The Golgotha Initiative

Caleb

"I should get hurt more often," I say. Izabel laughs softly as she examines my knuckles.
"You're scratched."
"You should see the other guy."
I'm barely injured. The bleeding of my hands stopped before it started. Normally, a wound this tiny would be completely overlooked, but I have to wait for the handlers to decide what to do with me. Most physicians still couldn't be bothered to check on my slightly bruised hand, but Izabel, who's still in training, could.
"Are you sure you're okay?" Her shoulder length hair, black but dyed purple at the tips, brushes against my skin as she inspects my fingers. "It's been a while since I've seen you."
"I know." I place my other hand on top of hers. She looks up at me, brown eyes reflecting the harsh lights above us. "But I'm alright. I promise."
"Okay," she says, and moves up swiftly to press her lips against mine.

When I first met Izabel, I was dying. Alone in a hospital bed, hooked up to an endless array of monitors and IV drips. I couldn't remember anything except a flash of blue light and heat searing through my muscles.
"Eric?" My voice was waxy and strange, like it came from the opposite end of a tunnel.
"Hush," said a nurse.
I tried to sit up, struggling against the needles that dragged my arms down like chains. The nurse pushed me back onto the pillow.
"Hush," she repeated. "We'll take care of you."
I didn't want to be taken care of. I wanted to know where my friends were. But when I tried to explain that the nurse pushed a button on one of the monitors that sent a vortex of unclarity swirling through my head.
"000581?"
It was torturously difficult to turn my head. "Who... you... where?"
Coughing, I hacked the syllables from my chest. The woman in front of me watched calmly as I struggled. Her shoes caught my eye, their bright red blaspheming against the stark hospital room.
"You are 000581. One of the first Magnets who didn't die, actually."
"What? Where... I want... Kiko and Eric..."
"Dead."
What?
"I'm sorry. An accident. I can bring you the footage if you'd like to see it."
She was speaking, but the sounds didn't make any sense. I knew Kiko and Eric couldn't be dead, Kiko and Eric, who fell asleep on the sofa with their heads on my shoulder and stole my dessert and pushed me into the ocean when I made stupid jokes. Not that Kiko and Eric...
"Ave Fibonacci and Logan Ahmed also passed away two weeks ago. I am sorry for your loss."
Ave who ruffled my hair and Logan who made scones on my birthday and
"Help!" the nurse was yelling. "Help!"
"Move," the hard, cold woman ordered. She grabbed a syringe from a table near the door, too calmly, her face unchangingly masked as she drained the needle into my shoulder. I tripped over fallen IV drips, stumbled into a beeping heart rate monitor, and fell back against the hospital bed as the world twisted away from me.

When I woke up, I was cuffed to the bed. It, in turn, was bolted to the floor. I yanked on my bonds but couldn't break them.
"Sorry about the cuffs," lilted a voice from the chair a few meters from my cage. "The doctor was refusing to come near you."
Eric. The grief crashed over me like an avalanche. Kiko, Logan, Ave.
"May I help?" The voice was soft. I looked over at the girl- at Izabel- hesitantly rising from her chair. A silver charm bracelet ensnared her wrist, and a People Magazine dripped from her bronze fingers.
"I want to know where they are."
"Where who is?"
"You know!" I screamed. "Bring them back!"
"I don't know! I'm sorry, I-"
"BRING THEM BACK!"
"I'm sorry! I can't- I don't know who you're talking about-"
I thrust my weight against the cuffs. Furious, desperate, screaming for the only people I cared about. Wild, I was an animal, fierce and foaming at the mouth, spit bubbling like rabies against my ranting lips-
Cool silver flowed through me. A breeze, whispering in my head, the feeling of tender warmth that precedes sleep.
"I'm sorry," Izabel said. "I didn't want to sedate you but-"
"They're dead?"
I knew they were dead, even though she didn't. So I turned my face into the pillow and cried.

"Good news," Izabel says. "They're sending you back. And guess what else?"
"What?"
"I get to go with you!" Izabel grins at me. "You're too good to train with the other students, so I'm coming to hold punching bags for you or talk about fighting strategies or whatever."
"That's great," I say, although I can't imagine throwing sweet, bubbly Izabel into the world of training soldiers.
"I'm going to help with nursing too," she chatters. That really is great. Izabel is a good nurse.

"I'm sorry," she apologized, a day later when I'd run out of memories to cry for. "But they want you to try eating solid foods. Pudding?"
I pried open swollen eyes and gazed at the flimsy cup in her hand. She sat a good distance away from me, chin up, fierce.
"Why are you here?"
"I'm an intern. My mother works for Compass, as a nurse, and I want-"
"No," I snapped, "why are you here?"
"I... They want someone to watch you, in case you need anything..."
"Not what I meant," I whispered, and opened my mouth for pudding.

"Tell me about them," she said. "The people who died."
"No."
"Tell me," she insisted.

Eventually I did. Some of it, anyway. That we'd gone to school together since I was six years old. That we had family movie nights. I told her the little things- that Kiko braided her hair every night and Logan made breakfast every morning.
"They sound wonderful," Izabel sighed, and explained what it was like to be an only child.
I was going to point out that, being dead, the wonderful capabilities of my classmates were severely limited, but I didn't want to remember that.

"Question," I said. "Why is it always you that comes in here?"
"Oh. Well," her dark cheeks flushed lightly. She was cute when she was flustered. "You've been so calm the past few weeks and- I mean- we don't really have to have someone sitting here with you but-"
I grinned. "I like the company."
Izabel smiled. Less flustered, still cute. "Me too."

Three days later, I was allowed to get up and walk around the room, as long as I took the IV drip with me. Izabel came in to talk at least once a day, usually more. I wasn't happy- not by a long shot- but I was accepting the fact that they were gone.
"Do you have a girlfriend?" Izabel asked.
I thought briefly about Kiko, then shook my head. My feet were soft against the floor as I stepped forward, the weight of the IV nothing as I floated to Izabel.
"You're not seeing anyone, are you?"
"Nuh-oh," she sighed, haltingly. My hands moved up to her cheeks, slipping under the purple locks that framed her face.
"Good," I murmured, and kissed her.

When I get back to the barracks, the other boys either avoid my gaze, or outrightly stare. The whispers start once we're in our bunks and I've closed my eyes.
"Did you see Tomas?"
"Worse 'n Kyle."
"Nah, he was not-"
"That kid, though, I seen him lift three hundred-"
"That's a load of crap."
I sit up and their voices shut off.
"Three fifty, actually."
The rest of the night is quiet.

Periodically, Compass will switch up the barracks. There are several besides mine. Every couple of weeks we'll be reassigned, to new rooms with the same food and walls and generic figures waiting to become punching bags. Izabel moves with me, this time, and the loudspeaker says,
"Agent Izabel attends the barracks with the full permission and protection of East Division's Training Facilities. Recruits are expected to carry out orders as usual."
Izabel waves to the boys. It's all boys here, besides her.
"You single?" one of them shouts at her. Izabel grins and turns her face up so I'll kiss her.
"Frick," I hear, and the word catches my ears because it's so familiar. The low voice, the dark timbre of it, easy to recognize but impossible to believe.
"Caleb?"
I break apart from Izabel. He's moving through the boys, pushing them out of the way, focusing wholly on me.
"Logan?"