The Conformation

“All students must complete the final test to move forward, Maria,” Principal Eli said, shaking her head in disappointment. I was always in awe of how well she mimicked our behavior. “You have caused quite some trouble in such a short amount of time. Thankfully the other students haven’t been…influenced by your disobedience.” She sat unnaturally still behind her desk as if waiting for my next outburst. But after one long year at this school— if you could even call it that—I learned the hard way to pretend.

“I still have a few days, right?”

“Most of your peers underwent our free memory extraction services. It helped them tremendously. I see in our records you have not.”

Shit.

Our plan was barely a plan, but it would have to do. My watch vibrated. 10 minutes had passed. Hopefully, I bought Jace enough time. But the longer I stayed in Principal Eli’s office, the greater my chances were of being forced into the testing room.

I stood to leave. “I’ll consider it,” I said, devoid of any emotion.

It was the biggest lesson I learned after countless hours of psychological torture, or what they called “detention”. Act like them, think like them, but never become them.

⟳

Jace waited for me in the library before morning classes, secluded within an alcove near a wall of windows. He propped his elbows on the table, slicking back hair that reminded me of sunrises and secret promises. His head lifted, the corners of his mouth rising in greeting. But the look of defeat told me we’d failed.

“My equations were right. The tech should override it,” I snapped, taking a seat next to him.

I pulled out a pocketbook. Messy handwriting covered every inch. It was filled with a makeshift map of the student sector— minus the testing room; instructions on how to work the tech I stole; and any other bits and pieces I could gather about these otherworldly beings.

"Principal Monster was being a hardass, huh?"

"It was a warning, Jace. We're running on borrowed time. They're coming for us sooner rather than later."

“It’s not your math, M. There are failsafes in the door locks.”

I sighed, “We need a badge."

“And one with the highest of clearances…but Principal Monster would notice when she can’t get past the student sector.”

“Not if there’s a big enough distraction. Not if every single alarm sounded in the building. But it has to happen today."

The overhead bell rang. “All students must proceed to their first-period class,” Principal Eli said over the speaker.

Jace kissed my forehead, “I love the way your mind works."

We filed into the hall with the other students, leaving behind our sanctuary for the tiny hope of freedom.

⟳

I shielded my locker from the single hallway camera as I fidgeted with the alien tech. The chaos of transitions between classes provided me enough invisibility to work on rigging the alarms. Classrooms are too well guarded with cameras watching your every move. Here, in the halls, I was safer.

“If I have to hear about our noble mission to save all life forms through the creation of one uniform being one more time I’m going to end it all. No need to escape,” Jace said mockingly. He leaned against the adjacent locker.

I chuckled. It was always such savior bullshit they spewed, hiding the real ultimate goal. Control.

“How’s it going?" he said, placing a hand on my lower back. I leaned into the touch, into his strength and warmth.

“I have one last alarm and then we should be good to go. All we need is a badge, an exit, and it’s showtime. Easy.”

"Well, I've got an idea for that badge. We'll figure out the rest. Together."

"Be careful, Jace. I love you."

He kissed me deeply. The whole hallway— the whole world, melted away. The bell rang again, signaling our last morning class and shaking us back into our cold reality.

⟳

My teacher stood at the whiteboard, droning on and on about a universal language we were supposed to be proficient in. My leg shook nervously under the desk, watching the clock move closer to noon. I wondered how exactly Jace was planning on stealing the badge.

A student from another classroom slammed open the door, interrupting our endless lecture, "We're almost at an 100% pass rate for our class!"

He kneeled by the desk of another student near the front, "You should've seen the shit he did. No wonder Principal Eli wanted to be done with it."

No, no, no.

I knew there was only one person he could be referring to.

What had Jace done? Had he gotten caught? Would our plan still work? I could still set off the alarms. We would figure it out somehow, together. He promised.

I jumped out of my seat, "Where is he."

⟳

“JACE,” I yelled across the cafeteria. The bustle of students froze—their collective stares on me. But I didn’t care because he was there, waiting in the lunch line like everything was normal. He looked the same as he did this morning. I bolted towards him. My shoes slapped the terrazzo floor, echoing in the deafening silence.

I grabbed him in an embrace, feeling for any injuries. A badge was tucked into his pocket. He got it.

He overlapped his hands in mine. “Nothing changed”, I whispered in reassurance.

“The testing room door leads to an external exit. Use the badge. I couldn’t leave you, M, but our world isn't for me anymore. Not after what I've done," he said under his breath.

“Wh—"

His arms, the same ones that hugged me tight and told me we would make it out of here together, shoved me to the ground. “Get off,” he said, his voice filled with nothing but hollow malice.

I crammed my hands into my jacket, hiding the last gift he would ever give me. “Jace, please. What happened? What did they do to you?”

“They didn’t do anything but save us from ourselves. You’ll understand once you’ve gone through it too, Maria.”

“You sound just like them. This isn’t you.”

“It always was, we were just fools not to see it.”

“See what?”

He smirked. His head fell back in laughter. The silent cafeteria seemed to thunder in response. As if they were all in on a joke I wasn’t aware of.

“Don’t you wonder why we have not fallen sick since we’ve been here? That there are no mirrors in our dorms? That our classes this year only focused on education instead of anything physical? They were easing us into it until we were ready.”

A crowd gathered, watching in anticipation with eager, hungry eyes. But I wasn’t the same girl that was petrified on her first day here. I had to become stronger, so whatever they were planning, I wasn’t about to go down without a fight. I tried to shove my way through the crowd, but they didn’t budge. The sheer volume of students had somehow grew in size from mere moments ago, making it impossible to escape.

“Let me go,” I said, pushing through layer after layer of bodies.

An elbow to the stomach thrust me back into the eye of the storm. Jace shattered the glass cup he was holding and picked up a shard.

“You’re not making any sense, Jace. I’m not going to fight you,” I said.

“You’re so stubborn,” he said and slashed at my body. I reached up instinctively, searing pain erupting from my arm. Hot liquid slid across my skin.

“Look,” he said in triumph.

I grazed my hand over the gaping wound. Blood stained my fingertips. But it wasn’t blood. It was a mulberry-colored liquid that seeped out of me, coursing through my veins.

“Wh-what is this? I’m human. I’m human,” I repeated. My vision tunneled, the darkness growing like it would eat me whole.

“No,” Jace paused, letting the silence ravage my thoughts. I remembered my mother’s voice lulling me to sleep. I remembered the lush forest behind our house that I'd spent hours exploring with my sister. Those memories were real. I was real. “You are not. None of us are or ever were human.”

Jace scanned the crowd, voice booming louder, “We are so much more. We are gods!”

Cheers erupted. Waves of students crashed into each other in a frenzy. Two students who took the test first in our class flanked me. I had known one of them before, Josh. He was kind and warm, and yet the greasy smile he wore was the complete opposite of all he had been.

“What have you all become?” I spat. “You’ve let them mold you into monsters.”

“Let’s end this now. You’re the only holdout of our class,” Josh said. “Tsk, tsk, you’re making us look bad.”

The rest was a blur. Students swarmed into the hall of the testing room, my escorts pushing me to meet my fate. I vaguely recalled screaming and clawing, trying to get anywhere but here.

This was not the plan.

Jace’s name remained on my lips. Reddish-gold hair gleaned at the edge of the crowd. I yelled his name again, praying I could see his face one last time. But then he was gone.

I would face this alone.

⟳

Change was inevitable. I held off for as long as I could. Eventually the day would come, whether I wanted it to or not. But I never thought it would happen like this.

When I stepped into the dimly lit room, a blast of realization as strong as the overhead AC overtook me. There were no cameras, no teachers, no audience. Just me and a growing shape shuffling closer from the corner of the room. A girl in tattered, bloody heart-shaped pajamas. My favorite birthday gift from last year. Familiar hazel green eyes pierced through the darkness, blinking rapidly. She spoke a language I no longer knew— of unfaltering innocence. Even now, in an unknown, terrifying situation, faced with an unrecognizable version of herself, her first reaction was that of compassion.

“Are you okay?” she said, a trembling finger pointed at the deep cut on my forearm.

I could read every emotion so close to the surface, plastered across her face. She had not been forced to abandon who she was like I did— to show nothing but a mask of steel to survive. I couldn’t look at her, instead focusing on the floating slab of gold in the center, and the implications of the gun laying atop it.

“The Conformation begins now” a robotic voice rang from a speaker on the wall.

As she looked up at the speaker in confusion, I darted for the gun.

“Both of us will not make it out of here alive,” I told her, keeping my voice level and calm. I was reminded of the old oak tree in my childhood home— no, her childhood home. It was never mine to begin with. And yet, the roots of her very essence dug so deep, that even morphed and mutilated, I clung to it.

”P-Please, don’t kill me,” she pleaded. “I have a family, a little sister, a-“

“I will buy you just enough time to escape. They’ll see a body and in the darkness think it’s you. So you must leave now and follow the instructions hidden in my jacket pocket. And use the badge, it will grant you unrestricted access,” I stripped off my uniform and tossed it to her, “What I know is that we are still on Earth. They hid us from the world in plain sight. Once you leave this school, the rest is up to you. Find them. Find our…your family.”

It was not my escape I had been planning all along— it was hers. It was not my world, and I would not make the same choice everyone else did. Tears welled in my eyes as I pressed the barrel to my temple, knowing I would never see that oak tree, but hoping she would.