It all started when I turned twelve. Up until then, I was near enough a normal kid. Despite my unusual name, Eli, I fit in pretty well in normal life in London...
Everyone says I look just like my mum, but she thought I got all my looks from my dad. Actually, they both look pretty similar. They both have similar jet black hair and light blue eyes, and this look that they know something you don't. A lot of people mistake them for siblings rather than husband and wife. The biggest difference between them is that my dad has a round face whereas my mum's a lot thinner.
Anyway, it was June the Sixth. My twelfth birthday. I was really looking forward to it. My mum had promised me a new bike. Unfortunately, she had to get up for work early, because she was a nurse. And she made my dad promise not to give me my presents until after school that day, which really sucked.
I went to school as usual. I walked with my friend, Tom, who seemed more excited than I was that it was my birthday. I suffered through two hours of maths and an hour of English, before I got to my favourite lesson, Science. I loved science, especially physics, which happened to be the topic we were on.
Unfortunately, we had a substitute teacher today, because our regular science teacher was out on a school trip with some of the year ten kids. The new guy was short and bald, with an eleven letter name that I couldn't pronounce. Something like Ksloingjest. I was willing to give him a chance, until he got my name wrong on the register.
"Um, Ellie?" he asked. And, of course, the class laughed at me, and I felt my face go bright red.
"It's pronounced Eli, Sir." I said. "Ee-lie."
"Oh, sorry, Eli." Mr Something seemed to realise that he'd just bought me a breaktime's worth of bullying and tormenting, and gave me a kind of whoops, sorry look. The kid sat across from me on my table, Aaron, smiled at me. "You want to buddy up with me, Ellie?" he asked, when Mr Something told us we had to be in pairs.
"Shove off, Aaron." I replied.
"You going to pair with your boyfriend, then?" Aaron called as Tom went to get our equipment.
"Just ignore him." Tom said when he got back with the stuff and saw me glaring at Aaron. Tom's one of those really weird, upbeat guys so when he's serious, it kind of puts everyone in a bad mood. "It's your birthday, you don't have to put up with that slimeball." I tried to enjoy the rest of the lesson, despite the fact that Aaron was constantly pestering me about being a girl.
"Did your mum name you Ellie?" he asked me. "Because usually mums are good at picking out good names for beautiful young girls. I think it quite suits you."
"Leave me alone, Aaron." I snapped, starting to get angrier. I hardly noticed the small steel ball we were supposed to be using to demonstrate the effects of gravity start to lift off the table.
"You know, I think you should never, ever cut your hair. It really suits you. You should plait it." Aaron sniggered. I tried to ignore him, and pushed my hair back out of my face as I looked down at Tom's recorded data. My hair wasn't that long. Maybe I should have got it cut, but I liked it long.
"Maybe you should try pigtails. Ooh, or pigtail plaits. That would look adorable." Suddenly, the whole room went completely dark. There was the sound of smashing glass, and I stood completely still.
"It's just a power failure, kids." Mr Something said desperately. "Nothing to worry about, the back up lights will kick in soon."
I realised that the lights hadn't been on. It was the middle of summer, in the middle of the day, and the sun provided more than enough light to work by. I decided not to tell the teacher that. Suddenly, light flooded the room again, and nervous chattering began to spread.
"The lights weren't on." Aaron said loudly.
"It's the Apocalypse!" Tom whispered to me urgently. The worrying thing was that he was actually being serious.
"Calm down!" Mr Something shouted. "Everyone get back to your work!" We did as we were told, but only grudgingly. And that was that. The rest of the day passed uneventfully.
I walked home silently, Tom chattering on obliviously next to me, explaining about the rise of the robots that were going to kill us all. We got to my house. "Uh huh." I said. "I'll watch out for the robots, Tom." I didn't realise it, but I wouldn't see Tom in a long, long time.
I unlocked my front door, and I could hear sobbing coming from my living room. It was my mum. I wanted to go and comfort her, but something told me I'd better of eavesdropping. Maybe my mischief-o-metre wasn't high enough today. I closed the door as quietly as I could and hooked my keys almost silently up on the rack next to the door.
Then, I crept down the hallway to the living room and knelt down outside. The door was open a crack, and I put my ear near it. My mum wouldn't see me from here, but I could listen into the conversation.
"Please, Mrs Moore..." a young male voice. Maybe the guy was sixteen, seventeen. "We need to take Eli away so he can learn to control his abilities." I realised with a jolt that the conversation was about me, and edged closer to the door slightly. What abilities?
"What good will that do?" my mum sobbed. "In six years, he'll... he'll..." she broke down crying, and I wondered what was going to happen to me in six years. Whatever it was, it didn't sound pleasant.
"We think we may be able to find a cure." a female voice this time. Around the same age.
"You're the One, right?" you know when someone emphasizes a word so that you know it's either supposed to be in Italics or capitalized? That's how I felt when mum said 'the One'. Capitalized.
"Yes." the girl said, and I could hear sadness in her voice.
"And all of you... go?" my mum asked hesitantly. "No one has stayed behind?"
"I'm sorry, Mrs Moore." the guy's voice said. "But no one has ever survived, as far as we know. We were trying to find a cure, me, Scarlett and Steve, but..."
"But Steve was the One." my mum guessed. I was really beginning to grow weary of 'the One'. "And now it's passed on to poor Scarlett." she continued. I guessed the girl had to be Scarlett.
"It happens to each of us." Scarlett said hesitantly. "It's nearly my time up, but we're so close to cracking this that maybe Eli's time won't come. Isn't that right, Tony?" I could hear a persistent note in Scarlett's voice.
"Huh?" Tony asked suddenly. "Yeah. Uh, definitely. With each generation, we get so much closer. By the time Eli turns eighteen, we'll have him all fixed up." he didn't sound convinced.
"Well you two won't." my mum said, which sounded harsh to me. There was a long, awkward silence. "I'm sorry." she continued suddenly. "I didn't mean to... It's just..."
"It's okay, Mrs Moore." Scarlett said. "I know it's a lot to take in. And we've long since accepted our fates."
My mum sounded like she was going to start bawling again. "A-are you sure it's Eli? Couldn't you have mixed it up?"
"He fits the criteria perfectly." Tony replied. "But we do tests to make sure. I assure you, if there's any mistake, we'll return Eli to you immediately, and this whole thing can be forgotten. But we haven't made a mistake yet, Mrs Moore. I don't want to get your hopes up. Eli is most likely a Six."
There it was again. They were capitalizing numbers. I didn't particularly like the sound of 'a Six' any more than I liked the sound of 'the One'. I didn't like the sound of any of this conversation. It sounded like something bad was going to happen when I was eighteen that everyone before me who had faced it had been unsuccessful.
"Would you like another cup of tea before Eli gets back?" my mum asked. It took me far too long to register that they were headed my way, I was so busy thinking about what I'd just heard. The door opened, and I fell backwards, exposed as an eavesdropper. My mum stared at me for a moment, before apparently realising that I'd just listened in to that whole conversation.
"Eli?" she asked disbelievingly. Then, she burst into tears. I quickly got up, hearing the two teenagers who had come to tell my mum the bad news muttering to each other. Then they came to the door.
The girl, Scarlett, was probably a year or so older than the boy. She had fiery red hair and deep brown eyes. She was wearing trainers, jeans, a black t-shirt and a tattered, brown leather jacket. She had a rucksack on her back. The guy, Tony, had messy brown hair and blue eyes so light that they almost looked like ice. He was about the same height and was dressed similarly to Scarlett, but instead of the leather jacket, he had a pair of sunglasses hooked into the collar of his top.
My mum cried harder, and pushed past me into the kitchen. I wasn't sure whether or not to follow her. "Hey, you must be Eli." Scarlett said with a smile, offering me her hand. I shook it. "I'm Scarlett, and this is my friend, Tony."
"What's going on?" I asked, feeling like I was the only one who didn't know about some great big secret.
"We'll explain later." Scarlett glanced at Tony.
"Oh, right." he said. I realised he was chewing gum. "Listen, kid, you've got to go pack your stuff. You've got to come away with us for a while."
"What? I'm not going anywhere with you." I said indignantly. "I don't even know you."
"He reminds me of Mackenzie." Tony muttered to Scarlett. She ignored him.
"Listen, Eli. We're going to take you away somewhere you'll be safe. I bet you've had a pretty wacky day, huh?" I thought about the sun disappearing momentarily, leaving our classroom in absolute darkness. I looked Scarlett in the eye, and suddenly realised she'd been crying. Her eyes were bloodshot, and were rimmed red slightly. She was good at hiding it, but she had been crying, just like my mum. "Tony'll help you pack. Right, Tony?"
"Yeah, sure, kiddo." he said. He couldn't have been more than sixteen, but he was treating me like I was seven. He was, what, four years older than me, maybe?
"I'll have a word with your mum to sort it out." Scarlett said, smiling. It was obvious that she wasn't any more fond of Tony than I was. "Please, Eli, we can explain later."
"Uh, yeah, sure." I muttered. Something about Scarlett told me that she knew what she was doing. I trudged off upstairs glumly, followed by Tony.
"Wow." he said as I opened my door. "Cool room, kid."
"Yeah." I murmured, looking around proudly. "It is." There was a normal, wooden posted bed in the middle of the room, facing a huge, flat-screen TV. Underneath it was the latest in gaming technology, with about twenty five games. In the corner was a bookcase full of mostly science books, and next to that was a computer that I'd had since I was seven. The desk around it was littered with unfinished homework, game cheat-codes, and a few of my very own scientific researches. On the other side of the room was a huge walk-in-wardrobe, not too full up, since I wasn't really a clothes fanatic. My window looked out over our huge back garden.
A lot of people think I'm spoiled, but I'm really not. Like I said, I'd had the computer since I was seven, and most of the books came from a charity shop. My cousin had given me the flat-screen as an early twelfth birthday present, since he was moving in with his girlfriend and wouldn't need it anymore. The games system was from my super-rich grandparents, and the games were from my parents and my friends.
"W-what do I need to pack?" I asked hesitantly.
Tony considered it. "Not too much. There'll be quite a bit of running and you don't want it to weigh you down. Some clothes, maybe a few prized possessions. Your toothbrush and hair comb, if you've got one." I reached under my bed and pulled out my old rucksack, which was covered in stamps and stickers from all the times I'd gone on holiday with my parents when I was little. My dad was a writer for a travel magazine, so we got to go pretty much anywhere pretty much for free. In fact, he'd probably be home soon. No doubt mum had sent him out to get me a birthday cake, because he'd forgotten when he went shopping yesterday.
I suddenly wondered if I was going to get to eat any of the cake.
I stuffed the bag full of as much of my clothes as I could. Most of it fit. It was a pretty big bag, and I mostly owned jeans and plain t-shirts. I packed my toothbrush and (yes, I have one) hair comb. I looked over at my bookcase, guessing I had room for maybe one of the books. After a good three or four minutes of deciding, I picked up my science encyclopedia, which my mum and dad had brought me for my tenth birthday and put it in there.
"That's everything." I turned to look at Tony, who was analyzing my TV closely, a small smile on his face.
"We don't have these back at HQ." he muttered.
"Huh?" I asked frowning.
"Nothing." he replied quickly. "Oh, do you have a phone?"
"Yeah, why?" I pulled my phone out of my pocket for him to see.
"Leave it." he said.
"What?" I asked. I loved my phone.
"It's easily trackable." Tony asked. "You'll get a new one when we get back to HQ."
"Fine." I muttered uneasily. I dropped my phone sadly down onto my bed, then shouldered my rucksack, which was weighed down by the encyclopedia.
"Let's go, kid." Tony said, and set off down the stairs. I followed him, closing my bedroom door behind me. I wondered when I could come back to my room, if I ever could. I almost fell down the stairs, because I was busy sulking and staring glumly at my feet. I caught myself and paid more attention to where I was walking. When I got to the bottom of the stairs, the other three were waiting for me.
"Do I really have to go?" I asked my mum, my eyes tearing up. She was still crying, but now she had a screwed up white tissue in her hand.
"I'm sorry, Eli." she sobbed, and I knew she meant it. Scarlett and Tony were starting to look uneasy. Tony pulled his sunglasses off his t-shirt and put them on, completing the whole 'daredevil' look.
"Can't I at least wait for my dad to get home so I can say goodbye?" I asked Scarlett, who seemed the more reasonable of the two teenagers. She shook her head sadly.
"I'm afraid not, Eli." she said. And she really did sound like she felt bad. "We've been here too long already. There are people out to get us, and we can't dawdle around."
I turned to my mum. "I love you." I said, and I felt tears spilling down my cheeks. I'd wanted to hold it together for her, but I guess I'd inherited her complete lack of the ability to hold back emotions.
"I love you too, Eli." she said. She stepped forward and hugged me tightly. Then she kissed the top of my head. I closed my eyes tightly for a moment and tried to remember this moment forever, to stay here forever with my mum. But she pulled away. "Don't get into too much trouble, Eli." she said with a faint smile as Tony and Scarlett ushered me towards the front door. My mum leaned over, and pulled my keys off the rack next to the door. "And remember, you always have a home here."
She pressed the keys firmly into my hand, and Scarlett started to get impatient. In a whirlwind, I was pulled out of the door, and dragged away down the street, my mum waving at me from the doorstep, still crying.
In the space of half an hour, my whole life had been stripped away.