Beneath The Blade

 Prolouge

    The FBI Take Me

            It was all a work of the federals. In 1987, a war was held between right and wrong. One side said that anybody with 'gifted' minds were to be pulled from the world as we knew it and experimented, privately documented.  The protagonist said this was unfair, that these mutants should be raised like a normal child unless their gift should make then unruly, wild in the eyes and indestructible to their thoughts.

            Should our fellow antagonists have succeeded, I most likely wouldn't be writing you this passage. I wouldn't even be writing. The war was held only one year, before an agreeance was made. Children between the ages of one to thirteen were to never be experimented, only in medical care for injury or sickness. From thirteen to twenty, this mutant was allowed to have these experiments but only by will of parent or guardian. Then after twenty, the gifted student would be allowed to only be tested by their own will.

            Gifted students could also live at campus of these wretched tests. By parent or guardian's consempt, of course. Basically, it was an orphanage. It had a school that was attended from the ages five through eighteen, but if you were lost at all during any experiments, your name was pulled from the lists. Forever.  

            There wasn't a gym class, although we did have a gym that was open at all hours under a trainer's eye. Other than that, we had normal classes, but you only had one teacher per grade, much like an elementary school. Which was easy, considering the puny amounts of us mutant as we grew older. Law said, at twenty we were released into the real world, if we survived. And if between our teen ages, we were taken in by a doctor with a large heart, we could legally be removed from tests. At a certain rate.

            Some people abused the base as an orphanage. Adults would drop off children claimed to have telekinesis, or the ability to move things with their minds. There was also the boy sworn to swallow a lit match and a five year old who could write like a seniored author. All lies, of course. Once the fallacy was found, these normal children were sent back to orphanages.

            Though I won't say I didn't meet extravagant people. I once met a boy, Felix, who could tell you the perimeter, area, and volume of an object without ever having seen it. We befriended quickly, I will say. Plus there was Maddelyn, who at age five was as mature as a freshman in college, and could hack any loose computer. And Derek, who could read a passage on the opposite side of a paper he was looking at.

            Felix and I stayed close, always. We ate at meals together, sat in class together and of course, and caused trouble. Sometimes Maddelyn, Derek, or a few others joined us, but it was always our plot. When our birth parents visited (which was, sadly, legal), we'd sneak off and give them an hourly pursuit as we hid from room to room, place to place until finally they managed to track us down.

What is wrong with me? I only sort-of know. I do know that I'm very different from the other mutants here. I can tell a person by the sound of their steps, even if they're mile or so away. I am a sort of pyrokinesis, light things with a flick of a finger. To say, I have lit things unwanted on fire accidentally before.  I'm still learning, cut me slack? I'm sure there's more, little did I know it wouldn't take me long to learn what they were, when the Feds would drag me away from living a so-far normal life.

Life at the base isn't the easiest, no. Doctors dress in bright robes to give the campus a rather cheery flavor here. They try to keep it secret when a fellow comrade has died, but if you stay up late enough you can watch them out of the bay window, loading the body into a casket and taking it away. I've always wondered where they discard bodies. With caskets so fancy, it would be more than odd to just leave the bodies out in the middle of nowhere.

            So many traits here were crazy. I'd managed to weasel out of the frilly girl rooms, into one with white walls, grey flooring and a mattress on a mere box. A short while after, I'd gotten blue sheets to put on my bare, depressing mattress, a fluffy pillow. And then I'd bought colors of the rainbow in quality paint, with various-built paintbrushes, and with enough begging and whimpering, was allowed to paint my walls.

            Oh, my pictures galore in my own little prison; the maiden with flowing golden hair that brushed into the passing, blue river, rose petals swirling on her bare toes and fingertips. Or the summer beach scene across my entire ceiling; I'd made the light cover a beach ball, and involved any white spot on my ceiling. And so many other galore that usually brought people to inspect the lines closely to see if I'd pasted it from somewhere.

            I guess that could be another one of my talents... Only at the age of fourteen, I could draw and sculpt rather like Leonardo da Vinci himself, or Vincent Van Gogh. It has brought much attention from my teachers and dorm registries, my art displayed in posters tacked to dressers, the drawings on the walls. Soon it was demanded I group up with one of our many artists in the modern world, though that idea was clearly stomped into the dust and I ended up with people at the campus, instead.

            Felix and I are the same age. Nobody's come to take him apart and study every piece of his brain, which I'm grateful for. I mean, Felix is my best friend, and the only person I trust here. I don't even trust Maddelyn that much, which is a rather change. After becoming thirteen, the only thing we look to is getting experimented as a possibility in our future. I watched as Derek was taken away; a horrific event, that I'm not sure I could bear had we been even a bit closer.

            It happened during the noon. Everyone was eating in a rather solemn motion at the tables, the asylum colors making their skin pale. Felix and I were in the middle of telling Maddelyn about something crazy, like a back flipping cow, when suddenly armed men stormed into our dining room, finding Derek with his oddly-colored hair, chaining his wrists and taking him away. I presume he's dead now; nobody told us anything. For all we know, he could walk out of the office right now, and have nothing have happened but a long sleep.

            Felix feared I would be chosen soon; I denied it at the time, but he was right. Never again shall I ignore his 'gift'.  I was of higher class than that of the other students, which is usually how they decided to kill us.

            I'll never forget in my life though, the day I got micro chipped at age seven. It's not that hard of a thing to have happen, just... Interesting, I guess. I only remember the warm, young face of my doctor, cobalt eyes piercing into mine as he slipped the piercing equipment into my arm, the metal chip slipping into my wrist forever. I'd felt partial to that doctor, from the soft look on his face to his tender, calming words. I've been afraid of doctors all my life; amazingly, I live around them all the time, too.

            Maybe, just maybe, this was all beginning to piece together.

            And now, on to what will end my epic prologue to my medical story. How I was taken away.

            It happened during my class. January eleventh. Time? 12:04 PM. We'd just begun to go over the literature book we were reading as a class when the troops came in. My teacher looked up as they walked in, and every student fell silent in a trail of fear as to they knew what was going to happen. But who? Who would be the unlucky victim today?

            I didn't expect it to be me. I'd thought I'd be safe. Imagine how hard my heart dropped when I heard my name. Tears sprang to my eyes as I rose for my last walk.