A few weeks later, we were matched for combat again, the evil girl and me. The two of us stood opposite one another on the mats, staring each other down with poison in our gazes. They were the looks of bad blood and unsettled scores, looks no two children should give each other. My hands twitched, ready to get revenge for the pain. I'd teach her the consequences of fighting dirty with me. I wanted to fight, my body begging me to attack, but it wasn't time. Not yet, although the girl looked just as eager as me.

I thought it was time as the trainer raised her hands to give the signal to fight. However, her orders were interrupted when a few figures wearing the nondescript black uniforms of field agents file into the gym.

The sight gave me pause. Field agents didn't normally watch combat training, and certainly not the combat of two children who hadn't yet neared their trials. But they had to be there to observe our combat. That was the only explanation. My mind raced as I tried to figure out who they were, why they were there.

And while I was distracted by my thinking, that's when I saw 08A again.

He'd gotten taller, and he regarded us children darkly, green eyes flashing with something akin to anger. He looked the same but utterly different, and my heart stuttered because I hadn't expected to see him. The next thing I noticed was a prominent scar running down his cheek. And my stuttering heart seized with alarm. What had caused that injury? Was he okay now? Did he kill the monster that had done that to him? He was the best fighter I'd ever known. How could something have even gotten close enough to hurt him like that? Despite my panic, I was overjoyed because he was my brother and he was there. With me. 08A was with me again.

That thought had me smiling expectantly at my brother. He was here. Finally, for the first time in two years, I could see him right there, right next to me. But the realization soon dawned on me.

Though I was looking at my brother with pain and adoration, he refused to even look at me.

Why wouldn't he look at me?

08A had never not looked at me, and that scowl he wore didn't look like my brother. Maybe... maybe he was so good now that he hated us kids. He thought we were beneath him. He thought I was beneath him. That explained the cold, disinterested expression he wore.

Well, I'd prove myself to him. I was just as good as he was at my age, and if he saw that, then he'd have to look at me.

I'd show 08A how good I'd gotten since he'd left, and my mind made up, I returned my attention to the girl I was to fight. This time, we were sparring without weapons. I don't know why the trainers had decided that. Maybe it was because our previous fight had gotten too brutal. Regardless, I looked at my opponent with renewed determination in my gaze. I was going to fuck her up. Then 08A would look at me.

Following the signal from the instructor, I made the first move, kicking her in the gut and knocking her back a few steps. She recovered swiftly, grabbing my ankle and twisting it violently enough that I cried out. My noise distracted her, and using her position to my advantage, I pushed off the mat with my grounded foot and employed my momentum to drive both my boot-clad feet into her chest. She stumbled backward, letting my ankle go.

I landed nimbly on my feet, favoring my right ankle and waiting for her to recover and make her next move. Her first lunge, I dogged because she was slow and her movements shown on her face like words on the pages of an open book. But her second attack I wasn't lucky enough to miss, and with her charge, the girl managed to get her arm around me and put me in a vise-like headlock. She then pulled me to the mat, pinning me with both her legs entwining one of mine. I couldn't move. Even though I was skilled in combat, the girl was larger than me, older with more muscle, and try as I might, I couln''t escape from her grip.

Clutching me, she continued to squeeze, and I coughed out a breath as my lungs tried to get in more oxygen. Soon, my vision blurred, and my muscles shook. I knew I didn't have long before I would blackout. I'd failed. I was going to black out and lose, and 08A was going to be ashamed of me. He was going to walk away and never look back because I was weak and didn't deserve him, and there was nothing I could do about it.

Just as I was about to lose consciousness, though, the girl made the mistake of shifting her right leg. I smiled despite my increasing disorientation.

She'd just made a big mistake.

This moment was the only opening I needed, and before the other girl could react, I freed my pinned leg. Swinging both my legs around while simultaneously driving my nails into her arm, I felt renewed determination settle into my chest. Surprised, she grunted as she released me from her grip.

Once free, I jumped to my feet in an expert maneuver, giving myself the advantage and catching the older girl off guard. Soon, I was on top of my enemy. My chest still burned as I struggled to regain my breath, but my rage meant that I didn't feel the pain. So angry was I that when she began to scratch at me viciously to distract me and force me to give her ground, I didn't feel her attacks.

Instead of taking me aback and forcing me to climb off her, I grew angrier and let loose a barrage of angry punches to the other girl's face.

Fuck mercy.

Her nose was very quickly bloodied and broken. The girl's desperate scratching at me soon ceased, but I didn't let up. I had to prove my worth to 08A. He'd see how good I was. He'd see that I was the best, and I devolved into a frenzy of attacks that I don't really remember, a frenzy that only ended when the instructor pulled me off the girl's broken and limp body. Panting for air, I looked down at my bruised and bloodied knuckles.

Of course, I had won. I always won. I don't know what had worried me.

Smirking triumphantly, I turned to 08A, fully expecting him to see him wearing an expression of approval or maybe even admiration. To my surprise, he didn't look proud. His disgust was written on his decidedly different yet eerily familiar face.

Disgust? Why? I'd won. 08A had seen me win. He should be proud. He should be beaming because I was fighting just like he'd always told me to. I was better than he'd told me to be.

But he wasn't proud, and the expression on his face made my heart ached more than my injuries.

Hearing a strangled noise, I looked back at the girl. She turned her head once to the side before she froze, her eyes closing after she wheezed out a breath, her face a bloodied mess barely recognizable as that of a child. After that one movement, she moved no more.

Quickly and efficiently, a clean-up crew entered, and I stood to the side so that they could collect her body to take to medical. I thought she was dead until I saw the almost imperceptible rise and fall of her chest. She was barely breathing, but she was breathing. For a moment, a very brief moment, I felt a flash of guilt strong enough to take my own breath.

Had I done that? Had I nearly killed that girl?

Part of me was sickened, but the other part, the rational part, said that children were injured, even killed, nearly every day at Imhullu. It was life here. It was normal, and I had nothing to be ashamed about. As I rejoined the other children, though, I couldn't help but wonder why I felt so guilty.

The field operatives, including my brother, observed the rest of the children training, occasionally murmuring something to each other but otherwise wearing impassive expressions. The commander of the field agents, whose uniform was slightly more elaborate than the uniforms of the others, watched all the matches, giving me the impression that he was lost deep in thought. When we trainees had all completed our matches for the day, the field agents stood and filed out of the gymnasium.

As they left, I kept my eyes glued to my brother, who hadn't even made eye contact with me since my sparring match. I felt a tug in my heart as he left without even casting a glance in my direction.

With that, my brother had drifted in then right back out of my life.