They dragged me along down the hallways, the bag over my head again. I could hear Theo having a hissing argument with the man who must be his superior office. The words were muffled and low, but I could still hear Theo’s tone growing increasingly frantic.

  “Enough, Heirdic!” the man finally shouted, and Theo fell silent. “You’re a brilliant mind, but you’re young and you don’t understand what’s needed. Hopefully this will be a lesson for you, but I don’t want to hear one more word from you until it’s time to set up the Machine.”

  “Machine” wasn’t generally a proper noun, but I could hear the capitalization in the man’s tone. This was something important. I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck and goosebumps run down my arms. I tried not to think of Genner, Hins, or Milo. I told myself that I didn’t regret volunteering to take Nalei’s place.

  What was my life, anyway? I asked myself. I wanted something new, I wanted something to feel meaningful. Here I am.

  It was too late to change now, anyway.

  I closed my eyes and let the men lead me. Their hands were hard on my arms, their gripping fingers as tight and inevitable as my own fate. It was strangely peaceful, in its way. I had a sense of purpose like I hadn’t in… in at least a year and a half. Since Adain’s death.

  I couldn’t tell if they led me down the same path as last time. My heart pounded too hard to let me keep track. It probably didn’t matter at this point. They led me into a room that sounded large, full of the noises of clattering footsteps and soft voices. The sounds reminded me of the Division's Magecraft Library the week before final exams, and my breath hitched at how distant that memory was now.

  They sat me on a chair and buckled me in, arms and legs both, before pulling the bag off of my head. I sat facing a strange machine on a rolling table.

  It was bulky as a car engine yet clearly electric: a plethora of wires sprouted from it and led away. The back end of it hulked up, but the front end narrowed almost daintily into a point like a drill. The point sat a foot from my own forehead, and I narrowed my eyes trying to see it. The end bit, unlike a real drill from my limited experience, was hollow.

  I shifted uncomfortably, trying to feel if there was any give to the straps holding me. My heart still beat hard and fast as a rabbit, and I was beginning to feel nauseous at the sight of the strange Machine. Had this been the last thing Milo ever saw?

  I craned my head around the room. It was large, like a full-sized lecture room back at Division Headquarters, and those had been made from the Emperor’s old audience chambers. Natural light filtered in from windows on the ceiling, the first I had seen in weeks. The space bustled with guards in bulletproof vests and people in suits and white coats. The guards were mostly young men, but the others were more varied in age and sex. I could sense more of them moving behind me, and someone fumbling with something right behind my head. I leaned forward, away from that unpleasant sensation, but that only brought me closer to the Machine.

  Theo appeared beside me, kneeling down and putting a hand on my arm. It was the first time my younger brother had actually touched me, and all I wanted to do was pull away.

  “Theo, what is this?” I asked. My voice came out calm and distant from myself somehow.

  “It’s our project, it should remove your magic,” Theo said. It wasn’t a surprise, but it still made me go cold. “It’s not quite ready yet- I don’t know if it’s safe- but I’ve done my best. I don’t know what you were thinking, demanding to be taken like that, I’ve been keeping you safe-”

  “Safe!?” I erupted. Flashes of memories, of Nalei’s fear and Milo’s disappearance, accosted me out of my surreal calm. “You’ve been murdering my friends! I have been living collared in a cage for weeks! You haven’t kept me safe!”

  “I’ve been doing what I could, until you threw all that away!” Theo said. “Look, Izak, I’m sorry and I’ll do what I can, but you don’t understand anything. You’ve been living in that magic secret police organization for ten years, and you don’t know what the world is like. We’re trying to make things better-”

  “Yeah, I didn’t know what the world was like, sure!” I spat. “I didn’t know I was living in a world where my own fucking brother would imprison and torture me to death!”

  Theo flinched, wide-eyed. “It shouldn’t kill you. I’ve been improving it, it should work!”

  “Right,” I said. “It should work to maim me because I can’t be your brother unless you cut out all the parts of me that you don’t approve of.” I stared my brother down coldly, and Theo looked away. My sense of purpose and satisfaction curled back around me with my anger.

  “Stop talking to the prisoner and start getting ready, Heirdic!” General Hendar’s voice was strong, and close enough to make both of us jump. For me, this meant banging unpleasantly against the chair I was strapped to.

  “Yes, sir,” Theo said. He scuttled away and I glared icily after him.

  Hendar stepped forward, breaking my line of sight. “I’ve heard my prison has been the site of a miraculous reunion. That boy is overjoyed to see you again, you know.”

  “Sure, that’s why he wants to kill me,” I said.

  Hendar sighed. He knelt down beside me before speaking: “He doesn’t want to kill you, son, he wants to save you. To save this whole world. He’s the most brilliant mind we’ve seen in years and I just hope we don’t let him down.”

  I leaned forward, as close to Hendar as my binds would let me go. “FUCK you! FUCK whatever you’ve done to my baby brother! You’ve already let him down, you’ve taken the good in him and fucking twisted it!”

  I gathered up as much spit in my mouth as I could, and watched with satisfaction as Hendar pulled away in a hasty retreat. I spat at his feet and let out a strangled laugh. My heart still beat hard and the heightened mixture of feelings within me roiled. I could feel every inch of my skin and the world was bright to my eyes. I was painfully alive.

  “Prepare the prisoner!” Hendar called to the scientists behind me. “I want this done quick.”

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  Firm hands grabbed at my neck. I tried to pull away out of instinct, but more hands joined in and pulled my head into place. They strapped in my chin and the top of my forehead, pulling a gag across my mouth. I tried to scream and my voice was muffled.

  Scientists and guards began scrambling into place. The frantic pace of talking and walking began to ominously slow. I heard calls for people checking and testing equipment, and I tried to struggle. My eyes flitted around frantic as a hummingbird, my head unable to move with them, and I couldn’t find my brother.

  Everyone cleared far away from me and I heard Hendar’s voice echo through the room.

  “Commence Test Four!”

  Lights zipped to life across the body of the Machine, until the drill head itself lit up with an eerie white glow. I smelled something weird and distinctive, something like sweet chlorine, like the ozone scent that used to follow Adain home after his days of experimenting. A shudder went through my body. The Machine began to slowly approach me.

  I froze. Every bit of struggle within me was frozen by the sensation of blood, fear, adrenaline, and some horrible elation. My heart pounded so hard it almost hurt, like it might burst. The Machine was huge and certain in its movements, the thrumming of its engine and the lights overwhelming, like a train in slow motion. I was caught in the lights like a small animal on the tracks.

  I closed my eyes and prayed with feeling more than thought, no idea what I was praying to. Please. Let me die. Let me see Adain again.

  There was a moment of pause before Hendar’s voice rang out.

  “Begin!”

  Something ran down the end of the machine and shot into my soul. The edges of the world blurred with movement and light and memory blossoming in my mind. With my eyes closed I saw and felt things move through me.

  My mother holding me, my sister braiding my hair, running out to the creek with my baby brother, my father’s arm around my shoulders, the dusky smell of my old school building and the sneers of old bullies, the feeling of the magic releasing inside me as I shoved a boy backward, my family’s faces retreating through a rearview window, the superior looks of the children at the Division school, the empty dormitory, testing my magic against others in our training games, the smell of fresh books, my painful confession to Shamora that I didn’t want this puberty, the sharp needle of the rune tattoo that would change my body the way I wanted, Adain with his head down as he was first introduced to the school, dragging Adain out to parties, long hours of quiet libraries, the same spells repeated over and over again, the sting of a tattoo for my own runes, the nervous dread of exams, the teachers’ voices sharp and praising, the taste of alcohol on Adain’s breath as we sat too close on the floor of our room, the smell of ozone, a storming night and soaking wet skin, the last look on his face obliterated in a white blast, the fitting of my first adult uniform, missions, drugging, prison-

  I screamed and the scream echoed. It wasn’t my voice. It was my magic, my being, my life screaming out the pain. White overtook my physical eyes as I saw/felt/was even more, visions that weren’t memories. My family running before my magic announced itself- my sister in a wolf pelt with a knife- my hands on my younger brother’s neck- running away with Adain in the night- the world collapsing inward-

  It was too much, it was everything, my magic screaming in the background. Life was being pulled out of me and with it went my memories and my potential, everything I was and could have been.

  I desperately tried to hold it, but it was like holding a river in my hands, there was nothing I could do. In the distance I might have heard my brother shout, but maybe that was just another memory.

  But then I felt a set of hands come through from the other side of my life. From the other side of the Machine. I felt something push my magic the other way, damming the flow, and I grabbed desperately from my side to pull it back.

  I felt rather than heard the words: I missed you. You need to listen.

  New images filled me, feeling more vivid and less real than the others. A beached tree in grass red as blood, armies marching in line, a machine even bigger than this one, an explosion the size of a mountain reaching into the atmosphere, and people being torn apart from the inside in popping explosions of blood.

  My mind didn’t have time to comprehend it, it was horrible, but I didn’t care. My magic was still inside me along with my life. I was okay. It was pathetic, but that was all that mattered to me at that moment.

  Then the magic started leaking out again, the force of the Machine renewing itself. Despite all the pulling and pushing, my mental insides slowly leaked away, intertwined with my magic. Further and further it went like a trail of blood. My screaming rang in my own ears.

  It was over. I was going to die, right here and now. Maybe my body would survive, but I would be gone. This was worse than death. There would be no chance of an afterlife to touch my loved ones again. I was being unmade.

  Then it stopped.

  I slumped in my restraints, breathing hard through my nose, not seeming to be able to get enough air with my mouth gagged. My ears were ringing, hell, my entire body was ringing, and it took many moments before I could understand the argument happening around me.

  “-not working!” I heard Theo’s voice. “It’s not sentimentality to know that we only have two prisoners left! We can’t keep going through them like this, the mission was dangerous enough the first time!”

  “We don’t have time for this! Have you forgotten we’re working off of a deadline? We can’t delay just because it’s your brother,” a voice scoffed. The guard who’d grabbed me from my cell, probably.

  “Maybe that helped me see the utter waste, but it’s more than that,” Theo protested. “We’ve gathered fascinating data already from this test. We don’t need to kill him to update the Machine!”

  The relief I felt at my brother’s voice, the rush of fondness at realizing my brother finally stopped the thing that was destroying me, began to fray again. I thought about being plugged into the machine again and again as it worked on me, being pulled out and put back in again, and shuddered in my restraints. All in the name of research or Theo’s perfect world or something.

  Then another voice joined. A jarringly familiar one, though I couldn’t place it at first.

  “I think Theo might have a point,” the other voice said. He was new to the conversation, but there was a distinctive nasal tone to his words that was somehow familiar. My scattered thoughts spun trying to place it as he continued. “I think this one might be worth keeping alive, anyway. He has something to do with the Division’s special prisoner.”

  The words made no sense, unless he was talking about the prisoner the Division had me use my magic on. But I didn’t truly know anything about that one, I just did what I was told to do. What did he know about the Mage Division, anyway?

  Then his voice popped into place. The quiet Mage who had gone on the mission an eternity ago. The one I knew half through rumor, who was barely a Mage but got trained anyway because of his Biralei parents. Emry. The one who had been missing ever since we were captured. Either captured or killed, I thought. It turned out there was another option.

  I froze. Then I tried frantically to swing around, to see him and confirm my suspicion. Unfortunately, I could only see the machine right in front of me. The actual conversation was happening behind me, out of eyesight.

  “Heirdic has a point,” Hendar stepped into view and his voice cut through. “We’ve gone from five Mages to two, and they’re not exactly simple to get. Maybe we can leave off here.”

  “But, sir-!” another man started.

  I would never hear the argument for continuing to murder me because alarms shut everyone up. They rang fast and loud, red lights flickering on and off. For a moment everyone went still, then burst into frantic motion. I, sore and overstimulated and exhausted, just sat there and wondered what fresh hell this was.