair. It bore tubes and something that resembled a gas mask. “Since normal fire needs both fuel and oxygen too.”

“Is there any reason why you've decided to become a scientist as well as a psychologist?” The needles positioned across a tray halted his smile.

“It's better to have a varied skill set, isn't it?” She laughed but didn't look at him as she picked up one of the needles and attached to a syringe filled with clear liquid.

“Not always.” The hand closest to her hid beneath its companion in his lap. “Sometimes when you try to achieve too many different things you become a jack of all trades rather than a master of one.”

“Very few people can afford to master a single subject though.” She glanced at her thin gold watch. “Especially in countries like this.”

“That's true.” He waited until she looked directly at him before speaking again. “What's that for?”

“I'll need to insert a catheter to drain your zai into a container but you have to flush the veins first.” She flicked the syringe and smiled weakly as bubbles rose to its top end. “I'm not sure if it'll work or not so you'll have to be my guinea pig today.”

Do we have to do this now?

“But zai travels through the meridian lines until you force it out, not the blood vessels.” She retrieved his right wrist with slightly clammy hands and pressed it flat to the arm rest on his right, loosening the straps and fixing them in place. “Why can't you take it from my hands?”

“Because it won't flow straight into the tubes. It needs to be suctioned so the only thing that comes out is pure energy, not blood.” She positioned the straps around his neck and head but didn't tighten any of them. “It's really complicated.”

It doesn't make any sense. Is that why she isn't trying to explain it?

“Do you have a machine that can do that?” Glass and plastic cupping equipment covered the sparse drawers in the room and matched the information on the posters that depicted various holistic therapies from wet and dry cupping to acupuncture, acupressure, and different massage techniques. “Why would you need these restraints?”

“To stimulate fresh zai production, I'm going to … provoke you. Emotionally.” She leaned across him to position his opposite arm and started to tighten the straps. Her eyes met his again. “It'll hurt you. Mentally. Maybe physically too. So I attached them for my own safety and yours –”

Sinastar pulled free before she could fasten the buckle on his right wrist and twisted out of the seat. She gasped as he grabbed her arm and shoved her into the seat, resting his other hand on the arm rest to her left.

“Spy, what –?” The question faded as she looked up at him.

“Who are they?” he asked softly. The friction from the straps left burn marks on his skin.

“Who?” She cringed against the back of the chair, eyes wider and watery. “You're scaring me. What's this about –?”

“Don't treat me like an idiot, Judy.” His grip on her wrist tightened. “You know me better than that.”

“I don't –” Her gaze shifted past him as a quiet mechanical whirring he could have missed came from behind him and her denial turned into a frantic cry. “– Look out!”

Someone punched through his chest with a fist made of flames. The bullet shattered his sternum but apparently remained trapped by it. Judy didn't have a growing patch of red on the front of her clothes like he did. His breathing filled the room and he dropped to his knees as his vision blurred. I can't go down here.

“Spy …” murmured Judy above his head. His fingers relaxed around her wrist but she didn't pull away. “Spy, are you –?”

She placed a hand on his back and the entry wound stung as if she had sprinkled salt on it. He couldn't breathe around the building pressure in his ribcage. Panic shook his thoughts and pain lowered his eyelids until he was trapped in the dark. I can't stay here like this.

“No. No, Spy, I didn't –”

The white noise in his ears blocked out her voice. His empty zai stores stared back at him sympathetically. Blood trickled down his abdomen and highlighted his nausea. Satara and Jason are waiting. They're not safe here.

Judy's arms wrapped around him and she pulled his head against her chest. Sobs rattled her body beneath his but she made no move to escape even though he couldn't stop her. I have to get up. I have to get back to them before –

The darkness inside heard him and smiled.

Then it turned red.

<><><><><>

They said they wouldn't hurt him. Sinastar's blood on her fingertips shone like red traffic lights. The weight of his bowed head blamed her. This wasn't supposed to happen. They promised.

“I'm sorry,” she choked and pulled his quivering body closer. “I'm so sorry.”

What am I doing? I need to call an ambulance. She eventually freed her phone from her pocket and tapped in her password. Her fingers stilled over the speed dial options. I'll have to tell them he's been shot but if I say that they'll probably send the police too. If those guys find out I called the police here –

Seconds ago, the camera above the door had spun on its wall mount to reveal the muzzle of a gun. Now it shifted to aim at her.

“No. No, wait,” she whispered as if the person controlling it could hear her. The phone slid from her hand and clattered on the floor. “I won't call them. I won't so –”

She shrieked and raised both hands as the gun-like device went off. A red screen reared up between her and the bullet which crumbled as if caught by a robotic hand.

“Spy?” she breathed as he pushed himself back up onto his feet, head still bowed as if his mind weighed a ton. “Are – Are you ok-?”

The gun shifted its aim again but he lifted his left hand and waved it over his opposite shoulder. As if the threat of the weapon were a mosquito trying to land on his neck. The metal bracket snapped and the disguised weapon crackled as it flew across the room to strike the furthest wall.

She jumped as Sinastar staggered and his hand slammed down on the neck of the therapy chair. A red fog surrounded them and his ice-blue eyes found hers easily through the black strands of his hair. A trickle of blood spilled from the corner of his mouth and his voice sounded like several people talking at once.

“What do they want?”

“The kids,” she confessed, airless, as two marks on his wrists lit up simultaneously. “They're after the kids.”

<><><><><>

Satara rose to her feet even before the men traipsed into the waiting room and started to surround them. Jason reacted half a second slower but followed her lead as she yanked up her sleeve and touched the symbol with a zai-infused finger.

“They just did something weird, boss,” said one of the men as a person with matted, straw coloured hair on his head and face wandered in after them.

“Seems to be a bad habit.” The newcomer ground his cigarette out on the nearest wall and blew smoke in their direction with a wide grin. “Long time no see, chicky.”