System Zero

Madeline v.01

Close your eyes and take a leap of faith, Madeline could hear her father's words rattle in her brain, as she readied the arrow. He'd hit the bulls-eye without fail, even when blindfolded, his faith guiding the arrowhead to its destiny.

Madeline dismissed his advice. Archery required focus, precision, and most importantly open eyes. She was not her father's daughter— she was pragmatic and cautious, while he was a dreamer and a world-renowned risk taker, a biochemist who explored the world for cures to deadly diseases and viral outbreaks. A sad lose for the scientific community, the news anchor said the day he was declared dead. His Cessna plane had crashed in the Artic. A step back towards a vaccine for Hog Flu, the news anchor concluded.

Losing her father felt like Earth's magnetic field had flipped. The house was upside down, Madeline's mother wailing on the ceiling. Family precautions against Hog Flu became a decontamination credo. The benign rules like 'use a paper towel to handle car doors' led to 'wear a respirator mask when going out in public', only to pave way for 'burn any clothes in the firepit behind the house before coming back inside'.

The home may have been germ free, but it was infected with grief. The world outside wasn't unravelling— Hog Flu wasn't nearly as bad as her father predicted it'd be—but Madeline's mother was spiraling crazy. Madeline placated her mother's demands, finding ways to sneak around their strict enforcement. She'd carry her favourite jeans in her backpack, changing back into grungy sweatpants before coming home, sacrificing the stained cotton in the backyard ritualistic fire.

September was around the corner, and Madeline was salivating to return to school. Forget the thrill of striving to be top of her class. Never mind student's council, dance team, and archery club. What Madeline was looking most forward to her senior year was escaping her mother for eight to twelve hours a day.

Her mother had other plans: to ship Madeline off to quarantine. "I'm not taking any risks with you, Madeline," she said. "I refuse to lose you. This is the way it's going to be."

On the drive to the airport, her mother insisted she was doing it for Madeline's own good. She'd be going somewhere safe, to an all-girls boarding school up in the mountains called 'Slugbrook Academy'. Sure, it'd be better than being home all day, but Madeline was planning to run for Class President! She wanted to finish her senior year at her school, not some boarding school in the middle of nowhere.

As Madeline released the bowstring, the vibrations began. Her legs buckled, causing her to lose both her balance and her aim, launching the arrow sideways. Madeline fell to the grass. The dormitory shook in the sky. Cards and soggy leaves from the roof's gutter rained down. Madeline scrambled to the dormitory door. Stand in a doorframe during an earthquake, Madeline recalled someone once saying. Was that right? She wondered.

The rumbling stopped after another minute. Madeline brushed leaves and a Queen of Hearts off her tweed skirt and walked to retrieve her arrow. It had impaled the heart of a crow, which was lying on its back, claws rigor mortis in the air. Madeline shrieked, triggering the crow's revival. It flapped its wings, bolting into the air, drunkenly flying in crooked angles. The poor beast was resurrected from the dead only to slam into the window of the headmistress's office. The carcass slid down the glass pane, then fell to rest in shrub partially disguising a basement window, its heart pierced and arrow in tact.

If Madeline wasn't so distracted by the murder she committed, she would have noticed a shadow lurking in the basement through the patterned glass.

It was Sunny, and she was up to no good.