Heart

I remember when the streets were bustling with people. Workers going to and from work. Teenagers in packs. Parents chasing after their energetic children. Tourists enjoying the local coffee shops.

It has been one year since I've seen another soul.

It has been one year since our government failed us. Failed it’s children.

It has been one year since the fear of the unknown caused a fear so deep within those in charge that they decided to do the unthinkable.

A solar wave had passed through those same bustling streets and crowded homes and unlocked something in a small percentage of adolescents' genetic code. The change was sudden, overnight children had acquired some kind of power. Some could manipulate the elements, some could heal or change the way they looked, and some could manipulate others. It was those with the ability to gain some sort of control of others that started the worst day of many lives.

At first, these new magical powers were seen as some sort of gift from a higher power. Appreciated and used to help better our lives. Crops were thriving, injuries had become nothing but trivial and criminals' minds were exposed to all who would try and convict them.

For a while it was good. Great even.

The government was more than willing to endorse this movement of using children for their new powers as long as it helped them. It wasn’t until those children with slightly less… tasteful powers started to receive more attention that the problem started. A simple tantrum could end with buildings being levelled or passerbys’ eardrums erupting.

No one had known how to control children before so they certainly didn’t know how to now. Children as young as 2 years old couldn’t control their powers as well as a 17 year old could, but ultimately there wasn’t anything more scary for the government then someone else having power that they couldn’t control.

Then came the Cleanse. The government had declared that all powered-children were to be taken into a facility that would protect the outside world from their potentially disastrous powers. What they hadn’t told the public was the way they had corralled us like farm animals behind their protected gates and had started to pick us off one by one. They had no way to contain us and our powers and they knew it, so they did the only thing they saw as a solution, they had tried to eradicate us.

I remember that day like it was yesterday. We had been pulled out of our cells one by one and never returned. We had started to panic when the sound of gunshots became consistent with the number of children they led behind high walls on concrete.

Their answer was to cut the virus at the source. Remove all powered individuals so that no one could ever obtain powers in the future. It was a logical, heartless idea. But they forget that viruses are relentless and they fight back.

It wasn’t long before we had escaped our cells, a young child had managed to melt the bars off of many cells, sending children of all ages scattering.

Running towards the concrete wall wasn’t ideal, knowing that the minute that they turned the corner they could come face to face with their murders and those who’ve lost their life but there was nowhere else to go and they wouldn’t sit there like lambs to the slaughter. Yet when I had turned the corner, the scene before me almost made me stumble over my feet. They had been dragging a young girl towards a platform that had been littered with splatters of crimson red.

The girl who couldn’t have been more than 12 years old had been screaming and thrashing as she stumbled up the stairs. It wasn't until the person in a uniform had upholstered their weapon that I saw a bright gleam of red explode from her chest, many had shielded their eyes but I kept my eyes trained on the scene before me as she reached toward the gleam on her chest and ripped it away from her body. The bright glow had disappeared as something clanked to the ground and within seconds everyone around had paused in their steps. I thought it had been from shock but after everyone collapsed, clasping their chest like they were trying to claw their way to their own chest, I had realized what was happening.

She was the child that I heard rumours about, the one who could stop anyone’s heart. I had heard people talk about her in the streets, whispering about the girl who stopped her mother’s heart by accident . She wore this gold-plated heart shaped locket that had glowed red from time to time. It was rumoured that her powers came from that necklace, that it was a physical representation of what she had control over. The heart.

Bodies had dropped like flies all around me, but me? I was left standing. Unharmed as my frozen heart protected me. Since my body had frozen over, skin turning blue and blood turning solid, my heart had frozen in place. My heart hadn’t beat since I had gotten my powers and I wasn’t certain if it was a blessing curse but at that moment I knew, it was a curse.

One would think that my ability to survive would be a blessing, but there was nothing blessed about being the only one left. Her outburst didn’t just take out those in the room but everyone, everywhere. After spending days finding my way out of the government's base I had gone searching for others, someone else only to come up empty handed. Not even the animals survived the force of her heart-stopping powers. So I was left alone. Totally alone.

I would’ve thought that at least she would survive but it had seemed like her power was even too much for her to bear. I can only assume that she hadn’t meant to send her powers out as strongly as she had, she was clearly just wanting to attack those who were attacking her. It was understandable, and yet an untrained child with immense powers could only lead to disaster.

I had travelled for a while, losing more and more hope in the idea of life until there was no hope left.

I never went back to the facility where it had all started. Until now.

I stood in front of the tall walls that had stood to protect those inside from the viewers outside. But I knew what they did there. What they were willing to sacrifice.

I’m not sure why I’m back here. I’ve had nightmares of the bodies of children collected in the room but for some reason I felt like I needed this as a reminder of what I had gone through. Why I'm still here and why everyone else isn’t.

Finding my way in was easier than it had been to get out, I took the same path that I had managed to carve out from my days stuck inside alone, surrounded by death.

It didn’t take me long to find myself in the same room where the world ended.

The remnants of the past year were evident. Greenery and plant life had managed to find its way through the crevices just as it had everywhere else. The absence of humans allows them to flourish in our stead.

I made my way through the decayed bodies of children who would’ve had so many more years left to live if it wasn’t for the government's selfishness, their willingness to discard us like we were the Sunday garbage.

I made my way up the platform, stepping around the dried stains of blood that had turned into dark smudges. I made my way up to the girl who had ended the world, kneeling beside her corpse. Over the past months I couldn’t help the times when I had blamed everything on her. It was her power that had destroyed my life and ripped everyone else’s away from them. But I always drew the same conclusion that it wasn’t her fault. It was the government. They were our leaders and they failed us. They failed her and they failed me.

The gleam of gold under the layer of dust caught my attention and I was hesitant to reach so near the corpse but curiosity got the better of me. I had seen her necklace burst with colour before she stopped everyone’s heart, and if the rumours were true, they were the source of her power. I needed to see it.

I brushed the thin layer of dust off the golden surface and raised the heart-shaped locket off the ground. A bright red ruby was lodged between the two heart-shaped gold platings.

At first glance it seemed like a normal piece of jewellery but something had shocked me. The gem had started to glow.

I stumbled backwards as I watched my permanently icy blue skin start to form into a smooth beige that my skin had only been since before I got my powers.

The gem glowed red as my skin gleamed with a thin sheen of sweat as my body adjusted to the heat of the air and yet this still wasn’t the most shocking part.

It was something inside me that changed.

It wasn’t the cold hard interior that I had become.

Instead there was a steady, thump thump.

My heart was beating once again.