"A few gulps on a beverage can at three in the morning wasn't supposed to hurt. Not until all the pride you'd built up for it gets downsized.
"You should've just told me you were hungry."
Aunt Lynn was standing near the kitchen door when she spoke. I saw her the moment I turned from the fridge, staring at me in a kind of lifeless manner that almost made me mistake her for a ghost.
"I'm not hungry," I said, moving toward the sink to wash my hands. Anything to avoid her face at that specific moment. "I was just getting a drink."
"So, how much longer are you planning to keep avoiding me?"
"What do you mean?" I was scrubbing under the running water. "I'm not avoiding you."
"Look, I understand. I messed up." She admitted. "I've lived with you long enough to see that myself. And at this point, I realise I was wrong to think you still couldn't protect yourself—"
"Is that why you gave the approval to Mr Ross?" I turned to her.
"That's..."
"It wouldn't have mattered if you approved or not. I was participating either way." I let the adamant tone run free. "If I survived almost three years in that hellhole of a high school, a week at some academy camp should be nothing."
I moved to the fridge, grabbed a bag of chips, then walked around the corner specifically so I wouldn't have to cross her path. Honestly, I wasn't even mad at her. I was just scared she could grab my arm and twist it before I got past.
And just when I was about to leave the room—
"Your mom." Two words powerful enough to make me stop walking.
"Yeah, you already told me that," I said without turning around. "She left because she still had a life ahead of her, right?"
"That's what I thought," Lynn replied. "But I'm not so sure anymore."
"What do you mean?"
"Last week, I got a call from Freddie — a friend who used to know your mom. Apparently, she now lives alone in a small apartment in South City. No husband. No children. And worst of all—" Lynn paused. "She doesn't remember anything."
"What?"
"Freddie said he tried to ask her about your father and you. But what she told him was that she had no idea what he was talking about. Nothing about your father. Nothing about you." Another pause. "I'm not sure if that's denial or something else entirely."
"Something else like what?"
"Like a memory warping." Her voice sharpened when she said it, like the thought had just clicked into full shape. "Ren, I don't think your mom was trying to run away from you."
"Spare me the riddles, Aunt Lynn." I groaned. "What happened to her?"
"I think she was going to save your dad." Lynn's voice dropped. "But the Bureau caught on first. I think they did something with her memory to keep her in check." Her hands came up to her mouth. Her eyes went wet. "What did they do to you, Erin?"
If everything I'd heard about the Bureau in the past week was accurate, then that place was definitely not the safe institution it represented itself as. They took my dad. They erased my mom's memory. And they were somehow the brains behind a serial-killing system that was absorbing people and trapping them inside it.
That was enough reason to be penalised for life, except that the Bureau was the law itself. It was only too easy for corrupt officials to hide underneath it and commit whatever they wanted.
"Why are you telling me this?" I asked.
"I thought you should know," Lynn said. "She's your mom, after all."
"Correction. She used to be."
"Ren..."
"Don't bring that to me again," I said, turning away. "I don't intend to avenge anyone. Not my father. And definitely not her."
***
"♪ Saddle the horses, the road is long. I think my briefcase is gone. My money, my shoes, my wallet, my socks — I think my briefcase is goneeeee! ♪"
When Cauli had first proposed driving Aria and me to the academy training camp, I'd had a bad feeling about it. Just take the bus, I'd told myself. But I'd shrugged it off eventually.
What could go wrong?
Everything went wrong. The back seats were uncomfortable and smelled distinctly like pork sauce. My head was approximately one inch from the car roof, which meant it connected with it on every single road bump, which was consistent. And worst of all, Cauli and Aria were chorusing along to what appeared to be a road trip song blasting from the stereo.
Cauli's voice was manageable. Aria's voice was the kind of sound that made you quietly question your own auditory health. She was also the loudest one. She did not seem to register that someone —me — was literally deteriorating in the back seat.
We arrived at the camp eventually. Or at least, the gate, because they weren't letting vehicles any further in. Students were funnelling in through the entrance in hundreds, into a space that stretched out as wide as a campus ground.
Except it looked nothing like a campus. Four security towers stood at every corner. Everything else — the low-profile buildings spread across the grounds — looked like a combination of cabins, training halls, and garages.
Well. This makes me nervous.
I stepped out and went around to the trunk, pulling out my backpack and Aria's large suitcase. We were here for a week. For some reason, she'd decided that required packing her entire wardrobe into a single box.
"Why is this so heavy?" I measured the weight before throwing the rhetorical question in her direction. "Did you pack your whole flat or something?"
She squinted at me. The specific squint she used when she was about to say something I wasn't going to like.
"Real men don't complain, weakling."
"Alright guys, you ready?" Cauli poked her head out of the driver's window. "Don't get scared, okay. It's just an exam. And if you fail, you could always come work in my shop—"
"Don't get your hopes up." Aria shut that down immediately. "Find another employee. I didn't come all the way here to fail."
"That's the spirit." Cauli raised an encouraging fist, then looked at me. "What about you, Ren?"
Me.
Honestly, I wasn't sure either. There were already enough reasons why I had to pass this exam — except that roughly three thousand students were competing, and I had an S-rank ability that I technically couldn't use. I'd signed my application form as a cripple. If I used an ability, I'd be disqualified. If I participated as a cripple, I'd fail in the most spectacular and public way possible.
Which meant only one thing.
"Keep that employment space open," I said to Cauli. "Who knows what happens in a week."
Cauli smiled. The smile you give in response to the most absurd thing you've heard all day. Then she pressed the gas and drove off until the car disappeared from view entirely.
Aria and I stood in front of the gate and looked at the new world positioned before us. The academy training camp. A new trope that could either go really well or really badly — and the latter was the more honest projection for me personally.
"Well, I guess this is it." She said with a long sigh. "Let's go become hunters."
"That's your problem, not mine." I started moving toward the gate entry. "Something tells me this place is about to ruin my life."