The Stolen

Chapter 21

Ella isn't focused on telling me the story of the Stolen Betrayers, I can tell.

Her eyes wander around the room, mostly looking at the door, and sometimes she pauses in the middle of a sentence, like she's thinking about something else.

"The scientists that created the ship had to choose seven hundred people to leave the Earth. They trained them and took care of them. They trained you and took care of you, Chrix," Ella explains.

"Days before the ship left, the people leaving realized they were going to leave their families behind and were not okay with it. Two hundred of them rebelled and created the Stolen, the people who had been taken away to be trained against their will."

Olympia looks at me. "The Stolen Betrayers are those who did not rebel. They were selfish."

I frown.

"You're not included, Chrix. You were only a child. You didn't know about the rebellion," Ella says. "Only the ones who were older than thirteen were conscious of what was happening. That's why we call you an Innocent Betrayer."

"You really have this name thing thought out." I smile.

"Yeah. We were really bored the first year, and we had a lot of time to think about it," Olympia says.

"Oh." I think about everything the girls have said. "Wait, I know for sure that there are more than two hundred people in this city. Where did the rest of the people come from?"

"They're the people who survived to the Explosion but weren't part of the Stolen. Some of them have amnesia. We restored the memories we were able to, but we couldn't help them all. There must be about three thousand of them," Ella says.

"And why is it so important that we're coming back?"

Olympia gets up and starts walking around the room. "You probably know Inés, Nico's sister."

"Not really, I don't know anyone with that name," I say.

"We think she might have changed her name to confuse people or something, but that's not my point," she says. "Inés is crazy. The only reason she left the Earth was because she wanted everyone to die so she could come back and rule the world. And she was just a kid when you left."

"She's probably crazier now, if that's even possible," Ella mutters. "She must be twenty right now."

"Inés is Spanish, right?" I think about all the Spanish people I have seen in the ship, trying to figure out who Inés is. "She's got an accent like Nico's."

"Not really," Ella says. "Inés speaks perfect, fluent English. You can't know who she is. She sounds like us."

I frown. It's practically impossible to find out who Inés is. I'm afraid that I'll only find out her identity when she's here, taking over the Stolen Headquarters.

I hear a knock on the window.

"Leave, I'm busy," Ella says.

The person knocks again, louder.

"I said leave, I'll deal with you later," Ella repeats.

If the person keeps banging on the window like that, the glass is going to break.

"What could they possibly want?" Ella wonders out loud. She opens the window to reveal a face exactly like hers, only terrified.

Now I think I'm losing my mind.

"Ava, what are you doing here?" Ella says.

"They're here, they're here already!" the other girl shouts.

"Who's here?" Olympia says, alarmed.

"The Betrayers are! They have found us! We need to hide!" The girl at the window is so scared.

"What's going on? Who is that girl and why does she look like Ella?" Lots of questions are invading my mind and keeping me from thinking.

Olympia turns to look at me. "Calm down, Chrix, everything's okay, we just need to hide. We just need to hide." She sounds like she's trying to convince herself instead of me.

"From who?"

"From Inés."

<><>·<><>

It's been three hours.

Three hours hidden in a room at the top of one of the buildings in Stolen HQ.

I have discovered that I wasn't losing my mind: the girl who looks like Ella is Ava, her twin sister. Ava's nose has got a slightly different shape. It's barely noticeable.

Sounds of bombs exploding fill the air, and I don't understand a thing. Why are we hiding from the people who have taken care of me for seven years? Why do they want us to die? I say us without including me, if that makes sense, because Daniel and Brooke probably think I'm dead.

"Olympia," I whisper. "What is going on?"

"They're bombarding us, kid."

If we weren't being bombarded, I would snort at the way she calls me 'kid'. She's probably just a few years older than me.

But if you think about it, I am acting like a little kid. I'm the one who knows nothing about this, the one who is doing what she's told in order to protect herself, though she doesn't know which side she would take if she had a choice.

It doesn't matter anyway, because I feel like I'm going to die in seconds.

"Are we going to die?" I am asking the most childish questions in the world.

"Don't think so. They'd have to blow up this whole building to kill us, and though they are way more advanced than we are, I don't think they're advanced enough to blow up a place they built to protect themselves," she says.

"What do you mean? Did they build this?"

"Of course they did. This is where we all used to live before the ship left. Then we split. The Stolen and the Betrayers."

"What am I right now?" I ask.

"You're one of the Stolen. And I think you were meant to be one. Why else would your parents tattoo our symbol on your hand?"

A/N: Hey! It has been a month since the last chapter, and I am so sorry for that. I hope you enjoyed this one, and I hope I'll be able to post another one soon. In less than a month, I think.

I've been busy with school and my short teen fic story, but now I'm excited about this story again and I'm not planning to dump it again any time soon.

This first draft is not as good as I expected, but I don't think it's very bad either. Tell me your opinion in the comments! Thanks for all your support, and I hope you're not too angry at me (although I totally understand if you are).

Serenity.