Chapter 1
It started with Calliope waking up with a headache one weekend and the girl ultimately deciding not to mention anything of it. She'd been one of the Red Room's youngest to be chemically subjugated at six, an experiment, and figured out pretty quickly that headaches were a common side effect, both in and out of mind control. The last six years of her life had been nothing but pain and she couldn't really do anything about it except wait until someone noticed, which they rarely ever did. She never really understood that. If they want her alive then why wouldn't they prevent her from getting injured? Or sick? Or dying? She's almost died plenty of times, and that hurt a lot, more than the headaches.
So she was used to pain. This wasn't a problem, really, not until it got worse and she developed a fever, her muscles aching with the slightest of movements. Training sucked and she did pass out right after but she would never miss training. Those are the rules, that's her routine. She doesn't miss the slightly concerned look her older sister, Katya, sends her when she stumbles through their dance routine for the day.
She dreaded going to school when Monday came around. She dreaded going to school everyday, everything was confusing and the people were too loud. The only point of her even being there was to befriend the targets so her parents could get information from theirs. But she was nothing but a puppet to be controlled and knew they could cut her strings anytime if she didn't follow orders.
Her parents reluctantly let her stay home, giving her antibiotics and hoping her bout of sickness would be gone by Monday.
They sent her to bed and she woke up sweating and shivering, a bad fever and a dry cough that made it hurt every time she took a breath. They reluctantly let her stay home yet again, making her drowsy with medication.
So she was sick. She has no time to be sick, though. Being sick is not part of her schedule and it made her weak and vulnerable and succeptible to bad things happening.
She stayed home day after day and it got to the point that she slipped out of her mind control, her mind jumbled and thoughts hazy, jumpier than she'd ever been. Her mother would hold her against her chest and rock her side to side, the young girl tense most of the time.
"Relax, little one." She whispered, running a soothing hand through Calliope's loose curls.
Calliope did, despite knowing that people from the Red Room would come and her mother go back to the distant woman she was when they came around.
That night Calliope, just on the edge of falling asleep, startles awake because of her father's angry yelling. He berates their mother for failing to tell him she slipped out of her chemical subjugation. Katya tells Calliope to join her in her bed when he starts breaking things. She hums a song that echoes pleasantly through their room and drowns out the crashing and yelling.
Calliope tries to stay awake as long as her tired body will allow her, wanting to look out for her sister just as much as she looks out for her.
They were told at the beginning of this that this was nothing but an act and attachments were prohibited.
Calliope had known that wouldn't be a problem, there was a mission and she had to complete it. Katya was there to make things seem normal and Calliope would play the part of an annoying little sister while simultaneously befriending her targets so her "parents" could get close to theirs. She just wasn't expecting to actually feel like Katya's little sister.
She'd never...belonged before, that made it easier to advance faster than her peers because no one was trying to be nice to her. She had an understanding of weapons and espionage that no one her age, or older, could master, besides the White Widow.
School was...an issue, to say the least. She doesn't belong there, either. She kills people to survive, she doesn't belong in a school. She can barely focus because everyone is always talking, and Philip Andino is always drumming on the table with his stupid pencils, and her teacher's shoes are always tapping, even when she's sitting at her desk. She doesn't understand how to actually befriend her targets and the other children make fun of her for it. Mimicking everyone else's behavior didn't help just this once when she really needed it, and people thought she was weird and that meant she sat alone all the time. The only person who didn't care about her failure was Katya. Katya would be so much better for this mission.
She was expecting it to be just as easy as the others, even though this one would take longer and she couldn't kill or maim or even threaten the kids who would make fun of her and she couldn't make friends for the life of her (literally, if they decided to kill her for her uselessness). It's gonna take a lot longer now that she messed things up all the time. That led to her pent up frustrations back at home and subsequently not being able to do anything about it until the weekends, when they trained. She came home frustrated one day and threw a knife at her father. Unfortunately for her it just missed him.
Katya made her feel better about the punishment she received afterward, her legs and feet aching and her toes bleeding after the complex routine he made her do. Katya told her he deserved it and told their father that too when he wanted to yell at her afterward, calling him a few names even their mother would never dare to. Katya scares her whenever she does that, challenging their parents, their handlers, their superiors, for her. Katya gets in trouble for her all the time and Calliope never thought it would bother her because she didn't care. But now she does, and that's a lot more dangerous than whatever punishment their parents could think up for Katya's attitude.
And she supposed Katya cared for her, too. Even when she couldn't ruffle her hair or tease her at home like she did at school, the soft smiles she offered her when they were back at home made Calliope happy. She didn't feel that very often.
Katya woke her up later that night and told her to get back into her own bed when she heard footsteps. She fell back asleep in her own bed only for their father to burst into their room and pretty much drag her back out of bed. Their mother leaned against the door frame, her arms crossed and face creased with worry.
They knew better than to protest, and their father slammed the door and took her to the living room to test her consciousness.
She was fairly present, she'd argue. More than she'd ever been for the past six years, anyway. She felt confused and tired more than anything but she was pretty...there. But that didn't really matter to him when he called the Red Room to inform them of the recent developments.
Both their mother and father had pissed them off for the whole situation, failing to tell them the second she showed signs of awareness and calling instead of taking her back immediately.
She knew she was screwed when the soldiers started asking her things.
Calliope never understood what they wanted from her. At school, in the Red Room, on this mission. Everything was a test and every answer she had was always wrong.
Of course, this time was no different and her stumbling over her words earned her a hard slap in the face.
The pain was so much more real than it had ever been. The whole situation is a complete overload for her brain and she can't take it, her final straw being when they say they're going to take her back. When she cries, her tears are a shock to all of them, including herself.
And although their father told her sister to wait upstairs, Katya sits at the top of the steps and eyes the soldiers with hate. Calliope knows that look in her eyes. Well, she thinks she does.
Katya's plotting something. Probably something dangerous. Calliope both fears and anticipates whatever her older sister plans on doing. She just hopes she does it soon.
Soon meaning now, Katya!
The last thing she remembers before they sedate her is the feeling of her mother's arms around her.