I’ve walked miles it seems before I reach it and stare into the darkness beyond. I squint inside and make out a classroom, peeling desks and rickety chairs.
I catch sight of a whiteboard with a single name sprawled across it in bold letters.
Professor Shade.
The Academy.
Smiling, I step into the portal and am greeted by the darkness.
* * *
“Coax out your Prod,” Professor Shade says. I blink at the haziness of my mind. It’s like waking from a dream and trying to recall the details. Something dark and disturbing nudges in the back of my mind but the Professor before me is more prominent than those unreachable memories.
The smile on his face is natural, welcoming, so unlike any of the other professors at the academy. They all wear perpetual scowls and want to see us fail. Not him. Never him.
“I—I don’t know.” The reply springs from my lips in shaking words.
The professor’s bicolored eyes regard me with encouraging amusement.
I squirm in my seat and look around at all the Prodless students in the room.
It’s an after-school program where the Prodless gather to talk about our problems, our differences.
Professor Shade organizes the entire thing, he watches over us, encourages us to break past our comfort zones.
The truth is, I’m embarrassed among these faces. Faces of Prods I don’t recognize.
“You can do it, Izara.”
He doesn’t understand. No one understands what it is to live with this Prod inside me, to have this unknown power rippling inside me, urging me to destroy, to kill. I already killed Adam, all because he dared to grab my arm and refused to let go when I tried to leave him.
My Prod hadn’t liked that.
Not one bit.
Wait. I wasn’t supposed to remember that, was I?Whydid I remember that?
“Come on, Miss Castillo,” Professor Shade’s voice cuts through my thoughts.
I take a breath and nod, and then I unleash my Prod.
She’s vengeance and she’s glory and she sucks me into a void I can’t climb out of. A malicious smile twists her lips—my lips—that I instantly know is both beautiful and cruel. The power she shoots out is ephemeral and everyone in the room screams as it consumes them.
And all the while, my Prod laughs.
And laughs.
And laughs.
* * *
“Coax out your Prod.”
I take in a gasping breath and look around, my heart beating wildly in my chest. I can still feel the fire, can still hear their helpless screams. The room is the same; Professor Shade’s name is still scrawled in that same bold lettering. He’s still in front of me, other Prodless are still around me, staring at me like I’ve lost my mind. Maybe I have. Maybe it’s deja vu.
Demonic words of disturbing creatures whisper at the back of my mind, a memory I can’t quite grasp.
“Izara? Coax out your Prod.”
