The door swung open, slamming into the wall with a thunk as more people rushed through.

"Is she conscious?" her father boomed.

Astrid tilted her head back so she could see better as he approached. Worry filled his dark eyes and lined his sharp face, his meticulously groomed hair sticking up and falling in too many directions. Dropping to his knees, he brushed her hair to one side, pressing with two fingers behind her ear to the nape of her neck. Even though he was being gentle, her head pulsed with pain.

He actually cares about me after all. Tears of happiness and relief threatened to form, but she blinked them back--she'd already cried too much.

"Syl, get me water." He smoothed pale wisps of hair away from Astrid's forehead. "Give me the meds."

A latex gloved hand offered Dr. Rytron a pad soaked with disinfectant. It was icy against her skin as he wiped a spot on her neck, the smell of it strong in her nose. It'd been a few years since she'd received this type of shot, but she still remembered how the needle felt, piercing her skin like it was nothing more than paper.

She clenched her jaw, then relaxed. She wasn't a little kid anymore.

Her father placed a firm hand on her head to ensure she didn't move; then, he inserted the needle. Astrid bit her lip but otherwise remained still.

"Here, sir," the woman he'd addressed as Syl said, holding out a styrofoam cup.

He pulled Astrid into a sitting position, cradling her against his chest in the crook of his arm. "I need you to drink this." His tone didn't match his concerned look.

She obediently gulped down the water. Even with the bitter taste and grittiness of not-quite-dissolved medicine, its coolness soothed her throat. She couldn't get enough.

"Is the gurney ready?" her father questioned, taking the cup away.

"Can I have more?" Astrid asked, but her request went unheard.

"Yes, sir," someone answered.

"Great. We'll take her to the clinic for further examination. Have Dr. Ares on standby," he ordered.

A man dressed in a hospital uniform gathered Astrid in his arms, lifted her up, and placed her on the gurney. A woman placed a sheet over her, tucking it around her shoulders. And then they were pushing her down the hallway and away from her father. 

He didn't even say good-bye.

Their faces grim, neither of them spoke as they navigated the gurney into an elevator. Their eyes remained fixated on the red numbers that ticked down how many floors left. As soon as the doors slid open, they wheeled her through the lobby.

There were no comforting words or reassurances as they placed her in the back of the nondescript vehicle waiting outside. The rumble of the tires, accompanied by the occasional squeak of protest from the hand-liked clamps that held the gurney in place against the wall. But otherwise, it was completely silent.

Why am I not in an ambulance? Not that it mattered; she was just curious.

When the road became rougher, it jostled her so much that Astrid feared the clamps wouldn't hold. She clutched her skirt, her sore body tensed.

The man and woman sat on the bench across from her and watched her warily as if they expected her to either attack them or burst into flames at a moment's notice. And other than a large metal container painted white, most likely containing medical supplies, the back of the van was empty.

Thankfully, the ride wasn't long. The van glided to a stop and the two scrambled to their feet. In a flurry of movement, they opened the doors and removed Astrid. Before being wheeled inside, she caught a brief glimpse of the cloudless blue sky, quickly replaced by a tiled ceiling and fluorescent lights.

The steady beeping of machines, the blur of voices, and hum of medical appliances was absent, the tap tap tap of two's hurried steps like thunderclaps.

She swallowed, closing her eyes briefly against sudden nausea. When she opened them again, the man scooped her up again and transferred her to the table-like bed in the center of the room. Various unidentifiable instruments and pieces of equipment lined the walls and an assortment of bottles and boxes sat behind the locked glass cupboard doors. It looked like any of the countless hospital rooms she'd ever been in.

At least the lights aren't in my eyes--that's something to be happy about. It was always best to think about the positives, not focus on the negatives, like the fact that her father barely said ten words to her and didn't even bother to stay by her side. And where was her mother? Was she not allowed to see Astrid? That would make sense.

All she wanted right now was a hand to hold to distract her.

I killed someone. This time, she didn't push the thought away. She felt detached, as though untangling and observing events that had happened to someone else. I had one of my episodes and electrocuted the minder. Nothing like that has ever happened before--something is seriously wrong with me.

How? How was that possible? And the memories of the woman--a thousand questions with no answers cluttered Astrid's head at the thought of her.

Like the nightmares, the flashbacks only came when she didn't take her pills, like the seizures. She bit her lip. The medications were just supposed to slow down the destruction of her body and prevent her mods from glitching as a result; they weren't supposed to suppress memories.

She tensed at the sound of footsteps as someone neared the room, briefly breaking her concentration. But her racing mind refused to let her go.

Perhaps the memories were hallucinations, caused by her mods malfunctioning. And that could be where the electricity had come from; but the more she thought about it, the more illogical her theory became.

Astrid slammed her fist down, growling in frustration. If her father were here, she would ask him, but she'd asked many times in the past: questions about why her body didn't like the mods, how the medicine worked, and when--if ever--she could stop taking them. His answer had always been a smile and, "You don't need to worry about those things." But as she got older, the smile faded away and his replies became shorter and shorter until he simply ignored her.

"Can you breathe alright?"

Astrid's eyes shot to the man walking through the doorway. His nametag read Dr. Ares. "Yes."

He looked up from the tablet in his hands, his angular face awash in its blue glow. "Good."

"It's you again," she gasped.

Nodding, he flicked a switch, causing the room to get brighter as more lights turned on. "Yes, it's me again. And hopefully, I can actually help you this time."

He glanced back at the tablet, purple eyes narrowing as he scrolled through whatever he was reading. Two grunts and three minutes later, he set it on the desk in the corner and pulled on a pair of gloves.

"You've really been through it since I last saw you," he commented.

Astrid nodded.

"Can you tell me where your injuries are while I check some other things?"

"Yeah." A tickle in her throat made her cough.

As he walked around the room gathering different things, she told him about her shoulder and the various cuts she'd received.

"I'll take a look at those in a moment." Dr. Ares peeled the cover off the adhesive on the back of a small black strip, then placed it over her temple. It pulsed almost imperceptibly.

"What does it do?"

He shot a glance at the door. "It's complicated."

Setting his jaw, he clipped a bracelet around her wrist, tapping it twice until it flashed blue. He waited another minute, watching it intently. Then, without a word, he placed an electrode on her other temple and one on each side right behind her jaw. Two more went an inch or so below her collar bones, and the last two he placed on the inside of her wrists.

Astrid cleared her throat and braved another question. "What are these for?"

"Without going too in depth, these are locations of microchips that help control your mods, and I'm using these to monitor them," Dr. Ares said, sitting down beside the bed.

"What are you monitoring?"

He studied her, the intensity in his eyes making her squirm.

"Their activity and energy levels so we can keep them under control." He still didn't look away.

Astrid's heart skipped a beat. "You mean so I don't zap someone again."

Standing, he walked around the bed, attaching different colored wires to each electrode. "More or less...yes."

So she did electrocute the minder, and it was a result of her mods.

"What...what mod..." She stopped and tried again. "What kind of mod does something like that?"

"It's a malfunction." He shrugged stiffly.

 She squinted, curling and uncurling her fingers. "Okay, so if it's a malfunction, why didn't I get shocked? If it glitched and sent that much electricity through my body, why am I still alive?"

Twisting her head so she could watch him as he attached the ends of the wires to a monitor, she fought back another wave of nausea.

"It's the result of a malfunction," he said through gritted teeth. "That's all."

"That doesn't make sense unless one of my mods is a lightning protector," she snapped. "Why can't anyone just answer my questions for once? Is that too much to ask? Everybody seemed to forget it's my body and my life they're messing with. Surgery to remove mods that are killing you? No, we can't do that! Having nightmares and remembering stuff that apparently didn't happen? Here, take more pills! Killed someone during one of your episodes? We'll just lie to you about the reasons!"

Eyes burning, her face contorted as though it couldn't decide on what expression to make. Her lips tasted of salt, and only then did she realize she was sobbing, gasping for air like a drowning man. She curled into a ball, pulling on the wires, burying her head in the crook of her arm. The damp fabric clung to her skin and her nose was running, but she didn't care; the dam inside had broken into a thousand irreparable pieces, allowing the torrent of emotions to pull her under.

There was no one to hold her and no medicine strong enough to take away the pain that left her fragile like a fading flower. She'd been broken for a long time and the strength that had held her together for so long was gone.

It didn't matter. Nothing mattered.

She was born to die, the same as everybody else--just like the boy with the wings, just like the minder. Life was a ripple in an ocean, a speck of dust in the endless expanse of the universe, there for one second and quickly forgotten the next.

"I need you to calm down."

Digging her fingers into the thin mattress, she ground her teeth, the spark of anger in her chest growing. It spread, the heat from its flames catching in her throat. The device Dr. Ares had placed on her temple started beeping in sync with the alarm blaring from the monitor.

"If you're not going to calm down, I'm going to have to sedate you," he warned.

Astrid hated him and she hated her father and her mother for everything they'd done to her. She wanted to cry until there were no tears left, wanted to break every single last thing in this room into a million fragments and grind them into dust under her heel.

"Don't touch me," she snarled, lifting her head to glare at him.

He didn't flinch, his face carved from stone.

Pulling her legs under her, she sat up, crossing her arms despite how it made the electrodes tug at her skin. The incessant beeping so close to her ears made them ache, and she couldn't think straight. Reaching up, she pulled on the device, fully expecting it to come off.

A rod of bright white pain stabbed her temple, and she couldn't see, the air sucked from her lungs.

"Stop! Don't pull that!" Dr. Ares screamed.

He grabbed her hand, prying her stiff fingers off one at a time.

"Let me go!" She struggled, but he only tightened his grip around her wrist while seizing her other hand.

"I can't help you if you won't let me," he hissed. "So stop fighting me, otherwise I'll have to sedate you!"

Astrid gave one last half-hearted jerk before completely relaxing. Sniffing back all of the snot, she blinked the tears away and cleared her throat. "Tell me what my mods are."

His darkened eyes bore into hers. "I can't tell you when I don't even know them all."

It took every ounce of willpower not to slam her head into his. "Then tell me the ones that you know."

The vein across his forehead swelled as he squeezed even tighter. "This is not an interrogation, Astrid. I'm not like your father--anything I do, it's for your good."

She lifted her chin, keeping her face expressionless. "You think I trust you? There are only two things I know: one, I can't trust anybody, and two, there's a reason my parents don't want a single one of my mods removed." She paused, letting her words sink in, continuing before Dr. Ares could cut her off. "This wasn't the result of a glitch."

He opened his mouth to speak, but she wasn't finished.

"When I..." Be strong, Astrid. "...electrocuted the minder, the energy started here." She wrenched one of her hands free and tapped her chest with quivering fingers. "You placed two electrodes there. And just a few moments ago, it started happening again, and all the alarms started going off. Both times it happened, I lost control of my emotions. That's not a coincidence, Dr. Ares. Is it?"

He dropped her wrist as though it had burned him. Whirling around, he strode to the monitor and started flipping switches. The alarm decreased in volume, and the strip on her temple stopped emitting noise altogether.

"Answer me!" She swung her legs over the side and planted her feet on the cool tiles.

He turned, his eyes widening in horror as she yanked the electrodes off, tossing them to the side. Each one made a sharp, satisfying click as they hit the ground.

He reached for her shoulders, but stopped himself, his arms dropping back to his sides. "There are some things you're safer not knowing."

"Wrong answer." Astrid crossed her arms.

"You have no idea what you're asking about." Scanning the room, he ran his hands through his hair. A sheen of sweat coated his forehead, and his face was paper white. "You're not the only who's risking everything and has a lot to lose."

Her eyes narrowed. "I have nothing left to lose, and I never did. Why do you think I stopped taking my meds so many times?" Even now, the sharp taste of the pills lingered on her tongue and bile rose in the back of her throat. "Every second these mods are in me, I get that much closer to an early grave I'd be buried in just as quickly without them. What's the point of dragging the torture out?" Her vision blurred and she was thankful she didn't have to see Dr. Ares' face anymore. "In the beginning it...it didn't matter. I was with people I loved. But..."

The wristwatch on Dr. Ares' wrist ticked steadily like a death bell tolling the loss of another soul.

"I'm going insane," Astrid whispered, covering her face with her hands and rubbing her eyes. "I really do need my meds."

If this was all part of another nightmare, then she should wake up any time now. She'd never think of running away or miss a dose again.

"Astrid." Dr. Ares wrapped his arm around her shoulders. "This isn't a dream, and I need you to trust me. I swear to you, I'm doing everything in my power to help you." 

"How?" 

"By getting you somewhere I can remove your mods."