Where am I? It is dark, and something clings to me. I struggle, pushing it off, and realize that it is a piece of cloth. A blanket Lily’s memories tell me. It keeps people warm when they sleep because the inactivity of sleep makes a person colder.

I push myself into a sitting position, and I realize I am in a dark room. Strange long shapes are lined up near me along the floor, and a strange rough noise that sounds like a door grating against its frame rumbles through the room.

Snoring, a memory supplies me with a word. The shapes must be bodies.

What am I doing here, and how did I end up here, wherever here is?

I must be back in a cell. We must have been caught, and I woke up in the night cycle of the cell. I blew our escape. If only I was stronger.

Maybe a better escape plan would have also helped. Something other than just casually walking out through the main lobby. There have to be other, better ways to escape this jail.

Where is Nathan? Did they put him back in with me?

I don’t know what is going on. I need to know, now. I reach out with my hands to read the mind of one of the people near me.

The light switches on, blinding me and plunging me back into my own mind.

“Morning Ya’ll. Time to rise to yet another day in our fair city of disappointment.” A young teen with straight black hair hanging over his face, probably close to Lizzie’s age, is standing near one of the walls, seemingly speaking to everyone. He looks over at me, and smiles.

“Hiya! Lily’s awake!” Why was he calling me Lily, and what was this place? It didn’t look like a cell. Strange speckled gray tiles covered the ceiling and a course fabric, a carpet, covered the ground. The walls were filled with colorful and unreadable words splashed across them.

I searched through Lily’s memories, and realized this must be an abandoned office building. An orphan hangout. Was with Nathan’ rebel group he talked about?

“Hope, are you ok?” It was Nathan, sitting next to me. On the other side Lizzie’s curly brown hair is emerging from under her blanket.

I’d almost tried to steal Nathan’s memories earlier! I need to be more careful about m power. If I’d stolen his memories, even a couple days’ worth….

No, it wasn’t worth thinking about.

Nathan is staring at me, as if I am some sort of strange creature.

“What’s wrong?” I felt fine now. The earlier escapade definitely left me exhausted, and he probably carried me here, but otherwise I was perfectly fine.

“You’re… You’re eyes.” Shock making his voice stutter.

“What about my eyes?” He wasn’t making much sense.

“They’re red.”

“What!” I know that Lily has brown eyes. That this body has brown eyes.

Lizzie also comes over to stare, and soon there is a whole crowd jabbering around me.

I make the world around myself disappear, and tune out there jabbering around me. Why are my eyes red? Are you as confused as me? Or do you already know? Are you going to sit there and smile at me like I am some clueless child? I want to look over at you, but I can’t. Not with all these people around trying to stare at my eyes.

The voices quiet down and a hand touches my shoulder, “You can’t keep your eyes closed for forever.” Lizzie’s voice. She is correct. Eventually I will have to open them and allow people to sit there and stare at my eyes.

She is sitting right in front of me, staring at me with that blank look. What did I do to her? She used to have so much spirit and now she looks dead inside. It is as if she has seen too much of the terrible things in the world. Like a soldier who has gone to war, Ray’s memories supply me with.

“It looks like your eyes have lost their pigmentation.” She states. How would she know this, she didn’t even go to school did she?

“How…?”

“After they took my memories they did a separate experiment. They tried to fill my head with all of the things a normal child would learn in school. I’m not sure what all took, but I often remember random things.”

So not only did they steal her memories and lock her in a cell, they continued to experiment on her and change her. What else did they do to her?

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I reach up and hold her shoulder, as she is holding mine, “We will destroy them and release everyone held in there. For you. For me. For all the people that are their victims.

She plasters on a delighted smile that doesn’t reach her eyes and looks almost malicious. As if the thought brings her great joy.

“Yes. Yes. We must destroy them. Steal their memories and burn them alive.” She whispers, the smile spreading up to her eyes, crinkling the corners with a mad delight.

What else did they do to her and all of their test subjects? Was I lucky to have spent years in a jail cell sheltered from the cruel world inside that building?

Nathan pulls her away from me, “Lizzie, could you lead a supply run? We will need a little more food with the three of us back in the group.”

The boy who woke everyone up is glaring at Nathan. We are upsetting the balance. Someone, probably him, took over while all of us were in jail, and he wasn’t happy to lose that power.

I push myself to my feet, and I can feel the muscles in my legs contracting under me to help hold me. It was such a wonderful thing, to stand and walk.

Nathan’s hands grasp my shoulders, as if to support me, but I feel as if he is preventing me from walking forward.

“Hello.” I stop, unsure of what else to say.

The boy walks forward, and smiles at me, “I’m glad to see you back, Lily. Do you remember me?”

Lily… I search her memories, looking for him. He was probably much younger then. A little boy with a mop of black hair and golden brown eyes.

The one she always called her little brother. Yes, there he was. A boy with a woolen cap and a gimpy toothless smile. What was his name?

“Brother… Little Brother.” I whisper, unable to dredge up his name.

“Yes, yes, that’s me. Your little brother Jay.” He smiles at me, his face almost at the same height as mine. He’s grown a lot since her memories of him. She found him when he was a baby, abandoned on the street, and raised him as her brother. No one questioned her…

His arms wrap around me, a hug. I reach out and wrap my arms around him, just as I learned from Nathan.

“Jay… I never thought I would see you again.” That is what she would say, and what he needs to hear.

He is crying his tears soaking the collar of my prison shirt where his head is leaning on shoulder. “I thought they killed you. I gave up. I’m so sorry.”

I pat his back, trying to comfort this boy I can see in other people’s memories, this kid I am supposed to care for. “It’s ok. There is nothing you could have done.”

He pulls away from me, “They wouldn’t tell me how you escaped. They just said you were struggling with memory loss due to the experiments that were done to you. And now your eyes are red. What happened?”

I shrug. “It’s nothing Jay. I… They did experiment on me, and I gained some strange power, I guess you would call it magic. I think the eyes are a side effect of my usage of it the other day.” My lips turn up into a smile. A calming gesture.

He throws his arms around me, “I should have come for you. I should have come and claimed blood relationship.”

“No, they would have just taken you also. I’m glad you were safe, that you stayed here and protected the other children.” A prickling in my chest, and water seeping out of my eyes. Am I… crying?

This boy. He is my brother. My brother. How strange. I have no memory of him, and yet I feel – happy – that he is safe. There is a connection between us stronger than memories. It is stronger than personality. Yes, Lily was right to call this boy brother.

“Hey Jay,” I have to ask him to call me by my new name. I can’t go by Lily. I am not her.

“Mmm?” He whispers, still holding tightly to me. Clutching me as if I might disappear again.

“Could you call me Hope? I, I changed in there, and Lily is, well it’s a painful name for me to hear.”

He face is red and blotchy with tears, and I wipe them away.

“Hope? But why…?” His confusion is so clear to see, and twists my gut. Lily never could come home.

Nathan steps forward, “When Lizzie and I ended up in her cell, we gave her that name when she screamed at us not to call her Lily. She won’t tell anyone why she hates her own name so much, but I think it is better for everyone if we just accept. That place changes people. You saw how different Lizzie is.”

I nod. Yes, that’s as good an explanation as any. I see his eyes glancing at Lizzie who is choosing people to go on a raid. Lizzie with her lack of emotional response to anything. I did this to her.

I look back at him, and I can see the worry in his eyes. He lost me, his sister, and the girl he loves to them. I gently hold his shoulder for a moment, “Why don’t you go and see if she wants help. She will need you more than ever. They… they also experimented on her. Different experiments, but I think she could use your help.”

He nods and heads over to her. I wipe the water leaking from my eyes away.

“Well that turned out better than I thought it would.” Nathan says from behind me.

I turn and face him. “How did you think it would turn out?”

“Well, for one I thought you wouldn’t remember him, and if by some miracle you did, I thought you would reject him and tell him he wasn’t actually your brother.”

Does Nathan think I am so cruel that I would hurt my own brother that way. I think back to how I treated him when he arrived in my cell. How I ordered him around and he put up with. I guess I am that cruel. His blue eyes are making me uncomfortable, so I stare down at the dirty old carpet on the floor. “I’m sorry, for how I treated you back then. I…”

He lifts my face up to look at him, “I know. You changed. But I like this new change, Hope. I was afraid that the power you gained would make you crueler, but instead you seem to be understanding feelings and being more empathetic.”

I pull look over at my brother, “I feel some things, but I think I am just understanding better about how to fit in. Though, I think my feelings for my brother are real. Familial bonds transcend personalities, I think.” I turn back to Nathan. “Lily started her private war for him, didn’t she?”

He nods. “Yes, she called us hell’s children. The unwanted children of the street. She promised us that if we fought back against the bounds of society, she would create a place in society for us, but I always thought that she only wanted to create a place to for her brother to live. A place where he wouldn’t be reviled as one of hell’s children.

I get that sense from her memories. “I’m going to continue her mission. I’m going to force society to accept us, and this time, they will listen, because I have the power to force them to.”

You are smiling at me now. Does this mean you approve of my decision to fight against this world? I never know what exactly you think, do I? I guess, this is another thing I will never know, so I will leave you with your secrets. I will do what pleases me, not what pleases you.