Ki’s eyes flew open the moment the final word of the text scrawled away and vanished from sight. With a gasp, she flung herself upright, banging her head on a monitor above. She yelped, rubbing her forehead in pain as a dull sting spread from the spot. 

  Fluorescent lights flickered on above, casting the room in a sterile white glow. The room surrounding her was filled with wires, machines, and monitors, all things that made her heart skip with unease as she threw aside the white sheets. White sheets, white floors, white lights, white walls. As if the room were meant to be the opposite of the Chamber--where everything was black--the room was blindingly white. And painfully impersonal.

  She scratched at her head again, her fingers tangling in more wires. Gasping, she quickly withdrew her hand and scrambled back. Wires in several different colors connected her to the monitor that had been above her head. She followed the wires to a metal rim around her head, which connected down to similar cuffs around her wrists and down to her ankles. The wires lay everywhere, tangled around her and the sheets on the bed. She glanced up at the monitor again, looking for more instruction. Static filled the screen, and the red error message flashed continually across it.

  The ache of her wounds returned, bitterly reminding her of their existence. She looked down at herself, her eyes widening in surprise at the sight of her purple dress, intact and on her body. Holding her breath, she searched her skirt for a sign of the tear where she had ripped off a section of cloth for Na’s wound. 

  The skirt’s hem was even and complete, with no sign of any cut. Even the sash around her waist remained put together, despite where Ti had first stabbed her with the spear when she ran away.

  Yet the dull throb of her half-healed wound served as a grim reminder that something didn’t fit. Something was wrong.

  The door to her left opened before the train of thought could go any further. A pair of attendants entered, each wearing matching white lab coats and lanyards. One of them, a short young woman, met Ki’s gaze with a smile. The other, a middle aged man, seemed entirely uninterested in her.

  The woman checked the clipboard in her hands. “Good morning. Ki-701824, was it? Congratulations on withstanding the test for so long! You endured for exactly seven months and twenty-four days. The Master has definitely taken notice of your progress!”

  Ki blinked. Her heart sank and her mouth went dry. “What?” she croaked.

  “Oh, dear.” The woman pushed her glasses up her nose and scrutinized Ki, her lips forming a tight frown. She looked down at her clipboard again. “Still a little disoriented I see. Let’s start with the first question then. Can you tell me your name?”

  Ki furrowed her brow in thought. The scrawling red text had just addressed her by name, if her memory served right. For so long, she had wondered what it was. She knew, at some point, she had forgotten it when she became Ki, and now that it had been told to her again, she had forgotten it. It sat just on the tip of her tongue, but it seemed too far to grasp. Like a fading memory of a dream she had just awoken from. 

  A dream…

  She gasped and sat upright with a jolt which pulled the wires attached to her head taut. “Na! Where is Na?”

  “You’re going to have to be more specific than that,” said the older man as he turned to a monitor beside the door. He tapped the screen a few times before a small keyboard slid out from beneath it. For a moment, his dark blue gaze settled on her as he said, “There are a lot of those here.”

  “My Na!” she cried, pushing herself off the bed. Her legs wobbled beneath her and the woman quickly rushed to catch her. With a grunt, she shoved the woman away and steadied herself with one hand on the edge of the bed. “The Na who called me here!”

  “You’re still a little disoriented from the simulation,” the woman pressed, her voice bubbling with concern, but Ki could sense an underlying edge to it. Putting her hands against Ki’s shoulders, she pushed her back down into a seat on the bed. “We have to ask a few questions and run a few tests, then you can be discharged until the Master calls for you. He’ll want to interview you before we release you back to your family, that’s all.”

  “The Master?” Ki recoiled, slapping the woman’s hands away. “I-I left the Master behind in the Chamber! With Ti, and--oh my gosh, Flint! I left Flint and everyone else there. They won’t be able to get through. I’m the only one that found our escape!”

  The woman heaved a sigh as she consulted her clipboard again. “Take a deep breath. Everything is fine now. We need you to answer our questions, then I can tend to that wound in your arm.”

  Puzzled, Ki glanced down at her arm. In the place where the nick from Ti’s spear should have been, she saw only the purple cloth of her sleeve. Below that, however, she could feel the thick scab that had formed over the wound. Confusion welled up in her chest, twisting her stomach into uncomfortable knots. If the cut wasn’t visible, how could the woman have known? Moreover, hadn’t the woman said it was a simulation?

  Her heart skipped a beat. If it was a simulation, then were the others not real? Flint, Emma, Ti, and Na. Were they all made up by the computer?

  A headache began to form in her temples. Her vision blurred with tears, her face growing hot. Cold fear gripped her heart and, without thinking, she tore the wires away from herself. Sparks flew and a brief bout of dizziness tilted the room around her. Gritting her teeth, she shoved herself off the bed and pushed past the woman. Before anyone could say anything, she bolted towards the door and flung it open, her shoes sliding across the pristine white floors.

  Behind her, the woman called her name--no, not her name. Her number. Ki-701824.

  Even though she knew it wasn’t her real name anymore, her mind clung to Ki and refused to present her with the name the red text had revealed. Frustrated tears streamed down her cheeks, but she quickly wiped them away. 

  She shut out the sound of the cry and dashed down the hall that opened up. More fluorescents flickered on overhead, lighting the way down a plain white hallway. Staff and attendants leapt out of her way as she flew past them, though they quickly joined the woman in calling for her to stop. Doors lined the hallway, all marked by different numbers. Test Room twenty-seven, Test Room twenty-five, Test Room twenty-three. The numbers blurred together as she ran.

  The hall opened into a massive lobby, reminiscent of any hospital waiting room. Benches and chairs covered the floorspace, and each was occupied by a person staring down at their phone or a book or quietly chatting with their neighbor. All eyes turned her way as she burst into the room, followed by a hush in which their bored expressions morphed into ones of surprise.

  Overhead, an alarm blared. The calm white lights turned an angry red. 

  “Ki-701824 has escaped the test chamber. All available personnel report to the Ki-Wing to catch her. Repeat, Ki-701824 has escaped the test chamber.”

  At the far end of the room, the staff standing on either side of the door looked up in bewilderment. Sucking in a deep breath, Ki dropped into a crouch beside a young girl sitting in one of the chairs. The girl narrowed her hazel eyes for a moment, but quickly returned her gaze to the phone in her hands. 

  At the door, the staff members dashed past her, vanishing down the hall she had come from. The woman from before met them in the doorway, exchanging several panicked words and pointing frantically at the waiting room exit.

  Ki didn’t wait another second for them to notice her. She shot to her feet and made a break for the door. At the other end of the room, the door swung open without problem, but the alarm screeched louder above her. The constant scream overhead drowned out the pounding of her heart in her ears and the shouts of the personnel on her heels. 

  Outside the waiting room, a massive chamber opened up to her. A circular balcony wound around, leaving an open center that revealed several other levels to the facility. Mouth open, an awestruck gasp stuck in her throat, she leaned over the guardrail to peer into the many levels below. Confused personnel ran to and fro on the other levels, attempting to puzzle out the cause for the alarm. Or perhaps searching for her, since someone was still announcing her escape over the speaker system.

  “There she is!” the woman called.

  Ki glanced over her shoulder at the open lobby door, where the woman from before and the other personnel stood. Ki frowned and pushed herself off the guardrail to add a burst of speed to her run. She dashed towards the elevator on the left hand side, pushing and shoving past staff and others alike. The empty elevator opened up to her and slid in just in time to slam her palm down on the button to close the door before her pursuers caught up. The metal doors slid shut peacefully, the elevator dinged once, and her descent began.

  Alone, she released a deep sigh of relief, leaning against the back wall of the tiny elevator.

  She glanced down at her hands, trembling with adrenaline, and managed a dry, humorless laugh to herself. “Some escape this is, Flint,” she muttered.

  The elevator descended slowly, but she silently thanked it for the moment to rest. By the time the doors slid open again, her heart had calmed and the rush of adrenaline had faded.

  Cautiously, she peered out the elevator doors. The blaring alarm had faded into the distance, suggesting the floor she had come from was far above. In her rush to get inside the elevator, she hadn’t bothered to check which floor she had selected before smashing the buttons.

  Whichever floor it was, it was empty. No personnel wandered the halls and very few doors lined the wall.

  Smug, Ki stepped proudly out of the elevator. Even in a panic she had done something good--though by sheer luck.

  The shouts drifted downwards, along with the pounding of footsteps, as the personnel chased her. She cursed the facility’s need for a staircase and took off down the quiet hall. Without thinking, she dove into the first room in the corridor and slammed the door shut. Groaning, she banged her forehead against the door, ignoring the throb that raced through her skull. The stitch in her side screamed from all the running, and her legs trembled beneath her. Weariness caved in on her and she slid to the floor with her hands pressed against the door. Outside, the footsteps and shouts of the personnel reached her floor, but quickly shuffled past the room she had flung herself into.

  Her shoulders drooped with relief.

  What a way to make an impression.

  "Ki?"

  Her entire body froze, heart leaping into her throat. Stiffly, mind racing at a thousand miles an hour, she turned to face the room she had so carelessly tumbled into.

  At the opposite side of the room there was a bed, the very same as the one in the room she had escaped from. A young boy perched on the edge of it, holding his arm out for the nurse beside his bed. With his free hand, he brushed aside the cinnamon colored hair that fell in his face, hiding the freckles that dotted his caramel colored skin. The nurse paled as she met eyes with Ki, but the boy seemed even more shocked than her, though the surprise quickly fell away as a graceful smile touched his lips.

  Tears rose to Ki’s eyes yet again. A feeble whimper slipped through her guard as she stumbled forward. Her stumbling grew more confident until she flung herself at the boy, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck. At first, he stiffened, the same as the nurse who stepped away. Then, he relaxed in her arms and wrapped her in his own.

  “I found you. I finally found you.” She squeezed him tightly, burying her face in his shoulder. Her tears seeped through the fabric of his shirt, her lips quivering with the beginnings of a sob. “Na,” she whispered.