✘ ✘ ✘ ✘ ✘

Kate was relieved to part with the nervous atmosphere that banded around Tom's planetary body.

Relief aside, the hunger she felt was now gnawing at her insides like a rat chewing through metal. Before, the blistering heat of the sand on her smooth untouched feet was enough to distract her but the cooler lake air now only heightened her need for food.

As the girl walked, paths meandered this way and that. Their curves flowed the same routes as when Kate and Jasmine had scurried along them at only 13 years of age.

To Kate, the moon was an empty bucket hung from the pointed pin of a star. The moon had poured out its contents long ago. Now there was nothing left.

Windermere was almost entirely encased by radioactive lakes. The seclusion of the town meant that it was hard to walk out of the guard's trigger happy gaze. At first, the only time Kate, Tom, Flynn and Jasmine would really see each other was at school but only small conversation was permitted between students that wasn't under moderation. So they organised in secret to meet in the rickety old Boathouse- a place where they could hang out without constant monitoring.

Kate and her mother - Charlotte, stayed in a house a few miles from the oxygen conversion kiosk, the most appropriate location to access pure air and the lake markets.

She intended to tell her mother all about the real forest she had seen and the Forest Facility. Of how horrific it had been. So she would pity and spoil her. Kate craved the attention like a warm meal.

Kate would tell her mother everything... Except about her side effects. Which she still wanted to believe was some sort of trick Tom had been playing on her.

Everyone has good senses- Kate told herself, recalling how easy it had been for her to trace Tom's scent.

I just know how to use them.

*

As she turned the corner she saw a warm glow emanating from the eyes of a house, its blinds hung halfway down the windows, like the stage between awareness and sleep.

"Home," she whispered.

Kate's first sight of her mother was through the left window. Her mother was staring through it, pensively, with pen in hand.

She's been drawing on the walls again, Kate presumed, since paper was not accessible. Like elder skin, the tree bark had withered along with its maker.

Kate smiled. She could hear Buddy Holly playing happily through the walls. She ran to the door and knocked excitedly.

Mum hasn't changed a bit.

"I'll only be a moment!" Charlotte called from inside and Kate rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet eagerly.

Then the door clicked open and Kate leapt towards her mother, grabbing her tightly in case she dissolved under her touch.

"I'm home," said Kate shakily.

"Kate?" Her mother gasped and lifted up her daughter's face so that she could get a better look at her. "Same eyes," the woman noted, whilst her own began to glisten. "Same hair." She tousled her daughter's long ginger mess of hair and Kate laughed lightly. "Oh and of course! Same cute little nose." She squeezed her daughter tightly, encasing Kate in the motherly grooves her arms.

"You're home! My little one is home," Charlotte announced, closing the clotted cream door behind them.

Incredibly happy, Kate didn't realise the furtive glances her mother sent out into the night.

"I'm not little anymore," Kate said, over Buddy Holly's comforting hum. She gave her mother a wry smile. Charlotte turned the radio down - the action mirroring the now downward curve of her own red lips.

"Oh Kate." Concern dripped from her mouth. "I've missed you."

"You too." Kate held onto her own hands tightly to stop them from shaking. "These people took me, mum. They-they experimented on me. Changed me and now I'm not me anymore." Kate that felt spiked anger pierce her with such force, it was as if she was in that very room again.

"Don't say awful things like that," hushed her mother. "You're still you. Just a bit older, dear. You can still walk and talk. You're ok. Aren't you?"

Kate looked away and fidgeted with Tom's jumper sulkily.

That'll Be The Day hummed through the house- her house. The house she had been without for four years. She had been without those comforting walls. Without her mother. Left with just the bare bones of existence.

Kate wanted her mother to feel guilty for letting this happen to her. But, like usual, she had been neglectful. She seemed half as upset as Kate had expected- as though Kate's suffering wasn't even news to her.

"Where are the rest of your clothes, honey?"

"I grew out of them, if you hadn't already noticed," Kate scratched at her rumbling stomach. "Have you already had dinner?" she inquired.

"I did. But, I have leftovers! Why don't you go and put some proper clothes on and I'll get you some food."

So Kate went upstairs and dressed, putting on her mother's tank top, faded jeans and boots. With these new clothes she felt even less like the child she once was. But the house had not grown like Kate had and the nostalgia of the rooms in which she stood was intoxicating. They were almost identical to the day when she'd left, except the wallpaper which hung off the walls, like a man hunched over.

Upon walking back downstairs Kate found her mother again seated on the sofa. She half expected her to have vanished and to be another murky question mark in the swamp of her memories.

On the metal table was her favourite uncontaminated meat- Meat 2, it was called and it tasted the most real out of all the tinned food she tried.

Shoving the cutlery aside, Kat savagely ripped into the food with her canines. Her mother hid her alarm behind a hearty laugh.

After the food had slithered down her throat Kate slumped back in one of the four dining chairs- that were composed completely of street shrapnel. She was so relieved to be safe. Her tongue fell flat against her mouth; she was too weak to even talk anymore.

"So," began her mother in attempt to make conversation. "Why did they decide to release you?"

"Pardon?" Kate gazed at her mother expectantly, sitting back up.

"You know, the govern-"

"How did you know it was the Government that took me?"

"Oh Kate," she said sympathetically. They broadcasted it. On the TV," Charlotte assured Kate.

Kate's brows furrowed in confusion. Since when did the government want the rest of England to know that they were torturing people? They want people to trust their methods of control.

"That doesn't make any sense... Mum, why didn't you come for me?"

Charlotte clapped her hands down on the table. "They said they'd destroy the whole town if I didn't let them take you! That you'd betrayed us by going to that tree place. It was the only way for you to earn Redemption! I'm so sorry, Kate. Believe me, but I told you not to stray."

It was in that moment that Kate noticed the wrinkles on her sunken mother's face and the glinting, almost blinding shine, of her pearl earrings.

"And you believed them? You didn't trust your own daughter?" Betrayal washed over her, weighing down her heart, like an anchor. All that torture because of her own blood. Her own family.

Charlotte leaned across the table and reached for Kate's hands. But she pulled away. Her mother's perfume reminded Kate of laughing gas. She tried to refuse the possibility of her mother giving her up. She can't have really...And yet Truth chased Denial like a viscous cat would a mouse.

Kate scowled. If she hadn't been so ignored by her parents, maybe she wouldn't have strayed. Then she spat out a piece of meat stuck in her teeth. She turned, itching to leave. Her anger now fuelled her barely working body. "Kate Monroe!"

"It's Kate Marsh. It will always be Kate Marsh. Just because you're too scared to use it-," she spat, remembering the 1st law of the government. "does not mean I have to be." Itch. Kate went to open the door but Charlotte grabbed onto her wrist.

Kate stared at her mother in disgust- who was so afraid of mentioning nature that even the last name of her daughter terrified her.

"I'm sorry! Don't get angry. You're father used to do this too. They said they would keep you protected!"

"Does this look like protection?" Kate yanked her hand away from her mother's grasp and revealed the underside of her left forearm, presenting her mother with the pine tree scar that had made her skin feel red raw. Itch. Itch.

"Goodness gracious me!" Her high-pitched voice wore down any hope Kate had of staying calm. Itch. Itch. The bones in her hands began to crack and shift as patches of orange tainted her skin.

She really hasn't changed a bit thought Kate, in disgust.

Itch. Itch. "No!" Kate said to her own body. The truth of the events in the Forest had become irrefutable to her now.

Itch.

Itch.

Itch.

Authors note- Hey guys. Please please please vote and comment to let me know what you think! Also #169 in Sci Fi? Let me just pinch myself... *ouch* Just wanted to mention that my characters are just that. They're characters! So that while they may have certain beliefs it's depending on the specific person they are as a whole and they are not are by no means a representation of a specific religion, race or sexuality as a whole.