Sparks Rise (The Darkest Minds 2.5)

It’s me.

I see the thought reflected in the relieved faces of the girls around me. This is the third day in a row since the rotation began that he’s zeroed in on me, come sauntering over like a hunter picking up a bird he’s shot out of the sky. I can’t believe it. I don’t want to believe that it’s me.

My muscles lock first. My head buzzes, emptied of every thought. The sudden shift from badgering bully to—to this actually tilts my world. It’s a soft, delicate touch, and so vile I think my skin is actually crawling to get away from it. I don’t know what to do—I know what I want to do. Scream, shove him away, give in to the burn of bile in my throat. I’ve been hit so many times it’s never occurred to me that this kind of touch could be that much worse than the pain. The hand slides around my hip, down—

I straighten, turning my head to the side. Vanessa’s face disappears as she turns away, letting a cloud of curling dark hair protect her. What does she have to be afraid of? It has taken years for us to see the pattern of his interest, the careful process of his selection. Last month, when we overlapped cleaning duty with another Green cabin, a girl whispered to us about what happened to her bunkmate. While I am in the room, there will be no one else to him. Only, the attention from the past two days has focused, sharpened from mocking cruelty to something...something like this.

“Work faster.” His voice makes me think of the way condensation collected on walls of my parents’ unfinished basement. The stones are so dark and the lighting is so bad, you don’t feel the cold drip until it’s already on your skin. You can’t avoid it.

I see his reflection in the screen of the next phone I pick up. His body is hot and damp and it repulses me more than even the sight of his face. How can someone who looks so normal, like the man who’d delivered our mail each afternoon, be this way? I want to know what hole he crawled out of, and how I can send him straight back into it.

There are others watching this happen, from above, from around me. I feel their eyes, can sense the attention in the room shifting the longer he stands there, smelling my hair, pressing against me. Even as the hatred boils over in me, shame is right on its heels. It’s the stupidest thing in the world, I know it is, but I am ashamed of what he is doing to me and that others are seeing it.

When I still don’t react, he grabs my wrist, wrenching it back up into the air. “Search!” he calls out, clearly delighting in the word. “Assistance!”

It was quiet in the Factory before, but now I can actually hear the rain bleeding through the cracks in the ceiling. Rain and sleet slash against the walls and glass overhead, washing against them like waves. I think I am drowning; I am actually choking trying to get air to my chest. Before today, I would have stood there and just taken it, but I know now that there’s something he’s looking for. Something he wants to see.

He’d lie about me stealing something from the bin just to strip off every last layer of clothing and shred of defense I have left in front of everyone. When we were kids, this was nothing. A female PSF would lead us to the far corner of the room and stand over us as we took off our uniform to prove that we weren’t hiding anything. I’m not a kid anymore, and none of the women seem to be coming forward. I see one in the rafters, older, thick at the waist, and she’s watching this all play out with a pinched look on her face. She isn’t walking toward the stairs. None of them are.

But they don’t look surprised.

So he starts the process for them, tugging my shirt the rest of the way out of my shorts. I hear Vanessa let out a startled gasp, swinging around and bumping the table.

I push my elbow back, trying to dislodge him.

“Careful,” he warns.

Hot shame washes through me. I’m furious at myself for showing these other girls I won’t fight back. Ava is watching me with eyes that are pools of helpless horror, and I realize, with sudden clarity, that if it were any one of them, any of the girls in my cabin, I would have done something immediately, said anything to have made it stop. I need to do the same for myself.

Because I know where this is heading. Before the Green girl told us, we’d heard whispers in the wash houses and out in the Garden. I know what language his touch is trying to speak, and I feel old Sam, the lion, roaring through my blood again. No one gets to believe that I won’t fight.

I know that pride is a sin, but I would rather be dead than let him—any of them—think for one more second he’s allowed to do this to me.

When I feel him lean forward again, I don’t hesitate. I drive both elbows back into his gut, catching him off guard. I know it doesn’t hurt him—that’s why I throw my head back and make sure to nail him in the face, too.

And I feel like I’m spinning, spinning, spinning, reckless with delight in the small power I’ve managed to take back.

Vanessa and Ava both scream. Out of the corner of my vision, I see a blur of red coming toward us and I realize that my vision is hazy because my eyes are watering from the blow. My blood is thrumming in my skull, but I can’t feel any pain. I barely hear Tildon when he starts cussing and spitting out one vile word after another. A PSF stands a short distance away with bugged-out eyes, looking between us and a soldier talking into his radio, saying, No, and, Calm Control, and Handled—

I swing around to face Tildon as he gasps out, “Little...bitch!”

He’s clutching his nose, the words muffled by fingers and blood. He fumbles for the small White Noise machine at his side and I lash out with my foot, kicking it away. I feel a thousand feet high, like I could land another hit on him before the soldiers in black reach me. So, I do. I haul my hand back and slap him as hard as I can across his face, curling my fingers at the last second. The nails I’ve broken working day after day in this Factory cut into the slick, fleshy part of his cheek. The breath goes out of him like a blown-out tire; the blood dribbling down his lips sprays out, sending a fine mist of it onto my sweatshirt.