01 | One

Another rupture rocker the dining station back and forth and chairs skidded across the floor from the sudden movement. Rapid red lights flashed vibrantly across the room and a scream of an alarm sounded throughout the compound. I slammed my hands onto a tabletop to keep myself standing as another shake filled the concrete space and with tears filling my eyes quickly I glanced back at my friend who was standing behind me. His eyes met my own and slowly he extended his hand, reaching out to grasp my fingers. I hesitantly pulled one of my hands from my strong grip on the metal table and once my hand wrapped in his he tugged me over to him and wrapped his muscular arms around my shaking frame. 

We stood like this for several moments before another shake caused us to tear apart from each other. A scream left my mouth and my friend sprung into action and pulled me behind him as he navigated his way through the room. We rushed past fallen tables and multiple chairs before reaching the door we had entered through not even minutes ago. 

In the back of my head I think I knew that if we survived whatever this was that we would never be setting foot in this facility again and as my last time, I looked over my shoulder at the room where I had made so many new friends, and then lost all the same. I didn't understand why they kept so many chairs and tables, there was only five of us left and we occupied only one, yet there were three others, each reminding the others and I everyday of who we lost.

A sob formed in the back of my throat but I ignored the horrible feeling and pushed through the door with my friend, allowing him to lead me to our living quarters to hopefully find the rest of our friends. As we turned the first corner, someone nearly ran into us before skidding to an abrupt stop. He took a deep breath before staring at us, fear fixated in his eyes. "There you guys are, I was trying to find you but..." his voice trailed off as he motioned to everything around us. We noticed overturned bunk beds, a clock fallen to the ground with glass surrounding it, a cart with blankets on its side, everything we had every known was out of place, something so strange for us all to see.

"We need to go, Jax," my friend holding me said, already moving his feet with me stepping behind him. "I think I saw Kathryn over by our rooms, come on!" Jax said quickly, his feet already lifting off the ground as he broke into a sprint down the opposite corridor of rooms that were actually cells. Fear continued to resonate inside me the further we ran and the ground continue to shake below us. Tears slipped from my eyes as the air hitting my face stung, but no matter, we kept running. 

"What's going on?" I cried out, trying to make sense of everything going on. Earlier we had been training as normal, and before this entire situation arose, we were all making our way to the Dining Station, yet only Luca and I made it. "I don't really know!" Jax called back, turning his head to look at me while his feet continued to move. "I was on my way to Dining when I felt the earthquake!" 

"Is that what we're calling this?" Luca snapped, his hand tightening around mine as we passed a scientist collapsed on the ground with a cement pillar crushing his upper half. My eyes widened at the sight but I didn't stop in fear of the same thing happening to me. "That's the only explanation for it! I haven't seen but, like, two scientists and all the guards are gone! We really need to find Marcus and Kathryn!" Jax responded, his feet launching off the ground as he hopped over a pile of rubble.

After Jax had said he didn't see any of the guards that were normally heavily guarded around the compound, worry filled my mind. We had never had anything like this happen, we never practiced drills or anything, and none of us ever questioned it. We just knew the government funded our program and that nothing would truly happen to us so long as we followed the rules and didn't fall behind. So with no guards around us and having only ourselves to figure out how to deal with this situation at hand, a sinking feeling made it's way to my stomach that maybe we were under attack.

"Faster!" Jax called out, already nearing the end of the hallway. Luca and I sped up and found ourselves turning the corner. Already running to us were the two siblings Marcus and Kathryn. At the sight of them, an uncontrollable smile made its way to my lips and I continued forward with my two other friends.

But out of nowhere, a bang echoed off the walls and Kathryn's body fell limp against the ground, blood already seeping through her stomach. I found myself screaming, my body thrasing against Luca's arms as he tried to drag me to safety. Marcus turned around at the sound of the gun and screamed his sister's name while turning to run for her. "Marcus, don't!" Jax shouted, his body taking off down the corridor to stop the blonde boy.

He couldn't get far before an explosion rocked the building, causing Luca to fly back against the wall. I fell roughly against the floor, already feeling blood drip down the side of my face. Slowly, I brought a hand to my forehead and felt a warm, sticky substance on my fingers. My eyes widened once I saw that it was in fact blood, but deciding to handle that later, I turned around in desperation to find my friends. 

I first noticed Jax struggling to sit up, his arm tucked beneath him at an awkward angle as he laid in the center of the hallway. Luca I had found behind me as he was thrown behind an overturned bed. He didn't appear to be injured so my first instinct was to grab onto Jax's hand. 

As I held his hand tightly, we found ourselves staring horrified at the scene before us. In our line of sight was Marcus slumped against the wall with blood trickling down the side of his face and a shard of glass stabbed through his abdomen. His sister, not even ten feet away, was laying limp with a bullet to the stomach and blood pooling around her.

"Oh my God," I whispered in shock, my brain not registering what I was seeing. Kathryn and Marcus were gone. Two of my best friends, my siblings. Kathryn and I were the only girls among six others throughout the eleven years at the compound so it would be a drastic lie to say we weren't close. Every one of the five of us were close, and the fact that I was staring at two people who were lucky enough to survive eleven years here but now were dead because of something we didn't know, well, I could hardly function.

Before I could register what was going on and run to my fallen friends, I was being tugged backwards by Jax as footsteps echoed on the ground in the hall next to us. My blood still as Jax pulled me into the cell where Luca was just now sitting up and together we huddled against each other behind the overturned bed. I had my head buried in Jax's chest as he did his best to silence my sobs and his own, while Luca stared up at the ceiling with tears leaking down his cheeks after looking at what was going on.

"They're dead," Luca whispered to no one in particular as he cried out to God, pleading for Him to hear and get us out of this dreadful situation. "God, they're dead," he continued, his sobs quieter as people we couldn't recognie began shouting orders to each other in front of us. I watched Luca carefully, my hand wrapped in his for comfort. I knew he was crying out to his God, and while I wasn't sure if I believed in the same God - or any for that matter - we needed help. So with my hands wrapped tight inside Jax's and Luca's, I bowed my head down and squinted my eyes shut to block out the tears that wanted to continue to leak down my cheeks. Through my sobs I could feel my body release a tight contraction of energy, and I focused primarily on hiding the three of us in the shadow of the wind. 

There was no way we were visible to the human eye now, so though we could be heard, I tightened my fingers around my friends' and took a deep breath, "Oh God, please, I haven't asked for much, but now..." my voice trailed off as my cries grew thicker, "Please, please don't leave us here. Give us a chance, we are good people," I whimpered, the pain I felt from earlier from the blast quickly fading away.

As my prayer that probably meant so little and was so short came to a shaking end, I looked up, my head rising to see a man crouched not even five feet from us. His hand found Kathryn's arm and he gently shook her, only slightly, most likly trying to see if she would respond. Another man lifted two fingers to Marcus's neck before shaking his head at his friend, and a sob racked from the bottom of my throat. 

I wanted nothing more than to leap up from my spot and lunge at these strangers. I wanted them to feel the anger and sadness I had gathered over the years. I wanted to make them pay for what they had done for my friends, and how they had the slightest audacity to come back and look at what they did. But I didn't. If I got up, the powers I was using to hide Jax and Luca would fade away, and there would be nothing left to fight for if they got caught.

So reluctantly, I sat with my knees pulled to my chest and tears down my face, only watching the two get lifted from their places of death and be taken down the corridor.

There were more men and women rushing through the hallway, checking every room and every crevice. Two people had come into the room Luca, Jax, and I were hiding in, and they had gotten dangerously close to us before leaving. We held our breath for one minute to keep silent, and since that time our cheeks had dried and we had cried all we possibly could. Now we needed to keep our sadness on the inside and prepare with our plan of revenge for what had happened.

We probably sat in silence for three hours before the compound grew eerily silent. We couldn't hear the stamping of leather boots, or the shouts of orders, or the sound of water dripping from the loose pipe in the Dining Station. We were completely and totally alone, and I couldn't tell if I hated it or not.

Hesitantly, I let go of Jax and Luca's hands and pushed myself to my feet. I let my powers release and felt a weight being lifted from my chest as I could finally take a deep breath. "What are you doing?" Luca wondered, leaping to his feet and stumbling behind me. I turned around to face him and lightly smiled, something I was surprised I could even fake at a time like this. "It's over, they're gone," I replied, taking a step into the hallway and letting my head glance both ways outside. "We don't know that," Jax scolded, his fingers finding my wrist and pulling me back inside.

"Look around us, A," Luca sighed, his hands extending from his sides as he motioned to all the rubble surrounding us. "It's not over, it's never over. Look at our home," he emphasized, grief flooding his facial features. "This was never our home, Luca," I spat back, trying to get him to see that we were free, and that it was time to do what we've always wanted and get the hell out of here, just like Kathryn and Marcus would want us to do. "This was a place that we were forced to live. Let's face it, the government screwed us over on this one. Because of them, Kathryn and Marcus are dead, and fifteen other people that we've loved over these years. Someone horrible came in and killed our two friends, probably because of Forefront. I'm not saying I agree with what happened here - no, I-I hate it. And I hate whoever did it. But what are we supposed to do now, huh? Wait here until Forefront comes back and takes us away to a new compound?"

"We don't know that it's over," Jax spoke again, leading me back into the room. "Besides, where will we go?"

I sighed and looked to my feet. I didn't know what the answer to that question was, and I wasn't sure that I wanted to know the answer to it. Our friends were dead, we need to accept that. 

As I opened my mouth to speak, Luca's hand slapped over my mouth, and his other over Jax's. "Do you guys hear that?" he whispered so soft that I could just barely hear him. I shook my head, trying to focus on what he was listening to. But before I could, Jax's eyes went wide and he pushed me forward, my feet skidding to a stop outside of the cell. "Wha -- "

Jax's voice interrupted mine and his hands gripped my shoulders so I could stare into his eyes, "Go," he ordered, pushing me back a bit more. "Excuse me?" 

"You have to go," he repeated, taking a step back into the room where Luca waited for him. "You can't be serious," I warned, shaking my head a little as my brain tried to comprehend this. Tears once again brimmed my eyes and I could see them forming in Luca's and Jax's. "Whatever happens, you have a better chance at making it out of here then we do," Luca jumped in. "You run, and you don't look back, okay? We'll be fine wherever we are so long as we know you're safe," he said, his arms wrapping around me as he gripped the back of my head as if it were the last time he would ever hug me. I hugged him back before kissing his cheek, then hugging and kissing Jax as well.

"Forefront is coming, you have to go!" Jax called out, rushing back into the cell as the footsteps approached. My lip quivered and I scrunched my cheeks while letting my while body convulse with sadness. "I love you guys," I whispered, taking a light step back as I prepared to run. "We love you, too," they replied, their hands reaching together as they slumped inside the room, knowing this would be the last time they saw me in a long while - perhaps forever. "I promise I'll find you, I will get you out," I choked out, watching them nod their heads.

With a final shake of my head and one last hug, I turned around and started running, my powers kicking in as I blended in and turned invisible. Sobs spilled from my mouth and I no longer cared about being heard. I lost four people in one day. Once I saw Kathryn and Marcus's dead bodies, I knew no matter what I would have Jax and Luca, and now I had none.

They were so foolishly brave to let me go, and I wish I argued with them and stayed instead of run. We were in this together, we always were. Running wasn't far, I should be the one who gets tortured or locked away, they both deserve any chance of happiness they can possibly have. But I couldn't tell them no. They wanted me to run, and I had to do what they asked.

And the first chapter is done on May 20, 2018 !! Please, please, please, comment and vote what you think !! I need motivation to continue on with my books or else what am I writing for, so three comments for the next update. And no 'please update' because that doesn't do anything but make me feel bad that I couldn't make something so amazing. Anyways, thanks !!