Thank you to gingertonic for making the wonderful cover shown above! 💕 (note: if this isn't your user i'm so sorry - let me know so i can fix it up)

   I'd love your feedback - this genre is very new to me, so let me know what you think about the plot so far!

   Somewhere between when my brain had decided on my words and when they expelled from my mouth, I realised that the information I'd released was something I was much safer keeping to myself.

   Because the curious grin, and the dangerous expression that crossed his face told me that I was most certainly not supposed to remember.

    The thud of my heart bellowed loud in my ears, which had started ringing acutely in the absence of the pain which had been searing through my head. My face was hot with the blood pooling beneath my cheeks. I considered running for the door, and just as my instincts started to break me from my confusion and I took a step away, free from the pain that had been binding me, he broke the air and spoke.

   "Is that so?"

   Our eyes locked, and I was frozen. 

   "And what exactly is it you do remember?" he quizzed, his face, though nonchalant on the outside, slightly shadowed with what something within me identified as worry.

   I paused. Something about the charisma which was oozing from the way he tried to reassure me with a pleasant smile made me feel as if I could tell him everything, and he'd somehow make sure things ended up okay. But it was him. And I wasn't quite sure whether putting the target on my forehead by being honest was a good idea.

      What I remembered was an unsettling silence filling the room, an invisible blanket hushing the gathered students. I remember not a voice instructing us, but more a force, breaking through into our minds and compelling our muscles, making us puppets on strings as he tested whatever he'd done to us. 

   He'd made sure the doors were shut, locking us into the room for no other eyes to see.

   That was when he'd told the boy to climb the service ladder.

   With ceilings spread metres tall and ornate fixtures older than the university itself, the cleaners needed some way to reach the highest parts of the roof. A thin metal ladder, easily concealed by a heavy satin curtain, stretched almost to the top.

   Everyone was deadly silent. Even the boy.

   I remember my pulse racing, and not just because of Isaac behind me anymore. It was the fact that I was waiting for everyone to laugh, to make a joke. To remind me it wasn't real by snickering about how crazy the professor was. Maybe the ones truly scared would call the police.

    But I couldn't move. Nobody laughed. And the boy clutched the rungs of the ladder as if it were simply his duty.

   By then, my breath was held in my throat, the functions needed for sustaining my life long forgotten. Everything was an incredibly conscious decision, even blinking. My eyes, wide with terror as they watched the boy unevenly place his feet one above the other, found Isobel beside me, her cheeks still pink from her brisk walk in the morning cold.

  She was staring blankly, bored. She was seemingly not one bit bothered by the boy climbing to the ceiling above us.

   "Enough," he'd said.

   And then he had asked the boy to jump.

   "Aspen," he now said warmly, his fingers fiddling on the desk before him, like a patient adult trying to address a disobedient child. "I need you to tell me. It's very important you tell me."

   I could feel it now, as I stared at him, my body still frozen. The pull. The trust. 

   "I remember the snap," I said, my mouth now incredibly dry, so dry it felt as if my words would crumble as they fell through my lips.

   The break. Like a branch falling from a tree, a stick cracked over someone's knee. His arms, which he'd held out to stop his fall, collapsed under the force of his own body, and they sat at disgustingly unnatural angles as he stood, pain seemingly absent from his face.

   "Good," he'd said. It was working. It had all been a test.

   "The snap?" he said to me now, his voice carrying a little more urgency.

   "His arms," I said, quiet in the terror I was experiencing, both for the boy, and myself. I was going to die. I was sure he was capable of killing me. I didn't know what to do.

   And like that, adrenaline coursed through my body, and I could feel the heartbeat which had become so slow in my hazy state before, start racing, thudding through my chest. I was in terrible danger. A danger I didn't understand. 

   I stood quickly, and I turned to the door, ready to run, to feel the air press against the front of my body as I tore my way to freedom, far away from Conrad Blackwood. I needed to save my life.

    But his hand gripped mine tightly. My desperation to live won out, and I went to rip it away, to fight my way to escape, despite the fact that he was much larger and undoubtedly stronger than me. I was fighting for my life now. This was much more than going crazy. It was absolute madness.

   But in the seconds that ticked by, I realised I was not moving. And neither was he. There was a current, sizzling through my body, a buzz almost audible in the air.

   His deceptively handsome face was not curious nor amused. It was shocked. And even laced with hints of fear.

   But he was the first to break it, to gain the upper hand. The man who had told the boy to jump, to break both of his arms in the fall, to make a show of him before the whole class, pulled me away from the door.

   "Aspen," he said, his voice louder and filled with much more authority than before. "Sit down."

   I couldn't. "You're - you tried to kill him."

   "Sit down," he repeated, his tone now seething. He had worked it out for sure now.

   He gave an almost violent shove until I was sitting in the seat again. I was gone. This was it. He could control people. He could control me.

   Only he couldn't. I was remembering.

   Maybe I had more of an upper hand than I thought.

   "You need to listen to me, Aspen," he said urgently, his dark black eyes alluring me in the most dangerous way, with a force so strong I could physically feel it now. "You're - you're not supposed to remember."

   The way he said it was a statement - no, a mere comment. Like he was stating today's weather. My breathing was shallow now, the adrenaline now pumping pure fear as I realised what his words meant. 

   "You're going to kill me."

   Gia, and Isobel. They were in danger too. They were going to die.

   He paused, his head tilting slightly, and I knew I was right. It was all over his expression. But there was something else there too.

   I was going to die in this little room, my whole life reduced to nothing, never another word spoken to my friends or family. I'd never find out if Isaac had wanted to kiss me when he'd walked me home, or whether I'd ever fit in with Gia and Bel's group of friends.

   Maybe I'd be dumped in the woods, or maybe I'd be wherever the broken-armed boy was now. Disappeared into thin air. Maybe he'd told everyone there was nothing to worry about. Maybe he could wipe people from the memory of others.

   "This has never happened before," Conrad said slowly. "Nobody has ever... resisted it."

   God, I wanted to live. Even if it meant I'd be crazy. I was afraid of dying, even if I had no idea what was real anymore. My mind was quick to think, to buy myself time.

   "Resisted it?" I asked quietly, trying to keep the desperation from my tone. His hand was still firmly clamped around my forearm, a force which was almost tangible running through us, making me feel attuned to him in an unsettling way.

   "You're like me," he said after a hesitation. "You have it. You have it too."

   My throat constricted, and the overwhelming string of emotions made tears spring. Terror still wrapped around me, compressing my lungs, not enough oxygen passing into my blood stream.

   "Nobody else has ever done it," he repeated, his tone bordering on hysterical. "But I have to kill you. I can't control you, damn it."

   His hand dropped my arm and like that, the current broke, and the tears which had pricked at my eyes now spilled over my cheeks. "You don't have to kill me, please-"

   He started pacing his small office at a furious rate. "It's a curse. One I was always supposed to endure on my own. And for you to be dangled there, for someone who has it, to be so dangerous, it's cruel. It is torment."

   My voice was now a whisper, for I felt if I elevated it any further it would be a scream for help. "I don't have to be dangerous, Professor."

   "You're telling me you wouldn't tell them?" He laughed. "You wouldn't be a terrified girl with no filter between her feelings and her mouth who turned to fear rather than logic?"

   I swallowed. I couldn't tell him I wouldn't do that. I needed to protect my friends, to protect everyone. 

   But it was obvious. Everyone would think I was crazy.

   "I would do what I needed to to survive," I said, voice thick with the acquired tears. I blinked furiously, willing them to dry from my face.

   "Of course you would," he said levelly. He eyed me, a debate warring behind the bleakness in his eyes. 

   Please. Please let this be some kind of sick dream, I thought, holding my jaw tightly so it wouldn't chatter in fear. Please tell me I finally fell asleep.

   "Your friends," he spoke, his voice filled with power, his mind decided. "I could kill them all with the snap of my fingers."

   As if to prove his point, his hand wavered in the air, a smirk lining his lips.

   "And I wouldn't hesitate, Aspen." He bit his lip in a failed attempt to stop the manic laugh which broke through the terror hanging in the air. "I've been alone a long time now. People are a weakness."

   I swallowed hard, trying to keep my chin high as he circled me. 

   "Your next greatest weakness is trust." He paused, hands erratically rubbing at his jaw. "Your strongest is persuasion."

   Chills shook my body. Persuasion.

   "I'm a good teacher, you know. Though I know almost nothing about the fine arts of psychological theory," he said with a sardonic laugh, the whites of his teeth glistening as I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. He was right. I couldn't tell anyone, even if my friend's lives would be saved. 

   This was all on my shoulders. Even if there was no way I could comprehend it.

   "Of course, I'm not simply letting you go," he said. "Not without some precautionary measures."

   I tensed. Here it was. He was going to rip out my tongue, torture me into silence.

   "I'm not worried about you, Aspen," he said slowly, falling into his desk chair and wheeling it so he was closer. "You are no threat to me."

   I wanted to be a threat. I wanted to do something. But he was right. I had no idea what he was capable of, no idea what he was even doing. I'd be lucky to come out of this alive. I didn't know how many people I could save.

   "But you have value," he spoke, the smile back to haunt me. "You have power. Some degree of power, planted in a young and naive girl who knows no better of it."

   Power. I had power. Maybe not much, but it was something. It was enough to be here, to have remembered. I stared at him unblinkingly, wishing there was some way that he was underestimating me. That I could pose a threat. That I could come out of this.

   The image of the boy falling flickered before my vision again.

   He leant back, arms folding over his chest as if he were admiring a painting in fascination. Like light against the blade of a knife, mirth glinted upon his wicked smile. "What will it be, Aspen? To kill you or control you?"

   "Control," I whispered. I had no choice. "I'll do as you say."

   "Of course, you'll tell me that," he said, the humour still evident in his tone. Then he leant forward again, this time much closer, so close I could smell the scents of the forest on his skin.

   "You can kill them if I don't listen." I swallowed. "All of them. I'll do anything."

   He took my hands in his, the current reconnecting, like a circuit being completed and the power coming full circle. And then, when my eyes flicked from his hands to his eyes I felt it.

   The only way I could describe it was the pull of a magnet. As if he was somehow unplugging and disorientating the cords of my mind.

   "You're not to tell a soul," he said, his voice so melodic it brought the drowsiness back to cloud my vision. "You are to go about your day as if things are perfectly fine. I want you to meet me back here at nine tomorrow morning."

   He... He was letting me go. A wave of hope rolled over my defeated body.

   "You may be an abnormality, Aspen," he continued, curiosity dimming his features as my mind warped around my reality. "But that doesn't mean you can't be an alliance, with some... control."