Chapter One

Peyton's POV:

I've never really been what you would consider 'normal'. Ever since I was little I've had these 'gifts'. They've been more of a curse than anything has though. At first my parents thought they could handle it, but as I got older it got harder and harder for them to accept me. On my sixteenth birthday they packed up and moved while my brother and I were at school. I've never seen them since.

My brother Landon is a year older than I am. He's now eighteen. He also has a gift but our parents never knew about it. He was smart to keep it to himself. If only I had kept my mouth shut about my abilities then we wouldn't be where we were today.

A couple of months after our parents left a man took us in. It wasn't until that man started doing tests on us that we realized how hated and coveted our powers really were. He kept us separated. I stayed in a twelve by twelve-foot room with nothing but a bed and a bathroom. It was more of a holding cell than a room. I spent more time being tested than I did in my room. There were more people like us there. I'd seen them a couple of times during the experiments. Many of them had died off. I was a lucky one. Our keeper, he liked to call himself The Maker, favored me. I was like his little pet. Some of the things he did were vile and disgusting but as long as I played along, I stayed alive.

I was lying on my bed staring off into the darkness when the cell door creaked open. "You're up." A rather large bald guard called.

I sat up and faced him. "What time is it?" I shielded my eyes from the light peeking through the door.

"Just past 2am." He motioned for me to get up. "Let's go, they're waiting."

I followed him through the dark underground hallways. The stone floor was cold underneath my bare feet. He held my upper arm unnecessarily. It's not like I was going to run. Where was I going to go? I've been here almost a year and have learned from past attempts that running is futile. We came up on a large glass sliding door. He punched in a code and we walked through.

There was a boy lying in a tank full green fluid. He had wires attached to his hands and head. It wasn't until I got closer that I realized the boy in the tank was Landon. "Landon!" I screamed pressing my hands up against the tank wall.

He turned his head and looked at me weakly through the glass tank. He stared numbly in my direction. Someone cleared their throat behind me. I felt a warm hand on my shoulder. "He doesn't remember you my dear." I forced back the tears threatening to fall from my eyes.

"W-What…?" I mumbled softly. "Why doesn't he…What did you do to him!?" I whipped around and shoved him a step backwards. He grabbed my shoulders and pushed me up against the tank.

"Now now, Peyton... None of that." He scolded. "He's beginning to become of little use to me."

"But, what did you do? Why can't he…" I loosened my stance.

"I was testing a recalculated formula of 13372A. He was the first ever to survive it, but it did cause him to lose sense of his powers. They are still there, but he doesn't remember having them. If all goes well he'll be back on line within the hour." He paced over to a computer.

I turned back to Landon. "Landon, I know you're in there…please, you have to come back…" If whatever The Maker was planning to do didn't work then Landon would be put to death and rendered as another failed experiment. "How are you going to fix him?"

A lab assistant led me over to a chair that reclined back. He hooked me up to a machine and began to type a sequence code into the monitor. "If what we do to you works, then you will be able to fix not only him but all of our future experiments." The Maker walked over with a syringe. The lab assistant strapped me down to the chair with several restraints. I flinched back as the needle entered my skin and I felt the burning fire course through my veins.

"IT BURNS!" I yelled as I thrashed back and forth; that syringe was followed by another and another until my body slipped into unconsciousness from the pain.

I woke up back in my room. I looked around the darkness. I had no indication what day or time was. I stood up and went to look out my barred window. I collapsed on my second step. I felt weird. My body didn't feel like it wanted to cooperate with my head. I felt a sharp pain run through my spine. My body contracted into a ball as my muscles uncontrollably twitch. I let out a blood-curdling cry of pain.

My cell door flew open and I looked up to see Landon. "We've got to go." He scooped me up into his arms. I whimpered from the sudden movement. "I know you're in pain but you're going to have to keep quite." He warned.

I swallowed back my pain and buried my head in his shoulder. I felt Landon's power flow through me as we turned invisible. We walked past guards undetected. The next thing I knew we were outside in the freezing snow. "How did we…?" I asked puzzled.

"I'll explain later." He adjusted my weight in his arms. "We need to get moving." He trudged through the snow.

We had been walking for about an hour before he finally had to set me down. "Where are we?" I looked around at the endless horizon of snow.

"I don't know, but we can't stay out here much longer. We'll freeze." He took of his jacket and wrapped it around my bare arms.

"How do you remember me?" I questioned.

"I don't know, the past week has been a blur. I remember bits and pieces of it but nothing coherent." He explained.

"Oh…" We started walking again. Seconds turned into minutes, minutes turned into hours. I couldn't feel my body. My brain just kept telling me to keep moving. Landon's hand was intertwined with mine. He held me close as we braced the cold winds and falling snow. "La-La-Landon, I-I can't keep go-go-go-going." I stuttered out of my chattering teeth. "I can't fe-fe-feel my body." I stopped walking and knelt down to the ground.

Landon came over to me and knelt beside me. "I-I know. I'm cold to-too but we can't stop n-n-now. Do you hear me? I n-ne-need to find you help." He picked me up into his arms. "Can you not he-hea-heal yourself?" I shook my head just enough to tell him I couldn't. "Let's go t-then." He took small steps without lifting his feet from the ground. "Look!" He yelled nodding off into the distance. "There, do you see it?" He referred to a huge mansion up the hill.

"What is it?" I lifted my head to get a better view.

"I don't know but maybe they can h-he-help!"