I started screaming today.
—AN EXCERPT FROM JULIETTE’S JOURNALS IN THE ASYLUM
Were you happy Were you sad Were you scared Were you mad
the first time you screamed?
Were you fighting for your life your decency your dignity your humanity When someone touches you now, do you scream?
When someone smiles at you now, do you smile back?
Did he tell you not to scream did he hit you when you cried?
Did he have one nose two eyes two lips two cheeks two ears two eyebrows. Was he one human who looked just like you.
Color your personality. Shapes and sizes are variety. Your heart is an anomaly.
Your actions are
the only traces
you leave behind.
—AN EXCERPT FROM JULIETTE’S JOURNALS IN THE ASYLUM
Sometimes I think the shadows are moving. Sometimes I think someone might be watching.
Sometimes this idea scares me and sometimes the idea makes me so absurdly happy I can’t stop crying. And then sometimes I think I have no idea when I started losing my mind in here. Nothing seems real anymore and I can’t tell if I’m screaming out loud or only in my head.
There’s no one here to hear me. To tell me I’m not dead.
—AN EXCERPT FROM JULIETTE’S JOURNALS IN THE ASYLUM
I don’t know when it started. I don’t know why it started.
I don’t know anything about anything except for the screaming.
My mother screaming when she realized she could no longer touch me. My father screaming when he realized what I’d done to my mother. My parents screaming when they’d lock me in my room and tell me I should be grateful. For their food. For their humane treatment of this thing that could not possibly be their child. For the yardstick they used to measure the distance I needed to keep away.
I ruined their lives, is what they said to me.
I stole their happiness. Destroyed my mother’s hope for ever having children again.
Couldn’t I see what I’d done? is what they’d ask me. Couldn’t I see that I’d ruined everything?
I tried so hard to fix what I’d ruined. I tried every single day to be what they wanted. I tried all the time to be better but I never really knew how.
I only know now that the scientists are wrong. The world is flat.
I know because I was tossed right off the edge and I’ve been trying to hold on for seventeen years. I’ve been trying to climb back up for seventeen years but it’s nearly impossible to beat gravity when no one is willing to give you a hand.
When no one wants to risk touching you.
—AN EXCERPT FROM JULIETTE’S JOURNALS IN THE ASYLUM
Am I insane yet? Has it happened yet?
How will I ever know?
—AN EXCERPT FROM JULIETTE’S JOURNALS IN THE ASYLUM
There’s a moment of pure, perfect silence before everything, everything explodes. At first, I don’t even realize what I’ve done. I don’t understand what just happened. I didn’t mean to kill these people—
And then, suddenly It hits me
The crushing realization that I’ve just slaughtered a room of six hundred people.
It seems impossible. It seems fake. There were no bullets. No excess force, no violence. Just one, long, angry cry.
“Stop it,” I screamed. I squeezed my eyes shut and screamed it, anger and heartbreak and exhaustion and crushing devastation filling my lungs. It was the weight of recent weeks, the pain of all these years, the embarrassment of false hopes manufactured in my heart, the betrayal, the loss—
Adam. Warner. Castle.
My parents, real and imagined. A sister I might never know.
The lies that make up my life. The threats against the innocent people of Sector 45. The certain death that awaits me. The frustration of having so much power, so much power and feeling so utterly, completely powerless
“Please,” I screamed. “Please stop—” And now—
Now this.
My limbs have gone numb from disbelief. My ears feel full of wind, my mind disconnected from my body. I couldn’t have killed this many people, I think, I couldn’t have just killed all these people that isn’t possible, I think, it’s not possible not possible that I opened my mouth and then this
Kenji is trying to say something to me, something that sounds like we have to get out of here, hurry, we have to go now—
But I’m numb, I’m dim, I’m unable to move one foot in front of the other and someone is dragging me, forcing me to move and I hear explosions
And suddenly my mind sharpens.
I gasp and spin around, searching for Kenji but he’s gone. His shirt is soaked in blood and he’s being dragged off in the distance, his eyes half closed and
Warner is on his knees, his hands cuffed behind his back
Castle is unconscious on the floor, blood running freely from his chest Winston is still screaming, even as someone drags him away
Brendan is dead
Lily, Ian, Alia, dead
And I’m trying to reconnect my mind, trying to work my way through the shock seizing my body and my head is spinning, spinning, and I see Nazeera out of the corner of my eye with her head in her hands and someone touches me and I jump
I jerk back
“What’s happening?” I say to no one. “What’s going on?”
“You’ve done beautiful work here, darling. You’ve really made us proud.
The Reestablishment is so grateful for the sacrifices you’ve made.” “Who are you?” I say, searching for the voice.
And then I see them, a man and a woman kneeling in front of me, and it’s only then that I realize I’m lying on the ground, paralyzed. My arms and legs are bound by pulsing, electric wires. I try to fight against them and I can’t.
My powers have been extinguished.
I look up at these strangers, eyes wide and terrified. “Who are you?” I say again, still raging against my restraints. “What do you want from me?”
“I’m the supreme commander of Oceania,” the woman says to me, smiling. “Your father and I have come to take you home.”
