They took me on the day I was born, before anyone even had the chance to know me, to learn to love me. The nurse, one of them, whisked me away and took their fragile memories of me along. By the time my twin was born I was long gone from their world, their memories, never to be missed at all. It would take years for me to discover the truth of my origin, of my humanity, and by then I wasn't even sure if I had any humanity left to find.
In my earliest memory I am two, maybe three years old, and I am staring up at a solid wooden door, wondering if anything lies beyond it if there's a world outside this room. I wouldn't find out for another four years. Those first seven years of my life... Well, I don't like to think about them, and if I'm honest I successfully don't, most of the time. But sometimes, mostly in my dreams, they sneak up on me and I find myself awakening with tears streaming down my face. I don't know why, because the seven years that followed were much, much worse, but when I dream of those I don't cry.
I was fourteen when I found out that I was human, whatever that was supposed to mean. They never talked about what I was, just that I was something lesser, disgusting, unworthy of anything but their perverse curiosities. Of course, I always knew that I wasn't like them, I obviously lacked their grace, their power, their magnificence, but I had never really thought to wonder what exactly that made me. I existed to serve them, their curiosities, their whims, and wishes. I was no entity of my own, didn't even have a name to call my own until I turned fourteen and met another one like me. It was he who told me that I was human, a girl at that and that I ought to have a name as all humans do. He said I reminded him of his sister and so he decided to call me Aya. It was the first name I ever owned. His name was Darryn, and he was a year younger than me. They hadn't taken him at birth, as they had me. He had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and before he had known him his own world was gone. And so was his freedom. I was selfishly happy about that, because while he had lost everything, I had, for the first time in my life, gained something: a friend.
I didn't get to keep him for long.
One day they took him for one of their experiments and he never came back. It was the first time in my entire life that I felt loss, and that was the beginning, really of my story. I had lost my family the day I was born, but I had never known them, never understood the concept of family, and therefore never known enough to realize that loss. But I had known Daryll, had laughed with him, cried with him, learned to be human with him, and when he left me, when they took him from me, something stirred within me. Back then I didn't know what it was, but when it broke out two years later, loud and raging I had learned to call it by its name: Hatred.