Blackout

It felt like there was a constant rain cloud over Azkaban. A storm had been pelting down the first day they’d began to bus us in, and it never truly stopped. Sometimes it would lighten up to a drizzle, even rarer, the rain would clear away, but never would the clouds part away to show us a glimpse of the sun.

We were left pale and grey, like ghosts wandering the hallowed halls. The chill seeped into our bones, seeping into our skin until we stopped noticing it. Numbness became a normality, physically and emotionally.

And yet, the first few days, with the air filled with the threat of snow, had been the warmest I ever felt in Azkaban.

There had been so many of us in the beginning, tightly packed, shoulder to shoulder into busses for the journey to the camp. The heat from all of our bodies making it suffocating, the air thick and stale. I felt lucky enough to be by a fogged up window, pressing my face against the cold glass, letting it cool my skin. None of us spoke. The fear had left us all silent. The only semblance of entertainment being the sound of rain pattering on the roof of the bus and watching droplets race in paths down the windows.

It’s took hours to reach the camp, all sides surrounded by water. But it didn’t look like a camp, it looked like a prison. Black stone, cracked and battered, rose tall and unyielding against the grey sky. Glassless, barred windows stretched endlessly, one after another and another. The water below was just as endless, a dark abyss, an unspoken reminder that there was no escape.

We weren’t the first bus over the drawbridge. we were forced to watch as the other kids were herded out into lines, sorted by some unlearnable system. Some kids were dragged forward, others were struck down for resisting.

By the time the second busload of kids had trailed inside, a man stepped onto ours. Enormous and imposing, his frame was draped in a black hooded poncho, the edges thin and fraying. Beneath it, I could see the sharp cut of his uniform.

“You will leave the bus in an orderly fashion,” he boomed. He didn’t meet anyone’s gaze, “You will be separated into groups and brought into the building for testing. Defiance will not be tolerated. Those who fail to comply will be punished.”

A beat of silence, then—

“You can go fuck yourself!”

A boy at the back of the bus, couldn’t have been older than eleven, maybe pushing twelve, shouted with a kind of fury I had never seen from another kid before. Before I could blink, a woman in uniform had slammed him to the ground, emerging from the emergency door like a phantom. No one had seen her coming.

We got the message.

I shuffled forward with the others, stepping into the freezing rain as we were lined up like cattle. But I couldn’t stop watching him. The boy from the bus. They had dragged him forward, forcing him to stand beside his attacker as we waited to be filed inside. He didn’t look broken, though. He was seething, shaking, but still alive with something the rest of us had already started losing.

His eyes met mine.

I froze, like my bare feet sinking into the mud. He smiled. Wicked and encouraging. Then he lent towards the woman gripping his arm and whispered something. She’d let go of his arm, unthinkingly, and reached down to grab her gun in her holster before turning it on herself and pulling the trigger.

The gunshot split the air, sharp and deafening.

For a second, there was nothing. No breath, no movement. Only the dull thud of her body hitting the mud.

Then… screaming.

Panic crashed through the lines as children ducked, ran, cried out in terror. Someone bolted. Then another. Then another.

“RUN!” the boy shouted, his voice raw with desperation.

But where? There was nowhere to run to. We were completely surrounded. I had nowhere else to go to even if I could get out.

“Orange!” One of the guards yelled.

Then the gunfire started.

Chaos breaking through the loud screams and cries of frighted children as merciless shots broke through the air and defiant bodies fell to the ground.

I stood there, frozen, feeling a new kind of fear sink into my bones. I didn’t know how, but he had made her do that. He had gotten into her head.

If he could do that… what else could the others do?

Did they think I could do that?

I couldn’t. I wasn’t like them.

How could I prove it? How did I show them they had made a mistake?

I couldn’t.

And, as if nothing had happened, the guards forced the rest of us inside.

~*~

The medical bay was cramped, cold, sterile. I was shoved onto a stiff bench, my legs too weak to dangle properly. My eyes latched onto the poster across the room.

A pyramid of colors.

Green sat at the bottom, had the word safe in bold next to it.

Blue came in next, smaller with the word containable next to it.

Yellow was in the middle, thinner than the other colors. Proceed with caution next to a small yield symbol.

Red was above that, the word terminate making my blood run cold as my eyes move up to the last section up top.

Nothing. Not a word. Just a big, black X in the orange triangle.

A man in a white lab coat stepped into view, clipboard in hand. He looked old, like my Uncle Alphred, his glasses slipping down his nose as he peered at me.

“Name?” His voice was dry, cracked from overuse.

“Regulus,” I whispered.

He nodded, scrawling it down. “That’s a lovely name, Regulus.”

“It’s a star,” I mumbled, not sure why I said it.

He paused, then offered a small, careful smile. “Yes. In the Leo constellation, if I remember correctly.”

I nodded, my eyes flicking to the equipment beside him.

“My brother’s name is Sirius.”

“The brightest star in the sky,” he murmured, lifting a hand as if gesturing to a night sky that wasn’t there. “Is your brother younger?”

I shook my head. “No. He just turned twelve.” My voice dropped lower. “A month ago.”

The man hummed in acknowledgment, scribbling something down. Then he looked up.
“And how old are you, Regulus?”

I hesitated “I just turned ten,” I said, “Yesterday,” I admitted quietly.

The doctor looked up from his writing, a look of pity dressing his face, and stared at me for a long moment.

Then, softly, he said, “Happy birthday, Regulus.”

I nodded my thanks, picking at my fingernails nervously.

The doctor sighed pulling off his glasses to rub at his eyes. “Have you had any unusual symptoms, Regulus?” He asked replacing the glasses to the bridge of his nose.

I shook my head furiously, “No! I haven’t gotten any of those symptoms they talk about on the news. Sirius said he would tell me if I started doing those things. Sirius wouldn’t lie to me,” I insisted, fingers digging int the cushion of the bench underneath me.

“Relax, Regulus,” He said kneeling to meet my eyes. “Sometimes these symptoms aren’t too horrible,” he murmured in soothing tone. “Are you really really good a puzzles. Or maths, Regulus?”

I blinked at him in confusion, my brow furrowing. That didn’t make sense. What did being good at maths have to do with being sick. But none of the other kids really looked sick either. And with what that boy did…

“That’s okay, Regulus,” The doctor said standing at his full height one more. “We’ll just use my little machine here,” He said patting the equipment he had rolled in with him, “It will scan your brain and tell me everything I need to know. Easy.”

I nodded stiffly.

He fiddled with the machine, adjusting the screen and positioning the scanner in front of me. “See? Nothing horrible,” he promised, tilting the screen slightly so I could see it, too. “Just one little press of a button.”

With a soft click, he pressed the button.

The flash was blinding, sharp and white, like a camera going off. I blinked rapidly, trying to clear the spots from my vision.

Then I heard him gasp.

I blinked the last of the light away and froze.

On the screen was an image of my brain. A section of it was highlighted, and next to it, in bold, flashing letters:

Orange.

Like the boy outside, probably still on the ground.

Orange.

Like the chart. The top of the pyramid, the place where the X didn’t mean contain or even terminate. It meant something worse.

Orange.

“No,” I whispered. My hand shot out before I could think. I grabbed his wrist.

The doctor gasped again, louder this time, eyes going wide. But suddenly, I wasn’t in the medical bay anymore.

I was somewhere else.

Suddenly I was seeing a little girl in an observatory, pointing up at the stars. A women dancing around a kitchen, laughter bubbling from her lips. The roar of a baseball stadium, a view from the stands as someone cheered.

Memories. His memories. Flickering through my mind like home movies Mum and Dad used to show me and Sirius.

Then… something else.

Another boy, younger than me, sitting in front of the same scanner. The screen flashed BLUE.
More kids. Green. Yellow. Blue. Green. Another blue. Two more greens. A yellow.

And then…

The Reds and Oranges.

Kids being dragged away kicking and screaming. Tear streaked faces twisted in terror. Begging. Pleading.

A training video flickered through his mind, cold and clinical. Showing the termination the poster spoke of.

No.

I’m a green.

I’m a green.

I’m a green.

I repeated over and over till it sunk in. Made it true.

Then slowly I was back in the medical bay. My vision clearing to the doctors smiling face as he cleared the screen away.

“See? Nothing to worry about,” He said scrawling something down on his clipboard like nothing happened.

My hands shook as they reached down to grip at the cushion once more.

“Just a green,” He said handing me a slip of paper. His voice was just too casual. Like he hadn’t just cleared away evidence that made the words he uttered a lie.

A green. I thought as I stared down at the slip.

Not an orange.

I clutched the paper tight in my fist and slid off the bench, my legs feeling unsteady beneath me.

But as I stepped into the hallway, one thought looped in my head like a curse: That boy outside wouldn’t get a second chance like me.