CHAPTER 1A – HOW SHE GOT HERE
1191 Words
Seviah didn’t remember the ride.
Just the heat.
The way her wrists had burned under the too-tight restraints. The buzz of static in her ears. The humming sound of a machine that never quite landed. A man in a white uniform had said something like, “She’s too calm,” and she’d smiled at him — just slightly — because they always said that.
Because they didn’t know the storm she carried in her blood.
They’d taken her from the orphan compound under Order 9B: Non-Compliant Female. That was what they called you when you stopped answering questions. When you stopped blinking at the tests. When you look a scientist dead in the eye and say: “I heard her voice. She said, "I would burn.”
Seviah had said that.
She wasn’t supposed to remember.
But she remembered everything.
Two Days Before
The sun at the orphanage didn’t rise — it crawled. Pushing its dull weight across the concrete sky like a tired god.
Seviah was always up before the bell.
The others hated the mornings. She didn’t blame them — cold floors, shared uniforms, tasteless rations, endless drills. But she liked the silence before the noise. When the halls were still half-shadowed and the air still belonged to her.
Her first move, always: unwrap the fabric from beneath her mattress. A linen scarf, threadbare now. She used it to bind her wrists — loosely, gently — like armor. No one knew why. She never explained.
Next: the book. A stolen one. Or maybe “borrowed forever.” The front cover had faded to white, the title lost, the spine cracked. But Seviah never cared for the words on the page. She studied the margins — the handwritten notes in slanted cursive. Notes that didn’t always match any known language. Sometimes, they mirrored thoughts she hadn’t yet had.
Today, she carried it against her chest as she tiptoed barefoot past the other girls and climbed the metal ladder to the roof.
The roof was hers.
She never told anyone that, but somehow they all obeyed it. Even the older girls. Even the daring ones.
Up here, the sky felt close. Like it might lean in and listen if she spoke softly enough.
So she did.
Not in full sentences. Just thoughts. Breathless half-prayers. Whispers that didn’t expect to be answered.
But sometimes… they were.
Downstairs, the bell rang.
Seviah watched the lines of uniformed orphans dragging feet across gravel, standing in neat rectangles. She didn’t rush. She never did. They wouldn’t mark her absent. They never did.
They didn’t know how to handle her.
No one at the orphanage really did. She wasn’t violent. Wasn’t loud. Wasn’t disobedient in the traditional sense. She followed the rules. Ate her food. Kept her bed neat.
She just… unnerved people.
Like the time she told Miss Halwen, the dorm matron, that the fire alarm would go off before dawn.
It did.
Or the time she said, “It’s going to rain inside the hall,” and within an hour, the pipes burst from the ceiling.
After that, they stopped asking her questions. Stopped looking her in the eye.
Except for Nali.
Nali was different. Not because she was brave — though she was — but because she believed Seviah.
She was younger by a year. Soft-voiced. Too curious. The kind of girl who drew moons on the soles of her shoes and made up stories for the dust mites under her bed.
She was the only one who ever sat beside Seviah during meals.
“You know what I think?” Nali whispered once, eyes bright. I think we’re here because we’re dangerous. Not broken. Just… too awake.”
Seviah didn’t answer. Not with words. She just stared into her bowl of rice until Nali nudged her with an elbow.
“You always act like you don’t believe me,” she teased. But your eyes? They’re like… on fire.”
Seviah blinked once.
“Then don’t touch me,” she said flatly.
“Too late.”
That night, it rained.
The roof leaked, and the dorm floor grew damp, and Nali curled beneath Seviah’s blanket anyway. They whispered into the dark. Nali asked questions like, “Have you ever seen a ghost?” and “What if they’re lying about our parents?” and “Do you ever hear music when no one’s playing it?”
Seviah gave her the same answers she always did:
“Ghosts don’t whisper, they watch.”
“They’re not lying. They’re forgetting.”
“Yes.”
Sometime near midnight, Nali touched her arm and whispered, “It’s warm,” and Seviah said, “Don’t,” but the moment passed.
And in the morning, Nali’s nose bled.
It wouldn’t stop. Thick streaks down her neck. The medics came.
“She’s just sensitive,” one said.
“She’s been around the wrong energy,” another muttered.
Nali was taken to the lower bay. For observation. That’s what they said.
But she didn’t come back.
That night, Seviah didn’t sleep. She wrapped both wrists tight in linen and sat on the roof until the wind made her lips crack.
And she spoke.
This time, not in whispers.
“I know you can hear me,” she said to the sky. Whatever you are. Whatever you want. I’m tired of warnings.”
Silence.
Then — a low hum beneath her skin.
Like a shiver without a cold.
Like a name she hadn’t learned yet.
The next night, they came.
Four men in white. White gloves. White boots. No faces — only visors.
Miss Halwen didn’t resist. She just stepped aside like it was inevitable. Like she’d always known this day would come.
The girls in the dorm pretended to sleep.
Seviah didn’t struggle. She looked up at the ceiling, saw a crack shaped like a spiral, and whispered, “She’s waiting,” just before they injected her neck.
Darkness swallowed her like a mouth.
Now
She stood in the transport chamber.
Glass panels. White light. The hiss of chemicals in the vents.
She could still smell Nali’s hair.
She could still hear the sky.
Not with her ears, but inside her — behind her ribs, like breath that had gotten lost.
It hummed now and then. A low murmur she could only describe as… familiar. Not like thunder. Not like wind. Something older. Like language that never needed to be spoken.
She stood there for what felt like hours.
The white-coated guards didn’t rush her. That was the strange part. They didn’t bark orders. Didn’t grab her. They watched her like a riddle. A door they couldn’t open.
She wondered if they could hear it too — the sky inside her.
But they didn’t say anything.
And neither did she.
Until something whispered her name.
Not aloud.
Not from them.
From the hum.
From inside.
“Seviah…”
She blinked once, then looked up.
No one had spoken.
The guards were still staring, blank as the walls.
The voice hadn’t come from them.
It had come from beneath her skin.
Just like before.
Just like the night they took Nali away.
- Writer
