The snow falls steadily, distracting me from my lessons as I glance out the classroom window. It is cold, something that never used to bother me. Having lived in Kraków for my entire life, the winter weather has always been bearable, but this year has been particularly difficult.

The school's heating system has been malfunctioning for weeks, and no one has the money to fix it. Students have been wearing their coats in every classroom of the school, though my threadbare excuse for a jacket serves as poor protection from the cold.

I glance to the clock in the corner of the room. It is one of those clocks from the 2020s, one of the last to run off batteries instead of being solar powered.

10:05.

I will be in maths for fifteen more minutes.

The teacher is talking nonstop in Polish. He wears the most convincing fake smile I have seen in a while, seeming as though he genuinely cares about all of this.

He doesn't.

One look into his mind tells me he can't wait to get out of here. Teaching twelve-and-thirteen-year-old primary school students is driving him crazy, and all he wants is to go home for the weekend to be with his wife and child.

I can't say that I blame him. I can't wait to leave school for the day, making my way home to be with my mother and sister.

My mother.

These days, whenever I have time to think, it seems as though she is the only thing on my mind.

She hasn't been herself since my father and the twins were killed, accused of being thieves when I was the guilty one. The city patrol wouldn't listen to me, even though I begged them to. It didn't matter what I said; they always accuse the oldest first, and it didn't help matters that all three of my family members confessed.

It would have been better in the long run if they had taken me; losing one family member is much easier to cope with than losing three.

My mother would have been fine without me.

There is a knock at the classroom door, and despite myself I flinch.

Surely, this isn't who I think it is.

But it is my sister.

Milena has clearly run all the way from her secondary school, her light brown hair falling across her face and a German textbook still cradled in the crook of her arm.

"Shemik," she looks at the teacher with a pleading expression, "I need Shemik."

Milena looks calm, having mastered the skill of acting over her sixteen years of life. She looks a bit disheveled, but other than that anyone might think she was just running a bit late for something important.

Being the only one who can read her true thought process, I can tell just how afraid she is.

The neighbor stopped by our house again, the way she does every morning, to check up on our mother. The door was locked, and she didn't want to call the city patrol over nothing. The neighbor called Milena's school, but Milena forgot her key at home again.

She knows I never forget mine.

Milena is still pleading with the teacher, now speaking furiously in Polish. She is practically shouting, the volume of her voice attracting my classmates' attention as they crane their necks to stare.

The girl in front of me turns around to frown at me. She is one of the richest children in the city, the fur coat she wears clearly indicating her status. The girl has hated me for years, jealous that I always seem to end up with higher marks despite being one of the poorest students in this neighborhood.

She smirks, amused at the prospect of me somehow ending up in trouble as a result of whatever is going on.

Like the rest of my classmates, she is wondering what could possibly have happened to the Warszawskis this time. Most of our neighborhood watched the execution last month, and since then it seems as though everyone is waiting for something else to happen to us.

If I'm right, they will soon have another news headline about us.

Milena drops her textbook, and it lands on the floor with a bang. She marches across the classroom while the teacher shouts for her to calm down. She reaches me, landing a hand on my shoulder, pulling me to my feet as I collect my things.

I can feel her fear as though it is my own, and I notice the way she tries to hide her shaking.

I should have told her. She would have stayed home if I had told her this might happen.

My teacher moves to stop us, but he isn't fast enough. The two of us beat him to the door, stepping outside and sprinting down the hallway before he can decide whether or not to follow.

It is even colder outside, but now I barely notice. Milena and I take the maze of streets as quickly as we can, ignoring the snowflakes that threaten to obscure our vision..

It normally takes us fifteen minutes to reach our home from school, but today we make the trip in ten.

When we reach our rundown house, our neighbor is standing at the front door, hands in her coat pockets and looking both concerned and impatient. She isn't necessarily rich, but she has quite a bit more money than our family can ever dream of having.

I pull the key to the front door from my jacket pocket, stepping past her. I unlock the door quickly, stepping inside as Milena and the neighbor follow closely.

The house is cold. That isn't too surprising; we couldn't afford the month's payment on the utilities, so we won't have the electricity back for at least another week and a half.

Our footsteps sound unnaturally loud as we make our way into the kitchen. Even though I haven't found anything to indicate that something has happened here, I'm still incredibly unnerved. I can't stand still for more than a second, and as Milena and the neighbor move into the study, I find my feet taking me toward the stairs.

The staircase looks particularly sinister today, and I flinch when my foot finds the creaky step in the middle of the stairway.

Leaving the stairs, I feel as though I am somehow delaying the inevitable as I avoid my mother's door to check a few of the other rooms. Opening door after door, I realize that I'm not going to find her like this.

I know exactly where she is.

She'll be in her room.

Just how she planned it.

I force my feet to move in the proper direction, pulling open the door to her room as footsteps resonate on the stairs.

I find myself in the midst of my worst nightmare.

My mother is sprawled across the bed, the morning light making its way through her window. Her face is normally pale, but I've never seen it quite this ghostly before. She doesn't move as I run across her room, tripping over my own feet as I hope desperately that I'm wrong.

She has been depressed. She's thought like this before, thought of doing this before.

She still had Milena and me.

Surely she wouldn't do something like this, she would never leave the two of us alone if she had a choice.

I am nearly standing over her when I see it.

She's still holding the small bottle in her hand. I reach for her fingers, taking the empty container from her cold grip.

Her fingers shouldn't be this cold. I tell myself this is a result of the frigid temperatures as I place two fingers on her wrist.

Then it hits me.

Nothing. No pulse.

I can't read her. I can always read her.

I remember shouting for Milena. I sounded hysterical, though in my present state I couldn't bring myself to care. My sister found me curled up on the floor, still holding that empty pill bottle and whispering the same five words over and over.

"I knew this would happen."

When Milena heard me, she was furious. I remember wishing I hadn't read her mind in that instant. If I hadn't taken in her emotions, I may have convinced myself that her anger was solely a result of grief.

She easily could have been angry at our mother for what she did, and I'm sure to some extent she was, but when Milena found out that I knew what our mother was planning to do, the brunt of her anger was directed at me.

I glanced up at her, vaguely noticing the way she was shaking and how red her face was. She was furious, too angry to take on the weight of her grief in that moment.

Milena was like that sometimes; she got our father's uncontrollable anger, and I got our mother's pessimistic mindset.

"You knew this would happen! You knew and you didn't tell me?" she pulled me to my feet, shaking me as tears ran ceaselessly down her cheeks, "You're a mind reader, it's your responsibility to keep this from happening! If you knew she was going to kill herself, why didn't you tell me?"

My excuse was a pathetic one.

"She's thought about it before, Milena. I-I didn't think-"

"No, you didn't!" Milena cried, shaking me again, "Th-This is a-all your fault! Sh-She did th-this, but you... Y-You might as well have killed her! Shemik, I c-can't even look at you right now. I hate you!"

Years later, even after Milena swore she forgave me, I could never forget that conversation. I couldn't escape the image of her face, the expression she wore or the way she truly thought this was all my fault.

Milena might have denied it later, but right then she really did hate me.

I was gone for hours that day, running through random streets in downtown Kraków until it was absolutely too cold to stay outside.

~*~

I wake up abruptly, sitting up quickly and trying to force myself to breathe at a normal rate.

The immediate shooting pain in my rib cage tells me that I moved too fast, and I clinch my teeth to keep from groaning. Almost instinctively, my gaze lands on the silver tape that binds my right index finger to the neighboring middle one.

I should probably hate Dimitri Orlov for betraying us, for leaving the group of Superiors who protected him for a year and a half to join brutal soldiers in fighting the war. Because of those soldiers, Lili, Theo, and Emilio are most likely being tortured. The realization that I have no idea where they are is both frustrating and depressing.

There should be seven of us here right now, but thanks to Dimitri there are only four.

I should undoubtedly hate him.

But I don't.

Dimitri's actions were justified in a way. His uncle's death was my fault, and his closest friend died on my watch. Katerina was like a sister to him and I couldn't protect her.

Dimitri deserved the chance to kill me.

Sometimes I wish he had.

"Hey there!" The voice sounds cheerful, but I can tell that the enthusiasm isn't entirely genuine.

Brynn Wintering is standing next to me, her hand outstretched as though she's caught between keeping it at her side and resting it on my shoulder.

Her teal gaze meets my icy-blue one, and I can tell that she is concerned.

She is Worried about Jason and Rosalie, the other two members of our group.

The nine-year-old wraps a strand of hair around her finger, frowning.

Glancing around the shabby-looking room, I begin to share Brynn's concerns. We have been staying here for around three days now, and in that time I have never woken up to find a member of our group missing. Today, both Jason and Rose are nowhere to be found.

Brynn bites her lip. She looks at me, then at the clock. Both of its hands are positioned on the twelve, and I'm taken aback by how late it is.

"They went downstairs almost half an hour ago." Brynn says.

She thought of going after them, but made up her mind to wait for me to wake up. Now she's debating whether her decision was the right one.

"I'm sure they're fine." I tell the girl, getting to my feet and contemplating looking for the others myself.

I have to find them. I would never forgive myself if an Inhumane found them first, or if those Russian soldiers got word that we aren't as dead as they thought we were.

I open my mouth, prepared to tell Brynn that I'll be back.

The door to our room is pushed open. Rose steps inside, her gray eyes wide as she looks around. The eight-year-old is half carrying, half dragging Jason alongside her. She looks at me, a frown making its way onto her face as Brynn moves forward to help her.

Jason doesn't stir.

I have seen him like this once before, and instinct tells me that nothing good will come from this. Jason's talent is one of the most convenient and inconsistent abilities I have come across. The nine-year-old has visions of a sort; he is able to see events from around the world as though he's there in person. Before I met him, Jason watched me kill my own sister after she was bitten by an Inhumane. His most recent vision was equally as unpleasant. While I want to believe that this vision is different, I can't keep myself from imagining him in the middle of another disturbing scene. If the fear he is currently experiencing is any indication, then I am most likely right to assume the worst.

Rose and Brynn reach the small bed in the corner of the room, practically dropping Jason onto it. I move to stand next to them, looking down at Jason and hoping that he comes to sooner rather than later.

If we're going to get more bad news, I suppose it would be best to find out as quickly as possible.

~~~~~~
A/N:
First chapters are always the most difficult for me to write.
Hopefully this one lives up to your expectations.
Chapter 2 probably won't be up for a while and updates will be a bit crazy for a few weeks.
Any thoughts on the chapter? Feel free to tell me in the comments.