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[Indigo Individual]

Okay, so here's my first shot at an epic in COT. Don't expect it to be updated very often, though -- I have a lot of other stuff to do. Expect maybe one update every two weeks, if I'm lucky. Review topic is here.

Prologue:

00:00
21^st July
2012
An unknown location in the south of Ireland

Three men scaled a mountain. The one in front was pale, somewhere in his thirties, with short brown hair and emerald-green eyes.
The second was tanned – the real stuff, this hadn’t come out of a bottle – with long blonde hair, brown eyes, an untidy beard and a face which made him seem like he was in his twenties, although it wasn’t beyond reason that it might be made more of plastic than actual face at this point.
The last was large and muscular, with a blank face and grey eyes which stared into the middle distance, not focusing on anything in particular.
“How much further is it?” The second man asked. He spoke with an American accent, and he sounded exhausted.
“Not much further,” the first replied. He had a strong Irish accent, and although he too seemed to be out of breath, he sounded more excited than tired. Indeed, he was correct; a few moments later, the three men stood at the mountain’s peak, before a steep cliff.
The second man’s eyes lit up, and he walked up to the edge.
“You shouldn’t do that,” the Irishman warned; “You might fall.”
The American turned and glared, silencing the other man. Although he was the shortest, and seemed to be the physically weakest, of the three, he had a certain aura of power surrounding him. He had always commanded an amount of respect, even before he had gained celebrity status. You would have to search for a long time to find someone who didn’t know Damian Hall’s name, and even longer to find someone who knew more about his fortune than ‘it’s big’.
Damian turned to the large man, who removed a large rucksack from his shoulders, and pulled out a long rope. A lone tree stood at the edge of the cliff, and the large man tied the rope around it, before attaching it to a harness, which he handed to Damian.
Damian clipped the harness on, then climbed slowly down the face of the cliff.
When he hit the ground, he took off the harness, and brushed some dirt off his jeans. His shoes were caked in mud, which was a shame, as in the day and a half since he had bought them for an obscene amount of money he had grown rather attached to them.
He looked up, and turned around, walking along the foot of the cliff, until he reached a point where it opened into the mouth of a cave. He grinned, and stepped inside.
Damian brushed a spider web aside as he walked through the dark tunnel. He pulled a torch out of his pocket and flicked it on, jumping back slightly as the beam of light revealed a skeleton, held in place by webs and blocking his path. He took a second to compose himself, then smirked, pushing the corpse out of the way and continuing through.
Soon, he reached a large room, and his eyes lit up again as they settled on six coffins, each coated in a thick layer of dust.
He approached the first, and wiped the dust away, revealing a strange symbol with three spikes and an eye in the centre. “Necromancy;”
He did the same to the second, and this time there was an image of a head, and three symbols like lightning beside it. “Telekinesis;”
The third, an eye. “Foresight;”
A scroll. “Mind reading;”
A crescent moon. “Teleportation;”
Last of all, a cloud. “Electricity. They’re all here!”
This was it. He had found the tomb of the Marked.
As soon as he got out of there, he was going to start making plans. He was going to come back first thing in the morning with a proper team, unveil his discoveries to the Cult, and finally earn their respect.
Turning to leave, he saw a seventh coffin, resting against the other wall. He walked slowly over to it, and brushed the dust off carefully, revealing an image of an hourglass. “What?”
Damian stepped back, then looked thoughtfully at it. He nodded to himself, and carefully opened the coffin.
A hand immediately wrapped around his neck, cutting off his air. He struggled, trying to pull it away, but his eyes widened as he saw wrinkles forming on his own hands. His hair and beard grew longer, becoming grey, and his eyes began to sink back into his skull, his skin now stretched so tightly that his bones were clearly visible. At last, the hand released its grip, letting Damian fall to the ground, dead.
Stepping over Damian’s corpse, the being opened each of the other coffins, one by one, allowing the corpses within to fall out. A coloured sphere of light appeared in each of their chests, before floating upwards and through the ceiling.
His work complete, the being walked out of the room, the webs turning to dust as he passed them. He nodded solemnly at the skeleton Damian had pushed aside, then exited the cave. After so long, the time had finally come:
The Marked would be reborn.

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Edited by Just Another Vorex, Oct 29 2012 - 03:21 PM.

[Indigo Individual]

Chapter 1 – Alex

15:14
20^th July
2012
A town in the south of England

---A fifteen-year-old boy sat on a bus.
---This was an unremarkable thing. In fact, he was an unremarkable boy, or at least would be for a few more hours.
---The boy’s name was Alex. He had very pale skin, blue eyes, and messy blonde hair. In terms of attractiveness, you could probably say he was pretty decent-looking. He certainly wasn’t ugly, and didn’t seem to have any of the difficulties with spots his peers were having, likely due to the massive amount of time he spent on personal hygiene.
---He wore a light grey hoodie, with the hood up, black jeans, a medium-blue T-shirt, and a pair of black converse. He gazed out the window, although he wasn’t paying attention to anything that went by, caught up in his own thoughts.
---As he noticed someone sitting down beside him, he turned to glare at them, planning to make them uncomfortable enough that they would disturb someone else’s personal space. However, his eyes widened slightly as he realised that this was actually someone he knew. “Hi.”
---He bit his tongue immediately after saying it. He hadn’t meant to. He probably shouldn’t have. But he still felt slightly proud of himself for having done so.
---“Hi?” The person who had seated themselves beside Alex actually had a lot in common with him. Their skin, much like Alex’s, was quite pale, and like him they also had blonde hair and blue eyes.
---What was different between them was that the person sitting beside Alex was a girl. She wasn’t just any girl – to be honest, Alex had been paying an unusual amount of attention to her, although he had never actually spoken to her. There were two reasons for this:
---The first was that Alex was introverted by nature, and socially awkward at the best of times. Talking to guys he knew well was a challenge to him, nevermind girls he barely knew, especially ones he was interested in.
---The second was that, last he had checked, she was the girlfriend of a guy named Ryan.
---Ryan was by no means a nice person. He was cruel and sadistic, and he controlled pretty much everyone from the age of eleven to seventeen, whether inside school or out of it. He tended to avoid Alex, though, which was fine by him.
---However, the one thing that Alex could do to get himself a death sentence would be to speak to Ryan’s girlfriend, Christina.
---Which brings us back to the fact that she was sitting beside him. “Hey, I know you.”
---“You do?” said Alex, his eyes lighting up. “I mean, yeah, you do.”
---“You’re in my class at school, right? Alan?”
---The light flickered and died. “Um... Alex, actually.”
---“Oh. Alright.” Christina looked at the back of the seat in front of them, and whistled quietly for a couple of seconds, then turned back to Alex. “So, how are you?”
---“I’m... fine,” he responded, before turning to the window again. “Are you sure you should be talking to me?”
---“Well, I don’t see why not.” Christina shrugged.
---“Well, there is the rather small matter of your boyfriend brutally killing me.” Alex pointed out.
---“Oh, you mean Ryan?” Christina looked down sadly at the floor. “We’re not going out anymore.”
---“Oh?” Inside his mind, Alex afforded himself a smile. On the outside, he faked a frown, but tried not to overdo it.
---“Don’t feel sad for me,” Christina said. “I dumped him, not the other way around.”
---“Am I allowed to feel worried for your life?”
---“If you want. I can deal with him, though.” She laughed. “So, where’s your stop?”
---Alex looked out the window to get an idea of where they were. “Um... somewhere back there.”
---Christina’s eyes widened, and she opened her mouth to say something.
---“It’s okay, I’ll just get off at the next stop.” He sighed. “Well, it was nice talking to you.”
---“Same,” she smiled.

- - -

00:27
21^st July
2012

---Alex sat up in bed, gasping for air. He tried to control his breathing, and then looked around, seeing his room in darkness. He reached out to grab his clock, only to feel a sharp pain in his left arm, just below the shoulder.
---He climbed out of the bed, being sure not to hit his arm off anything, and made his way to the bathroom. He flicked on the light, and then walked over to the mirror to examine his arm. He rubbed his eyes, and then the mirror, to make sure that he was seeing right.
---On his left arm, there was now a tattoo of a cloud. And it seemed to be glowing.

- - -

13:48
21^st July
2012

---Alex sat on a park bench. He wore the same clothing as he had the day before (except for the shirt, which he had switched out for a different one in the same colour), and had his hood up yet again. Across from him, Christina sat with a few of her friends. She hadn’t noticed him.
---He wasn’t stalking her. He was just out, and happened to have seen her. It wasn’t really stalking, when you thought about it. True, he might have followed her to the park, but he was planning to go there anyway.
---He tilted his head as he saw her friends suddenly getting up and moving quickly away. The question of why was soon answered as Ryan came into view, a few of his loyal minions standing behind him. He reached out his hand towards Christina, but she pulled back, shouting something at him. Alex felt something stirring inside him, and before he knew what he was doing, he stood up and began walking towards them.
---Ryan turned around to face Alex, but didn’t recognise him. He grinned at his thugs, who stood around him, looking threatening.
---“Leave her alone, Ryan.” Alex warned.
---“Or what?” He growled.
---A breeze blew through the park. It was cold, somehow unnatural, and as it threw back Alex’s hood his eyes began to glow blue. “Leave. Her. Alone.”
---The thugs stepped back, but Ryan stood still, glaring at Alex. “Fancy lightshow, freak. Now come closer so that I can punch those lights of yours out.”
---Electricity began crackling at Alex’s fingertips. He wasn’t sure how he was doing it – it felt like he was no longer in control of his own body. “I tried to warn you.”
---He lifted his arms, his palms facing the group. The electricity flashed out, striking Ryan and his minions, and scorching Ryan’s face. Christina looked fearfully at Alex, and then ran away. Slowly, the light in his eyes faded, and the wind calmed. In control of himself once again, Alex looked down at the unconscious bodies below him, then at the crowd which had gathered in the park.
---He was in trouble.

[Indigo Individual]

Chapter 2 – David

10:13
21^st July
2012
Belfast, Northern Ireland

---Some people just have abnormally good luck. It’s a fact of life.
---David was such a person.
---David was good at pretty much everything, be it academic, artistic, or sporty. He was pretty good-looking, which also helped earn him the respect of his peers, and since he was actually a pretty nice guy, he was often looked up to. This also meant that he was more likely to be invited out to places by friends than the majority of other people.
---He was seventeen, just about average height, with long brown hair and green eyes, and his skin was quite pale, although that was the usual for anyone who had been born and raised in Ireland.
---He had everything he could possibly want, and more, but it came at the price of pretty much never seeing his parents (highly-paid jobs, where they could be found, had the problem of long hours). Although, sometimes that might have been a good thing, because it avoided the arguments other people had with their parents about coming home late at night. David couldn’t even remember coming home last night.
---Honestly, David just couldn’t remember last night.
---So it was that when he found himself standing in front of the mirror, looking curiously at a tattoo on his shoulder, he felt that he should never again trust himself with alcohol if he had this little taste when under its influence.
---He yawned and shook his head, before walking back into his room and pulling on a red T-shirt. He walked downstairs, getting himself a bowl of cereal and turning the TV on, before sitting in front of it and beginning to eat.
---“In the news this morning, American singer Damian Hall has gone missing during a vacation in Cork in the south of Ireland. Police are asking that anyone with information comes forward, but they don’t seem to have much hope of actually finding him.”
---David flicked the TV off. He was sick of bad-news stories, and he’d never been a big fan of Hall. The man had always seemed a bit self-centred to him.
---He grabbed his wallet and walked out the door, planning to walk to the nearest shop. He started across the road, when everything around him suddenly froze. In his mind’s eye, he saw a car driving at him, and he saw himself jumping into the air as it slowed, landing on the hood. He shook his head, and looked down, finding himself standing on the bonnet of a car, the driver staring at him, eyes wide. But... I imagined that... right?
---David climbed down off the car, apologising, before backing away. He was too shocked to notice the person behind him, even as he hit them and nearly knocked them over. It was a teenage boy, with greasy black hair and brown eyes, who was abnormally thin and looked about sixteen. “Sorry about that, I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going...”
---“What was that?” the boy asked, staring at David much as the driver had.
---David shrugged. “I’m not sure.”
---“Were they super-powers? How did you get them? Were you bitten by a radioactive spider?” He sounded somewhat excited.
---“I don’t know if they were super-powers, and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t bitten by a radioactive spider.” David sighed, not noticing that he was still walking down the street and steadily approaching an alley, the boy now in tow.
---“What would happen if you were bitten by a radioactive spider?” Although his questions were somewhat idiotic, there was something in his eyes that unnerved David. Something cold, and calculating.
---“You would die,” David replied, shaking his head.
---“Are you sure?”
---David stopped, and turned to look at the boy. “Pretty sure, yeah. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to leave now.”
---“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.” Even as David starting walking away, he felt something stopping him, holding him in place, and noticed that they were now inside the alley, out of sight. “You’re not the only one here with powers.”
---David stopped struggling for movement, turning to look at the boy. “Who are you?”
---“You can call me Liam,” he smirked. “I would ask your name, David, but I already know it.”
---“How... how do you know my name?” David tried to back away, only to find himself stopped once again.
---“Your families tried to hide it. They tried to bury the past. But mine?” Liam began laughing. “Mine embraced it. We kept tabs on the other families, and every time another was born into our own bloodline, the legends were passed on. I was reminded of my destiny every night before I slept, and I knew that the day would come when I would take on the power of my ancestor’s Mark.”
---As he heard Liam mention the Mark, David thought back to the tattoo he’d seen on his shoulder that morning. “Wait, you mean that tattoo gave me these powers?”
---“No, that ‘tattoo’ represents your powers. The powers are in you, the Mark proves it.” Liam replied, shaking his head. “Now, if you’ll let me get to it, I came here to make you an offer.”
---“What kind of offer?”
---“We are Marked. The first among us came into existence thousands of years ago, but they were sealed away, and their powers sealed with them. Last night, the powers were released, and they reached the six descendants of the original Marked.” He explained, calmly, the tone of his voice reminding David of a teacher. “The Marked were born to rule over humans. Our powers make us superior to them.”
---“But... we are human.” David pointed out.
---“We are not human. Humans are parasites with ego, and nothing more.” Liam hissed. “We are the flesh of humans, with the power of gods. And soon, we will be worshipped as gods.”
---“You’re insane.” David tried to get away a third time, only to be stopped once more. “I’m not going to let you do this.”
---“And how do you plan to stop me?” Liam chuckled. “Use your powers to see into the future before I attack you? You are working on instinct. You cannot bring out your full potential until your power is mastered.”
---“I don’t see how it matters.” David ran at Liam, moving around him and throwing a punch at his back. Liam spun around, but even as he made the final decision in his mind David saw himself blocking the punch he tried to return with, grabbing Liam’s hand.
---“You can only predict attacks once they are guaranteed to come. That’s your weakness.” On the ground, a coin began to shake, before lifting up into the air. “Let’s see how you do now.”
---The coin began to spin, dropping down. As soon as he saw the coin facing him directly, Liam lashed out at David with a kick, which the other boy failed to block. “The coin creates two realities – had I seen the head, I would have punched you. But I saw the tail, and only then were you able to see it coming. But that was too late, wasn’t it?”
---The coin lifted up once again, and Liam swept his foot around beneath David, making him lose his balance and fall. Before he had a chance to get up or block, Liam kicked him in the side, and began walking away, leaving his enemy lying on the ground. “I thought this would be easier, David. I’m disappointed in you, betraying your destiny like this. But, perhaps you will see the light later. Until then, I just have to find and turn the others.”
---David turned his head, watching Liam disappear, laughing, into the distance. The world began to grow dark as his eyes closed over, sounds growing distant as he drifted into unconsciousness.

- - -

---David’s eyes opened and he stood up, only to find himself standing in what appeared to be some form of police station. He saw a boy, with messy blonde hair and a hoodie, being led through it by two policemen, his head down.
---“You’re going in there, mate.” One of the policemen said, gesturing at a small cell. He spoke with an English accent.
---“Are you allowed to do that?” The boy asked.
---“We’re not going to sit around with a guy who can shoot lightning out of his bloody hands.” The second one chuckled. “Honestly, kid, I don’t know what the heck you did out there. People are saying you electrocuted three guys, and we’ve got three unconscious teenagers with scorch marks.”
---“Electrified.” The boy corrected.
---“What?”
---“The word is ‘electrified’. Electrocution is death by electrification.”
---“Just get into the bloody cell.” The policeman growled, obviously irked.

- - -

---David jumped up, looking around. He was back in the alley, and he felt like he’d been beaten to a pulp. He then remembered that he had, in fact, been beaten to a pulp.
---He looked up, seeing the sun just about in the centre of the sky. He’d at least been out for a few hours. “Great,” he muttered, “Today is just going great.”

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[Indigo Individual]

Chapter 3 – Eve

19:26
20^th July
2012
Manhattan, New York

---A sixteen-year-old girl sat in her bedroom, strumming softly on a guitar.
---Her name was Eve. Her skin, although pale, had some evidence of colour, her eyes were a deep blue, and her hair was short and blonde, with a fringe that covered her eyebrows and a significant amount of the right-hand side of her face. She wore a lilac T-shirt, and black jeans.
---Her parents, Mark and Sarah, were in the living room watching TV. Although they didn’t hear the guitar – or at least didn’t register it, as Eve was almost always playing it, and they had grown used to hearing it – the thump made as their daughter hit the floor, unconscious, was clearly audible.

- - -

---We should have sent her to a hospital. I know we should have, I should never have listened to Mark, he knows nothing about these things...
---She’ll wake up. She’ll wake up, and she’ll be fine, Sarah is just overreacting.
---Great. A dog. That’s wonderful, really. Why don’t we make my day a little worse? The universe hates me. That’s just it. The whole universe hates me.
---Just wait ‘til she gets off the phone and turns into the alley. The knife is in your pocket. You pull it out, and get her money. That easy. That easy.
---I can’t believe John was cheating on me. Actually cheating on me. I mean, on me. How could he? How could he want anyone over me?
---Eve’s eyes opened, and she turned her head, looking across the room. She was lying on the bed, and she was surrounded by voices, very few of which she recognised, and although she didn’t know it her eyes had gone from blue to a dark shade of purple.
---She tried to get up, only to find herself unable to summon the strength. There was a sharp pain in her left arm, but she tried to ignore it, putting it down to having hurt herself at some point.
---Suddenly, it dawned on Eve that she was lying fully-clothed in bed, which even for her was slightly unusual behaviour. She thought back, trying to work out how she’d gotten there, but the last thing she could remember she was sitting on the edge of the bed, playing guitar...
---She sighed, and tried to call out for her mother, but all that came out was a small croak. Resigning herself to sleeping a while longer, she closed her eyes and allowed herself to drift away, trying to block out the voices in her head.

- - -

09:23
21^st July
2012
Manhattan, New York

---Eve opened her eyes again, looking around herself. Light leaked into the room through the curtains, just enough to suggest that it was morning. She sighed, and tried to pick herself up, just managing to sit up on the bed with what little strength she had. She reached for her phone (which she had left lying next to her bed the night before), and picked it up. It wasn’t anything terribly fancy or girly; it was simple and black, and looked a little cheap.
---She typed quickly, before setting the phone down and returned to sitting up on the bed, waiting for the doorbell to ring.

- - -

10:46
21^st July
2012
Manhattan, New York

---A raven-haired girl walked up to the door of Eve’s home, and rang the doorbell politely.
---Alice was seventeen, although in truth she was just a few months older than Eve, she had green eyes, and she looked Asian, but this was just something she’d gotten from her parents, as she was American by birth.
---A few seconds later, Sarah came to the door. Her red hair was tied into a ponytail at the back of her head, and her blue eyes regarded Alice suspiciously from behind her glasses. “I’m sorry, Eve isn’t well at the moment. If you want, I can get her to call you when she’s feeling better.”
---Alice didn’t say anything in response, simply pulling her phone out of her pocket and showing Sarah the text she had received from Eve.
---“Oh, okay.” Sarah still seemed slightly suspicious, but quite a bit less so. “I guess you can come in.”
---“Thank you,” Alice smiled, stepping into the house. It was a little messy, but it always seemed to be. It wasn’t off-putting, just... comfortable, in a strange way.
---She ascended the stairs, then knocked on the door of Eve’s room. Not waiting for a reply, she opened it and came in, closing it behind her. Eve was sitting on her bed, playing Angry Birds on her phone. “So, what did you want me for?”
---Eve looked up when Alice spoke, only just noticing her, then closed the game and motioned for Alice to sit down on the end of the bed. “I have... a problem.”
---“Is this about Sam?” Alice asked, taking a seat.
---“No, it’s not.” Eve sighed.
---“It’s about Sam, isn’t it?” Alice smiled.
---“Not all of my problems have to do with Sam!” Eve shouted (or, tried to; her voice was still quite quiet), clearly irritated.
---“Most of them do, though.”
---There was silence for a few seconds while Eve tried to think up a response, then she sighed. “I’ve started hearing voices.”
---“Oh?” Alice’s smile disappeared, her face taking on an expression of concern.
---“I think... I think they’re people’s thoughts.” Eve had been considering this for a long time, and short of insanity, it seemed to be the best explanation. Especially seeing as Alice’s voice had recently joined the others: She’s gone insane. “I haven’t.”
---Did she just...? Nah. “I’m sorry, what?”
---“You think I’m insane,” Eve said. Her voice had grown even quieter.
---“No, I don’t.” Alice reassured.
---“You just said it. Well, your mouth didn’t move, so I should probably say you just thought it.”
---Alice stared at Eve, fear slightly present in her eyes. “That was a lucky guess.”
---“No, it wasn’t,” Eve tried to explain. “I can really hear what you think. Everyone else around me too.”
---Alice looked thoughtfully at Eve for a few seconds. “Alright. I believe you. How long has this been going on?”
---Eve shrugged. “Last night, I woke up and they were just there.”
---“Why do you think it’s happening? Are you able to turn it off?” Alice’s expression had changed, the concern replaced by curiosity and excitement.
---“I don’t know, and I’m not sure how to turn it off, although I’m able to make the voices quieter when I focus on my own thoughts.” Eve explained, calmly.
---“Can you focus on specific people?”
---“I don’t know.” Eve shrugged. “I don’t think I’m ready for anything like that yet, anyway.”
---Alice was silent for a short while, trying to think of any questions that Eve might know the answers to. “Do you think you’re the only one?”
---“No.” This time, Eve sounded completely certain. “I just have this... feeling, that there are others out there. I can’t explain it. And... I don’t know what to do.”
---“Well,” Alice replied, her voice thoughtful, “I’d say that you’d have to find the others. Or wait until they find you.”

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[Indigo Individual]

Chapter 4 – Stephen

 

12:30

21^st July

2012

Dundalk, Ireland

 

---There are only so many ways that people will react to being given power. Some will use it for the good of others. Most will abuse it for personal gain.

---And then there are the few who try to test its limits.

---Stephen was among those few.

 

---Stephen awoke on the morning of July 21^st to find a tattoo glowing on his shoulder, just like all of the other Marked (with the exclusion of Eve, but were it not for the fact that she lived in a different timezone from the rest, it would have been just the same for her). Shortly afterwards, he discovered that he had unusual powers, again just like the other Marked.

---However, unlike the other Marked, Stephen had no immediate use for them.

 

---Along with allowing him more time to test the powers, this also meant that he had some difficulty activating them. His attempts to master them were… unusual, to say the very least.

---Stephen stood on the ledge of a window on the first (that’s second for you Americans) floor of his home. He wore an orange shirt, and he had long brown hair and brown eyes.

---Unlike every pretty much every other character I’ve introduced so far, his skin was somewhat dark, although not quite the shade that would be associated with a tan.

---“Teleport!” This was the latest in a long line of commands that he’d been shouting. Unsurprisingly, none of them had worked.

---He sat down on the ledge, thinking. So far, he hadn’t been able to teleport since he’d accidentally done so earlier that morning.

---For a few seconds, he wondered if he had just imagined the teleportation, then dismissed the thought. He wasn’t insane, he knew what had happened.

---He stood up, planning to climb back in through the open window, only to have his foot slip out beneath him. Panicking, he tried to grab the ledge, when he suddenly found himself standing back in his room. “Yes!”

---So, it seems to activate itself when I’m in danger. If I can find a way of tricking it into thinking I’m threatened…

 

-           -           -

 

12:15

21^st July

2012

Belfast, Northern Ireland

 

---The door of David’s house opened, and he walked in, water dripping from his clothing and hair. The weather had taken a turn for the worse as he was on his way home, as it often did. “Great day. Wonderful day. Beautiful.”

---Suddenly, David clutched his head, and fell to the ground, unconscious.

 

-           -           -

 

---David looked around himself, to see that he was in a car park. Everything was slightly greyer than reality – it reminded him of that dream about the blonde boy in the police station.

---The second thing he noticed was that the car park appeared to be for a shopping centre.

---The third thing he noticed was that a teenage boy was standing on the roof of said shopping centre.

---“Oh, that is not good…” He muttered. He stopped, confused, when it made no sound.

---As he began walking towards the boy, everything started turning black, and he barely reached the other end of the car park before it all faded away.

 

-           -           -

 

---David’s eyes opened, and he picked himself up. His hand went to his head again – he’d hit it off something as he fell. He couldn’t shake the feeling that those dreams were important, somehow. And there was something about that place that he recognised…

---He sat down on one of the chairs in front of the TV, which was still switched off, and closed his eyes for a few seconds, letting the events of the day sink in, from finding the tattoo to collapsing on the ground. His day had been constantly getting worse; he nearly got hit by a car, he was attacked by an insane teenager who thought he was a god, the rain barely meant anything compared to the first two, but his head was throbbing from the fall.

---He took a while thinking over the last dream, vision, whatever it was. There was something familiar about it all, something he couldn’t quite place. As he thought over it, it hit him.

---He recognised the shopping centre, although he wasn’t entirely sure if he was right. A quick Google search confirmed his suspicions, though. He sat there for a few seconds, then made his decision: he was going to go there, and he was going to see if he could find the boy that he’d seen.

---He walked over to the fridge, and reached on top of it, grabbing a pen and a block of sticky notes. He quickly scribbled, ‘Going out for the day, borrowing car – David’ on one, before attaching it to the fridge door and returning the pen and sticky notes to their previous position.

---He had a long drive ahead of him.

 

-           -           -

 

13:43

21^st July

2012

Dundalk, Ireland

 

---The drive had been longer than expected.

---At this point, David was absolutely convinced that he was driving in circles, and that even going to Dundalk in the first place was a waste of time, energy, and money. Regardless, he was there, so there was no point in not just making the best of it.

---Just as he was finally giving up hope, he saw it: the empty car park, the shopping centre, and the boy standing on top of it. He got a strange feeling in his gut, telling him that something was off, but he couldn’t place quite what was wrong.

---David drove into the car park, and abandoned the car in one of the many empty spaces, before making his way to the foot of the building.

---The teenager, who had noticed David driving in, looked down at him. “Nice day.”

---David stared at him, his mouth hanging slightly open. “Why the heck are you standing on a shopping centre?”

---He shrugged in response. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m up here for the view.” His face remained serious for a few seconds, then he grinned. “Nah, I kid.”

---David glared at the boy. “I’ll ask you again: why the heck are you on a shopping centre?”

---“It’s sort of one of those, ‘You won’t believe it ‘til you’ve seen it’ things.”

---“The day I’ve had, I would happily believe that the universe was created in three days by a giant purple octopus. Named Herbert.” He sighed, although there was a slightly joking tone to his voice.

---“Okay,” the teenager grinned, stepping back, “Prepare to be amazed.”

---He began running towards the edge, and then just as he was about to go over it, he disappeared.

---“What the-” David looked around, confused, trying to figure out where the boy had gone.

---“Well, that was disappointing,” he frowned, now standing right behind David. “I was at least hoping for a stream of expletives.”

---David turned, slowly, to face him. “Let me guess: you woke up this morning with a tattoo on your arm and magic powers.”

---“Well, I wouldn’t call it ‘magic’, but it’s pretty frickin’ nifty.”

---David sighed, and shook his head, before beginning to walk towards the car. “Come on.”

---“What?” The boy looked at David, slightly confused.

---“Get into the car.” David said, still walking.

---The boy began walking, speeding up slightly to catch up with David. “Listen, no offence, but I don’t even know your name. I’ve never met you before. I don’t think it’s a terribly good idea to get into your car.”

---David sighed again, turned around, and lifted up the sleeve of his T-shirt slightly so that the tattoo of the eye was visible. It was a dark red, no longer glowing. “I’m David. Get into the car.”

---“Well, it’s not like you could’ve just gotten that at any tattoo parlour-”

---“Just get into the bloody car.”

---“Okay, okay, no need to get aggressive...” he muttered. Once he and David were in the car, he turned to him. “Well, David, since you’ve already told me your name, I’m Stephen.”

---David looked at Stephen. “The journey’s an hour and a half long. Are you going to keep talking this much? I need to know whether I need to go into the boot and get the duct tape.”

---“Why would you need- oh, I get it. Very funny.”

---“I wasn’t joking.” With that, David pressed his foot down on the pedal, and Stephen gripped the seat, slightly surprised by the speed. As they left the car park, David finally realised what was off:

---The car park was empty. At just about two o’clock, on a Saturday, the car park outside a shopping centre was empty. That was without even mentioning the fact that Stephen had been standing on the roof, looking suspiciously like he was about to jump off.

---He shrugged it off. There was probably just something on nearby, everyone was there. But still, he couldn’t quite escape the feeling that this was somehow related to the mark that had appeared on his shoulder that morning...

 

-           -           -                          

 

15:27

21^st July

2012

Belfast, Northern Ireland

 

---David sat in his home, looking across the table at Stephen. “So, I guess you probably want to know what’s going on.”

---“I think I got a fair enough idea from what you were muttering to yourself in the car, but a little further explanation would definitely be appreciated.”

---David was quiet for a second, thinking back to what Liam had said (it felt like days ago, rather than hours), and trying to arrange it in his mind in a way that would make it easy enough to explain. “I believe that there is a name for us: the Marked. We have powers. I’m not going to pretend I understand them, I’m not going to say I know all there is to know. All I know is that something happened a long, long time ago, and that it’s related to what’s happening now.”

---Stephen nodded, taking in the little information David had. “That doesn’t explain how you found me, though.”

---“I had a vision,” David explained. “Saw you, standing on a building. Thought it might be a good idea to get there before you jumped off.”

---“I wasn’t going to jump off.”

---“I didn’t know that.”

---There was silence for a few seconds, while Stephen and David examined each other carefully. David was beginning to get irritated with Stephen, although there was something about him that he liked. He didn’t think getting him to come with him had been the best idea, though. But it seemed to him that it may just have been the right choice, given Liam’s determination. He was unlikely to get anywhere, but he knew more about these powers than any of the other ‘Marked’ he knew of so far. That, combined with his powers and obvious insanity, made him a threat.

---Finally, Stephen spoke. “Have you had any other ‘visions’?”

---“No, I have-” Just as David was about to deny it, he remembered seeing the blonde boy after Liam had knocked him out. “Actually, I think I might have.”

---“What did you see?” Stephen asked. He seemed a little doubtful of David’s claims.

---“A boy. Around your age. Blonde hair. He was in a police station, being led to a cell.”

---“That... doesn’t sound good.” Stephen pointed out. “Did you do any research into it? There’s this thing called the internet. Amazing what it can do. It has news websites.”

---David opened his mouth, then closed it again. “I... well... I... Don’t think you can tell me what to do. I’m doing this by choice.”

---Stephen grinned as he watched David walk over to the computer and start it up, but didn’t say anything. Soon enough, David spun around on the chair, in order to face Stephen. “Found him. Some town in England. Some kind of freak storm started, four boys got hit by lightning. One scarred, but nothing fatal.”

---“So, you think he has control over the weather or something?” Stephen wondered, pulling the chair he’d been sitting on over to the computer.

---“No. But I think I might know what he does have power over. According to this, witnesses claimed that the lightning didn’t come out of the sky.” David grinned. “It came out of the boy’s hands.”

 

Review Topic

[Indigo Individual]

Chapter 5 – Trapped

 

21^st July

2012

A town in the south of England

 

---Alex was pretty sure that people under the age of eighteen couldn’t be held in cells. The police themselves, however, appeared to disagree.

---Alex, if he was perfectly honest with himself, had absolutely no idea what to do. He had considered trying to use his apparent ability to control electricity to break himself out, but even if he knew how to access it, he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to. His mind kept drifting back to the bodies of Ryan and his goons lying on the ground, and Christina’s terrified face. He had been trying to help her, to protect her, but it was clear to him now that with the lack of control he’d had, he could just as easily have hurt – or even killed – her.

---He was cursed. He needed to hide from society, make sure that no one else would ever be hurt by (or because of) him. No one would miss him; he was a loner, so he had no real friends, his dad had left a few years back and his mum barely noticed he existed.

 

---He heard footsteps approaching, and tried to get a look at whose they were, his train of thought temporarily broken. Soon, a man came into view. His skin was white, his hair was white, even the suit he was wearing was white. His face was ageless, his pale lips were thin, and his eyes – which squinted slightly, as though he had difficulty seeing – were a pinkish colour.

---“Hello, Alex,” he smiled, with all the warmth of an icicle. “It’s wonderful to meet you at last. I’ve heard so much about you.”

---“Who are you?” Alex asked, glaring suspiciously at the albino.

---“Crux,” he answered, the smile widening, but staying just as cold and forced as before, if not more so. “Artemis Crux.”

---“Well, Crux,” Alex spat, not trying to disguise his dislike of the man, “Why are you here?”

---Alex wasn’t entirely sure why he disliked Crux. It was just that there was something not quite right about him. He wasn’t sure what it was; there was the obviously faked smile, there was the strange look in his eyes, and another thing may also have been just how white his suit was. It seemed strange to Alex, who hadn’t seen white clothing that dazzling on anyone other than Morgan Freeman.

---Crux was silent, as though he was thinking of an answer, but his eyes were carefully scanning Alex, while he rubbed his beard with his right hand. It seemed like he thought simply getting a good enough look at the boy would reveal everything he needed to know. “You’re very special, Alex.”

---“That doesn’t answer my question.”

---Crux spared have a second to glare at Alex, then continued. “There are very few people out there with powers like yours. Even then, they’re only similar. You’re... unique.”

---And there it was again, the cold, forced smile. Alex was slightly surprised that this Crux guy seemed not only to know about his powers, but to know more about them than he did. Still, he didn’t comment on it, but took a mental note of what Crux had said. “Why are you telling me this?”

---Crux crouched down so that he was at eye-level with Alex. He couldn’t help but notice how abnormally tall and thin the albino seemed to be. Another thing he couldn’t help but notice was his breath, which smelled minty to a point where it was slightly sickening, as though he’d swallowed a whole packet of breath mints about five minutes before he’d walked in. “I can help you, Alex. You and I have one thing in common: power. Mine is power of a different kind, but power all the same. I can get you anything you want, Alex, and I only want to ask a small favour in return.”

---“Counter-proposal: go to-” Alex was cut off by Crux clearing his throat angrily.

---Something appeared in Crux’s eyes, something cold and vicious, full of hatred, as he finally returned Alex’s glare.  “Alright, I tried the carrot and you didn’t want it. Here’s the stick: if you don’t help me, that girl of yours from the park might just end up losing her head.” The albino made a line across his throat with his right index finger, smirking as he observed the shocked look on Alex’s face. “What, did you think I didn’t know? Do you think I’m thick? You were found in a park with a terrified girl, and an unconscious, scarred ex-boyfriend. Your motive was pretty clear.”

---“But... but you can’t find her...” Alex whimpered, the little colour in his face draining.

---Crux grinned darkly as he observed the expression of despair on the boy’s face. The smart-arse teenager who had been standing up to him moments before was gone, replaced by a lost child, so consumed by emotion that he couldn’t think. He had won. “Oh, Alex. Poor, stupid little Alex. Of course I could. I tried to tell you I was powerful. I have connections in everything, from worldwide politics to the food industry. With a few words, I could easily turn a city in a nuclear wasteland. Do you really think I couldn’t find one teenage girl?”

---“How do I know you’re not lying?” Alex pointed out, some of his confidence returning.

---“Well, you don’t really need to. All you need to know is that you don’t have much of a choice. I’m free, you’re trapped; I’m great, you’re powerless; I’m a man, and you’re just a child. I have the advantage here, and don’t even consider trying to bluff me with that ‘hand-lightning’ power of yours, we both know that you can’t control it.”

---Alex was silent, defeated. He stared at Crux, and when he finally spoke his voice was shaking, and barely louder than a whisper. “What do you want me to do?”

 

-           -           -

 

Belfast, Northern Ireland

 

---“Congratulations, you just proved that you have no decision-making skills.”

---“I think it’s the opposite,” David replied, putting yet another shirt into the suitcase he was leaning over.

---“And I think that going to England on a whim is a bad decision.”

---“And I don’t, and I’m older than you and know more than you do, so I win.” David finished, shutting the suitcase with a loud bang.

---“Dundalk I can understand. It’s on the same island. But, England? Do you even know where in England we need to go?”

---“Nope.”

---“Then why are we going?”

---David shrugged in response, picking up the case and walking out of the room.

---“Do you even have that kind of money to go throwing around?” Stephen asked, following David out of the room.

---“Actually, I do,” David smiled. “If you want to climb on a train and go back home, be my guest. The alternative is that you phone your parents and tell them that you’ll be gone for a while, and then you trust me to find this kid.”

---“You really think that I’m just going to dump my life and follow you to England?”

 

-           -           -

 

Ferry, Irish Sea

 

---“Convincing the guy to go out of his way and take us to the south of England was enough without also paying him so that we would be the only people on the ferry.” Stephen sighed.

---“What? I didn’t pay him to make sure it was just us. In fact, it was only because we were the only ones who wanted tickets that he agreed.” David replied, slightly confused.

---“Oh. Right.” Stephen was silent for a few seconds. “That’s a tad strange. No customers at all. You’d expect it to be crowded.”

---“Yeah, you would...” David looked away from Stephen, thinking back to the car park where he’d found him. It was probably just a coincidence. But then, with everything else that had happened that day... something wasn’t right. And once he’d found Alex, he was going to find out what.

 

-           -           -

 

Somewhere in the south of England

 

---Alex sat in silence in the back seat of a limousine, along with Crux. After a short while, the albino turned to him. “You know, there’s something I don’t understand about your decision.”

---“That’s nice,” Alex replied emotionlessly.

---Crux frowned, before continuing; “You reacted to the threat with more emotion than I’d expect. As far as I could tell in the research I’d done, you barely knew the girl.”

---“Yep.” Alex turned to look out of the tinted window to his right.

---“Why did you react so strongly, Alex?”

---The teenager looked at Crux, anger clear in his eyes. “I’ll tell you why: she’s just a normal person. She shouldn’t be involved in this. I’m the one who woke up with a tattoo on my arm, not her. I’m the one who you want. I’m the one with the powers. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

---“Alright, hero.” Crux chuckled. “I’m surprised to see you being so very moral. It’s not the impression I got when researching you.”

---“And what impression was that?” Alex asked, clearly not very interested, turning back away from Crux.

---“You’re above average intelligence. You do very well in school. However, you have a tendency to insult others and cut yourself off, likely due the fact that your father left you and your mother a few years ago.”

---“Screw you.”

 

Review Topic

Edited by Simply Vorex, Jan 04 2013 - 03:42 PM.

[Indigo Individual]

Chapter 6 – Happy Families

 

21^st July

2012

London, England

 

---“Well, Alex, here we are.” Crux turned slowly to face the fifteen-year-old, grinning. Although his face displayed happiness, his eyes were as cold as ever. “What do you think?”

---The building Crux’s limousine had taken Alex to was massive; a towering structure made of grey bricks, reaching up into the sky, so tall that the top was obscured by cloud. He’d never seen anything like it. “It’s okay, I guess.”

---Crux’s grin slowly turned into a frown. “Well, maybe you’ll be a little more impressed once we’re inside.”

---Crux led Alex into the building, walking quite quickly as though he wanted to reach its shelter as soon as possible. In fact, once they were in the door, he relaxed slightly as though a burden of some sort had been lifted from his shoulders. They walked through a crowded reception, and Crux pressed the small circular button that summoned the elevator silently, his face void of any emotion. A few seconds later, the elevator arrived, and its doors slid open with a mechanical hiss. Crux gestured for Alex to enter it, and then walked in himself. Taking an old-fashioned key from his pocket, he placed it into a small keyhole underneath the elevator buttons and turned it. The lift jumped to life, descending at what felt like an unusually high speed. Even with the increased speed, though, it didn’t slow down and stop for at least ten minutes afterwards.

---“Now, Alex, this is where the magic happens.” The elevator’s doors slid open once more, revealing a large reception. Everything was clean and white, and the room was practically empty compared to the one in the building above. Alex was so busy examining his surroundings that he didn’t notice the elevator doors closing behind him, and a section of white wall sliding down as though from nowhere to cover them. “The building up top is somewhat of a cover up. It was meant to be London’s equivalent of the Empire State Building, but somehow it just wasn’t as popular. Over time, various businesses have moved into the different floors, and the only tourists it gets are architects. Having a giant skyscraper over a secret underground base without anyone noticing is still somewhat of a bragging point, something we like to remind the Americans of whenever possible.”

---“What... what is this place?” Alex was still slightly in shock, trying to get over the fact that he was inside a building with a skyscraper on top of it. A few men and women in white coats glanced over at him from a small table in the corner of the reception, but looked back to their newspapers and cups of coffee right afterwards.

---“This, Alex, is the English headquarters for the Cult of the Marked.” Crux explained, matter-of-factly.

---“Cult of the Marked?”

---“Well, we still call it a cult. It’s really more like a family. One big, religious, worldwide family. That happens to be a tad competitive from country to country. Maybe we’re more like a government, we certainly control enough of them...” Crux was silent for a few seconds, as though he was trying to think of a better explanation. “Eh. You get the idea. Unless you weren’t asking about the Cult part, in which case the Marked are people like you, and the Cult of the Marked is dedicated to worshipping you like gods.”

---“I only got these powers last night,” Alex said, slightly confused.

---“No, you only inherited those powers last night. As did the other five Marked, presumably, but we’re still working on tracking them down. We were lucky enough that you made a public performance out of the discovery of your powers. Unfortunately, most of the others are probably in Ireland, and we’re having difficulty contacting the branch in Dublin.” Crux sighed. “A long, long time ago, there were six remarkable people born in Ireland, each with a different power: Telepathy, Electricity, Telekinesis, Foresight, Necromancy, and Teleportation. Then they got sold out and locked away for all eternity, their powers doomed to die with them. Then, last night, the Irish cultists saw six coloured spheres of light somewhere near Cork. And this morning, you show up. It stands to reason that the other five spheres represent the other powers if that wasn’t just a massive coincidence, which we assume it wasn’t. So, somewhere in the world, there are five other people with the other five of the aforementioned powers.”

---“Oh. Okay then.” Alex was silent again, trying to process all the information while Crux led him further into the underground building. He noticed that the corridors were lacking in the security cameras present in reception – maybe they just thought that anyone who tried to get in or out would get caught there. One of the corridors made Alex feel slightly nauseated, as the walls and floor were made of some transparent substance that wasn’t quite glass or plastic. Below was a building full of men and women in white coats like the ones Alex had seen earlier, gathered around various machines and cages. He couldn’t help but wonder why there was such a large scientific presence in something that called itself a cult (although, he was also fairly certain that most cults didn’t have massive bases underneath skyscrapers). All this business with the Cult was a bit hard to take in; from what Alex could tell, they had bases all over the world (Crux had already suggested that there were bases in America, and that the Irish cultists were based in Dublin), and they were made to worship him and a few other people. No, they weren’t, they were made to worship people from a long time ago with the same powers as him. Crux called them ‘Marked,’ which might just have had something to do with the tattoo Alex had found on his arm that morning. Who were the other five? Were they teenagers, like him? Children? Adults? Senior citizens?

---The idea of an old person with superpowers made Alex chuckle, which earned him a small glare and a curious look from Crux.

---Crux said Alex had ‘inherited’ his powers. That was something he just couldn’t work out. It seemed to be important to the albino, seeing as he had corrected Alex on his wording. After a short while, Alex turned to Crux. “You didn’t explain what help you wanted me to give you.”

---“Oh, of course. I must have forgotten,” he chuckled. Alex noticed again how his eyes differed so much from the rest of his expression, like they didn’t belong there. They were so cold, and emotionless, and... dead. “I just want to perform a few tests. Blood samples and the like.”

---“Why didn’t you say that at the time?” It seemed to Alex that Crux had made an awful lot of a fuss for nothing more than blood samples. The feeling that he’d grown so familiar with in his time around Crux, that something wasn’t quite right, made its return in his mind.

---Crux shrugged. “I can get somewhat caught up in the moment. I think ahead, but sometimes I don’t do it quite right... it’s caused me quite a few problems.” This was followed by another chuckle, but very much to himself, like he’d told some kind of private joke that he knew Alex wouldn’t understand.

---“So, when am I giving these ‘blood samples’?” Alex asked suspiciously, looking around the corridor they were now in. It was much like all the others, with its plain white walls and floor. The ceiling too was white, but it was punctuated with square lights built into it at regular intervals.

---“Tomorrow,” Crux answered simply. “Tonight, you’ll be staying in this room.” He gestured at the door which was now to his right, having stopped and turned to face Alex. “We’ve already gotten some of your possessions and clothing moved here.”

---Without giving Alex a chance to respond to his last statement, Crux opened the door and motioned for Alex to enter.

---“There’s a digital clock/alarm in your room, set to wake you at ten tomorrow morning. At eleven, some of the scientists in our employment will be sent here to escort you to the testing room, where they will take blood samples and perform some simple tests. Nothing to worry about.” With that, Crux walked away, leaving Alex standing in front of the open door.

---The fifteen-year-old stood outside the room for a few seconds, watching Crux walk away, but eventually the albino turned a corner and Alex found himself without anything much to look at. Sighing, he walked into the room Crux had opened, and closed the door behind him.

 

---The room was startlingly similar to Alex’s own bedroom, with a few things just slightly out of place. He could tell that none of it was really his, though, including the clothing inside the chest of drawers and wardrobe against one of the room’s walls. It was also lacking in a window, although as some sort of joke there were still curtains. There was a door, too, which wasn’t present in his own room, and when he opened it he found that it led into a small bathroom (completely unlike his own). The room contained a shower, a toilet, and a sink, and was somewhat cramped.

---Upon returning to the main room, he spotted something sitting on the pillow of his bed that definitely was his – an iPod. It was strange to see something so familiar in a room that was at the same time familiar and alien, but he found it somewhat relieving. He’d been worried about it when it had been confiscated during his arrest. He quickly unlocked it, and immediately went into the settings to search for an internet connection – either all signals were blocked or he was too far underground to pick up anything from the city above.

---He sighed, put the iPod into the pocket of his hoodie and collapsed on to the bed. Closing his eyes, he drifted into a dreamless sleep.

 

-           -           -

 

21^st July

2012

A town in the south of England

 

---“How are we meant to know where to go from here?” Stephen asked, looking around the docks where the ferry had left them.

---“Well, it’s probably late enough that some papers might have stories, so now we just have to go into a shop and find one, find the ‘freak storm’ story and find out what town it was in.” David explained. It didn’t take long for them to come across a newsagent, and they were fortunate in that a local paper appeared to have printed somewhat later in the day than the others, and more fortunate again that the very story they were looking for made the headlines.

---“‘Local boys injured in freak storm,’” Stephen read aloud. “No mention of our guy, as far as I can see.”

---“Doesn’t matter,” David muttered, fumbling around in his pocket for change.

---“Why doesn’t it?”

---“Because it’s already told us that we’re in the right place. Ha!” David held up a pound coin, before picking up the newspaper and bringing it to the counter. After buying it, he walked out with Stephen.

---“Okay, so we’re in the right place, but where do we go from here?” Stephen noticed even as he was finishing his question that David wasn’t listening, instead flicking through the newspaper and skimming over the articles as though he was searching for something.

---“Well, I’m guessing we should go to the police station,” he answered after a few seconds, throwing the paper into the nearest bin. “Apparently a fifteen-year-old was arrested for shoplifting. Photo matches our guy.”

---“I’m not sure I want to be associated with a shoplifter.”

---“For all we know it’s just a cover-up to hide the fact that he had lightning coming out of his hands.” David pointed out.

---“Alright, do we know where the police station is?” Stephen asked, still not entirely confident in David’s planning skills. The seventeen-year-old stopped for a second, looked around, and then began walking quickly across the street, leaving Stephen to struggle to catch up. “Will I take that as a yes?”

---“Police car drove in this direction, no sirens. One could assume that it’s headed back,” David explained, quickening his pace once again in an attempt to keep the car in sight.

---“Alternatively it’s just headed somewhere where it isn’t needed urgently-” Stephen was cut off as he was hit by a powerful gust of air, blowing him and David backwards, timed almost perfectly with a massive bang and a burst of flame somewhere further down the road. His ears ringing, he tried to pick himself up, looking around for David, who had managed to stand but was shaking his head in an attempt to get rid of the sound which surely filled his ears as well. He stopped, then suddenly ran forward out of sight. A few moments later, he returned, walking at a slower pace. He helped Stephen up, and then he saw his mouth moving, but the sounds were too distant to make out. “What?”

---“It was the police station,” David repeated, slightly louder. The increase in volume and the fact that the ringing was beginning to get quieter meant that Stephen heard the words, although he didn’t quite understand what David meant. “Someone blew up the police station, Stephen. There was enough left to tell.”

---“Did... did someone know we were coming?”

---David shrugged. “No way to know for sure. We may as well go find somewhere to stay, we’re not getting anything done tonight and I want to get out of her before any fire engines arrive.”

 

---Soon enough, David and Stephen had checked into the nearest hotel – David wasn’t in short supply of money, and the place was cheap enough. The town didn’t seem to be the type that survived on tourism. As he sat down in his room, he found himself losing consciousness for the third time that day.

 

-           -           -

 

---David looked around, finding himself in the upper hallway of a house. There didn’t seem to be anyone there, and he took a breath in and began walking towards one of the doors, only to find it opening. A girl walked out – not too much younger than him, shortish blonde hair with a long fringe, purple T-shirt. He barely had time to register it as she walked right through him, and he felt strange chills down his back. Somewhere nearby there was a phone ringing, and it looked like the girl was going to answer it. He drifted down the stairs after her, to listen to the conversation.

---“Hello?” she said, picking up the phone.

---“Hello.” A voice on the other end replied. “Is this Sarah Winters?”

---“No, it’s her daughter, Eve. Can I take a message?”

---As Eve finished speaking, everything was beginning to turn dark. But this time, David had something he hadn’t had before:

---He had a name.

 

Review Topic

[Indigo Individual]

Chapter 7 – Ingredients

 

21^st July

2012

Manhattan, New York

 

---“Stop mothering me. Seriously, I have a cough and don’t want to get out of bed, I don’t need your input,” Eve snapped at Alice.

---“I’m not mothering you, I’m–”

---“‘Eve, you should get out of bed now’; ‘Eve, you shouldn’t be coughing up blood, you should get that checked out.’”

---“That’s not mothering,” Alice sighed. “That’s trying to help you. You’re my best friend, which is reason enough to worry about you. If that isn’t enough for you, though, you also happen to be going out with my cousin, all of whose anger will be taken out on me if you die given the fact that you won’t be present.”

---“Fine, I’ll get up,” Eve muttered, pushing herself up, only to swear and fall back, clutching her arm. “Well, looks like I’ve managed to screw up my arm.”

---“Let me have a look,” Alice said, leaning over her friend.

---“Thought you weren’t mothering me,” Eve smirked.

---“Can I just roll up your sleeve to get a proper look?” Alice asked, faking irritation.

---“You can just take the whole shirt off if it’s more convenient.” Eve smiled, winking.

---“I doubt Sam would approve.”

---“Sam doesn’t have to know.”

---“The sleeve will do, Eve.”

---“Alright then,” Eve pouted, turning slightly so that Alice had better access to her arm.

---Alice carefully began to lift up the sleeve, earning another curse from Eve as her hand brushed against the skin. “Shut up and stop complaining,” she muttered, continuing. “Hey, when did you get that?”

---“What?” Eve asked, turning her head to look at Alice. “Is there a bruise? Cut? Scar? Please don’t tell me there’s a scar.”

---“The tattoo, Eve,” Alice sighed, a tone of disappointment and some anger in her voice. “You have a tattoo.”

 

-           -           -

 

22^nd July

2012

A town in the south of England

 

---Outside a small hotel, a sleek black limousine with tinted windows pulled up. The driver opened the door, blinking in the bright sunlight as his eyes adjusted, and then climbed out of the car. Reaching in behind him, he picked up and opened a black umbrella, before walking to the back of the limousine and holding the umbrella over the door as he opened it. The man who climbed out was dressed completely in white; only his shoes and sunglasses were black, along with the umbrella which he took from the driver and held over his head, making him look stranger still in comparison to passersby, wearing shorts and T-shirts and other such clothing they would be unlikely to get away with on a colder day. And yet, somehow, no one seemed to notice Crux as he walked, umbrella raised, towards the door of the hotel.

---Behind him, three more men got out of the limousine, large and muscular, dressed in black suits. They seemed to stand out more than their albino boss, but no one commented on them or looked too long – they didn’t seem like the type of people one would want to anger.

---As he reached the door, Crux turned around to face the men who appeared to be his bodyguards. “What a wonderful day,” he muttered sarcastically. “The longest of this year's sunlight is behind us, gentlemen; at long last, winter is coming.”

---The guards nodded, and Crux folded down his umbrella, turned around and strolled into the lobby. The guards stood not too far behind him as he reached the desk, tilting his sunglasses down and leaning over it to face the receptionist. “Hello. I’m looking for someone called David, Frost or something his surname was?”

---“I’m sorry sir, I can’t give you details of our guests,” the receptionist responded, without so much as looking up.

---“Look, why don’t you just give it a little more thought,” Crux almost whispered, discreetly moving a roll of notes across the desk. The receptionist looked up at Crux’s hand, still holding them, and then pretended to shake it, taking hold of the money.

---“A David Frost checked in last night. Room 137. There was someone else with him, he’s staying in 138.”

---“Thank you,” Crux grinned, pulling away from the desk.

 

-           -           -

 

---Crux stood outside Room 137 with one of his guards, waiting for the other two to return. Teleportation would be easy enough to capture; he’d ordered the first guard to sneak up on him, and pull a blindfold over his head. Unable to see, he’d be easy to capture. Foresight would be more difficult, but he had a plan for how to deal with that.

---Suddenly, the door was shoved open and David tumbled through, turning to run down the corridor... only to find Crux standing in his way. “Hello there. Please, don’t make any attempt to escape, it’ll work out better for you that way.”

---Without replying, David turned to run the other way, only to find a guard blocking his path, and even as he turned to face Crux he saw the guard who had attacked him appearing in the doorway, sealing off any escape route. “Who are you?”

---“You can call me Crux,” the albino answered calmly, as the third guard walked out of the teleporter’s room, carrying the unconscious boy. “I’m here to help.”

---David looked confused for a second, then the guard behind him brought a cloth up to his face. His eyes widened and he struggled for a few seconds, then his eyes closed.

---“That went well,” Crux smiled. “Come on. We’re taking the emergency exit. You–” He gestured at the guard not holding one of the Marked. “–Take the elevator and bring the car round the back. We’re bringing them to the base.”

 

-           -           -

 

21^st July

2012

Manhattan, New York

 

---“I genuinely do not know how that got there,” Eve tried to explain, looking at the odd purple symbol on her reflection’s arm. The two girls were now standing in Eve’s bathroom, for a few reasons: first, there was a mirror there, and second, Eve had begun coughing again and she didn’t want to stain anything.

---“Eve, you have a tattoo. Unless you got drunk or something–”

---“I don’t drink.”

---“–Then you should remember where you got it from,” Alice finished.

---“A short while ago you were willing to believe that I could hear people’s thoughts,” Eve pointed out, slightly frustrated at her friend.

---“A short while ago you were commenting on what I was thinking and I didn’t really have a choice,” Alice sighed.

---“Well, I would appreciate it if you trusted me without proof as well,” Eve responded, before doubling over, coughing into the sink. A few seconds later, she stood up straight again, wiping some blood from her mouth and turning on the tap to wash away the red liquid threatening to stain the sink.

---“Eve, your nose is bleeding.”

---“Thanks, Alice,” Eve muttered sarcastically, wiping it with the back of her hand. “Now, could you help me get back to my room? I’m feeling a little light-headed.”

---A few minutes and falls later, Eve was sitting on her bed once again, Alice at her side. “This doesn’t look very good.”

---“Really?” Eve asked, pinching her nose in an attempt to stop the blood flowing. “I thought that this was all completely healthy. Don’t people wake up every Saturday with tattoos, telepathy and internal bleeding?”

---“Do you think they’re connected?”

---“No, I think it’s just a random coincidence that they all showed up on the same morning,” Eve sighed impatiently. “Yes, I do think they’re connected.”

---Alice was silent for a few seconds, trying to think of a response, or some way of helping her friend. “Didn’t you say the voices were quieter when you focused on your own thoughts?”

---“Well yeah, but they’re still there.”

---“What if... you were able to stop them completely like that?”

---“Do you think it would work?” Eve questioned, looking slightly worried.

---“It might,” Alice shrugged, smiling half-heartedly. Probably not.

---Eve felt a pang of something like sadness in her chest at hearing her friend’s thought, but tried to keep her face straight, not giving her feelings away in case she worried Alice further. She nodded and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath in, trying to centre herself in her own thoughts, memories filling her head, people she’d known and places she’d been, anything that kept her in her own mind. Some time later, she opened her eyes and found the world silent once again.

---“Did it work?” Alice asked, watching her friend curiously.

---“I... I think it did,” Eve smiled, breathing a sigh of relief.

---“Good, because I’ve been here a few hours and I really need to go home.”

---“I thought your parents were away for a couple of weeks or something,” Eve frowned.

---“I still need to eat, Eve,” the other girl retorted.

---“You could eat here,” Eve pouted.

---“Do you really think your mom would be that accommodating?”

---Eve was silent for a few seconds. “Fair enough.”

 

-           -           -

 

22^nd July

2012

London, England

 

---Alex awoke to the sound of synthetic bleeping and autotuned vocals, the kind of thing that somehow passed for music in the twenty-first century, as the alarm Crux had warned him about the night before went off. Muttering a few curses under his breath, he climbed out of the bed and turned off the alarm, before yawning and stretching. He recognised the song that had pained his ears a few seconds before as Damian Hall’s latest hit, which had brought him back up to the top of the charts alongside the other idols of teenaged girls such as Justin Bieber and One Direction, who he still managed to best while he was in his thirties, for which Alex had to give him a little credit.

 

---A knock came on Alex’s door just as Alex was drying his hair with one of the towels he’d found inside the cramped bathroom, and he sighed, grabbing a shirt (blue, as usual) from one of the drawers and pulling it on, before rearranging the shirts left in the drawer so that the layout was symmetrical once again. He made sure his clothes from the day before – apart from his hoodie, which hung on the door – were folded neatly at the end of his bed, one item on top of the other, growing smaller as the pile’s height increased.

---With that done, he went to the door at last and opened it to find two of the men in white coats there. Both seemed to be young, somewhere in their late twenties, but their serious expressions made them look older somehow. They led him through the plain, sterile hallways, and just as Alex was beginning to think they were as confused as he was by the corridors’ similarity, they came to a stop. Before them was a door, which blended so well with its surroundings that it actually took Alex a few seconds to realise it was there at all.

---As one of the men began to open the door, Alex prepared himself for some kind of laboratory, images of rooms full of bubbling chemicals over flames and animals in cages flashing through his mind. Instead, he found himself faced with what he could only compare to a dentist’s surgery, with one of those odd chairs that tilted backwards at the command of a remote in the middle.

---“Take a seat,” one of the men said, gesturing at the chair. Given his cold appearance and surroundings, Alex found his voice was surprisingly warm, and nodded silently before doing as the man had asked. As the chair’s back began moving, forcing Alex to lie down, the second man appeared at Alex’s side with a needle.

---“Now, this won’t hurt a bit...”

 

-           -           -

 

22^nd July

2012

London, England

 

---“I’m terribly sorry about all this,” Crux sighed emotionlessly. “But the thing is, I already have one co-operating Marked and as such, you two aren’t really necessary yet.”

---“What do you mean, ‘yet’? What is this?” David growled, trapped behind the bars of the cell he’d awoken in.

---“This, David, is the beginning of a brand new future,” Crux smirked. “Perhaps you don’t understand yet, but you will. Or maybe you won’t. It really depends on how I’m feeling when the time comes to kill you.”

---“Why not just kill us now, though? Wouldn’t it be easier, quicker?” David asked.

---Crux leaned in close to the bars, so close that David could feel the man’s breath on his face and even smell it, mint and something dark and coppery filling his nostrils. “You’re very special, David. As is your friend, as are all the Marked. And I’m just looking for the ingredients to make other people special as well.”

---With that, the albino walked away, brushing some imaginary dust off his suit and leaving a confused David to stare after him.

 

Review Topic

Edited by Indigo Individual, Mar 30 2013 - 07:01 AM.

[Indigo Individual]

Chapter 8 – Underestimation

 

29^th July

2012

London, England

 

Alex’s eyes fluttered open. New day. More exercises, more blood tests, more men in white coats watching him trying to throw lightning at a dartboard from behind a glass screen.

---He looked over to the alarm, checking how little sleep he had before it inevitably went off, only to sigh in relief as he realised it was Sunday.

---Crux was, fortunately for what remained of Alex’s sanity, not entirely unreasonable, and had agreed earlier in the week that Alex should get one day off, and Alex had been looking forward to it. He had to wonder, though, how long he’d have to stay, as it wasn’t particularly enjoyable and his mother might have been worrying about him.

---Alex sighed as he pushed himself up, bringing his feet over the side of the bed and standing. He knew very well that his mother hadn’t been worrying about him, because she didn’t notice he was there unless he tried to grab her attention. She just went about her own life as though she didn’t have a son, as though she’d never met his dad, as though nothing had ever happened. Which was, of course, a fantasy, but it was one she lived in, and if it meant that she wasn’t crying all the time Alex could live with it.

---She still did cry, though. At night, when Alex was lying in his bed and worrying about how his wardrobe was slightly off the centre of the room and whether or not he needed to move it, he could hear her sobs downstairs. He thought back to one night when he was twelve, and had gone downstairs in the hopes of comforting her. He quickly pushed the memory back into the deep recesses of his mind where it belonged, deciding that it might be an idea to take a look around the underground building. He’d grown more used to the corridors, and was now able to make out imperfections, badly applied paint or a chip in the wall, just little things that helped him identify where he was. If he tried to memorise his path, he should be able to make his way back.

---As he closed the door gently behind him, he looked to his right, the direction where the scientists or doctors or whatever they were took him every day, then to his left, the corridor stretching out. That was the direction Crux had taken him when he’d first brought him here, after threatening to kill Christina.

---It still didn’t sit right with Alex that it was just for blood tests, or even for finding out how his powers worked, that Crux had threatened to kill Christina. Crux had said there were others like him, and it would probably have been just as easy to get one of them to work with him. Or would it?

---Alex had been incredibly co-operative. He’d done everything Crux had asked, and he’d done it because he had a weakness, a flaw, which Crux had spotted and immediately exploited for his own gain: his feelings for Christina. Crux wanted something from him, and regardless of what this Cult’s apparent purpose was he doubted it was to worship him. A man who hands out death threats to a person he’s meant to consider a god obviously has more sinister motives.

 

Alex stopped walking when he realised he’d drifted too far into his own thoughts and gotten lost. He swore under his breath, looking around to try and find anything he recognised, but all he saw were blank walls and security cameras. Just as he was about to turn and walk back the way he came, he did a double-take – security cameras?

---Alex had noticed the lack of security cameras when he’d first arrived. It was one of the first things he took note of. So if they were here, when they weren’t anywhere else, it obviously meant that something important was here, something that might have had to do with Crux’s plan. He looked back the way he came, then down the hallway ahead of him. If he went down that way, he’d be taking a massive risk. He could’ve said he didn’t know where he was going, but the camera had seen him hesitate. He had to make a decision, doing as Crux wanted or trying to find out the true reason he’d been brought here. And, as teenage boys often will, he chose to take the risk.

 

-           -           -

 

“I don’t see what you have against threatening to kill me,” Stephen sighed. “You were fine with it in Dundalk.”

---“First, I’ve already threatened to kill you more than once in the time we’ve been here, and it hasn’t worked so far,” David snapped, his irritation getting the better of him. “Second, I didn’t threaten to kill you in Dundalk, only to gag you.”

---“Same thing.”

---David was silent, staring at the stone wall between him and Stephen as though he thought his glare would somehow travel through it. “No it’s not! With one you’d have duct tape on your mouth, and with the other you’d be dead.”

---“Couldn’t I have duct tape on my mouth and be dead, though?” Stephen asked, as though the question was somehow proving a point.

---“I’m not dignifying that with a response.”

---“Technically you just did.”

---“No, I undignified it with my response which refused to dignify it,” David pointed out. He’d been trapped with Stephen for just about a week, and they’d had either this same conversation or one very similar to it multiple times each day. His patience had worn thin by the end of the first day, and by the third it was all but nonexistent. Once again, he tried to distance himself from the situation by looking at the positives:

---First, they had the name of another Marked, Eve. That could make finding her easier than finding the boy here had been, or even decrease the screw-ups (although given her American accent, David had his doubts about the simplicity of the task).

---Second, Crux wasn’t going to kill them (yet). He needed them for his grand plan, making other people as ‘special’ as they apparently were, and somehow David doubted that he was doing it out of the goodness of his heart. His mind returned to the day Crux had captured him, and the smell of the albino’s breath as he crouched before him and whispered those precious few details of his plot. On the surface, it was all too many breath mints, but there was something else underneath, something unpleasant, something he suspected the mints were intended to hide. He hadn’t been able to place it at the time, but since then he’d had long enough to think, and slowly he’d become certain: the smell was blood.

---He had run through as many ideas as he could, but most he dismissed immediately. The only two that had stood a chance were that Crux was a vampire or that he was suffering from some kind of illness, and even the vampire one would have been pushed away were it not for the man’s appearance. David stopped for a moment to wonder if that was racist, then decided it probably wasn’t. He wasn’t sure how either of those fit in with what Crux had told him of his plan, but he hoped that it would make itself known. Assuming we don’t die first.

 

Hearing someone approaching, David shushed the still-talking Stephen, and tried to remain as quiet as possible in case it was Crux. However, as their visitor came into view, the silence broke with a quiet gasp from David and he immediately stood upright, in order to get a proper look at the boy before him.

---The boy looked about the same age as Stephen, and seemed to be exactly the same as when David had seen him in his vision, even wearing what looked like the same clothes. Although he wasn’t too sure, David thought he was a little paler than before, almost sickly-looking, with bags under his eyes, which were staring curiously at David.

---“Who are you?” he asked, and David was silent for a moment, trying to figure out the best way to answer the question and eventually settling on simply lifting up his sleeve as he had done to Stephen. They had been given different clothes, and although they fitted they were uncomfortable, and Stephen seemed to think that lime green didn’t match up well to his skin tone.

---“A friend,” he answered, allowing the sleeve to drop as the teenager continued to observe him carefully. “What I want to know is why you’re out there, and not in here like us.”

---“That would be easier to answer if I knew why you were in there to begin with,” he retorted. “You haven’t even told me your name, and how am I to know you don’t just have a tattoo?”

---“Are all fifteen-year-olds like this, or did I just end up stuck with you two?” David sighed.

---“In my defence, I did start off with ‘no offence’,” Stephen cut in. “He’s obviously just a prick.”

---“I didn’t start off with ‘no offence’ because I couldn’t care less whether or not you’re offended, I just want to know why I’m supposed to trust you,” he replied.

---“Alright. My name is David. I woke up last Saturday with a glowing tattoo on my shoulder and the ability to see the future. I met someone who also had powers, also about your age which is really making me feel old, and he used them to beat me to a bloody pulp, but not before telling me that there were others apart from us with powers and that he was going to find them all and convince them that they were gods, presumably by telling them that humans were parasites or something like that. I then had a vision in which I saw you being led to a police cell and teaching the police present the difference between electrification and electrocution, and shortly afterwards another of our friend Stephen. Wave your hand, Stephen.” Stephen didn’t wave. “I found Stephen, recruited him to the cause of finding you and the others, then we used news sites to make our way to a town in South England, where we found a cover story about you having been arrested for shop-lifting in a local newspaper. We then made our way to the police station, only for it to explode, leaving me with a splitting headache and confusion as to whether you were alive or dead. We rested in a hotel for the night, then were captured by a fellow called Crux who knocked us out, brought us here and then told me that he already had one of us working with him, who I presume is you although that might just make you untrustworthy, before informing me that he was planning to find what gave us powers so that other people could have powers too. Your turn.”

---“Okay. I woke up in the middle of the night last Friday-forward-slash-Saturday with a sore arm and a glowing tattoo. I went to the park and was gripped by a strange need to protect the girl I fancy from her thuggish ex-boyfriend, which resulted in leaving her terrified and the ex-boyfriend and his thugs unconscious. I was promptly arrested and escorted to a police cell where I informed the police of the difference between electrification and electrocution, before being led out by an albino in a Morgan Freeman suit named Crux who promised not to viciously murder the girl I mentioned earlier if I went with him. He told me that there are six of us, the Marked, each with a different power, and said some other stuff that I can’t be bothered adding to this summarised version. He’s spent the last few days getting scientists to take my blood and watch me throwing lightning at dartboards. Today was my day off so I took an opportunity to explore the building and came across this room which was miraculously unlocked despite the presence of security cameras all around it, hoping to find out exactly what Crux was doing, which I sort of have now.” The boy paused for a few seconds, as though trying to figure out if there was anything else to add. “Oh, and my name’s Alex.”

---“Well doesn’t my Saturday seem boring now,” Stephen muttered.

---“Aw, poor you. It’s obviously so much better to have the people you care about threatened or be beaten up.”

---“Well, I... uh...” Stephen was silent, trying to think of an adequate comeback, before looking down at the floor in shame when he found himself lacking one.

---“Alex, we need your help,” David said once he felt certain Stephen wasn’t going to think of something witty. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re kind of locked up.”

---“You want me to break you out?”

---“Well, yes, if possible,” David shrugged.

---Slowly, Alex nodded, after giving it some thought. “I... I can try.”

 

-           -           -

 

28^th July

2012

Manhattan, New York

 

Eve was bored.

---That was the sum of her problems. Even the guitar was beginning to irritate her, as she found it to be increasingly out-of-tune, regardless of how much she tried to tune it. She had become so busy tuning it, in fact, that she seemed to have forgotten to play it, and although her parents usually didn’t notice her playing it would appear that when the same note was repeated over and over with no noticeable change it began to grind on their nerves, leading them to commit the ultimate sin: they confiscated it.

---Regardless of what they believed was ‘for the good of our sanity, and yours’, it was Eve’s opinion that they had no right to take away her guitar. Or her keyboard, which she immediately turned to once the guitar was no longer available. The only thing she had left was her phone, which was very much less than a musical instrument with its tinny speakers and all-but-unreactive touch screen. All she had left was Angry Birds and the internet, and the former had grown a little tiresome after she found herself trying to score three stars in every level again.

---She’d tried waiting for whoever else was like her, assuming they existed, and they hadn’t come. Alice seemed to spend most of her days either asleep or out with friends who weren’t Eve. Eve didn’t really have many friends, apart from Alice and Sam, who was in France and not replying to Eve’s text messages. Probably to avoid being seen to have a girlfriend, which was very moral. Commitment didn’t really seem to be Sam’s area.

 

The internet had become Eve’s only companion, as she scoured it for signs of anyone else like her. There were things here and there that stood out as odd – something about UFO’s in Dublin or something, she didn’t really know the difference between Irish places. They couldn’t be that separate, right? It was such a small country.

---While people talking about UFO’s wasn’t odd in itself, it was the fact that it took place around the same time as she would have fallen unconscious that seemed odd to her. At first she didn’t notice it, given the timezones, but it was right. There were also paranoid blog entries about people disappearing around Ireland, saying that whole towns and cities of people had vanished. Ireland seemed like an interesting place to live. It seemed that Eve was just on the wrong side of the Atlantic. As Eve went through the search results for ‘Dublin UFOs’, she found her eyes drawn to one in particular. It looked like the average paranoid alien blog at first (and it seemed to think that the UFOs were in Cork. Then again, though, they might have been Cork...), but she felt something in the back of her mind urging her toward it and clicked it anyway.

---There was only one article. It was the first Eve had seen to actually have photos, and not low-quality phone images – there were six clearly visible balls of light, all different colours, in the sky. It could have been photoshopped, sure, but something told Eve, the same way it had told her to look at that article, that it wasn’t. The article was the first to suggest that it wasn’t caused by aliens – in fact, it seemed to think that it was something ancient and somewhat human. It claimed that the lights were directly related to six ancient gods, the Marked, who had been sealed away somewhere in Ireland in some legend or another. But it was able to list where the lights had gone – this couldn’t have been the work of one person, these were being tracked by at least one person each – which caught Eve’s interest. There was a red one which was apparently in Northern Ireland, although they couldn’t get the exact location but seemed to think it was in Belfast, an orange in somewhere called Dundalk (also in Ireland), a green one which had apparently barely moved at all and remained in Cork, a grey somewhere in the west of Ireland, a blue in the south of England and, lastly, a purple in New York.

 

The last one, of course, convinced Eve that there was some amount of truth in it, and she continued to read through the article (it seemed to be massive, but she didn’t try to save time by skimming), learning that these Marked apparently had what seemed to be superpowers. She started going through the list of powers, convinced that telepathy was going to show up, but found that it got cut off halfway through. Mobile sites.

---As quickly as she could, she clicked to read the full entry, waiting as it loaded, growing ever more frustrated until she was met with a blank screen and an error message. She hit refresh, and again, and again, and went back to the full blog page, but it had disappeared completely. It wasn’t even listed in the search results anymore. But she had something now; she knew what these Marked were, she had some idea of where the others were (even if they weren’t anywhere near her), and if this site had been taken down it must have had something important on it. Or the author realised he was drunk when he wrote it and proceeded to delete it out of embarrassment.

---She was taken by surprise as her phone vibrated in her hand and began ringing – a text. Probably Sam.

---Hopefully Sam.

 

It came up as a hidden number, but Eve couldn’t help but be a little curious and decided to read it, just in case of the slim chance it had something to do with what she’d been searching for.

---‘Who are you?’

---Eve narrowed her eyes, reading and rereading the three words. Wrong number. It had to be, she hadn’t texted anyone. She deleted it, but almost the moment she did the phone vibrated again, this time with a call. She hung up on it, trying to push away the feeling of dread rising inside her. A minute passed, then another. She breathed a sigh of relief.

---Then the house phone began ringing.

---She froze, waiting for it to ring out and stop. There was hardly any other way they could try to contact her, and her parents were out for the day – her dad was showing off some painting he’d made or something, still trying to convince the world that he was more an artist than a school teacher – so they wouldn’t be picking it up. After about eight rings, it stopped, but Eve didn’t move, still frozen, still waiting for the next ring, not daring to even breathe in case the phone started again.

 

The next ring was the doorbell. Eve couldn’t help but gasp, as she heard a voice and keys fumbling and the door creaking open and–

---“Eve! I'm home!” Sarah called out, and Eve smiled. It was all in her head. It must have been, it was just coincidence. But still, like one of those nightmares that feel so real even after you’ve woken up, the fear and the dread just lurked there on the outskirts of her mind, waiting for the next ring to be whoever was looking for her. “Eve?”

---“I’m upstairs, mom!” she shouted down, surprised at how calm and unbothered her voice sounded. She heard her mother coming up the stairs, and then her head peeked around the door.

---“You should try to go outside at some point, Eve,” Sarah sighed, seeing the phone in her daughter’s hand. “Being cooped up in here on your phone all day can hardly be healthy.”

---“Being cooped up all day in here on my guitar might be a little healthier,” Eve suggested, earning another sigh from her mother.

---“I’m just here for a few minutes,” she said, changing the topic. “Your father has just realised that he left his glasses here.”

---“Haven’t you been there for about two hours?”

---“Yes, and he’s been complaining about how much blurrier all the paintings seem since the last time he’s been there for quite a while.”

---“As a joke?”

---“Sadly not. He realised about an hour and a half after we arrived that he wasn’t wearing his glasses and sent me back to get them.”

---Eve raised an eyebrow. “How many times so far has he claimed to be a genius?”

---“Six, if you don’t count the sarcastic one about the absence of his glasses. But anyway, I really have to just grab them and get back, I just wanted to check in on you,” Sarah explained.

---“Okay,” Eve smiled, watching her mother’s head disappear as the door closed. She waited, listening as her mother closed the front door and the car drove away, and she was left with silence and the knowledge that whoever was trying to contact her wouldn’t have given up just yet.

 

-           -           -

 

29^th July

2012

London, England

 

Alex slowly ascended the stairs away from the dungeon where David and Stephen were being kept. He wondered if it was his fault that they were in there, then decided that if he hadn’t decided to work with Crux then it would have just been him in there and one of the others playing his current part.

---But that wouldn’t have happened, because Crux knew he would work with him. Somehow Alex felt that he’d been singled out among the others, chosen for a specific reason, that Crux had just known it would be easier to make him co-operate. He was weaker than them, and Crux recognised that, but perhaps it meant that he would underestimate him. If he was weak and passive then he wouldn’t act, but he was going to.

 

As he reached the top of the stairs, he stopped, hearing two guards walking past. The footsteps were growing closer and closer, and he was even able to make out what they were saying. He took a deep breath in and held it, trying to remain completely still.

---“What do you think of this kid, then?” one of them asked.

---“I’m not really sure. I wasn’t really expecting the Marked to be children, you know?” the second replied.

---“Well, we were all children once,” the first shrugged.

---“I don’t really see gods returning as children. I mean, what if they aren’t gods? What if they’re only kids with powers they don’t understand?”

---Alex heard one set of footsteps stop just outside, immediately followed by the other, and felt a bead of sweat creep slowly down his forehead. “You’re starting to sound like Thompson. You remember what happened to him?”

---“He... was executed.”

---“He got blown apart,” the first corrected. “The Cult doesn’t take kindly to disrespect.”

---“Calm down, I’m not planning to convert any time soon,” the other guard assured him.

---“I’d hope not,” the first growled, and as they started walking again and the footsteps faded away Alex considered breathing a sigh of relief, but the words of the guards seemed to hang in the air over him as some intangible threat: Crux was not to be messed with.

 

Alex sat in his room later, trying to figure out how he could break David and Stephen out. He could use his powers, he supposed, but what good would they do? He could knock out the guards and take down the security cameras, but he didn’t see what he could do after that. He didn’t know who had the keys... although he did have a suspect in mind.

---Crux liked to be in control. He wasn’t afraid of doing the dirty work himself, as evidenced by him showing up at the police station. It made sense for him to have the keys, and if he did he probably kept them on him. So Alex just had to get to Crux... or wait for Crux to come to him. He grinned, but it became a frown almost instantly as the lights in his room went out. He stood up, walking towards the door, and felt for the handle, but there was nothing there, and even unadjusted as his eyes were he could clearly make out the bright white suit in front of him.

---“Going somewhere, Alex?”

 

-           -           -

 

Crux sat back on the chair in his office, his legs crossed and up on the desk, sipping at a cup of tea. Alex was safely locked away with David and Stephen, and he already had all the information he needed – the plan would continue as, well, planned. He grinned as he lay the cup down. There was a knock at his door, and quickly brought his legs down, sitting up and pressing a small button on top of his desk to unlock the door, looking curiously at the security guard who passed through. “What do you want?”

---“I know what you’re doing,” he said.

---“Hm?” Crux tilted his head slightly, hoping to earn some explanation from the guard. He wasn’t the first to suspect something, and probably wouldn’t be the last, but he still needed to know how much he knew and how many others he’d told.

---“You have the Marked locked downstairs,” the guard explained. “You’ve been doing all those tests on Electricity to find out how their powers work, because you want them for yourself.”

---Crux couldn’t help it; he laughed. He looked in the guard’s face and he laughed. “How many people have you told about this?”

---“No one, yet.”

---“I see. And what, exactly, do you think you’re going to do?” Crux asked, his tone now completely serious.

---“I’m going to kill you,” the guard answered, pulling out the gun he’d had in his pocket and firing. He watched as Crux looked down at his brilliant white shirt, now slowly turning red, then back up at him. The guard couldn’t keep his eyes off the shirt, though, as the red slowly receded and the bullet itself was spat out through the same hole it had created in Crux’s shirt.

---“Good luck with that,” Crux smirked, standing up and beginning to walk toward the guard. “Mr Stuart, isn’t it?”

---“Y-yes...” the guard whimpered, backing away from Crux.

---“You have a wife, don’t you?”

---“Yes, I do,” the guard nodded.

---“Part of the Cult?” This time Crux didn’t get a spoken response, but the guard did nod his head. Under different circumstances, Crux might have considered pitying him, but pity was an emotion he’d left behind him a long, long time ago. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell her the truth of what happened here. Preserve your honour. I’m sure she’ll love hearing about how you took the same bullet that was meant to take my life. Or, at least, the closest available at the time.”

---Crux had fired the gun before the guard had even had time to register its presence, and he looked down at the red spreading across his shirt, almost as though he was hoping he would mimic Crux and survive.

---He had no such luck.

---“By the way, I’ll make sure that everyone knows that your last act was buying me a new shirt with your payment for this month,” Crux smiled icily, leaning over the man as he made a weak gurgling sound. When he was certain he was dead, he walked back to his desk, trying to ignore the red smear the guard had left on the perfectly white wall, and pressed a small red button beneath a microphone. “Hello, reception? Another assassination attempt, you’ll need to send in the clean-up crew.”

---With that, he sat back in his chair, putting his feet back up on the desk and lifting up the teacup. He put it down, frowning, as the lukewarm liquid slithered down his throat, then pressed the microphone button again. “While you’re at it, could you send up a new cup of tea? This one’s gone cold.”

 

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