Dystopia

Kori

Kori hadn't known what safety felt like in her whole life.Growing up in a cage, in the dark. Most men she knew scared her to death. If she did something wrong, punishment was  inhumane and brutal.

As a child, she would sit in her mother's lap while her mother would braid her hair. Her mother, Wei, would often tell Kori stories, to keep her mind off the torture they had gone through, and the pain that was still to come. When Kori turned seven, Wei revealed why their lives were spent in pain and darkness.

"We have powers, you know. We can create ice and snow, and that scares people. They think we're monsters. But you are no monster. One day, you will know the taste of an apple. The feel of grass on your bare feet. What it's like to dance. But today is not that day."

Wei had been promised that she and her daughter could leave once her captors were done with their research. But that day had never come, and two years later, Wei was decapitated, in front of little Kori.

Kori hadn't known what to do. So Kori didn't speak, didn't laugh, cry or do anything little girls were  supposed to do.

  Even the little girls who were also lab rats.

Now, Kori was sixteen. She had said maybe two words in seven years.She was short, and could pass for a preteen.She had barely gained ten pounds in that time. The cage had come to be her only home. Oddly enough, she liked it, often burrowing herself into the corner. She would think about the stories her mother told her, about Wei's life before. It wasn't glamorous, but it beat living in a crate for dogs.Not that Kori knew what a dog was.

Wei was gone. Kori wanted nothing more than to escape with her mother, but it was impossible. Was she doomed to spend her life here? Kori had long ago resigned herself to that fate.

The closest thing she had to a parent these days was Dr. Gaspari. He was strict, but occasionally would let Kori take naps on days she was overworked.