“FOURTEEN! I WAS FOURTEEN!” I screamed.

My vision blurred under the onset of tears until the world turned into amorphous blobs that dissolved into explosions of reds and blacks. In the very center was a tiny dot of light, a speck that started small and grew to engulf everything in white hot pain.

A small part of me promised that I would not lose control this time. This time I would hold it together.

A myriad of voices gave me targets.

“No! Someone stop her.”

“we can’t, she’s”

“too strong”

“-do something!”

I felt a stab from a web of minds working in concert to shut me down. I’d never encountered anything like that before. The small part of me wailed as the inferno of my wrath washed over them, and in that moment, it took control. Instead of burning away their collective memories and leaving every one of them a husk, I burned the fragile connection that held them together and the attack fell away.

Vocal and psychic screams of pain joined my own.

This was only the beginning.

Where was my baby?