It overtook her before she even knew what was happening.

She was sitting with Yune and watching a soap opera when there was a power outage. For lack of a better term, it was like someone threw a switch in her brain. When the lights went off, something woke up inside of her. An alarm echoed in her ears. It was a call. A summons she needed to respond to immediately

She stood up. Her eyes were wide. Her breath was shallow. Her legs felt like jelly. It was just like the fight at the café. She was losing control.

“Fae?” Yune looked up at her. “Are you… okay?”

Fae didn’t answer. She understood Yune’s words, but they didn’t mean anything to her anymore. All that mattered was her mission.

She let out a scream as electricity shot through her. It pricked at her skin, making it go numb. A stray bolt escaped from her, striking the television. It exploded in a flash of light.

Yune was up now and backing away behind her. It didn’t take long before Vi rushed out of her room.

“What the hell’s going on?” Vi yelled. She pointed her finger at Fae, and a roaring fire erupted up the length of her arm.

“Vi, don’t,” Yune said, but it was already too late. A huge arrow made of fire flew through the air toward Fae.

Fae shrieked again as she caught the arrow before it could hit her. The skin on her hands immediately cracked and blistered. She squeezed the arrow tight and it burst, sending embers around the room.

Vi looked shocked. Her mouth hung open like her words were caught in her throat. Fae put her hands in front of her face. She didn’t feel any pain and the wounds were already healing. This was incredible.

“Vi, it’s Fae,” Yune said from behind her. “Don’t hurt her. She can’t control herself.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Vi said, fire forming around her hands again. “Forget the ‘not hurting her’ thing though. That went out the window when she decided to fuck up my TV.”

Vi came at Fae, ready to strike her with a spike made of flames covering her hands. A jolt went through Fae’s arm, and she felt her fist hit something.

Huh? What happened? The wall in front of her was covered in cracks, like it was ready to collapse any second. Vi was sitting on the around right below it.

Terror hit her as she realized what she had done. She hit her. She hit Vi in the face. Even though it was technically self-defense, she hadn’t moved her arm herself. It moved on its own.

“You little shit,” Vi stood up, wiping the blood from her mouth. “There won’t even be ashes left when I’m done with you.”

“Vi!” Yune screamed.

Fae’s eyes locked with Vi’s. She couldn’t hold back. If she kept going like this, she was going to try and kill her.

“Oh, it’s happening!” Minerva scuttled into the living room. She took one look at them and then panicked. “Vi, stop that. Stop stop stop.” She waved her arms.

“Like hell I’m stopping!”

“Don’t you get it?” Minerva smiled, black energy forming around her and licking at her cheeks. “This is our chance.”

The siren in Fae’s head was on full blast now. She didn’t have time to fight, she needed to leave. She needed to get out of here as quickly as possible.

She turned around and caught a glimpse of Yune’s concerned face. She wanted to stop. She wanted to sit back down and watch cheesy TV, joke about the commercials, just be herself. She couldn’t. She ran past Yune, breaking through the glass door to the balcony.

“Go on demon girl!” Minerva cackled behind her. “Today’s the big day!”

Fae’s legs felt ached, like they were filled with a pressure that would make them burst. She kicked off of the balcony, and went flying forward faster than ever before. She hit the roof of a building with enough force to make it cave in.

She jumped again, and then it was like she was on auto pilot. As soon as her feet touched a new surface, she was already flying through the air again.

As she got closer to where the signal came from, she noticed the chaos in the city below her. Her eyes took everything in in an instant. Cars was at a total standstill, honking their horns. Traffic lights were blank. It looked like the entire city was without power.

What could have done something like this?

She made it into downtown, and she knew she was getting close. Just a little farther and she would be free of the alarm inside of her head. Just a little more.

There was a building in the distance. Right away, she understood. This was it. She took one last leap.

She smashed through a window on the roof, Below her, there were hundreds of people crowded around a stage. She fell down on it.

Everyone was completely still. The air felt heavy, like it might crush her at any moment. Had someone really stopped time? Why could she still move? She didn’t know, but she needed to get out of here as quickly as possible.

She surveyed the crowd. Near the center of it, she spotted a tall man with glasses. She knew it immediately, like an instinct. This was what she was called here for.

This man was her master.

She wanted to kill him. She wanted to beat his face in until turned her back to normal. That’s what she wanted, but her body wouldn’t let her.

She bit down hard on her lip until she tasted blood. She couldn’t do it. All she could do was follow the order screaming in her head. She hopped down from the stage and zagged through the people.

It sounded like people were yelling. Were there really other people here? People that could still move? She reached her master, and stopped in her tracks.

A man in a hoodie stared back at her. He seemed like he was trying to keep still, but it was already obvious that he wasn’t frozen. The look of shock in his face was a dead giveaway.

“Who… who are you?” the man in the hoodie asked. He reached into his pocket. That was enough to let her know she needed to stop him, but she didn’t want to kill. She had to keep herself from going too far.

She closed the distance between them in less than a second. She put her hand on his stomach, and his body convulsed. He fell, landing on his back. His body was still shaking, but he was already out cold.

Hopefully, he was still alive.

Fae turned back to the man that was her master and looked at his face. She didn’t know what was going to happen now, but she was going to remember this face. Even if she lost sight of him, she promised herself that she would hunt him down.

She wrapped one of her arms around the man. He was stiff like a mannequin. There was no doubt about it. He was frozen.

She tried to move, but she couldn’t take a step. The order in her head wasn’t complete. She looked to the right of the man.

There was a shorter girl with shoulder length brown hair. Who was she? She certainly didn’t give her the same feeling the man did, but somehow, Fae knew that she couldn’t leave her. She grabbed the girl too.

She hurried back through the crowd to the front of the stage. The window she came in through was right above her, but she still couldn’t leave yet. She had one more target.

A woman with long blonde hair stood on the stage. Fae didn’t even have to look twice to know it was Sadie Quasar. Why in the world did this man want her to save a popstar from Clock Link?

She didn’t have time to think about it. There were definitely people still moving around in the crowd, and she couldn’t wait to see if they were hostile. She grabbed Sadie too.

With all three of them, she must have looked ridiculous, like she was taking part in some kind of group hug. She put all of her strength into her legs, and she jumped. She went flying through the air, past floating glass shards, and through the window. Finally, she landed on a neighboring building.

Now she just needed to get them to safety. She moved much slower this time, taking care not to drop any of them. It didn’t help that she couldn’t really see in front of her either. Somehow, she managed to move to the roof of another building, and then another, and another until the strange feeling from inside of the building was gone.

“Whoa, what? What is this?” the girl with shoulder length hair struggled.

This was far enough. Fae let go of all of them, falling to her hands and knees. Her lungs burned with every breath. She felt legitimately exhausted.

“Gregory,” it was the voice of the brown haired girl. “Where… are we? Who is this girl?”

“There isn’t time to explain,” the man, apparently Gregory, responded. “It isn’t safe here.”

“But Gregory,” this voice must have been Sadie’s. “I don’t understand. What happened to my concert?”

“I told you, there’s no time for that,” Gregory’s tone was getting more demanding. “We have to go.”

“O-Okay,” Sadie said. “Let’s get out of here first.”

“No,” the other girl said, her voice coming out just as demanding as Gregory’s.

“I know this is confusing, Anastasia,” Gregory said. “But you have to trust me.”

“No, tell me what’s going on right now,” the girl, Anastasia, yelled. “How can you ask me to trust you… when you’ve being lying to me this whole time?

There was silence. Fae caught her breath, and looked up the three of them.

“Anastasia… I don’t know what you mean,” Gregory moved toward the girl.

“I found your notebook,” the Anastasia cut him off. Her voice seemed to tell Gregory that he shouldn’t take another step.

“Notebook?” Sadie looked at Anastasia, and then to Gregory. “What notebook?”

“It’s a diary,” Anastasia went on. “A diary describing… human experiments, I think. Experiments where people died. Lots of people.”

Human experiments. Fae felt like she might throw up.

“That can’t be right, Ana,” Sadie said. “This must be some kind of misunderstanding, right? Right, Gregory?”

“I wasn’t lying to you,” Gregory said, staring directly at Anastasia. “I just… couldn’t tell you until you were ready.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” the color drained by Sadie’s already pale complexion. “This isn’t funny. Tell her that you haven’t been experimenting on people. Tell her that…”

“This girl,” Gregory pointed down at Fae. “She was born a human. But just looked at her now.”

Fae looked up at him, doing her best to fill her eyes with as much malice as she could muster. Her stomach felt like it was on fire. Her vision was getting foggy. She wanted to scream, but it came out as a whimper.

“What does that mean?” Anastasia sounded like she was ready to cry. “What did you do to her?”

“Anastasia,” the look in Gregory’s eyes was completely inhuman to her. “This familiar is the product of years of my research.”

Research? Was that all she was to him?

“She’s the closest I’ve come to doing what your teacher did,” Gregory turned to the two girls. “She’s the closest I’ve come to turning someone into a magician.”

What the hell was this?

“She’s the closest I’ve come to liberating us.”