One day, I would leave this place and never look back. I picked at the gunky residue on my temple from the electrodes. My head ached from the solid hour the technicians made me spend pushing rocks through obstacle courses with my mind. The harsh lights in the all-white testing room made it hard to focus. At least I was done for the weekend.

I walked past the door to my dorm and continued for the glass door at the end of the hall, trailing my fingers along the pale blue wall. The color was supposed to make it feel like a home. Like children lived here. None of us had been children for a long time. As much as I hated the all-white room, I preferred its bright walls to this lie.

I'd been here since Dad died. Almost five years already. I'd sworn I'd make it out by now.

One day…

I sighed and walked out into the courtyard.

“Up here!”

Piercey. I bit down my smile and looked up to the tree branch where he sat twenty feet up.

“What are you waiting for?” he asked.

I looked at the trunk. No low branches to climb. “I’m tired. They had me doing puzzles today.”

“Ch-ch-chicken.”

I jolted forward, focused the warmth inside me on the muscles in my legs. I jumped higher than I expected and faltered when my foot hit the trunk. Crashed to the ground. “Ouch…”

“Weak,” Piercey said. “You can do better than that, Max.”

I tried again, but didn’t make it halfway to where I had before. On my third try, I kicked off the tree and grazed the closest branch with my fingers.

“Damn it!” I ran for the tree, jumped, kicked off, and caught the branch with both hands this time. Grinning, I focused on my arms and heightened my natural strength as I pulled myself up.

Piercey caught my arm to help me the rest of the way. “I was starting to worry you wouldn’t make it.”

“Is this your sly way of telling me I need to train more before Monday?”

“Not sure it’s sly, but yeah.” He nudged me with his elbow. “We can’t win our competition without you. You have to be ready. If our class wins, we get out of cleaning duty for a month.”

“What about you? Why does it all have to be on my shoulders?”

Piercey rolled his eyes. “You know why. You just want to hear me say it.”

I grinned and wiggled my legs dangling off the branch. “Come on.”

A side-eyed glance and then he muttered the words. “You’re better at combat than me.”

“That’s right I am.” I patted his back. “But you’re basically a healing prodigy, so don’t feel too bad.”

“Gods. Your ego…” He took an apple from his pocket. “Saved one for you. It’s the sweet kind. Not the nasty ones that taste like nothing.”

“Cool.” Juice pooled in my mouth when I bit into it. "Mmm."

“If the instructors hear you picking up slang from your shows, they won’t let you watch them.”

“The instructors can kiss my ass.”

He sighed. “You should stop watching so much tv and train more.” His voice quieted. "I'm tired of seeing you get hurt."

“Please. The better we get, the more pain they throw at us. Besides, I love to train. I get sick of doing it alone.”

"Well, you’re in luck, because I’m ready to be your partner today.” Piercey pulled his bag off his back and took out his tablet.

I squirmed. "No. I said I would train, not study."

"Studying is training. You won't get good with heights until you understand the concept enough to manipulate it. Like what we were learning about gravity–"

I crossed my arms. "I'm not in the mood to play school. I’m sick of the instructors cramming their shit down our throats.”

"You're talented. Smart. There's no reason you can't do this. You just don't want to take anything from the gods, even their knowledge."

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

I wanted to say that I’d take any resources from the gods if he would agree to escape with me. Piercey had been here two years longer than me. He should have been breaking the walls down. The mountain guard had killed everyone who ever tried to leave without approval. Piercey had panic attacks just talking about it. He didn’t see that together, we could do anything.

"They're not gods, Piercey."

"This again."

The words burned on my lips. I wanted to plead with him to leave. Sure, we all ended up here for a reason. Our power had hurt people and we needed help controlling it. But they weren’t controlling our power. They were controlling us. I didn’t think I would like who they wanted me to become.

Resentment sharpened my voice. “They abandoned our world while they live in a utopia. So, no, I don't want the scraps they toss at us. I don't want to pay the price that comes with it. I'm my own person." I smacked my chest. "Mine. I don't belong to them."

Piercey tapped the base of my skull. "Your implant does."

My nostrils flared. "Watch yourself, Piercey."

"This power isn't magic, Max. It's science. You're wasting your potential if you refuse to study, whatever your reasons are. It's a shame to not become all you could be out of spite."

"Send the stupid research to me if it'll shut you up."

His voice was quiet now. Hurt. "I want to help, Max."

"I didn't ask for it." I met his eyes. "But you're still by far the best person on this mountain. Okay?"

He chewed his lip.

"Piercey, come on." I poked his ribs. "I'm sorry."

He swatted me away but I poked him again.

"Let me see." I grabbed the tablet from him. "Quantum mechanics and the conscious mind… A key to the potential of the neural implant." I lowered it. "I'm falling asleep already."

"Keep reading. This one is good. It talks about how consciousness can affect particles in the superimposed state, and how we can even manipulate gravity with our implant. That's your problem. You strengthen your muscles but you need to learn how to bend gravity to your will instead."

"I'll read it and practice. I promise."

He smiled but it looked tense. "You know, Max, I'm sucking this place dry for everything I can learn. It pisses me off that it'll be me soaring past you one day, when you could get there twice as easy."

I hated losing. Normally the suggestion would enrage me, only Piercey was different. He didn't see it, but he was better at fighting the gods, even though I wanted it more. I settled my hand on his knee, voice soft. "You're more than you see. You deserve it more than I do."

His eyes fell to my hand. I tensed inside. It didn't happen often, but sometimes, the way he looked at me changed. Normally, it started like this. A touch. Getting too close. Why did I do it when I wasn’t sure how I felt about the look that followed? I started to shift away from him when dizziness nearly knocked me from the tree. I grabbed Piercey for balance.

Everything around me flashed to twilight. I gasped, my eyes opening wide. It was night. Night even though it’d been day. A crowd surrounded me, dressed for battle, and a man held me tight.

Pain exploded through my arm and my back. Lights flashed.

Blue sky opened over my head like someone had turned the sun back on. I was lying on the ground in the courtyard.

“Max…” Piercey pushed my hair back, eyes wide. “Say something.”

“I’m okay…” I groaned and looked at my crooked arm. “But I think I broke something.”

“I’ll take you to get healed.”

“Kelvin is going to be so mad. He healed me last week.”

“It’s okay.” Piercey carefully helped me to sit up, supporting my arm. “I’ve got you, Max.”

“I slipped again.”

“I saw,” he said.

“No… Like, I was in a different place again. A different time. A courtyard somewhere. I can’t remember the rest.”

“You need to talk to Kelvin about this. I haven’t heard of that happening to someone before.”

I shook my head. “Don’t say anything. Please.”

“Your power is messing with time and space. Doesn’t that scare you?”

“Everything scares me.” I looked down at my arm. “I’ve been scared so much in my life, I can’t feel it anymore.”

A film fell over my world, thickening, until the grass beneath me faded to stone. Again, already? I tried to hold onto the world around me but I couldn’t grasp it. Piercey’s arms blurred into those of the man; his voice mingled with the other.

“Max.” Both of them spoke it at once. The boy and the man. Piercey and…

“Leif?” I touched my head. My world came crashing back down.

"It's okay." He kissed the top of my head. "You were only out for a minute. Our people covered you."

It’d been a long time since I’d slipped like that. An even longer time since I’d gone back to the mountain. At least I hadn't traveled to any of the bad times there. Every time I traveled there, the feeling of unrealness would linger with me and I had to remind myself that even though nothing in my world was as it seemed, we still mattered. I normally managed to not think about it. Would have to fight it off now.

This wasn’t good.

"I haven't had one in nearly a year…" My skin tingled with pain. The time slips always burned so badly. "Shit." I squeezed my eyes shut. "My medicine. I haven't thought about it once."

"That's because you only think of others. Never yourself." Leif's voice was hard, but his expression, his eyes, couldn't have been softer.

"We should have thought of it for you," Wren said. "It got left behind when we were captured didn't it?"

I nodded. "I didn't realize I felt this bad. I was pushing it off."

Wren took my hand, lacing her fingers with mine, her presence as loud as Leif's tendency to shout at me when he wanted to help me.

I hated this weakness of mine. I drew back from them, my arm still aching from the living memory of breaking it. "If I stay calm, it won't happen."

"It's okay, Max. We're with you."

I glanced around. That couldn't happen again. Not with that demon picking me out of the crowd. I breathed in deeply and relaxed my muscles, willing calm into my body.