My throat wakes me. It is agonisingly sore, slightly worse than the pain from my shoulder – until I try to move. With my eyes still shut I groan. A muscle or something similar feels gone and each tiny movement of my arm brings waves of pain through the nerves.

‘It was dislocated.’ The voice is vaguely familiar. I realise I am in a bed, and judging by the smell, in a hospital. I open my eyes and recognise the detective, Hayden. He sees my confusion as I shift my view over and spot Mac, who manages to look both terribly stressed and relieved at the same time.

‘Your shoulder, it was dislocated. They’ve popped it back in, but it will be very painful and stiff for a few days. Do you remember me?’

I try to say yes, but have to stop and clear my throat. Mac stands and offers me a glass of water, which I take gratefully and sip before replying.

‘Hayden, right?’

‘That’ll do.’ The cop falls silent. He is sitting directly in front of me, Mac has retaken his seat to my right and my left shoulder is the damaged one. Without moving my neck laterally I take another sip of water.

‘I didn’t think you’d need any more water for a while, you swallowed half the ocean.’ Mac grins, trying to lighten the mood.

‘Unfortunately the salt tickles the back of the throat a bit.’ I stay very still and stare at Hayden. Despite maybe Flame, I can see no real reason for Hayden to be holding a vigil beside my hospital bed. After a few minutes the cop clears his throat.

‘How much do you remember?’ Hayden asks. I look to Mac cautiously, and Mac nods.

‘Be honest, mate.’

‘I don’t remember dislocating my shoulder.’

‘You took two impacts to the shoulder. The second did the most damage and, according to your mentor, it was from when you slammed into the side of the ship. You also have a mild concussion and, like Mac said, swallowed a lot of water. But, I’m reliably informed that you are a hero and that you saved his life.’ Hayden nods to my left side as he says this. I haven’t looked to the left, given the muscles in my neck have also had a workout, but I do now and see Flame right next to my bed. He has his head down on the bed itself and appears to be dozing.

‘Do you know who he is?’ Hayden continues.

‘Not really, no. First I knew of him he was on the yacht and we were out to sea. I was calling him Flame, ‘cause of the mark on his hand, but he seems to be mute.’

‘You saw him at the alley earlier though.’

‘Yes, briefly.’

‘What else did you see in that alley?’

‘Not much. I was trying not to.’

‘You saw the bearded guy that gave me this?’ Hayden points to a cut on his head.

‘Yes.’

‘Was he on the yacht?’

‘No.’

‘There were reports from the ship that there was a large man present.’

‘Well, yeah, but he wasn’t on the yacht.’

‘Can you explain why Flame has your lifejacket and won’t let go?’

‘Umm, no.’ I answer. I hadn’t noticed that little detail and curse myself inwardly for being so dopey. Normally I would have a much better read on my surroundings, especially before speaking to a cop.

‘Look, Andy, Mac explained your situation to me and I am not going to intervene. But you need to be honest with me.’

Mac has spoken to Hayden about my identity – or lack thereof? I look to Mac, who nods. ‘Hayden has been very understanding of our situation, Andy. And I think that whatever you’ve stepped into here, you’re in over your head.’

‘I agree,’ I say. Flame taps my arm.

‘Oh, hi.’ Flame bows his head to me and clasps his hands together. It looks like he’s praying, but I think he’s saying thanks. The momentary distraction gives me a chance to think – long enough to know that I need to clear my mind properly before continuing the current conversation.

‘Hayden, sir, I appreciate your position on all of this, but I can’t make sense of it at the moment and my mind is still muddled. Can I talk to you later?’

I don’t want to lose possession of the diary before I’ve taken a look at it, and I wasn’t lying about the whole situation confusing me. I need some time and a little information.

‘I think it may be a good idea, Detective,’ Mac says after Hayden hesitates. ‘He has suffered a concussion.’

‘Promise me that you will talk, if not to me, than at least to Mac. Especially if you’re feeling overwhelmed,’ Hayden says – after considering Mac’s statement for a moment. ‘I’ll leave you to it. Flame, do not leave without talking to myself or my partner. We still need to go through what happened in the alley. I understand you might need some time too, however, after nearly drowning.’

Hayden nods to me and Flame and leaves the room, heading down the hall.

‘I send you out for a few simple errands and you return with a straggler, some crazy magician chasing you and a half-sunk yacht. Glad I only sent you for a few hours,’ Mac says with a grin, but he looks tired.

‘How is the yacht?’

‘The wave that nearly killed you threw the yacht onto the ship. It is salvageable, but it will take time.’

‘I feel terrible about it.’

‘Don’t, boy. You did all the right things. Your documents are in the vest – yes, I checked, and I saw that diary. The yacht will repair. Right now, I’m more worried about you and where that diary came from.’

‘I’ll tell you as soon as I understand myself.’

‘Ok. Get some rest. You, Flame or whatever your name is, you’re coming with me. We’ll chat to the police and let my boy get some rest, understood?’

Flame has no option but to agree with Mac. Mac looks like he’s descended straight from the Vikings – despite his red-brown beard and hair being neatly trimmed. His skin is tanned and he’s got a solid build from many years at sea. As he guides the much smaller teenager out the door, Mac turns back and grins at me. The lifejacket remains beside me. Despite the obvious opportunity to investigate the diary while alone, I find myself fading back to sleep before I get the chance.

Happily, when I wake up some time later I am still alone.  I pick the diary out of the lifejacket and, with a shaking hand, remove a slim, white glove with a symbol of a lightning bolt on it. I stare blankly at the glove for a moment before opening the cover of the diary. A warning spans the first page.

If this is not yours, place it back where you found it and forget you saw it. If someone knows you have it, drop it and run. Run faster and longer than you ever have and never stop.

I wonder if I’d seen a similar message in the other diary. I can’t remember, but I have certainly been running so fast that even my memory cannot keep up. Shrugging off the warning – my memories are more important – I turn to the next page. It is dated just over two years ago.

It is my thirteenth birthday. Two days ago I found out I am something called a “controller”. My parents have inherited a glove, a very powerful glove, that has control over the element lightning. It is their responsibility to monitor and, if required, alter the levels of lightning throughout the world. This is both the easiest and hardest element to control. Lightning very rarely requires manipulating – it is unaffected by global warming and rarely creates big problems for humans. Sometimes, in places like Australia, intervention is required when it can spark deadly bushfires. But lightning is also the hardest to control – it takes a very strong person to do anything with it.

I also found out that, though my parents hold the glove, it will pass to me upon their deaths. Just as it was passed to them when the last bearer died. It arrived in the mail with a diary and a note. My parents are still reading the diary, but they say it is strange that it was mailed. Normally the “guardian” would bring it to the new bearer and explain the responsibilities. How the old bearers knew it would be passed to us is a mystery.

I re-read the last paragraph slowly. If the girl has the glove now, then her parents must have died prematurely. I turn to the final page of the diary, curious. She was half-dead last time I saw her, after all.

I have tracked down the other four but he is tracking me. The Guardian. He has killed all the parents and previous controllers and now only us kids remain. He has some gloves in his possession, this I know. Flame, my companion, is mute because the Guardian used the air glove to change the way he breathes. Flame lost his glove just before he found me.

I must go. He is coming. He wants the gloves for himself and total control over the elements. If I die and you, the new controller, are reading this – HE MUST NOT HAVE MY GLOVE.

She knows where the others are. If I remember a diary like this one, then surely my friend must have been a controller. I tuck the glove back into the diary and climb out of my hospital bed. The drip in my arm has been removed now, while I was asleep I guess, and aside from a sling holding my painful shoulder still, I’m feeling relatively good. The sling, which is dark blue and strapped around my chest and across my other shoulder, provides a very easy place to store the diary.

I take a few uneasy steps towards the door before my blood pressure stabilises. Mac appears suddenly and looks at me, a slight smile on his face. Hayden is beside him.

‘Feeling better?’ Hayden asks.

‘I need to talk to the girl. Please.’

‘What do you know?’

‘Nothing yet. But she might know something about me. Please.’

‘She has not spoken to us at all yet,’ Hayden says with an eyebrow raised.

‘Surely it is worth a try, for Andy,’ Mac says. Hayden relents. I don’t know what they talked about when I was unconscious, but they seem to have a mutual respect for each other.

‘Sure. Let’s go speak to her.’

Hayden guides me down the hall with a hand on my shoulder. The gentle touch gets me through the door and into the girl’s room – June, who is stationed at the door, looks seriously irritated by Hayden’s intervention. She stays at the door as I enter and Hayden releases me to speak to her. I hear the first part of their hushed whisper.

‘You were supposed to be questioning him, not babysitting.’

My eyes are only for the girl, however. She is staring at me with a look somewhere between curiosity and disdain. Flame is beside her, his hand resting next to her elbow. She is probably quite pretty, but at the moment both her eyes are black and there are stitches across her chin. I shove Flame up a little and sit beside them, showing her the diary in my sling. Her face visibly hardens but she says nothing. After a long, awkward silence I speak.

‘I know I have your property, and I am sorry. Truly. I wouldn’t be in this damned hospital if I hadn’t stuck my nose in it. But please hear my reasons.’

I hesitate, looking at her for something to go off.

‘My name is Andy.’

She nods slightly but doesn’t say anything.

‘I work on a ship with Mac.’ I point to my mentor. ‘I stowed away there almost 18 months ago, searching for a second chance at life and somewhere safe to sleep. After the crew found me and beat me, Mac took me under his wing. I got my second chance. Before the ship I lived on the street. I don’t know how long for, and I don’t remember anything from before it. I don’t even remember my surname, or what Andy is short for. I think I am about sixteen.’ I shoot a sheepish look to Mac. I had forgotten that Hayden and June were in the room. June is glaring at me, but Hayden nods at me to continue.

‘And I think I have been on the streets for five years, at least. I was ready to commit to my life on the sea, and I owe it to Mac to try. But when I saw that diary, I recognised it. I had a flashback of my hand, and my best friend’s hand, on the cover of a very similar diary and a promise to keep the secret. It’s the first time I’ve remembered anything of my past. I was hoping you could shed some light on who my friend was, or who I am, or who my family is. Anything. The last page said you’d tracked down the other kids, like Flame. Maybe you know my friend?’

‘This symbol. The one on the cover. What was it?’

Hayden straightens noticeably and June takes a step further into the room as the girl speaks for the first time. Her voice is a little raspy from lack of use, but I get the point.

‘Uh, circular, with fractures on it.’

She sighs and prepares to say something, but June interrupts.

‘What is your name, girl?’

Hayden, Mac, Flame and I all glare at the policewoman, who seems none the wiser. The girl ignores the cop, but not the question.

‘You may call me Spark. The symbol and the diary you saw belonged to the one we call Stone, the Earth controller.’

‘Hah, listen to these kids! Drew, seriously. Girl! What is your name, how old are you, and how did you come to be here! We must know if we are protect you and to charge the man who attacked you – or was it provoked?’

I only have ears for Spark. The arrogant cop is beyond my notice now, though I think Hayden shushes her.

‘Belonged?’

‘Did you read enough? The diaries are passed through each controller. There is a Stone now, but he has been a controller for a mere year. He has never held his glove – it was lost before he could receive it. In fact, his father, controller for several years, never held the glove either.’

I see a room filled with blood through a tiny gap in a wall. The sight rocks me hard – this is something I not only witnessed, but something that terrified me so badly then that it still does now. A room full of immense violence, somehow connected to me. This is where the glove of the earth was lost – and my friend’s life. I am gripped by the urge to run, again, and I nearly do. When I finally refocus on the room, I realise Mac is kneeling beside me and gripping my hand.

‘You remember, don’t you? Your friend is gone, I am sorry,’ Spark says, touching my sling-covered elbow. ‘But that is the reality of controllers. You should leave now, you have your answers. Flame thanks you, too, for saving his life. He would like to repay the debt. You are better off away and without us, though. This is not your fight.’

‘How did Flame . . .?’

Spark points to a notepad.

‘Oh, duh.’ I am saved from any further embarrassment by the Guardian, who bursts through the door and tackles Hayden. Mac dives on me, dragging me down by my injured shoulder. I yelp in pain and surprise, but am thankful to be on the ground and out of sight when the Guardian turns his attention to June. She tries to taser him but ends up on the ground clutching her knee.

The Guardian is moving towards us. The glove, not the diary, is what is important, I realise as I am gripped by a cold fury. My best friend was murdered in front of me –or at least, I think so – and it’s likely that this man had something to do with it. Trusting my blue sling to hide it, I slip the glove over my hand. It tightens around my fingers and, with just a little showing, looks like a bandage. Seconds later I am pulled to my feet, Mac thrust aside. He looks ready to throw some wild punches, but I doubt even my mentor could defend against this giant and hold up my hand to halt him.

‘You again. Who are you?’

‘I am nobody. You put me in hospital with her, hardly my fault!’

This earns a strong punch to the jaw, but it isn’t the worst I’ve had in a life of beatings. It does, however, force the diary loose.

‘You had the diary.’

‘Yes. I pinched it. That’s why I am here. The cops are making me return it.’

The Guardian looks around the room and only sees agreement. No one is going to antagonise the monster.

‘Why did you pinch it?’

‘It looked valuable.’

‘Did you find a glove?’

‘A glove? Like, a glove that you wear? What colour would it be? I didn’t see any clothing.’ I am dropped with a look of disgust and I back into Mac, staying close to my mentor as the Guardian turns on Spark.

‘Where is it?’

‘You cannot control it anyway, you have already seen this. It burns you.’

‘Where is it? I will not ask again.’

‘Lost. It was with the diary before and now it is gone. Perhaps it went into the ocean when you tossed that boy into it.’

The Guardian snarls and spins back to me. Grabbing me, he begins to search my body, and he isn’t gentle about it.

‘I’m in a hospital gown, for Christ’s sake! Where do you think I’ve put it?’ My anger fuels my voice, but my assailant pays me no heed. He manages to lift me off the ground, swing me onto a horizontal angle and shake me. My hospital gown loses its grip on me and falls off, only to hang by my sling. The Guardian snaps the two straps holding the sling in place, allowing the gown to fall away completely and leaving me only in my boxers. I grab the gown with my gloved hand to keep the limb hidden.

‘Enough!’ Mac shouts, and delivers a kick strong enough for the Guardian to drop me. Roaring with anger, the Guardian turns but is hit in the back by June’s taser, wielded by Hayden. The two cops combine to electrocute the big man, who turns and charges them both before the voltage can take effect. With a terrifically horrifying shout, the Guardian breaks through them and runs out into the hallway, dragging the taser gun with him. I regain my feet and some degree of dignity by wrapping the gown around my waist.

The three adults are talking animatedly and seem to be deciding whether to pursue the Guardian, but I ignore them. I feel a little touch on the bare skin of my back and turn. Flame is miming something but, now that the fury is gone, I am too shocked to understand. I just stand and look at him dumbly until Spark speaks to me.

‘Where did you hide the glove?’

I offer a small smile and pull the glove off my hand. ‘I think you should have this back.’

‘You were wearing it?’

‘Yes.’

‘It didn’t burn you?’

‘No. It fitted kind of snug, though.’

Spark is looking at me with a strange expression. ‘You shouldn’t be able to do that.’

‘Uh huh. This Guardian, did he kill my friend?’

‘It is likely that he had a hand in it.’

‘Then this is my fight too, and I will do whatever I have to.’

‘No, you don’t understand. Let me explain our powers. Take water. Have you ever seen an earthquake in the ocean and gone – that should have been a tsunami? Or have you seen storm surges that are calmer than they should be? Rain at the most opportune time? Or in Flame’s element, fires that burn close to people’s homes but turn away at the last second? That is our power as controllers – we save lives by controlling the extremes of our elements. Only those who control their element can wear the glove. It rejects all others.’

‘What about the Guardian? What is he?’

‘The Guardian is supposed to ensure that we are all doing our jobs. He can wear the gloves, though he is not supposed to.’

‘So why can I wear it?’

‘I’m not sure. Perhaps you have some guardian blood.’

‘I am not related to THAT.’ The thought makes me shudder.

‘No, I am not implying that. Gloves can be passed to new bloodlines, so I assume guardians can have alternate bloodlines as well. Maybe you are an alternate.’

‘Look, Spark, we appreciate your help. But Andy, think about this. You are getting in deep, seriously deep,’ Mac says. The two cops have gone after the Guardian and Mac is standing guard beside the door.

‘I just want knowledge right now, Mac. With more information I’ll make a decision.’ He gives me a look I’ve seen before – one that states I am clearly getting the benefit of the doubt, and that there is doubt.

‘Ok, if you’re sure.’

‘Spark, tell me, what is it the Guardian wants?’

‘He wants the ultimate power. He wants all five gloves. So far he cannot control mine, but I think he has the rest.’

‘How did he gain them?’

‘The same way he took your friend’s. He kills them and takes the glove before it goes to the next owner. Despite being able to wear and use the gloves, he does not have the same power that we do. One on one combat would likely result in his injury.’

‘So how come you’re in here?’

‘Ha, ha. He had two elements with him and I had a mute kid to care for.’

Flame looks downcast at this mention. I pat his arm. ‘You’re great, Flame, you saved my life.’ The kid offers me a sad grin.

‘All five will net him absolute power. I have been gathering the other controllers to retake what is ours.’

‘Without any powers.’

‘Yes.’

‘And everyone just happened to be relatively close.’

‘Yes. Well, no, but we are drawn to this particular area because the power of the elements is stronger here than in other places. Perhaps that is why you were drawn here.’

‘I doubt it. We follow the fish.’

‘You are something different, Andy.’

‘Right.’ I turn to Mac. ‘Let’s go back to my room now, Mac, I’m exhausted.’

My mentor nods and helps me put my gown back on before we head into the hallway. Spark speaks again just before we get out the door.

‘Consider this, Andy. We could use your help, especially if you have guardian blood. Perhaps, if you help us, we could help you find out more about yourself. You could meet the current Stone. He might have the old Stone’s diary on him.’

‘Right now, Spark, I appreciate it, but I’m not sure I want to know more about my past. What I’m seeing is . . . horrific.’

Mac has his hand on my shoulder again, his touch having barely left me since I awoke in the hospital. It is quite unusual for him to be so intimate, but I appreciate every gesture. We move down the hall and I climb back into my bed, with no sign of June or Hayden. The adrenalin has worn off and I am exhausted. Reassured by Mac’s presence in the corridor, watching both rooms, I sleep soundly for the first hour before dreams begin to take hold.

Dreams about my past.