To his surprise, Seth and Frans are already waiting for Sylva in front of his desk when he arrives in the office. The young magus squints his eyes at the two and suspiciously approaches them.
“I’m pretty sure I’m not late yet,” he says as he looks at his watch, “did I do something wrong? Why are the two of you here?”
Seth smiles and hands him a cup of coffee. “Just thought you must have had a long night, that’s all.”
“So,” Frans starts, “how is the kid? Did he try anything? Did you manage to get any sleep?” she asks with a smirk.
Sylva snorts. “What, you guys came all the way to my department to gossip?” The two laugh, but don’t deny the accusation.
“To answer your question, he’s not a kid, he’s eighteen; and yes, he’s fine. He didn’t do anything last night, he was very polite, actually. So, yes, I managed to get a good night's sleep.”
“Eighteen, huh? Got kicked out from home or something?” Frans asks and lets out an understanding “Ah” when Sylva nods. “That happened to me too. I lived in my car for a few months. He’d be fine.”
Sylva rolls his eyes. “How is leaving your child to live in the street “fine”? Where I came from, parents make their children stay with them until they’re ready. That makes much more sense if you ask me.”
Frans shrugs at that. “I mean, you’re right, I can’t deny that. I’m just saying it happens to us,” then she turns to Seth, “Did it happen to you too, Seth?”
Seth smiles at the two and shakes his head. “I still live with my parents.” He pauses and looks down. “They, uh, aren’t exactly suitable to be left alone by themselves.”
The two of them nodded understandingly and pat him on the back, to which Seth only laughs and gratefully smiles at them.
“So, what are you going to do with him?” Seth asks.
“Well, apparently he was kicked out before he got his ID made, so he’s getting it today. Then, well, I was thinking of letting him stay with me until he finds somewhere else to live,” Sylva pauses and shrugs, “or he can live with me, as long as he’s willing to split the rent.”
“Well, aren’t you just nice?” Frans elbows the young magus playfully.
Ava arrives five minutes after the three of them do, perfectly on schedule. She looks well-rested and fresh, the bags under her eyes have faded quite a lot and colours have returned to her face. The girl nods to the three of them as she sits down.
Just as yesterday, Sylva activates the memory orb and states the date and time, then nods to both Seth and Frans to let them start the interrogation.
“You look great today,” Frans says, “did you sleep well?”
“I did, thank you,” Ava answers simply, giving Frans a slight smile.
Frans asks again, “How are you feeling? Do you need anything before we start?”
“I’m fine, thank you.”
Seth places an envelope on the table and pulls out the files inside it, while Sylva places the medicine bottles beside them. Ava stares at the bottles, her expression is as neutral and passive as it was yesterday.
“Do you know what these are?” Seth asks.
“The medicine,” she answers without missing a beat.
“And are these the “medicine” Father gave you every day?”
She simply nods.
“Do you know what these are?” Seth asks again.
She shrugs. “No, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re poisonous.”
Seth nods solemnly. “Why is that?”
Ava points to her neck and her abdomen. “They burn. Some more than others. Sometimes I would see children foaming at their mouth or convulsing on the floor, and sometimes- they die.”
Both Frans and Seth grunt uncomfortably, while Sylva only nods and looks down for a couple of seconds. Then, he leans back on his chair and folds his arms, looking at Ava straight in her eyes.
“Tell us about it.”
In the second year of living with Father, he started introducing a new addition to their morning routine: the morning vitamin. He told them that most of them are vitamins, while some were medicines because even though they didn’t realize it, they are all infected with a disease their enemies had spread through the air in Alkemi.
They were given the vitamins in the order of their number, and Ava still remembers the reaction of Number Two when he took his. The poor boy was violently convulsing on the floor and foam was coming out of his mouth. It was a terrifying sight that no children had ever seen before, so they began talking amongst themselves in panic.
But Father calmed the children down, telling them that the foam only means that the illness had come out of their body and that he’d be fine. He quickly moved on to the next child and acted as if nothing had happened while Number Two was still laying on the floor with his mouth foaming for all to see.
Ava remembers Sana leaning down to whisper, “After you take them, go to the creek and insert your finger to your mouth as far as you can until you throw up. Don’t give your body time to digest them.”
So that’s what they did. The drugs burned as soon as they got to her throat, and it would bring tears to Ava’s eyes. Sana, like the smart boy he was, would make up an excuse for them to be let out to the yard, and they would run as fast as they could to throw up in the creek.
Over time, she noticed how the children started disappearing and Father would jump from number to number when he was doing the roll call. He never said anything, but the children were not that stupid, either.
Slowly, as more and more children started disappearing, some children would begin talking about escape plans, and some brave souls would even attempt to escape. Alas, everyone who attempted escape would all be caught and punished, and some who were punished never came back to their bedroom from the time-out rooms. So it wasn’t long until children stopped forming an escape plan altogether.
About eight months after the morning vitamin routine was enforced, Ava’s teeth started to ache and the pain made it impossible for her to get any sleep. So, one night, she crawled into her brother’s bed and complained about her aching teeth.
Her brother conjured a very dim light onto his fingertip and checked on her teeth. “I think,” Sana said slowly, “I think it’s because of all the vomiting we do.”
In pain, Ava couldn’t help but cry and whine. “Can’t we stop throwing up the drugs, then? The vomit tastes gross and my teeth are aching. There must be another way,” she sobbed, “Brother, my teeth hurt so much.” Sana held his sister tightly, apologizing over and over to her until she fell asleep from exhaustion from crying.
The following morning, Ava woke up earlier than Sana and noticed tear marks on his face. Her heart ached at the sight, thinking about how selfish she had been the night before. Ava knew that everything he did and told her to do was for her own good and to keep them both alive, and she felt bad for crying and whining to him over small things when he was the one who had always kept them both safe.
From that day, she pretended that her toothache had magically disappeared, and when her tooth fell off to reveal a badly rotten tooth, she threw it to the roof and didn’t say anything to her brother.
“Do they still hurt now?” Sylva asks, “Here, let me check. Open your mouth, and say “Ah”.”
Ava does as she was told, eyeing Sylva curiously as the magus examines her teeth. “Sometimes they do,” she says after he’s done.
Sylva hums. “It’s a good thing you’re still growing. The one that fell off was your baby teeth, yes?” Ava nodded. “As I thought. Anyway, I can help you with this since I’m also trained in medical spellcasting, but it would hurt since I don’t have any numbing potion with me. But you can choose to go to the healer if you’d rather have them fix it for you, it shouldn’t hurt at all if you choose to do it with them.”
Ava ponders for a moment before asking, “If I choose to go to the healer, when will I get it fixed?”
“I can take you to them after today’s interrogation,” Frans offers.
“Then I would rather go to the healer, but thank you,” she says.
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