Nova gazed across the fields she had travelled to visit the wilds' city, as the tops of the towering steely buildings of her city glinted in the sun's setting rays, beckoning her to an imprisoning home.

"You are much like her..."

Nova turned to Roxanne, the strange woman who had her released from the wilds' cell.

She tucked her violet strands behind her ear as the bushes rustled around her, a strong wind blowing through leaves and their swaying branches.

"Like who?" She asked, even though a quiet knowingness nagged her with an answer she almost felt fearful of.

"Your mother, Katherine." Roxanne replied, a gentle smile ghosting her lips but never truly forming, as if a caress of a distant memory. "My sister."

"Your sister?" Nova repeated in disbelief, eyebrows raised and eyes slightly wide as she tried to straighten the facts. "She was a-a wild? And so Floyd; is he also..."

"It's been a long time since I have seen Floyd." Roxanne, her aunt muttered absently, before facing and nodding to her in affirmation. "She was every bit a wild as you are."

Nova jerked awake, her heart beating sickeningly while her head pounded more strongly. She groaned, squinting as the harsh bright lights on a white ceiling overhead sent shocks and stung her bleary eyes. It was not just her odd sight or headache troubling her; her entire body felt murky as if she had drunk a toxin.

She blinked, trying to clear the darkness lingering on the edges of her vision, and with a deep breath sought to sit up against the pillows lining her headboard and ascertain the cause of her sudden illness.

But neither was there any pillow lined headboard for her to lean on, nor could she even sit upright; discovering instead the circular coolness binding her wrists to the side of the hard-flat surface of the bed of her father's clinic.

And at that moment, her memory of the dinner with the Mayor and him knowing of her dimming loyalties to the city swept her into a full storm of panic, as she pulled on the handcuffs restraining her. But as much force as the panic awarded her, her hurt by her father's betrayal who added sedative to her wine deflated her efforts, as tears glazed her green eyes.

She sniffed, snapping up as Michael entered his pristine clinic; the place he preferred to spend most of his time and life rather than with his child. She regarded him cautiously as he buttoned his white coat, and pulled a small vial from his experimental study desk.

Fortunately or unfortunately for her, Nova recognised the vial engulfed in his hand; it contained a dose of a drug of his invention, all to numb the wilds' spirits, until they were no different than the citizens obeying the Mayor's rules of their lifeless, lonely routines.

"We don't have to make the wilds like us, we can be like them." Nova said, looking at a startled Michael, adapting his features to neutrality as he spared her a glance. "Tell me you know it, don't you? It is nature; nature is the cure."

Michael stepped over to a bookshelf spanning the wall at the far end of the hall. He traced the hard bound spines of the books, touching them as if in a trance, and replied at last. "It is but a childish fancy at best."

"Mother loved nature." She spoke, looking at her father's back as tall and upright as the towers of their city forged of steel. She hoped to see a quiver, a sign or something to convey that his emotions still existed. It was solely the name and mention of her mother which held the power to make him tremble; yet his being did not convey any sign which she seeked.

Michael grabbed a journal from the top shelf towards the corner of the hall; the shelf and space which held many of his unsaid secrets. He flipped the worn-stained pages of the journal, as he as usual lost himself in reading.

But Nova could not allow him to do so, as fear crawled up her spine and settled in her mind as desperation to evade her death or worse, her existence as lifeless and dull as one of the true citizens. "I am like her; a wild, like her."

His head bowed reverently over the journal lifted from his engrossment, hearing the mention of his deceased wife from his daughter yet again.

He breathed, replacing the journal in his hand with an even older one as its pages escaped from their bounds, scattering onto the floor. He knelt, gathering the pages scribbled with his life's work and documentation of all his procedures on the wilds, one of those which ultimately led to the invention of the drug repressing the wilds' spirits.

Seeing him ruffled ever so slightly, she continued. "You could never bear to even look at me, for I appear as mother did. You wish she was here in my place; that it was her life which was saved instead."

It was hurtful for her to say what she said to Michael, but if it could save her now from becoming yet another victim of his drug, she vowed to do all it took of her. She would spew as much venom as she could, to make him consider his actions towards her. She would hope beyond all hope that Michael would stop his intention to drug her, rising from his loyalty for the city, its elites and the Mayor and from his misplaced sense of disciplining his only child.

"I know..." She cleared her throat, glancing at the cuffs on her wrists. "I know that she was already dying before being killed in the rebellion."

She twisted her wrist, trying to slip her hand out from the handcuff, but it only clanged against the bed's railing and remained stubbornly on her wrist. "Did mother plead you not to drug her? Did she cry? Was she in pain?" She knew she should await his answer, but words tumbled out from her mouth as if on their own accord. "Did she ever try to commit a suicide like wilds who were drugged by you!?"

Michael glanced at her, his eyes tight and guarded as his gaze flicked to her wrists still twisting to slip out from the circular steel bounds. He sat in the seat afront his desk, as he jotted notes into his new journal from the assortment of slips heaped on his table.

"You have no soul. You have no heart." Nova said bitterly, getting louder. "But you have a mind; and mind possesses morality, so why can't you be moral for once in your life?"

She breathed strongly, and blinked, clearing away a film of tears gathering in her eyes. "Does guilt never nag you?"

"What did they ever do to you? Why do you hate the wilds so much?-What did I ever do to you? Why do you hate me so much...father?" Nova cried, seeing Michael tap the vial with the dose of his drug now meant for her. "Do you never feel bad for all you do and what you did?"

Nova squeezed her eyes shut, laying back on the rough bed of the clinic and giving up the fight against the handcuffs as her wrists began to bruise.

"Did you hate mum because she was a wild?" Nova asked, unable to bear the thought of Michael drugging her mother and robbing her of her spirit.

Michael sighed and brushed his hair, greying more than ever around the edges with age no matter how much he tried hiding it, and rested his palms, fingers splayed out on the table. A quiver ran down his back, remembering their days before Katherine died.

A beep sounded from a machine near Nova's head, as she noticed a wire attached to the base of her neck. Michael grabbed the vial and walked over to her, taking a seat on the rotating stool beside her. He stared into her green eyes longer than he ever did prior to that moment. "Nova, you know I never hated her wild spirit, and I do not hate you."

"Then why are you doing this to me, father?" She asked.

"You would have been safe here at home; safe from the elites and the wilds you are so impulsively curious about. But you did not listen to me." He said, taking due measure to keep his feelings detached. "You have none to blame but yourself for the situation you have brought yourself in; so you should think about that."

"Why do you hate the wilds? I am a wild-"

Michael interrupted Nova, and continued. "I do not hate you because you are a wild. It is because you chose, easily I might add, to betray me and fraternise with those-"

"They are not our enemy." She stated, "They allowed us to use their blood immunity but if it did not heal us, they are not to be blamed for it!" arguing fiercely to make him understand the baselessness of his prejudice. "Surely you will agree with me. Then why do you hate them so much?"

"Because-"

"You slaughter them; you drug them; you drove them to commit a suicide-If it is to be anything, they should hate you. You have neither reason nor right to despise them, Michael-"

"They killed your mother." He yelled; his pale skin red and flush, his jaw clenched and his eyes large and wide. "Is that a reason enough for you?" He asked, eerily calm in a blink but his face ebbed to ashen tiredness. "She was already dying, yes; but they killed her, even though she was their own."

"I'm simply saving you from her fate." Michael whispered, his fingers brushing away her hair from her neck.

A lone tear trailed down her cheek, not knowing what to think or feel. Michael hated the wilds for he believed they killed her; but they couldn't have, could they? She nearly believed her father, but then she remembered Roxanne's warm aura, and decided to wait before assuming and adopting Michael's belief.

"You're saving me by robbing me of my spirit." She uttered, as Michael filled the syringe with the liquid as silver and minacious as steel.

"Lie still, it will not hurt you." Michael advised, pressing her shoulder onto the bed, laying her straight, and touched the tip of the needle to her neck.

The pin stung her as she seeked to move away, but Michael held her in place. The liquid rushed through her blood stream and veins, altering her consciousness, while she whispered. "No it won't hurt me-it will only kill me."

⚔ ⌖ ⚔ ⌖ ⚔

The hard surface of the bed pressed painfully in her flesh, as she lay laden with the drug slithering through her veins to nestle deep into her brain, until there would be nothing for her to feel. Not the joy of life and not the fear of death.

Her skin pleaded for her to shift into a more comfortable position, but try as she could, neither her body nor a single finger of hers complied with her wish. Her mind felt too muddled to even think about entertaining a thought or the comfort of her body. Infact her mind already seemed to have abandoned her into its nonexistence.

Her only companions were the mockingly bright lights overhead, and the constant tick of the second hand on a thoroughly irritating clock.

And yet, she did not know for long she lay there. She didn't know if it had only been a few minutes, hours, or days. She only remembered her desire to escape from this building before it buried her alive.

And it was at that moment, when a screech so dreadful as a metal ripping the wall woke her with a mental lurch from her slipping awareness. The lights dimmed, but instead of her vexation with the color of white decreasing, fear roared.

Slow, deliberate, measured footsteps echoed in corridor leading to her father's study hall. They were distinct and loud in a breathless, vacant building. An engulfing chill willed her to flicker her eyes towards the door; the knob rotated with the slightest of touch from outside.

The door swung open as she watched, helpless to hide, as shadows flocked inside from around a silhouette of a man standing in the doorway. He traced a blade down the side of his face, swaggering in the room while drilling holes into her glazed eyes.

Nova fisted the rough sheets, attempting to shuffle off the bed as a glimpse of the paint in thick stroke of smiling red caught her sight. He sneered, making his way towards her, smiling wider than the splits already piercing his cheeks.

The leather of his dirt brown shoes, stained with blotches of old scarlet, stepped to her, as he brushed his fingers on her cold cheek. Nova averted her face, whimpering away, but he dug the bony tips of his fingers into her chin.

"Shh... Did your daddy leave you here? Hm?" He asked, as Nova lost herself to the spell of darkness lingering around her vision. "No-no-no, girly, you don't sleep on the joker. Wakie, come on." He patted her cheek thrice, and closed her nose.

She snapped awake, screams crawled and ripped out of her throat, bruising it raw as the joker disallowed her even one breath. Her chest heaved up while her lungs shriveled in her quiet screams. Her arms as laden as they were refused to rip his hand from her face.

The lights overhead dulled to scrambling dots, while Nova nearly fell from the precipice of life and just as the deathly abyss began to reflect her in welcome; he freed her. Nova jerked upright with the force of her inhale, slipping off the bed as the machines attached to her body toppled over her with her weight, while some needles tore their way out of her flesh, leaving trickles of blood.

The joker huffed, "What a mess you make." staggering to the other side of the bed where Nova lay unmoving. "If you don't move, princess, I will obstruct your breath."

"No?" Joker rested his arms on her waist, staring down at her splayed form. He rolled his eyes up at the ceiling, but on receiving no answer from her, he bent and picked her. "Since you won't move, I am not responsible for dropping you. You get it? Hm, get it?"

"Not a talker? I'll loosen your tongue in no time." The joker said, exiting the room to step out in the corridor with Nova in his wiry, straining arms.

Nova's neck stretched back, dangling from the crook of the joker's arm. A long line on the left steel wall stole her fading focus in the otherwise neat and maintained place. It ran across the length, rather like a scratch, but deeper and more violent, as it embedded deeply into the steel, ripping and shredding it in screeches she had heard earlier.

He soon turned to the stairs and to his struggling descent, as Nova feared for a moment of tumbling on the stairsteps, but somehow the joker kept a firm grip on her. She closed her eyes to ward off the harsh brightness of the color white as the ceiling gleamed down achingly direct into her eyes.

She chuckled faintly as the joker stumbled, managing to catch his footing just in time as he arrived at the first level, where the armed guards on watch warned him to halt in his pursuit. He responded as maniacally as he talked with her, but the guards retorted.

She didn't stay awake for any longer as the silvery drug in her veins enshrouded her in darkness, but a distant blast and a rumble reverberated through her numbing being, while her body was flung out onto the sharp pebbles in the road. Her cheek burned, as it grazed the concrete, drawing red bubbles from littered cuts and peeling scrapes.

She didn't know who he was, where he was going or taking her, but still she surrendered to his weight rolling over to lie atop her back, as his gun rained bullets from near her ear. White flashed afront her eyes, and she was reminded of the purity that the citizens sought with all their might to retain while being controlled by the soulless.

The joker grabbed her upper arm, dragging her to a hover cab parked near the opposite building, and quickly shoved her inside. She pressed her injured cheek to the window, yielding to the fate she hoped would be better than the one she was already subjected to.

"My father claims he did not inject my mother, yet he did to me what he retains for his captured victims." Nova said. "And then he further goes on to claim that wilds killed her. But it can't be true, can it? I don't know who to trust."

The joker mumbled in his mouth, glancing at her in the rear view mirror while a car honked loudly and flashed a pair of neon lights, zipping past them narrowly as the joker steered the cab.

"Where are we going?" She questioned, the coolness of the window anchoring her in the present awareness. Nova pushed his shoulder weakly, urging him to answer.

"The flashtrain." He replied, turning to her with a smile that again threatened to tear his stitched scars curving up from the corner of his lips. "To district thirty seven."

"The Shielders' facility? I can seek help from uncle Floyd."

The joker glanced over his shoulder, briefly meeting her gaze with a quirked brow, as he muttered something in his breath that remained elusive for Nova's muddled brain, and accelerated the cab to a comforting rush drowning Nova's slowing cognition and dying emotions.

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