No.

Knock.Knock.Knock….Knock….Knock.

Not now.

I bury myself deeper in bed and pretend like I’ve dreamed the knocks.

Knock.Knock.Knock….Knock….Knock.

Knock.Knock.Knock….Knock….Knock.

Knock.Knock.Knock….Knock….Knock.

I force my heavy eyes open and the glowing green lights on my analog alarm clock say it’s only 4:07 AM. I’d barely been asleep for 4 hours. I’d been up late playing Spirit League 7 on my gaming tablet.

The knocks on the door sound again, followed by the hum of the first bars of the happy birthday song.

I cover my head with the pillow, wrapping the warm blankets around me as he starts to hum the second bar of the happy birthday song, his humming becoming clearer as he cracks open my bedroom door.

“Five minutes,” he says through the crack in the door.

The door shuts and I want to roll up in the comforter and hide under the bed.

But I can’t.

Because I’m 16 years old today.

In the stories I liked to read, sixteen was always the age when everything changed. When  the main characters discover their destiny and became who they were always meant to be. I don’t know if I’ll figure out who I'm supposed to be today.

But I know who I’m not going to be anymore.

I’m not going to be a scared little boy anymore. I’m going to stand up to him today.

I am not going in the Closet this year.

Last year, when I turned 15, I stood my ground and  got close to not going in the Closet but I’d caved and went in anyway. This year, I had my arguments and counter arguments prepared.

I slide out of the warmth of my bed and take the two steps into my bathroom and splash water on my face. I sleep in my boxers and don’t bother getting dressed  because I plan to be back in bed, under my warm covers again, very soon.

When I  step out of my bedroom, my guardian is standing by the Closet door.

I just stand there.

I don’t move to join him at the Closet door.

And he stares at me.

“C’mon,” he says quietly, sticking the key in and unlocking the Closet door.

I don’t move.

Neither does he.

The stillness is almost a little creepy.

He hadn’t turned on any lights on so our cabin is dark and none of our neighbors are moving around  this early in the morning.

I’d never told anyone about the Closet. When I was younger it was because he told me not to and I was the kind of kid who always did what my guardian said. By the time I realized none of the other kids my age had a Closet, I was too embarrassed to tell anyone about  what happened in there.

I still don’t fully understand why I have to go in the Closet. I never get a straight answer but my guardian wears a saltire cross, so my best guess is it’s some kind of religious thing.

“Sky,” he says when he notices that I still  haven’t moved to join him by the Closet door.

“N-n-no.” I protest. My stupid voice filled with tremors already. “No, um, I’m not doing it anymore. I don’t want to go in there...anymore.”

He walks towards me and I try not to lose my nerve. I look him dead in the eye.

“You’re such a lucky boy,” he says, crossing his arms and assessing me. “Do you know how lucky you are ? You get all your meals and I don't hit you. You don't have to be Morgan. You don’t say no to me.”

He doesn’t raise his voice, he  never has, he keeps a low, calming cadence but I’m still losing my nerve. My left leg shakes as he picks up the small medicine cup from the breakfast bar and holds it up to me, the vile clear liquid sloshing innocently inside it.

“Drink up,” he says.

“No,” I shake my head. “No...Please, I don’t want to--”

“If you’re smart you’ll get this over with.” he says, his tone even. “Stop being a brat and drink it.”

This is about where I’d have caved last year because I wanted to prove to him I wasn’t a spoiled little brat.

“Why do we have to do this ? Why do we have to go in there ?” I throw back. ”I want the truth. I’ll go in quietly it if you tell me why we have to do this.”

I don’t know why I bother asking this, I can hear his answer in my head before he says it.

Penance. You have a life some people only dream of.

“Penance,” he says. “You have a life some people only dream of. You can take a an hour in the Closet--”

“No. That doesn’t work anymore. I need something better than that.”

“The longer you take the worse it will be.”

I fold my arms in front of me defiantly. “No. I’m not doing it.”

My  words and confidence  fade as he side steps into the kitchen and opens the  first aid kit in the emergency cabinet and  unwraps an empty syringe. He  dips the thin needle into the medicine cup, filling the syringe with the clear liquid.

I hadn’t expected him to tip the scales so soon--I had an embarrassingly irrational phobia of needles. If I was even in the room with a needle I’d flip out. When we had to get our vaccines last month he had the medics give me to doses of laughing gas  before sticking me.

“I know you don’t understand. But I do,” he says, he pricks his own finger experimentally with the needle and my anxiety spikes at the small well of blood on his fingertip. I throw up a little in my mouth and have to swallow it. “We can do this the hard way or easy way. Either way we’re doing this.”

He hadn’t even approached me with the needle and I knew a blackout was coming.

“Fine,” I say before my resolve can catch up to my mouth. “I’ll drink it.”

Satisfied, he empties the clear liquid from the needle back into the little medicine cup and hands the cup to me expectantly. I tip the cup to my lips and drink, the poison is tasteless as it goes down. When I put the medicine cup back on the counter I feel a tight burn in my arm.

I let out an undignified scream of terror as I watch him jab a needle into my arm. On instinct I start flailing and he holds me steady, pushing the plunger on the syringe with his practiced hand  until another dose of the poison has been injected into my bloodstream. I stare at where the needle went in and start sobbing like a baby.

“Why did you do that!,” I scream, betrayed.

He’d given me two doses.

This was going to suck.

“That second dose was for being defiant."

He says something else but I don’t hear it because the poison has already started to seize my body. Pain radiates through my stomach, I’m suddenly more aware of the steady motions beneath my feet and before I can catch myself I vomit all over him.

I don’t apologize because fuck him and also, at this point in our relationship,  all of  my bodily fluids have been on him at some point at least once.

He’s not at all bothered as he unzips his sweatshirt and throws it in his laundry hamper and leads me into the Closet.

The Closet isn’t an actual closet, but a tiny third bedroom we never used. It doesn’t have a bathroom, overhead lighting or  windows like our rooms so it may as well be a closet. Inside the Closet  is a folding chair, an old cot, a musty blanket, a bucket and a plastic crate filled with old crap

My guardian sits on the in the folding chair, hands me a t-shirt from the crate and I dutifully sit  on the end of the cot next to his chair. Once I have the shirt over my head, he throws his arm around my shoulder--the poison making the sudden contact feel like a dull ache.

He always wears sleeveless shirts in the Closet, it’s is the only time I ever see the bare skin on his arms and the collage of tattoos covering them. The biggest tattoo on his right arm says Property of The Republic Liberation Army #95820 and is adorned by RLA iconography. I’d asked him years ago if he was actually in the RLA and he told me  if I asked him or Aunt Isla about that ever again he’d abandon me.

My favorite tattoo of his was the one on his left arm, the arm he kept slung around my shoulders in the Closet. The tattoo was of a vibrant full color sun bird, winding itself up his arm and leaving a trail of fiery destruction in it's wake . I’d looked at the tattoo a lot in the Closet and I could tell the sun bird was covering up an old tattoo, burning away one that had the word fuckwhore in it.

I sit silently in the Closet, trying once again to decipher new meaning out of this pointless ritual  we did on my birthday while also trying not to dissolve into a blubbering mess of tears and dry heaves from the poison.

And he sings.

He sings the birthday song to me while we just sit there, tapping the beat into my shoulder, sometimes humming when he gets tired of singing and always, for some reason, humming when he gets to the part when he’s supposed to says my name. On the crate sits a single red velvet cupcake  that he eats with a fork while he sings.

Every year. I sit in the Closet and suffer from poison. He sits in the Closet with me and sings while eating a cupcake. That’s it.

It’s so fucking bizarre.

He holds a bite of cupcake out to me. Red velvet is my favorite but  just the smell of sugar, forces more bile up my throat. I try and choke it back but it’s futile. I start to throw up in my cupped hand and he quickly picks up the bucket, putting it underneath my chin until I’ve retched up everything in my body.

Everything hurts even  worse than usual and I just wanted to lie down and die.

“Please…,” I start to beg, but he covers my mouth with a gag and start massaging the back of my ear, cooing at me to be still like a wild animal.

Above his wrist he had a tattoo on his hand of  roman numerals of  a date 12 years ago with a dash next to it. I’d deduced that roman numerals were a date because I had the same tattoo behind my ear and had  spent a month staring at the numbers with two mirrors trying to make sense of them.

When I’d asked why we had the same tattoo he’d turned the question back on me. I’d figured I must have had it before he took me in,  since I’ve always had it and don’t remember ever being tattooed. I wasn’t sure we even knew anyone who could do a tattoo.

Let alone on tattoo child.

After an hour in the Closet I can’t sit up anymore, I don’t want to hear him sing that stupid birthday song anymore and I slump to the floor. He wrenches me up from the floor roughly to Iet me lie down on the cot. The cot is hard as a rock but there is a lumpy pillow in the shape of  Starlight the Unicorn--the protagonist of  the Mystical Pony Island book series  we used to read to me when I was little.  I think the Starlight pillow was with me when I was in the orphanage.

It feels a little bit better when I get to lie down and he runs his hands over my hair and neck, he was trying to comfort me when he was the one who did this to me and I tell him to fuck off through the gag.

“What did you say ?,” he says removing the gag

“I said fuck off--”

“You’re going to pay for that,” he says

We sit in the Closet for another hour before he tells me we’ve done enough for today.  I don’t know what he means by I’ll pay for telling him to fuck off. Aside from the Closet he’d never punished me.

Once we’re out of the Closet, I decided to apologize for telling him to fuck off. “I’m sorry for--”

“Go back to bed,” he says, locking the Closet door for another year.

***

-2-

When I wake up again, it’s an hour before school.

There is a small can of ginger ale on my nightstand along with another red velvet cupcake and two small wrapped gift boxes.  Despite still being pissed at being made to go into the Closet  this morning I open the gift box and find a silver necklace with a single charm in the shape of a regal centaur, arched back with a bow and arrow in it’s hand.

It was Sagittarius, my zodiac.

I’d started studying the different zodiacs out of sheer boredom, it was an expansive topic since the zodiacs differed across cultures and time--everyone who’d ever lived on Earth has looked up at the stars and tried to make sense of them. I also secretly thought it’d tell me something about who I really was because the only thing I knew about my past was my birthday.

The other gift was a Syndicate. It would be my first, but it was kind of pointless since Syndicates didn't work here.

The necklace however, was perfect. My birthday gift from my guardian was always perfect and every year I accepted the gifts and ignored what happened in the Closet.

But not this year.

I roll out of bed, brush my teeth, shower and dress as quickly as I can.

When I got back into the cabin’s common area, the overhead lights are on and my guardian is dressed for work in gray scrubs and washing out a mug in the  sink.

My breakfast of cereal and sliced fruit is sitting on the kitchen counter next to my lunchbox and there is a shiny purple 1 and 6 balloon tied to my chair.

“Happy birthd--,” he starts, turning to me.

“I don’t want these,” I interrupt tossing the cupcake, necklace and Syndicate into the trash compactor.

“Hey,” he calls, rushing to the trash compactor and fishing the gifts out before the compactor can start up.

“We can exchange it,” he says. “What do you want instead--”

“I want to know the truth.”

He doesn’t answer. He just stares at me like I was being petulant.

“WHY DO WE HAVE TO DO WHAT WE DID THIS MORNING ?,” I say so loud I’m sure anyone walking past our door could hear me.

He doesn’t answer. He just takes the necklace out of its box and goes to put it around my neck, I smack his hand away.

“WHY?,” I demand.

“Penance--”

“No, don’t give me that. What the hell does that even mean--”

He takes a step to the left, pressing the buttons that opens up all the cabin window shades at once, dimly bathing our cabin with our view outside of he Atlas Star satellite carrier--endless darkness lit up with tiny burning  stars.

“Most people spend their entire life in one place. Trapped earthbound and always looking up, wondering what it’s like to step foot off the planet and float in the stars. Do you have any idea how lucky we are to know what that is like ? To live like this ?”

I didn’t think we were that lucky. There were 2,546 other people also living on board the Atlas Star  and more coming everytime we docked on Earth.

Whenever new people came on board they’d speed hours just staring out the lower deck’s  bay windows the way I stared up at the blue sky  when we docked at Earth base camp. I think my guardian and I had lived other places when I was little, but living on  Atlas Star is the only place I remember.

The Star was a maintenance satellite ship that orbited the Earth, fixing, redesigning and repairing the thousands of Eastern State and Federation remote operated satellites and space stations. It wasn’t a cool, futuristic exploration spaceship like our Earthbound penpals always thought. Because of the equipment on board most of us weren’t even allowed to have Syndicates.  It was just a big floating office for aeronautical engineers, researchers and government types along with the cooks, teachers, doctors and support staff.

Aunt Isla was on board because she designed and repaired  user interfaces for the satellites and my guardian was a nursing assistant in the Atlas Medical and Care Center.

He puts the necklace back around my neck and hands me back the bulbous, iridescent Syndicate.

“I know you can’t use the Syndicate on board, but I figured next time we land you could leave base camp and explore by yourself. You’re old enough now.”

He was doing it again-- offering me things again to make me shut up about the Closet.

We landed on Earth every three months for 2-3 weeks, sometimes more if new staff were being onboarded and acclimated.  When we landed I had to stay at the base camp while he always left, saying he had  things to do and he couldn’t babysit me.

As if he’d ever babysat me.

The last few times I’d tried to explain I was old enough to explore Earth by myself and he said no.

“I want to know about my mother,” I say, ripping the necklace off, breaking the clasp.

He turns and shakes his head, his obnoxiously complicated braided blonde ponytail shaking with it. "You want to keep having this conversation every year ? I don’t know anything about your mother--”

“What about my father ?”

“No,” he says. “We’ve been through this--”

“I want to contact the orphanage then,” I say. “When we land. You can ask them to let you look at the records--”

“No--”

“That's not fair. I want to know who my parents are--”

“Why ?,” he says and I can tell he’s losing his patience with me. “What 16-year-old wants parents ? I give you everything you need to survive without running your life. What more do you want ?”

I look down, unable to meet his gaze. He goes for the door.

I knew what I wanted. I hadn’t been able to put it into words until recently. I thought I’d just wanted to be like the other kids who got endless attention and adoration  from their doting parents when we had assembly.  I thought I’d wanted a pat on the back when I finished in the top percentile of the class too. But that wasn’t it. Not entirely.

I wanted to be loved.

My guardian was like my roommate who  took care of me enough that the government wouldn’t take me away. When I was a little kid I’d tried to hug him once because I’d seen the other kids do it and  he’d made it clear there was to be no physical display of affection between us--especially in public--because he wasn’t my parent. I’d settled for the occasional shoulder touch.

He wouldn’t even share his last name with me. The orphanage didn’t have one for me so he’d just made one up for me when he took me in.

“Were you friends with them or something ?,” I ask him. “My parents--”

“I’ve told you, I didn’t know them--”

“Then why did you take me in ? Why would you want me ? Who takes a baby in if they aren’t going to fucking love them ?”

This is a new question and he doesn’t have an answer. Instead he turns around, walks up to me and slaps me.

It’s not hard--more like a soft swat to the cheek  and it happens so quickly. I’d never been hit before and besides the dull impact I start to feel shame.

When I look up I can see the regret  all over his face.

“Sky, I--I'm sorry... but when I say stop, you need to stop,” he says, carefully wiping the tear from my eye and rubbing the back of his hand against my cheek. “Please stop asking me questions I don’t have the answer to. Happy birthday.”

With that he leaves for his 10 hour shift in the Med Center.

Despite food waste being strongly discouraged on the Star I throw my entire breakfast down the disposal, too mad to eat.

I also deflate the balloons for good measure.

We live in the bottom tier of the satellite and I take the student elevator, an express that only goes up to  the Academic Achievement Wing, up the 14 stories. There are no shortcuts on this side of the ship so  I quickly race through the  endless halls of administrative offices and college lecture halls until I get to the  glass enclosed classroom set aside for the junior class of ASS--Atlas Secondary School.

And yes, it was a miracle the administration hadn’t changed the name of the school.

“Happy birthday, Skylark !,” Ms. Walker, my teacher greets me, clapping her hands together.

I know I’m blushing at her greeting,  it was my worst tell. Anytime I was uncomfortable  the tips of my ears and the middle of my cheeks stained bright pink.

Ms. Walker used to teach Atlas Primary School students, but they’d run out of  students in that age range on the ship so they’d moved her to our class. She was a good teacher but didn’t understand secondary school students didn’t talk about their birthday in class like six-year-olds did.

I’m still pissed at my guardian and processing that he actually hit me-- something that could get him in trouble with the Atlas Deputy’s Office , but I just smile at Ms.Walker because I’m late and she’s not docking me for it.

There are 21 students in the junior class and I’d never been able to form much of a relationship with them. We were friendly enough since most of us had grown up together on the massive satellite but most of them were the children of  geniuses and I was the ward of one of the lowest level employees on the satellite.

I sit in the empty desk next to Faith Morgan for the morning lectures and when Ms. Walker announces lunch break  Faith hands me pink paper crane she’d been folding during the history lecture. Because technology was limited for non-mission based employees, there was always paper everywhere for the rest of us.

“Happy birthday, Sky,” Faith says to me, presenting the paper crane.

“Oh, you didn’t have to--”

“It was nothing. We all have to look out for each other,” she smiles before running over to where her best friend, Zarina Jeffries, was waiting to go walk with her to the cafeteria.

When Faith says “we” have to look out for each other she means we foster kids.

She and her 14 brothers and sisters were also foster kids but not foster kids like me. They’d been adopted by Morgan, Dory & Billings, the conglomerate that built the satellite. The company was responsible for providing for them and in exchange they had to work  20 hours a week  on the ship. Usually that meant cleaning or doing shit jobs for the executives or taking care of the younger Morgans who couldn’t work yet. When they were 18 they could stay with a promise of lifetime employment  on the ship or they could leave with a small sum of money.

On Earth there was an entire movement against corporations adopting children but the law allowing it was always upheld. Adopting kids wasn't common since it was cheaper to make your own in a lab if you had to. Sending unwanted kids into space seemed like a tidy idea. It sucked but the Morgans had each other and treated each other like family. They loved each other and if you messed with one of them you messed with all of them.

Once everyone has gone to get their lunch I pick up my lunchbox and hesitantly approach Ms. Walker’s desk.

“Have any fun plans today ?,” she smiles.

I shake my head.

“Um, I have to tell you something...personal.”

She  stares at me, her smile frozen in place. She puts a hand to her chest before ushering  me into the  private conference room that was usually for parent / teacher conferences.

“What’s up ?,” she asks, sitting on the conference table.

“Um, my--,” I didn’t know what I was doing. This was the exact opposite of what I’d planned to do today. “Something happened at home today. See, well, okay, um...My guardian does this thing to me-”

Her eyebrows knit and she starts quickly tapping the pencil in her hand against the conference table.

“Did he touch you inappropriately ?,” she asks.

“No, nothing like that--”

“Did he hit you ?”

“No--well--I--I mean yes, this morning but--”

“Does that happen a lot ?”

I shake my head.

“No, never--It’s just I think he’s keeping something from me--”

She stares at me and scratches her brunette waves with the pencil.

“Look, I know at your age you feel like you have a right to know everything, especially growing up in a place like this,  but sometimes adults keep things from children for their own good--”

“But I’m not a child--”

“I know--,” she says in that fake tone adults use

“He won’t tell me anything about my real parents or where I’m from--”

She snaps the pencil she’d been holding and the pieces roll away from her. We both stare at the pieces and she quickly puts them in the pocket of her skirt.

“Haley takes such good care of you, he’s a good one,” she says standing. “Do you really want me to report him ? You know what happens if you accuse him of doing something to you.”

I did know.

There wasn’t much crime for the Atlas Deputies, they did mostly safety training and reinforcement,  but  if you were accused of a serious crime on the Star you were  put in a solitary cell until we docked on Earth and then you had to wait for a court date from your home city--which basically meant you were kicked off the ship because by the time the courts got to you we’d be back in orbit.

If my guardian got left on Earth I’d probably have to become a Morgan. Or go back to an orphanage.

“Believe me, I know it’s hard sometimes when you feel like no one is listening to you,” Ms. Walker says. “But just do what your guardian says and if it happens again come find me first. Now, go eat your lunch before the hour is up.”

There was a time in junior high when a lot of kids creepily informed me  they had a crush on my guardian. For a while I suspected some adults on the Star felt that same way. I never thought Ms. Walker was one of them, but now that I thought about it,  I’d sometimes see them laughing together in passing.

I go back to sit at my desk to eat lunch but then immediately realize I forget my lunchbox in the parent/teacher conference room. I go back for it and the doors slide open. Ms. Walker is facing the wall opposite me, and  I hear here on a call. I was going to slip in and just grab my lunchbox when I hear her say my guardian's name.

“Yeah, well, Haley, maybe if you--no--I--Luce told me when I came on board I wouldn’t have to deal with--look I didn’t--I didn’t start anything--he’s good now, I mean I think it’s over but---no--but--he’s always going to have questions--”

I back away before she can see me. I wait a second and then walk back by the conference room, knocking on the glass. She turns around, her eyes wild and then quickly morphs her face into a smile. I point to where I’d left my lunchbox and she ushers me in.

I grab my lunchbox and rush back to the classroom, making a beeline for Faith and Zarina who were sitting in the bean bag chairs by the bookcases with their trays.

Zarina Jeffries’ mother is the captain of the Star. Zarina was the prettiest girl in class, never wore the the same outfit twice and changed her hair color every month. She should be running our entire class but instead she was a quiet kid and ardent rule follower who basically only socialized with Faith and no one else.

They never really made sense to me as best friends. We all knew Zarina was the richest girl on the ship and Faith technically owned nothing. All of the Morgan girls tended to wear their hair long and plain and switched up between the same plain dresses.

I  had no idea what Zarina and Faith talked about, but I was about to interrupt it.

“You should have a birthday everyday,” Zarina smiles as I approach and I notice she’s eating a red velvet cupcake with rainbow sprinkles like the one that had been on my nightstand this morning.

I look around the classroom and everyone is eating one, I spot the 3 bakery boxes on a corner table.

“Was my guardian here ?”

“No, the cafeteria dropped them off,” Faith explains. “Do you mind if I take an extra for Nina ?”

She was referring to their newest sister, who’d just come aboard when we docked three months ago.

“You can have all the extras,” I say, sitting down with them. They both exchange a look because I usually ate alone at my desk reading on my tablet.

“Faith, what do you know about your birth parents ?,” I ask.

She looks at me, surprised.

“Um, my dad didn’t want me and my mom got sick when I was born,” she says.

“So, like, all your siblings know ? About their real parents ?”

“Some of us. I mean, we have our birth certificates. Are you trying to find your real parents or something ?”

“I just...he doesn’t tell me anything at all. Not where I was born or why he picked me.”

“When you’re legally an adult in two years you can run your DNA and figure out who they were,” Zarina offers.

“I don’t want to wait...I think he’s hiding something from me.” I say and then look up at her. “Zarina, do you think I can see the manifest ?  I just want to see something. I’d owe you forever. Please.”

The two girls exchange looks again. Last year I’d accidentally saw a note they were passing so I knew Zarina thought I was cute and I hated to take advantage but I was desperate.

“I guess we can look,” she says. “It’s not like it’s a personnel file.”

“Now ?,” I ask

She looks at the clock in the corner of the classroom. We only had 40 minutes of lunch left.

“Let’s hurry,” she says.

We take the private Capitan’s elevator to her suite and while I suspected the Atlas Star’s captain’s suite was  going to be infinitely nicer than the little cabin I shared with my guardian I was still was blown away by the size---three stories high with a wide marble staircase and massive walls of windows that overlooked the galaxy outside. The inside was ornamental, it felt like we were in some futuristic Victorian castle than still on the ship.

There are uniformed service staff milling around  the suites but they don’t question Zarina being here in the middle of the school day, they just smile and nod at her.

I follow Zarina to the library in the Captain’s home office and she opens a filing cabinet labeled Manifests.

“Which year ?,” she asks.

I didn’t know which year we came on the ship exactly, I knew I went to first grade on The Star so we must have come a year or two before then.

I give her a date range and she pulls out a few sheets of official looking paper that have been  framed in glass with signatures on it. 247 new  people came on board between those two years.

“I think this is your Aunt,” Faith says, pointing to the name Ilsa Starling.

I take the page and examine it. The handwriting was right but I didn’t think Starling was her last name and she’d mispelled her first name, transposing the s and l.

And right below her name is Summer Walker, Ms. Walker. I never knew they’d boarded at the same time. They must have been together in line.

But I don’t see my guardian, Alexander Haley.

Or me, Skylark Gray.

Which is strange because I thought we’d boarded with Aunt Isla.

I tell this to Zarina and Faith.

“That is creepy,” Zarina says. “You should be on here, even unborn babies get counted.”

“Maybe I was wrong. Let’s try one more date,” I say and give her the date that was tattooed in roman numerals behind my ear and on my guardians hand.

Zarina shakes her head.

“There wouldn’t be a manifest for that date,” she says. “ The ship hadn’t launched yet. It would have launched 6 months later.”

“Let’s look at the recordings,” Faith suggests and turns to me. “They recorded every on boarding from the first few years for promotional stuff...It’s funny to see how everyone looked back then.”

I follow them  to another part of the library with a large flat screen embedded in the wall. Zarina effortlessly scrolls through the options on the screen, choosing the date Aunt Isla had boarded and the timestamp from when she signed the manifest.

The  footage is of a base camp in the Northern Province  and shows people moving through the 5-hour line that took you through the vaccination station, health check tent and pre anti-gravity stabilizer check up chamber  you had to go through before boarding the first time.

I see a younger Ms. Walker, looking nervous and clutching a big bouquet of flowers. Behind her is Aunt Isla, but they aren’t talking.

Aunt Isla has her back turned and she’s arguing with my guardian, which almost makes me smile because they were always arguing. My guardian  looks nearly the same except he’s shockingly even more thin, his hair is a darker blonde and much longer. It falls messily around his face and well past his shoulders.

He’s pushing a stroller and I assume I'm sitting inside of it---which is weird because I would have had to been like 5-years-old-- I'm covered in blankets and it looks like I’m screaming my head off.  I only recognize myself because I’m throwing the Starlight the Unicorn pillow on the floor. He keeps picking it up and giving it back to me in the kind but emotionally distant way he’s always dealt with me.

I stare at the images, trying to make sense of it. I watch him enter the ship and I watch him sign the manifest.  

We came on the ship, we went through all the checkpoints  but we’re not on the official manifest. How is that even possible ?

“Um, Sky ?,” Zarina says and I snap out of it.

“Sorry, I’m just so confused--”

“I went into Mom’s office and looked at your guardian’s profile to see if maybe there was a note. Like maybe he was on one of the test trips and then came back on and...did you know he applied to be transferred to Atlas Infinity ?”

I stand up and look at the file projection.  It has all his basic information, none of which was surprising except that he’d put in the transfer to Atlas Infinity last year.

I felt like I was losing my mind.

Atlas Infinity was Morgan, Dory & Billings new intergalactic exploration ship. It was being sent out with a boatload of researchers to study the edge of Cassiopeia, the next closest galaxy to our own. None of the support staff wanted to go on it because it was on a 40-year mission. 20 years there and 20 years back. And that’s only if it didn’t get sucked into a black hole or something.

We were scheduled to meet the Infinity for it’s final maintenance before it went into deep space in 9 months, but I didn’t think I’d be getting on it. If I was made to get on that ship I’d never be able to test my DNA when I turned 18. And even if I did test it my parents might be dead by the time I got back.

“Everyone is lying to me,” I say, but I must shout it because both girls jump.

“Let’s go talk to Ms. Walker--,” Faith starts.

“No,” I cut her off. “I think she’s in on it--”

“Okay,” Zarina says. “My mom--”

“No, she might be in on it too.”

“On what ?”

“I don’t know,” I shout and I must sound like a crazy person. “I’m going to figure this out. Tell Ms. Walker I went to see a test prep tutor.”

“Sky--”

“Please,” I say. “I have to do this now.”

I don’t give them time to agree. I half run out of the Captain’s suite  and sprint down the dozen escalators until I get the elevators that go down to my cabin.

The cabin door has a digital lock system but the bedroom doors inside are hinged and I take a pointed knife from the kitchen and quickly unscrew the hinges on my guardian’s locked bedroom door until I can push the door down with my bodyweight. The door is made up of some acrylic material and gives easily. A crack forms down the face of the door when I finally get it to pop off the hinges

I’d never been inside my guardian’s bedroom but the setup looks like mine; same desk, drawer and bed--except his space is impeccably neat. Which was good because it wouldn’t take long for me to get to the bottom of this.

Whatever the fuck this is.

I go through his drawers, not caring that it would be obvious I’d been in here or that I was destroying his shit. There’s nothing but clothes,  gaming tablets, medical textbooks, contraband mini liquor bottles, and random paperwork. I find a locket on his dresser, but when I pry it open there is only a picture of a moving LED photo of intense looking man with dark hair and blue green eyes inside.

Bracing myself I start going through his medicine cabinet, there is lubricant and condoms and he has a case of needle syringes that almost deter me, but my adrenaline pushes away my phobia  and I toss the needles out of sight  in the bathtub and keep going.

I open a bottle of old penicillin and inside I find the key to the Closet, I open another old medicine bottle and inside there are  dozens  of mini-syndicates.

I dump the syndicates into the bathroom sink, they’re different models from all over the world; New Tokyo, Paris, The Saharan Sprawl and they all say COPY in handwritten text with a date. I quickly sort the Syndicates in year order and fiddle with the oldest one until I can get it on.

Mini-Syndicates held a finite amount of information for secure transport and the only thing on this one is a video file.

I play it and it shows me as a  toddler  standing in  the Closet. It’s not the exact Closet but it has  the same cot, folding chair and crate. Toddler me is alone in the Closet, clinging to Starlight the Unicorn, crying and slamming my little palms against the walls, screaming “Dada” and then “nanny” and then “sissy” over and over and over again.

I fast forward and the video just goes on, a blue timer in the corner telling me that toddler me was in the Closet by myself for at least an hour. Even though I know it’s me and that I’ll be okay I can’t watch anymore. And I focus on that one word toddler me keeps repeating.

Dada

I play the next Syndicate and it’s another Closet recording of me as a toddler. The lens is positioned at my height and I’m sitting on my guardian’s lap screaming and flailing. His face isn’t in the frame but I can tell it’s him because of the hair and the tattoos. He’s folding my ear forward and another man, whose body was digitized out of focus comes into the frame and starts tattooing me behind my ear with a laser.

I touch the spot on myself. Suddenly having a weird sense memory of that day. In the video it looked like I was crying because of the tattoo laser but I’d really been crying because he’d taken Starlight the Unicorn from me.

The rest of the Syndicates are recordings of the Closet on my birthday and each recording had me suffering in pain while he sings the happy birthday song and that same blue timer running nonstop in the corner.

It had never occurred to me he was recording our sessions and with how shitty I looked because of the poison and the way it was shot and edited with the timers...it looked like I never left the Closet. Like I had been locked and suffering in there my entire life.

On the video from last year, when he starts caressing the back of my head to show the tattoo behind my ear  to the camera his puts his lips on my hair. I was so sick from the poison I hadn't known he'd done that.

He carefully lifts my hand and creepily puts my middle finger in his mouth. And then another another timer starts. This one is a red countdown timer counting down to my 19th birthday.

Holy shit.

My guardian was a fucking psychopath. My real parents were out there and he was goading them with these videos. And every adult on this ship could be in on it.

I had to go to the one adult I knew I could get to turn on him.

I tear out of the room and scramble up the 10 flights of stairs up to Aunt Isla’s suite. I take the stairs so I don’t run into anyone on the elevators. I’m still holding the knife I used to unhinge my guardian’s door  but figured I should keep it. Breathless, I scan myself into Aunt Isla’s suite, her suite was bigger. It made for a small family because she’d had a fiancé for a while but then they broke up and  he left the ship.

Aunt Isla  worked from a home studio on the second floor loft. I move cautiously up the stairs. Rock music was playing and she’s hunched over her tri-screen.

She doesn’t notice me as I slowly start to come up behind her, extending the knife. I want to have the knife point atleast at the back of her neck, just to show her I mean business but she turns her spinning chair too soon and screams when she sees me approaching.

She signals the music off. “What are--”

“Tell me who my parents are!,” I demand, waving the knife at her threateningly.

She stands with her hands up, she starts sobbing and the back of my eyes start to get warm too.

Aunt Isla was always nice to me, she treated me like I was her equal and she even let me call her my Aunt. I hated what I was doing but I also knew she and my guardian disagreed on a lot. If there was someone I could break it would be her.

“Sky….d-did you do something to him ? Did you do something to Lex ?,” she asks through tears.

I don’t respond.

“Oh, god--,” she cries, her voice thick. “Oh, god what did you do to him--”

“Nothing.” My first few tears start to fall. “Just tell me who I am. Who are my parents ? ...Please, Aunt Isla, please. I know he’s lying about not knowing... I saw the recordings.”

“Recordings ?”

“I saw them, I know he’s recording what happens--in the Closet.”

“Closet ? What--I don’t know anything about that but if you show me--”

“Okay. Come on.” I say. “I’m showing you now.”

“Let me--”

“Now,” I say and she nods.

Most of the Star employees are in school or their offices and the halls are empty. A few people see us both red-eyed and  ask Aunt Isla if everything is okay as we take the elevator down but she smiles and says it’s fine. When I open the door to the cabin, she stares at the mess I’d made taking down my guardian’s door.

I bring her into his bedroom and take out the mini-syndicates. I show her the one from last year, she barely looks at it for a second before calling the image away.

“Fucking  hell,” she says under her breath, dropping to sit onto the bedroom floor.  She bends her knees and puts her head between her knees like she’s doing one of her yoga poses  and then roughly scrubs her hands up her face.

“...Fuck it...You’re the missing Maxwell baby,” she  whispers into her hand. “Really. Your birthday is different from his because we--I mean they, really they-- took 14 months off to throw off investigators.”

The Maxwell Baby.

I wanted to believe it the moment I saw the tape of me calling for my Dad but I needed to hear someone else say it.

There wasn’t a teen boy in foster care who hadn’t imagined the possibility that he was the missing Maxwell baby.

Baby Phoenix Maxwell had  gone missing  a few weeks after President Kenneth Maxwell was inaugurated president. No one knew where he went or how he was taken. It wrecked the entire Maxwell family and he'd ended his term before it began. Most people thought the Maxwell baby was dead, including the authorities, but the Maxwell family was still looking and were up to  an  $50 million reward for his return.

But how had my guardian stolen a baby from the then president of the Federation ?

I’m about to ask Aunt Isla this when we hear  the front door of the cabin whir open.

“Take that fucking uniform off--,” an unfamiliar voice orders from the common room.

“Please fuck me--,” I hear my guardian moan

“How about I shove my cock in your mouth to shut you up ? Take that fucking uniform--”

I hear kissing as  my guardian and the Head of Security, Deputy Colfax Dawes come into view in the space where the door of his bedroom once was.

Deputy Dawes’ pants are unzipped and my guardian’s scrub top is ripped and pulled around his waist. Deputy Dawes stops suddenly and makes a horrified sound when he sees me, my guardian turns and I see nothing but rage in his  icy eyes as he surveys the damage; his door destroyed,  a crying Aunt Isla sitting on the floor, me with his secret Syndicates and a knife in my hand.

“Get out,” my guardian orders  Deputy Dawes, pushing the man off of him.

“No...wait,” Aunt Isla says to Deputy Dawes. “Sky’s upset and he has a knife I think--”

“They took me from my family--,”  I begin

“Shut up,” my guardian yells at me, putting a finger to my face  and then turns to Deputy Dawes. “Go.”

“He hit me,” I say.

“I apologized,” he says quickly. “Get out, Colfax. Now.”

Deputy Dawes gives the scene a single sweep before backing out. Which was crazy because he was the head of security, he should be arresting them. Or atleast asking questions.

“Sky, I can explain. Please put the knife down now--,” my guardian orders calmly, turning towards me.

“I’m the missing Maxwell baby ?,” I yell.

He gives Aunt Isla a withering look before turning back to me, gesturing for me to give him the knife.

"Please--"

"No!," I say, flailing the knife in the air just to be threatening.

But it doesn't work on him.

He approaches me anyway and I just revert to the obedient  kid I’d always been  because before I can think he  takes the knife by the hilt and tosses it aside.

He takes it with his left hand and I stare at the tattoo of the bright sun bird going up his arm.

It wasn’t a sun bird on his arm, it was a phoenix.

“I'm Phoenix Maxwell. You knew. You lied to me--,” I start but before I can get a word out he grips my arm and pulls me out of his bedroom.

We're almost the same height, I should be able to overpower him but I realize what is happening too late as he leads me out of his bedroom, shoves me into the Closet and locks the door.

A/N

I know this had a lot of info and exposition dump, but the rest should be less of that. I say this serial may not be canon because I'm not sure if this would really be Haley's best revenge.

Burn or as I refer to it All of My Characters Are Old Now!!! (AOMCAON!!!) started because I had this idea of a somber short story where Maxwell’s kids were older and had lived their whole lives in a small  floating satellite by themselves in a Room by Emma Donoghue type situation. But then it kind of swam in my head and evolved and  I was going to write just the Closet scene without ever using any names and make that a little flash fic but then it swam in my head some more and I wandered what if it only looked like he was locked and tortured in a closet.

Anyway, this story got away from me and  has kind of turned into a thing now. It's like a mini-serial and it’s kind of like UL because I have no outline and no idea how to end this. I’ve just  got some key scenes I’d like to write.

Never in a million years did I think I would stretch my timeline this much.

This story has more science fiction than cyberpunk elements and you guys, science fiction is not easy. A lot of the science in here has either been fudged or completely made up.

Also, IDK if Jean Dory will make an appearance but this Vanity Fair photoshoot of 65-year-old Jeff Goldblum is how I imagine Jean. Especially the one on the left.