Chapter 7

  POV: Ebony

  It had been roughly fifteen years ago. I was just eight years old then, no different from the other initiates forced into the organization. Back then, I wasn’t Lois. I was just a little girl known as 0-3-5-6. But most of the others called me "chipmunk," a nickname I had earned because of my brown hair and, more importantly, because I was the weakest girl in my cohort.

  The training was brutal. It was relentless and unforgiving. Each day felt like a battle for survival, a struggle just to make it through. We were taught that weakness was unacceptable, that it could get us killed. Every lesson drilled that into our heads. I was constantly reminded of my frailty, constantly mocked by the other initiates for being the smallest, the slowest, the least capable. They had their nicknames, their identities that they wore with ease, while I was just a number. A faceless cog in the machine of the organization.

  Right then, I was sparring with a dark-haired boy who was no older than me. His eyes were wide with panic. His stance was sloppy, his movements hesitant. He was afraid. And, for a brief moment, I saw myself reflected in his fear. But there was no room for mercy. Mercy was a luxury that could get me killed.

  “Fight me, you trash!” I shouted, my voice laced with a forced bravado I didn’t feel.

  “I… I don’t want to fight!” he stammered, his voice cracking as his eyes pleaded for a reprieve.

  But there was no mercy in this place. The instructors stood around us, watching with cold, calculating eyes. They were waiting for any sign of weakness to punish. I had learned the hard way that hesitation only led to pain. Showing softness was a death sentence. So, I lunged at him, fists flying, driven by the fear that had been instilled in me since the day I was brought here. My movements were wild, uncoordinated, but I fought with everything I had. I had to prove that I wasn’t as weak as they all thought. I wasn’t just a number. I wasn’t just the "chipmunk."

  But deep down, even as I landed blow after blow, I knew the truth. I wasn’t strong. I was just a scared little girl, trying to survive in a world that demanded more from me than I could give.

  The boy I was fighting was numbered 0-0-1-3. His smaller number meant he was among the earliest batch—likely born within the facility. Unlike me, who had been kidnapped from the outside, he knew nothing but this place. It was a cruel irony that they would have called me "trash" if it weren’t for him. In a twisted way, I was thankful for his existence. The burden of being the weakest had fallen on him instead of me.

  As we fought, I channeled all my anger and frustration into every strike. I hated this place. I hated what it was turning me into. But at that moment, all I could think about was how much I hated him. This boy, who was even weaker than me. I didn’t realize back then that he was bullied harder than I was. His life was a constant torment.

  To be honest, I took some twisted satisfaction in knowing that at least this boy was weaker than me. He was the weakest person in the facility, and that made me feel, for just a moment, like I wasn’t at the very bottom.

  I swept his legs out from under him, and he fell to the ground with a dull thud. Without hesitation, I straddled him, pinning him down as I rained blow after blow onto his trembling form. He raised his arms feebly, trying to defend himself with all the strength he could muster, but it was pathetic.

  This place was hell, and I was becoming a part of it.

  “Fight, damn it!” I screamed at him, my voice cracking with a mixture of rage and desperation.

  But the boy just stared up at me with wide, vacant eyes. "We all live in a game," he muttered, his voice tinged with a hollow insanity. "We aren’t real."

  His words unnerved me. They were the ramblings of someone who had been broken by the relentless training, someone who had lost all grip on reality. But they also served as a reminder of how close I was to the same fate. How much longer until I, too, would break? Until I, too, would lose myself to this hellhole?

  The only reason this boy was weaker than me was because he never fought back. Every time we sparred, he was beaten to within an inch of his life by his sparring partners. But he never resisted. I hated him for it. I hated him because I was terrified of him. If he ever decided to fight back, it might be me who ended up in his place, broken and defeated on the cold, hard ground.

  The World Order, known simply as the Order, was a sprawling government entity with a singular purpose: to conquer the galaxy. Beneath its vast umbrella were two key organizations—the Union and the Guard—each with its own distinct role in maintaining the Order’s dominance.

  The Union was the face of the Order. They stood in the light, portraying themselves as protectors of the people. They were the superheroes, the enforcers of justice across the worlds under the Order’s iron grip. To the common populace, they were the champions, the defenders of peace and stability.

  But there was another side to the Order, one that thrived in the shadows. The Guard was a secretive organization, filled with powerful and influential figures who ensured the Order’s control by any means necessary. They orchestrated conspiracies, eliminated threats, and manipulated events to keep the Order’s authority unchallenged. While the Union wore capes and saved lives, the Guard pulled the strings from behind the scenes, making sure that the Order’s vision for the future was realized.

  I had been thrust into this world, into a facility known as the Dome.

  It was a training ground, a brutal and unforgiving place where children like me were molded into tools for the Order’s grand design. This was a project jointly organized by both the Union and the Guard—a collaboration between the light and the dark.

  Back then, I wasn’t Lois. I was just a number. But I was surviving. And in this place, surviving was all that mattered.

  The instructor’s voice was cold, detached, like he was speaking to machines rather than children. His words cut through the silence of the Dome, a chilling reminder of the nightmare we were trapped in. "This training facility, the Dome, was created by both the Union and the Guard," he began, his tone as emotionless as his gaze. "You have one purpose here, and that is to grow strong. In the future, you will be planted in various positions within society, and you will learn to contribute. Understand this: the weak have no place in the future of the Order. That is why you must grow strong."

  His words sank into me like a heavy stone. There was no room for weakness here. No place for fear or hesitation. We were being molded into weapons, our bodies and minds forged in the fires of cruelty. And if we didn’t adapt, if we didn’t survive, we would be discarded, nothing more than failed experiments.

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  As I stood there, surrounded by my fellow initiates, dread began to settle deep in my gut. This was the world I was now a part of—a world where only the strong survived. If I wanted to live, if I wanted to escape, I had no choice but to become one of them.

  The Dome was a place of unrelenting brutality, a training ground designed to break children down and rebuild them into something unrecognizable. It was bad enough to subject us to this hell, but what made it worse was that each of us had a superpower—an ability that could make us powerful, or destroy us entirely. The process of awakening those powers, known as 'shedding,' was an agonizing ordeal that left scars both physical and mental. It was so brutal that even the strongest could break. For a child, it was sheer wickedness.

  We were all victims of this twisted experiment, and the Dome was our prison.

  "Sparring!" the instructor barked, his voice cutting through the cold air. "Zero-zero-five-two versus zero-three-five-six."

  My number. My stomach churned with a mixture of fear and resignation. I had no choice but to step forward. My opponent was already waiting—zero-zero-five-two, the albino girl with telekinetic powers. She was one of the top five ranked fighters, and she had earned that position through sheer brutality. Her pale lips curled into a cruel smile as our eyes met. She knew as well as I did that my defeat was practically guaranteed.

  I swallowed hard, pushing down the panic that threatened to rise in my chest. Rushing at her blindly would be suicide. There was no clear path to victory. But I couldn’t just give up. Not here. Not in a place like this, where survival depended on proving your strength, day after day.

  The instructor’s voice sliced through the silence again. "Zero-zero-five-two, I prohibit you from using long-range telekinesis. Only tactile telekinesis in this spar. No flight, no hurling objects, and no immobilizing your opponent. Do you understand?"

  The albino girl nodded, her smile never wavering. She relished the challenge, even with the restrictions. The instructor gave the signal, and the fight began.

  "I will crush you," she sneered, her voice dripping with malice.

  Her words sent a shiver down my spine, but I shoved the fear aside. There was no room for it here. I had to focus. I had to survive. Even if it meant facing one of the strongest opponents in the Dome, I would find a way. I had to.

  She moved with terrifying speed, her telekinesis amplifying her physical abilities to unnatural levels. It was as if she was cloaked in an invisible armor, her movements fluid and impossibly fast. In the blink of an eye, she was behind me, her leg already swinging in a vicious roundhouse kick aimed at my skull.

  I barely had time to react. Instinctively, I crossed my arms above my head to block the blow. The impact was brutal. Pain exploded through my arm as it dislocated under the force. I bit down on my lip, refusing to cry out. There was no room for weakness here. With a thought, I used my power to reset the joint. The sickening pop echoed in my mind, but I ignored it, forcing myself to focus on the fight.

  "You should do better than that," I growled, my voice low with defiance.

  Anger surged through me, a dark wave of emotion that I channeled into every strike. My power—my ability to manipulate my own biology—had always been a double-edged sword. It was supposed to be a tool for healing, a gift to help me survive. But here, in this place, I had learned to twist it into something far more dangerous.

  I focused all my rage into one point of impact. Lightning crackled around my fist as I swung it toward the albino girl, who had barely recovered from her last attack. My fist connected with her face, the combination of bioelectricity, adrenaline, and pure anger sending her flying into the concrete wall with a deafening thud.

  She crumpled to the ground, unconscious.

  The arena fell silent. My fellow initiates stared, their faces pale with shock. But my instructor didn’t share their astonishment. He stepped forward, his face unreadable as he assessed the scene.

  I stood there, panting heavily, my knuckles still crackling with residual electricity. The fight was over, but the rage still burned inside me, simmering beneath the surface. A constant reminder of the cruelty that had shaped me into this.

  And I fucking hated it.

  "Congratulations on your second shedding," the instructor’s voice echoed through the cold, sterile walls of the Dome, as if his words were a judgment rather than a praise. "This is what the Dome is looking for—initiates who prove that the weak have no place in the future the Order has set its eyes on! There’s a reason you’ve all been chosen! While some of you are weak now, you shan’t be weak forever."

  His words sliced through the haze of exhaustion that clouded my mind, but it was hard to feel anything beyond the trembling in my limbs. My body ached from the fight, my muscles sore, my bones still remembering the shock of the brutal blows exchanged. The air in the Dome felt heavy, as if it were thickened with the weight of our suffering, our collective brokenness.

  The instructor’s gaze swept over me, and for a brief moment, there was something there—something almost like pride. But it was buried beneath the cold, emotionless veneer he wore like armor. He wasn’t here to congratulate us. He was here to remind us that our purpose was to become stronger. And to become stronger, we had to endure the unimaginable.

  "Don’t look too happy, zero-three-five-six," he warned, his tone slicing through any flicker of triumph I might have felt. "Your opponent was yet to shed a second time. The organization has plans for you, so don’t disappoint. Now that you’ve had your second shedding, it’s time to make you more useful."

  The weight of his words settled over me like a thick fog. My second shedding. I had been through it once before, a painful, gut-wrenching process that forced me to push my body and mind to their limits. But now, it was different. The second shedding was supposed to make me more than I was. Stronger. More powerful. But also... more fractured.

  The thought of shedding again, of losing pieces of myself to the madness that followed, terrified me. We had been taught that each shedding pulled us closer to the edge of insanity. We were told that we would emerge stronger each time, but at what cost? How much of our humanity would be left after we shed again and again? How much of me would remain?

  I had no choice. The alternative was failure. The alternative was death. And that wasn’t something I was willing to face.

  Over the following months, life in the Dome became something like routine. The lessons were still harsh, the physical and mental strain still overwhelming, but I started to adjust. The brutality became almost normal, like a second skin I couldn’t shed. But that was only the calm before the storm.

  As the years passed, I was sent on missions. Missions that would break any ordinary person. Missions that pushed me to the brink of insanity, to the edge of what I could endure. Every task chipped away at whatever humanity I had left, leaving only the cold, calculated shell the Order required. But I kept going. I kept pushing forward. There was no other choice.

  I hated the life I was forced to live. The endless cycle of violence, the constant testing, the feeling of being nothing more than a tool for someone else’s goals. But what else could I do? If I refused to endure, someone else would take my place. And where would that leave me? Probably dead, buried beneath the cold, unfeeling earth. Survival was the only option. It was the only thing that kept me going.

  The power I had was both a gift and a curse. My ability to manipulate my own biology—my control over my body—was something I had honed to a terrifying degree. I could tweak my body, pushing it to its limits, increasing my strength, my endurance, my reflexes. I could even alter my brain chemistry, boosting my mental capacity, my focus. But there was a catch. It was never perfect. I could never match the raw power of someone with an inherent ability. And if I pushed myself too far, if I made a mistake, the consequences were... catastrophic. My body could break down. My mind could snap. I had learned that the hard way.

  Still, I had no choice but to use it. To survive. I had to be stronger. Stronger than anyone else. Stronger than the albino girl with her telekinesis. Stronger than the other initiates. Stronger than the Order itself.

  But as much as I hated the life I was forced to live, there was a part of me that had come to understand something: strength was the only thing that mattered. And the only way to gain it was to sacrifice pieces of yourself along the way. That was the lesson the Dome taught us.

  And I would survive. I had to. Because in this world, weakness was the only thing that would get you killed.

  The storm was coming, and I was ready to face it head-on. I would prove that I was stronger than anyone thought. I would prove that I was more than just a tool. And when the time came, I would show them all that I could be more than they ever expected.

  But for now, I had to keep going. Keep surviving. Keep shedding. Because that was the only way out.

  My idea for Lois was to make her a combination of Captain America, Batman, and Ironman. Lois with her superhuman recall makes her literally a genius like Ironman, meaning she'd be able to build her own stuff. Her mastery over her own body and discipline makes her like Batman, not to mention the potential for detective work. Make no mistake though, Lois wasn't perfect and she'd make mistakes... like falling in love and letting her guard down. In terms of specs, she would likely be Captain America material. Lois was pretty much the ideal supersoldier I had in mind.