The ground changes from cold, hard tile on my cheek to the grit of sand and dirt. Pushing my body up from the ground I can feel the bruises and cuts on my skin. I want to cry, but there are no tears. My eyes adjust to the dark just enough to finally see the others, so close I can touch them. Yet our hands never seem to clasp together. Always just inches away before they disappear like smoke in a breeze. Spinning in crazed circles, I search for their faces. Faces I’ve seen so many times behind closed eyes and know they aren’t figments—know they are out there, hurting, searching. The darkness shifts to bright flashes of light. Bolts of lightning surround me like an electrified prison, sizzling the hair on my arms. Spinning, abandoned, I wait for that final strike to hit. Diamonds. Crystals with colors glistening radiate before me as I lock eyes on the young woman. Arms outstretched as the winds whip her fiery hair. Our movements mimic one another. What is this? I strain to ask but my mouth refuses to form the words. Her eyes shine brighter. I can tell she sees me with our arms outstretched and fingertips drifting ever closer together as bright white bolts of electricity strike all around, enclosing us in a prison of light. Just as our fingertips are seconds from touching, her focus is wrenched away. **** “No!” Dakota jerked upright, arms flailing, grasping for the woman that had evaporated behind her eyes. Her mind raced through the dream again, struggling to hold onto details. Grabbing a notebook and pencil from the nightstand, her hands moved furiously as she began drawing every detail she could recall from the scenes that had played out. Of course, she sensed it was more than a dream. Maybe memories intermixed with something else. Something happening in real life. In real time. She’d known for six months now that she was being sought out, though not convinced she wanted to be found. After all, wasn’t the devil she knew better than the devil she didn’t? Dakota looked around the barren room. Sometimes she wondered if she was living in Hell or purgatory. Any space lit up by the flickering of fluorescent lighting was by no means Heaven. Cold, hard concrete under her feet had long since been normal. Cinder block walls made creating that ‘homey’ feeling a bit challenging, but she told herself she didn’t want any of that anyway. She wanted to block every hint of comfort from her life because safety and comfort always proved to be nothing more than a mirage. It seemed a lifetime ago that she had worn a dress. Or stepped into a walk-in closet full of clothes, shoes, and jewelry. All gone. The big house brimming with people and parties, everyone treating her with wonder and admiration? Nothing more than a distant dream. A delusion. Dakota had never been one to ignore the truth. Those comforts had been real enough, but thinking about them wouldn’t bring them back. She’d been a prisoner back then, too, only it was a luxurious prison. She had attempted several times to sketch out those memories, the problem, however, was that it made her desperate for the safety and love she was working so hard to keep at bay. Rather than comfort, she would find herself having to claw her way back from depression. With a deep breath, she let her mind drift back to when she was a little girl. She traced pieces of memories like moving waves on a pond. The doctor with his seemingly kind eyes and dark skin like hot cocoa, lorded over them. The girls, scared, huddled together when they realized his kindness masked something sinister. Snapshots of being pulled from their beds, confused, unaware that those stale white walls and clean floors would soon be longed for. Forced to travel long distances inside crudely made wooden crates to a hot, dirty, unfamiliar place. The doctor protected them in that sandy, windowless hut. Keeping them hidden until he could move them somewhere safe to continue his work. Intuitively, she knew that he protected them the way one protects an investment, not out of love, but out of selfish gain. Too young to understand the finances, she did, however, understand that he would have to get rid of one of them in order to stay below the radar. Dakota also knew he would choose her. After all, she didn’t cry like the others. “More malleable,” is how he described her. So when he needed funds to complete his research, he reluctantly sold her. Dakota’s mind drifted forward in time, watching as her tiny body was handed over to a clean-cut older man. Whispering in her ear, the doctor said, “I’ll find you. This is only temporary.” He was partially right. Everything was temporary, but he never did find her again. Snapping back to the present before the past took her to that dark place, she stood up and gazed into the cracked mirror above her sink. Her eyes sparkled, even in the dim light of her room. Staring into her bright, gray eyes, the fluorescent lights reflected off the silvery, jagged edges of her irises. A silver that had amplified over the past year. She felt trapped. From one stranger’s prison to another, she thought, as memories crept back in. She saw the rich man and his wife who had purchased her in Uzbekistan. They doted on her. Gave her everything she could ever want with the caveat that she would make them wealthy beyond their dreams with her magic, or sehr, as he called it. Dakota breathed deeply at the memory of civil war breaking out. She watched through the grate of a hidden compartment in the living room, wincing as her new family was slaughtered. She could feel the crisp night air on her cheeks as she escaped into the night. Their screams tormented her youthful mind. She recalled the lonely desperation of life on the streets until an elderly woman named Ellie took her in. Her time with Ellie was the most she had ever felt love. When it ended, she was more distraught than ever before. The woman cared for her like a granddaughter and would often say that she had saved her, not the other way around. Not long after her arrival, their small safe space was raided. Dakota relived the scene, abducted once again as Ellie died trying to protect her. Dropping back down on the edge of her bed, she envisioned the American special forces team that overcame her abductors and whisked her back to the United States. She felt her stomach turn as she watched that little girl learn the fate of her parents, killed during her abduction, years prior. But instead of collapsing in despair, she watched as her younger self resolved to grow stronger. Work harder. Though nice, her new foster parents didn’t have a clue what to do with such a strange, broken young girl who barely spoke English. Her foster siblings, though, weren’t as kind. They relentlessly bullied her behind their parents’ backs. Dakota, though little more than eleven years old, had learned how to survive and decided to leave the semi-safe environment of her foster home. Without a plan, and little understanding of her gifts, her days were spent hiding from the world, only daring to search for provisions after dark. One day, however, too exhausted from lack of food and fresh water, she’d decided to risk using one of her developing gifts to find supplies. To her surprise, it worked. And it led her to a gold mine of rations in what appeared to be an abandoned shack. Squeezing the notebook, she pursed her lips at the memory of her young self learning so much at such a young age, almost instinctively aware that all she had to do was think of something, draw it out with paper and pencil, and her special senses would guide her to it. That shack with those rations proved to be a turning point. That’s where they found me, she recalled, whispering aloud, “Breakers.”