This chapter contains references and imagery of sexual abuse and graphic detail. Reader's discretion is advised

Ginn POV

The day I found Sonya was meant to be a bad day. 

Jackson had sent me out of the Lower streets for the first time, to go East and find a village that supposedly had what he needed. A star fragment he called it. I didn't understand nor cared to understand all the science-y things he knew or revelled in and simply asked how I would find it.

That's how I ended up trekking through a forest, finding the "Base 01" landmark Jackson had informed me of. Supposedly where the Numera child I had assaulted and captured as my initiation became F-1. He was the payment I had to deliver for my sister's life. But the Lower Streets are savage lands and things don't always turn out the way we want. That knowledge alone drew the memory to surface. Was it really worth subjecting a notherborn child to the hands of men who wanted nothing but to use him to play with the fabric of nature? Perhaps if she had lived I would be more confident in affirming it so. Yet again, had I not used him as the price to pay, I would not have become Jackson's errand boy, and I would not have survived this long. I feel no real guilt over using another life to extend my own. After all, ethics is useless in the streets of my birth. My only regret is losing the last remnant of my family.

Skimming the border of the forest leading to Ferdun town, I keep well a thick width of trees between us, to stay out of sight. Those from the Lower streets are to be shot on sight after all. If Jackson had not had access and knowledge to a small gap in the walls I would not have been out there in the outside world. I would have never seen a tree in my 15 years of life, or felt grass beneath my feet. The colours of the outside world were ones I never seen before in tones so bright it hurt my eyes. I stumbled onto the path of the target village, the trees lagging behind as I entered the clearing.

The atmosphere was one I was familiar with, the hollowness of prior residence, the remnants of someone's home. Jackson informed me that an accident with the substance I was sent to retrieve caused a fiery demise for the village, if they weren't pulled into the rip generated by said substance. While the original sample had been stolen on that day of misfortune, the man who owned it prior to it's theft was said to have more in storage. I simply had to locate his workshop. This proved to be quite the task as most houses were but heaps of charred debris and ash, nothing really stood out as the entrance into a hidden workshop.

Jackson did provide me a device, the same (though later tweaked version) I would use to locate the Grenendaris tree nearby. However it seems that even after a year of the event, the energy waves were splayed all around the space. I wandered about the desolate village, trying to locate a source of stronger or constant energy output, finding myself drawn towards a demolished house. It appeared a bit different on the device's screen and I could feel the change as I drew nearer. I was made aware of the beating of my heart, pulling a closed hand to my chest despite the action having no meaning or purpose. A tingle of.. urgency? It spread to my hands and legs and I got onto my knees, peeling the shreds of the former house off the smouldered pile. It was almost as if the heap were the bones and skin wrapping up a beating heart beneath. The beats fell in rhythm to my own and it only compelled me to increase the speed of my efforts.

And that was how I found her.

After digging through the debris in a narrow tunnel vision of focus, I uncovered the cavity of safety buried beneath. I could not understand nor imagine how she could have possibly been still alive. Trapped there supposedly since the incident, a year sealed beneath the corpse of a residence. Testing her pulse with my soot dusted hands I determined her life was indeed still intact, clinging somehow to the skeletal girl caked in ash and dust. Her breathing was strained, her throat probably clouded. I dared not touch her. This.. miracle? I worried any movement would have reminded her body of its plight and sent it running to the world of the dead. 

It unsettled me. The violation of tearing memories from the back of my mind, imprinting Samantha's face upon this girl's starved frame. For a moment I could have sworn I was back in the Lower streets, the dark alley we slept huddled behind bins. It.. disgusted me? It was horrid to be forced back to that moment of failure, discovering the recent passing of my sister in the most pitiful and wretched state. I could easily pick upon the knowledge that her death had been unpleasant and in sorrowful agony. I still do not know what would have been worse for her, the sick ridden starvation or the brutality of becoming someone's meal and item of pleasure. Her clothes, or what remained, were but a few frayed shreds wrapping loosely at her hips, another patch of fabric hugged one of her shoulders, a sleeve intact. I had no doubts she had been used as an object of male satisfaction, I only could hope she was not awake during the act. Flesh had been bitten and chewed from her cheeks, her neck. Her torso was stripped bare, the white bone clearly jutted from the remaining rotting pieces. Her legs were missing, probably taken back by someone to their group to share. I could not find the other arm and assumed it to have become another stolen ration. I did not want to move her. I did not want to risk touching or holding her least everything else fell apart. Yet I did. 

And similarly with this young girl with purple hair and skin of a lighter tone, I simply had to hold her. I lifted her from what should have been her coffin, holding her against me for better grip and I backed out of the mess. As her chest was pressed to mine, I could feel her heartbeat once more, and with it, waves of some.. sensation. Something that radiated throughout my being and pulled all my senses onto her. It was an intense familiar form of affection.. protectiveness. 

I knew she was not my sister. But I felt myself treating her as she was. I wanted to bear the burden of her care, her safety. I wanted to do for her what I could not for my own. 

I forgot the mission and simply returned to the streets, Base 03, Jackson. While unhappy with my lack of findings, his disappointment quickly faded as he studied the child I brought back. That look in his eyes were like that of when he found a new technique or feature in his studies of the corpses he had me harvest for him. I knew immediately what he saw her as, a potential experiment, a sample to study.

I convinced him to help her, care for her.. keep her body healthy and fed until she would awaken. In return I would continue to work for him, taking down the powerborn in the streets so he could play with their parts, constructing his pieces.

She slept through a year or two, before she rose from her long slumber. She had no recollection of her name, her family, her past or who she was. I named her after one of the female names Jackson had rattled off in a book once. Sonya.

I never wanted her to know of the plights of our circumstances. Though of course I had to teach her the dangers of the streets, to remain in the base at all times. Though as she recovered and grew more comfortable and familiar with us, Jackson was eager to begin his studies on her. I had to bring her with me on some day to avoid his scalpel and other such tools. It was risky, but I felt that to leave her with him would be the same as leaving my sister in the alley waiting for me. But in the stressful environment of my work and tasks, we discovered her to be a notherborn. She had an ability that placed her on a higher defensive capability than average people like me had I not been supplied with firearms. With this she wanted to help in my work, though I tirelessly denied her request. All I did was for our survival, there was no need to jeopardise her safety or her innocence. Like how I would have never been able to live with letting Samantha gain blood on her hands, I wished Sonya to maintain her streak of pureness. There was no need to become what I had, and so we made a compromise. She would aid me in incapacitating dangers and targets, but she would never herself take a human life.

Raising her in such a way was abnormal to me, after all I had forced the children I found upon the streets to accept and be conformed to the monsters that localised the area. That was the only way they could survive. Perhaps it was that connection we held, that calling from her being that invokes such protectiveness from me. A side effect of her ability?

Nevertheless Sonya was very dear to me, whether it was her resemblance to Samantha, my loneliness despite Jackson's presence, or the energy she radiated that manipulated me so, I cared not. 

After I chose to leave Jackson's residence and care, wanting to pursue the powers he studied. The energy entities that powerborn drew their abilities from, some would choose normal humans like me to become their partners, their ambassadors and errand boys to aid them in their duties or interests. If only I could convince one to have me as their Chosen, I would have the strength to stand on my own. No longer would I have to live each day in high alert fear and caution, running and hiding, relying on others for protection and fleeing people in fear of their betrayal. If only I could gain such strength.. perhaps I could finally feel safe. I took Sonya with me on this quest, receiving Sward's pledged service after an encounter with him in some other part of The City. 

Similarly with Sonya, this girl.. Leif. She too radiated a different texture of similar energy. Though unlike Sonya, the pulsing warmth of her power did not prompt an urge to protect from me. It provoked instead a form of jealousy, the confidence she must have with that connection to such a power being.. She who already kept a caring circle of friends to defend her. It seems so unfair. She clearly didn't need this power and so its presence within her only wrenched my attention onto her, onto the prize hidden fused with her soul. I would not be denied what I have longed after for so long. 

I feel no joy in destroying a child.. but yet... something in me simply despised her for her upbringing. For having a life outside the quarantined walls of the Lower Streets. 

"I hated her kind. I hated her people. I hate these.. I hate people."

In my struggles and misery of trying to simply "survive in a harsh world in which we were born in." Where each day of life had to be earned and up to pure chance "and factors outside our control." Knowing that outside those guarded walls, the "people of The City were living each day a privilege." 

Why were we denied the life of "the norm"? Why did the guards shoot any resident of our birthplace for simply trying to "escape the hell we were forced to grow up in?"

.. This is unlike me. It's you again, correct?

"We used to be one lil boy, so technically Its is you.. but it's not. We were split for a reason."

It's meaningless to get worked up now. To tattle in an endless spiral, questioning the misfortunes and unfairness of this world and our people.

"Yeah yeah I got it."

The plan with F-2 failed we need to come up with another method of extracting the connection from her before it fuses too firmly.

"Hm.. I think I got an idea, but you gotta deal with this supposed brother of Sonya first."