She says she doesn't remember but it's a lie. She specifically recalls long calloused fingers reaching into her mind,carelessly unravelling the threads of her sanity. She is letting go, tired of the buckles around her wrists and ankles keeping her pinned to the bed.

Jedekiah's face hoovers over hers and he smiles sinisterly. "I'd like to think of this as killing two birds with one stone. You as a human who knows too much about paranormals and he," He nods over to a pale looking boy about her age or younger who is strapped to a bed like hers across the room. "He didn't quite make the cut,"

She would have been worried or scared or angry for the young boy but a numbness has washed over her due to the mental probing. Her mind was like an onion and they took their times shedding each layer of her sanity.

Jedekiah does a little gig; his happiness is out of place against the stark serious whites of the room and it makes her sick. She wants to throw up but she's more than certain they would simply let her choke on it.
He produces a huge needle filled with a cloudy brown tinged liquid and he's rambling about how this would make her better than others IF she survived. He doesn't expect her to live and she doesn't either. She welcomes her end.

He carelessly inserts the needle in her arm, scraping bone on the way down and she screams, screams because of the pain and because she will probably never see her family again, she will never finish her bucket list. She screams until it dies in her troath and she's sure the next time she uses her voice it will break under the strain.
She lies strapped to the bed and watches the limp lifeless body of the young boy get carried off and finds that can't make herself feel anything for the boy before observing a variety of emotions play out on Jedekaih's face; the misplaced awe, the giddiness and the disgust. She wonders if he has always been so transparent.

She can hear him talking to The Founder outside the cracked door.
"It's the first time anyone has ever survived. It must be the serum," Jedekiah's telling The Founder who only looks mildly interested. She lets her head lull as she watches them and a sudden violent anger surges in her. She was human for god's sake! Weren't they supposed to protect her?! and then she's screaming. Not a high pitched scared sound but a frustrated yell that comes from deep within her gut and portrays all her pain. The glass breaks all around her and she watches as the two men fall to their knees and clutch the sides of their heads.

It's blurry and cold. Suddenly way colder than she recalls and she watches the unconscious bodies on the floor. It makes her stomach twist and her heart pound. She's exhilarated and disgusted. A tugging starts in her lower stomach and she gives in to it; letting herself be shrouded in cold invisible fingers that leave a ghostly tingle over her skin and in darkness as she falls into the darkness.

##

Her father stopped asking her were she's been or why she had shown up on their front stoop unconscious after the first time when her face had turned into a grimace and she had emptied the contents of her stomach in the wastebasket in her room but he cradles her face ever so often and brushes her curls back. It had grayed at the roots and she had bleached the rest to match. Stephen had smiled weakly at it, saying she looked like Halle Berry in X-Men just with curls.

It had been difficult in school when she had returned; donned all in black and her hair pulled back in a high bun; she was dressed sensibly. In flat soled combat boots, comfortable jeans and a jacket in case she needed to run. It was like she lived in constant fear of Ultra. She was greeted with stares and speculation from her teachers and classmates. She blanched at their thoughts and ignored them.

Stephen called in sick to work more often to spend time with her. Over compensating maybe, for not being there for her. She had sifted through his thoughts which he never bothered to block from her, soothing his guilt without him even realising. It was easier to pretend she was normal when the tense awkward silences, where he'd be tempted to confirm his suspicions that it was his fault that she was taken, didn't exist.

The nights were always difficult, she had flinched when she had first seen the belts Stephen had secured to his bed post to keep himself there but now as she ran her fingers down the silk length of scarf - that was her mother's - secured to her bed post she was numb. She kept teleporting to weird places; just last night she woke up in her school's pool.

John had showed up in her room a few days later with a crooked smile and a box of her favorite cupcakes. Her brow had raised even as she took the box from him and pilfered through to find a double chocolate cupcake with a green swirl through the icing. "Did Stephen tell you?" nodding to her Favorited.
He smiled knowingly and that made her stop mid chew. "You go there every Tuesday like clockwork to study and snack."

Her stomach twisted painfully and she set the cupcake on her desk and stared at him.

"Don't tell him," Astrid said simply, her brown eyes had turned hard and unwavering and John chuckled and shook his head.

"Not my secret to tell Astrid. It's yours... I'm not going to force you," He said slowly and his forehead turned brooding, making her think he had a lot of painful secrets. She was tempted to prod at his mind but he turned his blue eyes back to her and she froze. "Ultra's not going to let you go that easily. They've been watching you since you got back. The only reason they haven't tried to grab you as yet is because they're not sure how strong you are and Jedekaih's trying to get something from Steven. When they get it that's it everyone you love is in danger."

Astrid's hands balled into fists and her jaw set and John did a double take; she wasn't the same scared little girl from before. Right now she looked ready for a fight. He recognized that lost look behind her eyes; it was the same look his own eyes held ever so often.
"What do I do?"

##

He watches as Astrid invades her father's mind. Careful not to tug at the tendrils of his thoughts that are attached to the insides of his head like an intricate web.

She had practiced, snipping memories and implanting thoughts with surgical precision but she hesitated now; a fear gripping her. He was all she had left.
A hand rested on her shoulder and she looked up into John's indecisively blue eyes.

She nodded to him before casting her eyes on her father's blank face.

"You don't have a daughter anymore. You know no one named Astrid Finch," She said as she snipped out the memories of herself. "After your wife Sarah died 10 years ago, the pain got easier. You knew she'd want you to be hap-py," Her voice caught on the word and the grip on her shoulder increased marginally giving her strength to forge on. "You've dated and opened a bakery but you want to travel and explore probably even open a franchise. Pick someplace you've always wanted to go and go. Be happy, have a family and do what you love to do,"

She keeps the memories from her early childhood, the ones that is blurred at the edges and stored with childish abandon. She smiles vaguely at the way her dad sees her. All light and walking bundle of joy. It hurts to take that away from him but it may be even more painful for her to just up and disappear on him again. He may just die of grief.

When she finished she extracted her mind from his and her whole body trembled. and tears prickled at her eyes but she refused to let them fall. John ran his hand up and down her forearm and gave her a weak smile.

"Let's go,"

She leans over to press a soft kiss into her father's forehead and then they wrapped themselves in the invisible tingle that came with teleportation and leaves a dazed Mr. Finch nodding off at the table.

##

Astrid doesn't tell Stephen good bye for selfish reasons. She writes him a letter instead, tucking it under the picture of them together on the surface of his desk. It says everything she's ever wanted to say to him but it also says nothing at all.

Her father takes up residence in , one of those U.S virgin islands, and does as he should; opens up a string of successful bakeries that lead to more opening up on other Caribbean islands. He remarries and gets a dog, a pomeranian husky he names Isabel which brings tears to her eyes because that's her middle name and she wonders if he even remotely remembers her.

Being on the run with John is a lesson in itself. She learns useful things like how to fight, how to fire a gun and use and conceal blades and things she doesn't know if she'll ever use like John's favorite color is green and he doesn't have any siblings, only a cousin who he was really close with but he died a few years ago or the fact that John's mother was Polish and English is actually his second language.

It's a whole year before she learns that his ears are sensitive and he likes it best when she sinks her blunt nails into his back and licks a trail from his neck to the edge of his jeans.

And a full year after that that her memories don't give her nightmare that makes her wake to shaking furniture and a worried John hovering over her. She learns to lock it away as far into her mind as she can. She's nowhere near alright and she's not sure if she'll ever be but it's a start.