Where… am I…?

  This dark room… was it a laboratory? Why was she here? Moving any more than her head felt like a monumental task. Was she supposed to be here? How did she get here? She was…

  She was…?

  Who… am I?

  She could recall her name, but everything else was so blurry. Memories of what she thought she knew slipped through her fingers like sand. She lived in a house, but what street was it? She attended a school, but its name had already faded away. She had a friend… didn't she? What was her name? What was her face? She lived with… did she live with her mom? Erina reached and reached, but so little was there to grasp, and everything she didn't focus on was gone by the time she looked again.

  Her fingers slipped off the edge of the capsule. Erina tried again, gripping it for support to pull herself up and forward and out of the capsule. Her leg buckled on the first step. Her grip kept her from falling, but her heart felt like it dropped another meter on its own.

  Erina wobbled onto her two feet, and stood until her body no longer shook of its own accord. She took another step, more surely this time. The next was better still. Her head remained foggy, the floor ever so slightly tilting back and forth under her like a ship adrift at sea.

  She looked again at her surroundings. Those machines… something bubbled up from a distant corner of her memory. Yes, that one was life support and vital monitoring. The monitor displayed all zeroes now that nobody was hooked up to it. That one beside it was the suspension liquid purifier. Over there was a mana converter…

  Without knowing how, Erina knew these machines. Each one she looked at seemed to flicker momentarily—blinking their lights back at her, acknowledging her. Did they know her as well?

  Her gaze settled on one screen in particular. EMERGENCY RELEASE COMPLETE, it said.

  She looked at the capsule again. She came out of it, didn't she? Maybe, if she stepped inside again…

  A series of thumps from the ceiling startled her. "Sir!" a rough male voice called out, muffled between heavy footsteps. "This where you at? God damn, this place goes on forever…!"

  Erina turned away from the capsule, only now noticing the two bodies sprawled out on the staircase with blue wisps floating in lazy circles above them. Hundreds of tiny black burn marks dotted the stairs and walls, so numerous she could never even begin to count them.

  "Looks like a warzone down here…" Grumbling, a man stomped down the stairs and came face to face with Erina. A schoolgirl? he thought.

  Delinquent? she thought.

  Erina saw his eyes flick down to the bodies on the floor, then back to her with far more anger. His arm came up to strike her—

  She didn't think. Erina flicked her hand, waving a tiny green orb into existence. It stretched into a line, rotated, and replicated, expanding in the blink of an eye into a glowing dragon curve fractal that caught the man in the stomach and blew him to the ceiling with a resounding clang.

  Erina flinched back as he crashed down, dispersing the fading particles of light. Spitting curses, the man began to rise. Her gaze moved again to the countless marks on the walls, stirring something from the depths of her mind. Erina didn't fight it, only moving as her body wanted to remember.

  She let herself twirl, drawing a spiral of energy into being. It straightened and sharpened as she grasped it—a spear formed from solid light.

  Glaring at her, the man swiped his arm behind him. The lantern at his shoulder broke, releasing the wisp inside as the container clattered to the floor. The blue flame turned an angry red and darted away, up and out of the chamber.

  Erina barely saw him crossing the several yards of distance. Unprepared, she realized it was too late to do anything.

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  Pain flared through her stomach, hot and fierce… but Erina didn't look away from her attacker. In her peripheral, she could see what happened. A dim pulse of faint green radiated, spreading over her body from the fist that met her—not his energy, but her own mana burning itself away to deaden the physical blow.

  The dull green of her hair lit to a vibrant shade. A spell circle formed at her feet as she staked the spear into him at point blank range and willed it to multiply from within. The hundred branches erupted violently through the other side, spearing even the ceiling and adding another several hundred blast marks to the chamber.

  Erina swiftly drew back, clutching her stomach and panting as the third body dropped to the floor. As the pain and adrenaline wore off, she carefully approached again and nudged him with her foot. No response.

  She examined more closely. Burn marks and blackened holes on the clothes, but no total perforation of his skin and flesh. There was a small pin on his chest. He still seemed to be breathing, albeit shallow and labored. At this close, she could read enough of his energy signature to tell she wasn't the only one using a mana shield. His ether, that faintly glowing liquid, stained the points of impact and streaked the roof amidst the burn marks.

  …Energy signature. Mana shield. Ether. The terms came to her on their own. Erina racked her brain. Dim, distant memories bubbled to the surface—studying in her room, reviewing terms like this. Pacing in her backyard, honing spells like this.

  Her gaze wandered to the blackened marks covering the ceiling. Though she could make a simple transient weapon by fashioning her mana, that wasn't her true ability. Its name rose to the front of her mind on its own—the gift afforded to her in some form, at some time she couldn't recall.

  Reiteration.

  The power to turn back and repeat what had once been done. A simple command to split the end of her spear, stacked on itself so many times over, created branches of lightning.

  Snippets floated around in her head, rising and falling faster than she could catch them. Recursion… fractals… exponential growth… targetable definitions…

  Distant voices echoed down through the doorway, too far to make out anything distinct. Staying here didn't seem like a good idea. Erina set foot on the main deck of the unit, looking out over the primordial sea. A light blue spell circle blinked to life as she exited, several feet in diameter. That wasn't hers.

  She looked around a moment longer. The rays of light shining from the ceiling and agitated spotlights of the gang members illuminated the catwalks.

  She gingerly stepped over the border of the runes to stand in the midst of the spell circle. A sudden lurch, and then the circle began rising, carrying her with it away from the primordial sea.

  The men searched for the cause of the alarm that sent the red wisp back up to them, pacing quickly from unit to unit and jumping up and down across the catwalks. Even so, Erina counted less than a dozen on the catwalks at any time. Most were too busy scouring the units to patrol.

  The cyan circle faded as she made the small hop to the catwalk. Erina didn't particularly know where she wanted to go—only that she wanted to leave—but that, it seemed, was enough. She let her feet carry her down the catwalk, away from the spotlights, into the depths of the vast lab lit only by faint rays of light. An elevator waited for her in the dark. Old, as exposed as the catwalk, and a little wobbly, but the panel flickered on at her touch, and it brought her closer to where she felt she had to go.

  Erina didn't feel nervous. Rather, there was something soothing about walking the laboratory. She didn't run into dead ends. At each intersection, she picked her way with no real rhyme or reason, but didn't feel like she was guessing. Her fingers glided along the railing as she ascended a staircase she couldn't quite explain how she found.

  Had she been here before? Try as she might, nothing came to the surface. She could only draw up faint images of a classroom, the sunlit sky, and a warm house.

  She tried focusing harder, searching for any events. Nothing of any holiday came to mind. She couldn't recall what she got last Christmas or wanted for this one. She didn't remember anything of the winter… had she ever seen snow? She couldn't remember what happened on her birthday. She couldn't remember her birthday.

  Erina tried and tried, but every effort was for naught. She knew the memories had to be there, felt as if she was on the verge of recalling more any second… but nothing came. Why couldn't she remember? Did someone take away her ability to remember? …Was there anything to remember?

  A sharp crunch of a stray circuit board under her foot jolted her back to reality. After such a quiet walk, any small sound seemed a hundred times louder. Erina looked around anxiously, but it seemed all of the men were searching deeper into the lab. She stood on the threshold between the surface bunker and the main lower laboratory, in the frame of the massive destroyed door.

  Erina turned to look at the lab one last time, away from the searchlights below. The cracked ceiling, the light shining down, the rusted and broken units stirred an odd pang in her heart. Though nobody was there to send her off, she couldn't help but feel like she was looking at someone close to her waving goodbye.

  She shut her eyes and clung to that feeling. Someone close to her… someone she knew well…

  Someone with long white hair, streaked like pale branches…

  …

  Nothing else came out.

  She opened her eyes. She couldn't stay here and reminisce forever.

  "I'll come home soon," she whispered.

  Erina turned her back on the laboratory, and departed for the surface.