The headache didn't kill me, though I half-wished it would.
By the time we were herded back into the barracks, every step felt like glass driving through my skull. I collapsed onto the thin mattress without ceremony, curling against the cold wall. My breath came in ragged bursts. Sleep, once again, refused to come.
The others shuffled around me, climbing into bunks, pulling thin blankets over trembling bodies. The sound of shuffling, coughing, whispered prayers. My own heartbeat was louder than all of it.
I don't remember closing my eyes. Only opening them again to darkness.
And a voice.
"Ryan."
Soft. Barely more than a breath.
I turned my head. Across the aisle, Alexei lay on his back, pale in the dim light that leaked through the window. His eyes caught the faint glow, shining with exhaustion.
"You're worse," he whispered. Not a question.
I tried to smile, though it probably looked more like a grimace. "Headaches."
"Me too. But not like you." He paused, the silence heavy. "Do you think… this is how it starts? The powers?"
The word felt strange in my ears. Powers. It sounded childish, like something out of comic books, not this nightmare.
"I don't know," I admitted.
He shifted under his blanket. His voice cracked when he spoke again. "I keep thinking—what if I don't get one? What if I just… break, like the others?"
I swallowed hard. There was no comfort I could give. He saw it in my silence.
"Promise me something," he whispered.
"What?"
"If I don't make it… remember me. Remember my name." His eyes shone in the dark. "Alexei Walter. From Brighton."
The words hit me like a knife. His story echoed back—his mother's bakery, the smell of bread, the night he was sold like an object.
"I'll remember," I said, my voice rough. "I promise."
For the first time that night, his shoulders eased. He closed his eyes, though sleep didn't come quickly.
I lay awake long after, repeating his name in my head like a mantra.
---
The next day brought no mercy.
We marched to the gymnasium again, the fluorescent lights stabbing down. My headache pulsed with every step, like the walls themselves were beating in rhythm with my skull.
That was when I saw her.
Mira stood with the other girls, blue backpack still hugged to her chest. She looked tired, but not broken. Her eyes caught mine across the space, and in them I saw something I hadn't expected—recognition. Not just that I was alive, but that I was still me.
When we were given a moment to sit, she crossed the floor and settled beside me. The boys around me shifted uncomfortably, but said nothing.
"You look like death," she said. Not unkindly. Just blunt.
"Feels like it too," I muttered, pressing my hand to my forehead.
Her gaze lingered on me, steady. Then, almost reluctantly, she asked, "Why do you keep looking at me?"
The question caught me off guard.
"I don't—" I began, then stopped. Honesty clawed its way out. "Because you're alive. I thought… maybe you weren't."
Something flickered in her eyes—surprise, maybe, or the shadow of a smile. But it vanished quickly.
She adjusted the strap of her backpack. Always that bag.
"What's in there?" I asked again, softer this time. "Why do you carry it everywhere?"
For a moment I thought she would shut me out. Her arms tightened around the fabric, her jaw clenched. But then she said, in a low voice, "It's mine."
Just that. No explanation. No detail.
But in this place, the word meant more than it should have.
I nodded. "Fair enough."
We sat in silence for a while, the hum of the lights filling the air. Then Alexei stumbled over, pale and trembling but determined. He sank down beside me, his eyes darting nervously at Mira.
"I'm Alexei," he said, his voice shaking as if even speaking to someone new was an effort. "From Brighton."
Mira looked at him for a long moment. Then she gave the smallest nod. "Mira."
No more than that. But Alexei's shoulders straightened, as if the acknowledgment itself was a gift.
The three of us sat together in that awful gymnasium, surrounded by silence and fear. It wasn't friendship. Not yet. But it was something.
And in a place designed to strip us of everything, something mattered.
---
That night, back in the barracks, the pain grew worse. My head throbbed with a violence that made me dig my nails into the mattress just to ground myself. Sweat soaked my blanket. My vision swam.
I heard Alexei's voice somewhere close, whispering encouragements I couldn't process. Heard the other boys muttering in their sleep, crying out in dreams they couldn't escape.
And over it all, I thought of Mira's steady gaze, her blue backpack pressed against her chest.
Doctor Veyren had said seven days.
I wasn't sure I would last four.