To: The Staff

If you are reading this right now, then it’s too late.

-Lavi

Six Hours Earlier

“Wake up Memrie! Breakfast is starting soon, yous having goat chops stew again so bring one of ’em barf bags ya call ‘handmade piller cases’! Ha!” The warden screeched from just outside of my bedroom. If this was a bedroom for that matter.

I groaned aloud, then lifting myself out of the lying position and into the sitting, I stared at the rusted, creaky door in front of me. There was something about today, I could feel it, almost taste it. It was as if…

Before I could finish my thought, another scream came from outside my cell.

“Screw you Memory! Rot In Hell!”

It was Quia, the girl imprisoned directly across from my cell. She had a habit of yelling at me, days- months even before I knew what I did wrong. You’d think I’d be annoyed by now, but I was not. If anything, I had been curious as to what it was this time. As I had been for a while now, for this was my life, ten years spent deteriorating in Future Hall in the Watson’s Facility for the “Mentally Unstable”.

Ten years ago, once The Hampshire Corporate was enacted, everyone facilitated here was stripped from their homes, given patient rags for clothes and placed in their own moldy, four walled cell, for reasons unknown to mankind, but very known to both us and the government.

We were special.

And not special in the sense that we were gifted, although you could say we are something like that. Each of the patients in this hospital have been segregated and placed in Wings according to their ‘disability’.

Take me for example, I live in Future Hall -floor Level Five next to Control Hall (because these two Wings were considered the most dangerous)- because I’m one of the few people that can look into the future.

So of course, the reason behind the fact that Quia’s constant yelling has ceased to annoy me and my tense feeling of something being bound to happen is because something is bound to happen. Only I don’t know what, and whenever Quia tries to tell me what is wrong, the words never seem to find their way out of her lips.

Which is why The Staff calls all of us ‘The Glitches’. When we were first put into this ‘luxurious hotel’, they stripped something from each of us, and named us based on our abilities. Here in Future Hall it isn’t just that we know the future, but it is the varying ways we know it. Take Samuel (patient to my right), he can only hear the future, so The Staff glitched him by only allowing him to hear common sounds; screaming, wheels of a medicine cart turning, things like that. You would think that Sam is his actual name, mais non. He was only given a normal name because ‘Samuel’ means ‘to listen’ in Biblical terms. And Quia -the Latin word for ‘seeing’- can actually see the future. Though you can already see how they glitched her.

And me?

I don’t really know why I’m here. They say I’m the most dangerous, that there was a time where I could see, smell, taste, hear, and feel the future. Now I can’t even tell when the next warden will come by.

I was never glitched, not like them. I have been told sometime between them stripping me away from my home and me ending up here, my memories were stolen, and so were my abilities. I’m powerless here, though The Staff wouldn’t budge when I begged and pleaded to return me, hence the name Memory, or ‘Memrie’, as Angus seems to call me.

I was out of the cell and into the Mess Hall in five minutes, teeth brushed, bed fixed and all.

“Hey Sam, what’s new?” I questioned, once he had gotten fully situated with his stew. I, as always, had decided not to eat.

“Whistle blows and a curious room inspection,” Sam shrugged.

“Curious?”

“Yup.” He popped the p. “Oh and Mem, don’t forget to check your mail today.”

I scoffed.

“Sam it’s not like I get mail anyways.”

“Well, it seems today you doo,” he smiled, as he mockingly waved a finger in my face.

“Swear?” I entreated.

Sam began to nod. “Do my ears ever lie?”

I chuckled softly and stared down at the table. “I guess not.”

The day did not actually start for me until free time in Freedom Bay, this facility’s crappy version of a play room. Sam was nowhere in sight, neither was Quia, which left me with The Staff members treating themselves to doughnuts and bingo, while the Control Hall patients practiced levatating pencils and the Future Hall patients debated on tomorrow’s lunch.

Regardless to Sam’s absence, I still did as requested and asked for my mail for the week.

“Here you are Memory,” Hanza, the front desk lady, handed me an envelope. Walking away, my eyebrows knit with confusion. Strange, I thought to myself. I don’t remember ever getting mail here.

Heedfully, I opened the envelope, careful not to destroy the contents:

BEFORE YOU READ ANY FURTHER, WALK OUT OF FREEDOM BAY AND TAKE THE LEFT SIDE ENTRANCE TO GET INTO YOUR CELL.

NOW!

Bewildered, I kept reading on, assuming it must’ve been a typical joke the ones Sam and Quia played:

I MEAN IT MEMORY, NOW!

Okay, maybe not. Using the left side entrance, I scampered to my cell. Once locked in, I read further:

GOOD. THE NEXT FEW WORDS YOU ARE ABOUT TO READ ARE GOING TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE FOREVER. PAY CLOSE ATTENTION, AND LEAVE THIS MESSAGE IN CONTROL HALL WHEN FINISHED.

Control Hall? I wasn’t even allowed in there. Still, I read on.

I know you’re confused Memory, but unfortunately, it doesn’t get much simpler. For starters, you should know who I am:

I’m you.

Before you think different dimension, I’m the same you that you are today, but from ten years ago, before The Hampshire Corporate, before your memory was stolen. You might be wondering how you could be reading from your seven year old self, with no recollection to having written this letter at all. But the bigger question that seems to loom is why did I reach out to you today?

I’m going to break you out, Memory. Or should I say, Lavi Argent, your name before it was taken away from you.

Once you are out, follow my letters, they will lead you to The Resistance, people who are just like you but were never captured. I cannot promise our safety, but I can promise the end of The Hampshire Corporate, I can promise you leading a rebellion that can save mankind and our kind. Because we are mankind. But I need you to run this with me, with you.

So the biggest question is:

Are you in?

**

“Room Inspection! Ev’ryone out of ya rooms, now!”
Angus’ voice rattled across the whole hall. Each patient lumbered out of their rooms.

“I told you there was an inspection,” Sam turned to his neighbor.

Only she wasn’t there.

Anxious, Sam softly but furiously pounded on Memory’s door.

No Answer.

“What’s the matter Samule?” Angus mocked. “Fraid ya girlfriend isn’t waking up? I got sumthin for ‘er.”

Sam tried to fight back, only to have two guards grasp his arms, holding him back. He knew what Angus was going to, and wished there was a way to stop him.

Angus grinned a crooked smile, then unlocked the door, walked in, and relocked it.

BOOM!

The door erupted into a million pieces, the room caved out in flames, and the sound of Angus’ loud shrilling scream of pain could have been heard in Level One. He wasn’t seen, but his quickly burning flesh had stinged both Sam and Quia’s eyes, as well as everyone who had been nearby (Quia, who had already seen what would happen, moved towards Sam before the explosion).

“She’s gone, long before this,” Quia warned Sam, and he sighed with relief.

Control Room, at the Same Moment

“CALL A MEDIC! THERE’S BEEN A FIRE IN THE CONTROL HALL, THE PATIENTS ARE REBELLING! CODE BLACK!”

The Facility quaked with madness as the roaming patients broke, smashed, and destroyed everything visual to them. The guards stood in the halls, blowing their whistles and attempting to get the patients in check. Meanwhile, The Staff stood in the Office of the Hall, contemplating their next move.

“What now?”

As the other members opened to reply, Hanza, noticed a small envelope, just next to the water fountain. The same envelope that she had given to…

“Wait. There. That envelope, that’s the same one I gave to patient #5210, to Memory.”

“What’s it doing here?”

Hanza shrugged, then made moves for the letter. Once opened, she set it on the table as The Staff huddled in to read it contents:

To: The Staff

If you are reading this right now, then it’s too late.

-Lavi