Nightmares. That is how I’d describe my nights when I sleep alone with no drugs. Lately, I spend most nights alone. Uncle Amon, my trainer, employer, and only living family member has been doing more ‘training’ than ‘employing’ tely. That’s okay, I hate most of the in-person jobs. It’s depressing to know the true depravity of our leaders and the richest in our society.

  ‘Nightmare’ perfectly portrays most of my nights, and what is usually in my brain, but not this night. This night I would describe as…confusing.

  I look up at the unfamiliar ceiling and tug on the chains on my arms and then at the ones on my legs. If this is another training exercise, I’m going to be very annoyed. It’s my twenty-third birthday, I should at least get to sleep in. I suppose if I’m being fair, I woke up randomly, so I may have been able to sleep in otherwise. I try to turn towards my side, and I’m again halted by the chains, which is what woke me up to begin with.

  While a training exercise in and of itself is not totally out of the question, it’s unlikely that Amon would use metal chains. They’re extremely easy to break, that just doesn’t seem like his style since he’s already tried it before, and I already completed that training.

  I sigh. It’s not the dark that causes the nightmares, but it doesn’t help that I can see one of my nightmares moving in the dark. I look in the corner and see a shadow move and my eyes go back to the ceiling. It’s been this way for years. Amon trains me, the shadows move, sometimes they get almost close enough to touch me, I beat the training, we move on.

  I break the chains on my arms and sit up, hugging my knees. I was just getting to a point where I felt like it was okay for me to strike out on my own, even though Amon didn’t know that.

  I had pns, I just kept them to myself, he’s been thinking we’re on the same page. Amon’s pn was for me to join Selly and Trevor at The Academy for the Gifted and Mages and learn my gifts. He wanted me to eventually find my essentials, fight and win the war, and I assume settle down to do whatever formed bonds do, not that I have great reference points. Or that we ever really discussed my time…after everything is supposed to happen.

  In the time Before I had the same pns as Amon. But in the After…I just wanted to find Kara, rescue her, and run away.

  I pulled my legs and broke the chains on my ankles. The metal cuffs still surrounded my wrists and ankles, but I wasn’t too worried about them right now. Kara was with me in my time in The Uprising, she’s the only reason I had kept fighting at the time. I made a mistake and put her in danger, and after that I don’t know what happened to her. I am almost positive they still have her. I basically ran like a coward. She was like a little sister to me after all the time we spent together, and I just left her there…because I’m worthless.

  Nightmares. I have plenty of them. What happened to my family, what happened to me in The Uprising, what my future potentially holds… All full of nightmares. The shadows move again, and I cut my eyes to the corner of the room, “Quit it.”

  For all I know the moving shadows are a spy sent from The Uprising, but I don’t think they would have followed me all these years without just taking me. Thinking about it for a second longer…No, they want me in the flesh, that’s the only way I’m any good to them. They don’t really care about what I’m doing and my day-to-day activities.

  Standing at the side of the bed I had been chained to I take a moment to stretch out. I guess I should be more upset, more alert, but this just doesn’t seem like The Uprising, and from what little I know about The Brotherhood, this isn’t their style either. I do a deep squat and lean to the left; this is most likely going to be a pain in my ass. I keep the squat and lean into the right, watching as the dark shadow reaches for me. I don’t have my knife, whoever took me must have taken it, but I’ve stabbed the shadows before and had success in keeping them away.

  I look down under the crack of the door and see at least one guard. Cracking my neck, I take a deep breath before climbing back in bed. These are most likely men, and men tend to be easy to manipute. I pull a bnket over me and pinch my cheeks and hold my breath until my eyes water before I begin the show.

  “Help! Someone help me, please!” I pause to listen while footsteps run towards the room that I’m in. Three men storm into the room, some kind of weapons drawn but they don’t look like regur guns. I look over at them as if I’m still restrained, “I’m sick, I don’t know what’s going on and I think I just got my period. I need help, please!” Each one of them is covered in gear from head to toe, but they look at each other, unsure of what to do. “Please! I’m probably bleeding everywhere!” One of them takes a tentative step forward before another walks over to the foot of the bed, presumably to unlock the chains.

  I kick up into his face and he falls into the corner of the room where the shadows are, I hear him screaming but he doesn’t emerge from the corner. I jump up and onto the other closest guard, I pull off his helmet and look into his eyes. “You want to shoot your partner and then yourself.” He doesn’t hesitate. He just shoots his partner with the stun gun they all have and after about fifteen seconds, I jump down right before he shoots himself and also falls to the floor.

  I look into the corner and see spatters on the wall of what is probably blood from the fallen guard. “Thanks.” I whisper before gingerly walking into the hall. They must have been the only guards for this floor because I don’t see anyone else. All I see are doors on both sides of the hall for hundreds of yards all the way down to the exit doors at the end of the hall.

  I hear some whimpering behind the doors, I hear some moaning, but those people are not currently my problem. Maybe I can help them when I figure out what the fuck is going on, but right now, I just need to get out of here. I can’t save anyone while I’m in a long T-shirt and a pair of sleeping pants.

  I run to the end of the hall and push open the exit door. Initially cautious, I walk over to the steps and look down, no one is in the stairwell at least. I jumped down and hit the ground floor with a thud. There is no way this was Amon, if this is a training exercise it’s way too easy, not his style at all. Opening the door I’m temporarily blinded by the light that is much brighter outside before my eyes adjust and see that the building is surrounded by guards, all with stun guns of various types trained on me. I nod before saying to myself, “Right, that makes a lot more sense.” Right before I’m shot with a stun gun and everything goes bck.