P.O.V: Elizabeth Harmon.
"Happy birthday!" Amelia squealed beside me.
"Oh, shut up," I muttered, but I was smiling. "When your birthday comes around I'm going to embarrass the shit out of you!" I glared at her playfully.
"Yeah, sure you will," She rolled her eyes, not believing I would do anything of the such- and she's probably right.
"Besides, it's your sixteenth birthday, we have to do something fun to celebrate tonight!" I knew this meant a party, which I didn't mind, but her idea of a party and mine were two completely different things.
But any talk of celebration died from her as we walked down the stairs to the cafeteria and were staring at the large TV mounted on the wall.
"An attack was made in Washington D.C late last night, but authorities have no leads on who led the attack." The lady on the news said, and a live video of a tall building popped up on the screen.
The building looked as if not only fire but time have worn it down, seeming to bow to the ground in defeat. There were similar buildings around it burning, but the first one had no match to its flames as they just seemed to rise higher even though the firefighters were trying their hardest to battle the impossible blaze.
"Police found around two hundred bodies in variant ages in the buildings and on the surrounding street and are warning the public to be on guard. Report suspicious activity to your local authorities immediately." The newscaster warned. I rolled my eyes. They've repeated that for longer than I can remember. It never changes.
Though that attack happened several states away, I can understand why they felt the need to warn everybody. Attacks like this have been happening all around the country, in other countries even, and it causes the people to be terrified out of their wits because they know it can happen to them. Well, some people, that is. Most of us ignore it and try to go about our day. There had been several buildings set on fire, some even exploded, in the past few months. One had been an old mutant prison in Tennessee. An abandoned high school in Michigan. Old buildings left to rot that had been exploded that held hundreds of people as young as toddlers both human and mutant. Oh, sorry, did I lose you? I'll try to keep it simple for you: my name is Elizabeth Harmon this is going to get weird.
From a statistical view, a little over a quarter of the world is mutant. My entire family is. My dad can control emotions, make a room of angry people calm, or produce fear strong enough to kill. My brother, Brannon, is a Telepath. He can read somebody's mind with a single look, which is why I can't keep many secrets when he's around. Then there's me. I'm the only member of my family that isn't Mutant, making me the only human. My father had a wife before I had met him who could control light, make it so dark you'd think you'd never see the sun again, or make it bright enough to blind someone. My family likes to entertain themselves by saying that I look like her, but I knew I didn't. I had seen pictures of her and knew I looked nothing like her. There was no chance of anyone ever comparing us as relatives. I didn't look like Brannon or Charles- my father- either. And there was no reason for me to. Though it never felt like it, I was technically adopted. Brannon was too, but we never thought of ourselves as adopted, we always saw ourselves as a family.
My father's eyes are a deep brown, a contrast to my mother's bright eyes.
My father said that his wife died in a car accident shortly after they were approved for my addoption.
As long as I'm explaining that part of my family's past, let me explain another part of our history.
Around twenty, maybe thirty years ago humans found out about Mutants and everything was spilled. It was chaos at first, and acceptance was dificult, but after a while it was like nothing had changed.
Until the war. Two people started the war- Hamado and Da Kenshi. I don't know much about Da Kenshi, I only know what my parents told me about him. But this is what I know. After humans found out that mutants existed, Da Kenshi, or at least that's the name mutants who saw him named him, formed a group of mutants who were later called The Blood Order. They wanted to make mutants in charge, believing that mutants were the better race of the two. But nobody could've predicted what lengths Da Kenshi would go to to do it. He killed anybody and everybody that got in his way- human and mutant both. He tried, and almost did so many times, to accomplish his goal. The only thing that stopped him was the Gate Keepers. The Gate Keepers were formed when Da Kenshi was as strong as anyone remembers, when people were scared to death of what he would do next, who would be the next person on the news, pronounced dead by him or his Order. Hamado started the Gate Keepers to fight back against them, they started small because not many people were willing to fight. But ever since they've grown in size and power until they were as powerful as the Blood Order, and they've been fighting ever since. No side winning. Both sides losing. The Order has the support of Iraq and Germany behind them, while the United States took no side and continues to fight both wars. I know that there's a lot more to the story than that, but to be completely honest, I just don't care. This war has never had anything to do with me and I, like pretty much everyone else, try to pretend it doesn't exist. Even though everyone knows we're at war, most tried to go on with their everyday lives as normal as possible. But it's impossible not to notice when things like that happen in Washington and around the country that reminds you that you are at war.
Amelia was deathly quiet as we took our regular seats at our table. I couldn't help but roll my eyes at her. Amelia always took these things to heart, always bothered her. Like a few Keepers or Order dying meant anything- but to her, for whatever reason, it did.
I shook my head and tried to ignore my annoyance at Amelia and slid in at our lunch table to hear the kids at the table were all talking about the same thing: the bombings.
"Ten bucks says it was the Order," Remarked Sarah, a girl with green eyes and, originally, almost solid black hair, but she dyed it at the beginning of the year into a light pink to make an attempt to 'stand out from the crowd' she had said. But all she had managed to do was make herself a prime target for name calling. The most popular nickname she's gathered so far is Pinkie Pie.
"No shit Sherlock, you think Keepers would've done something like that?" Rod scoffed at her and shook his head.
I wanted to say that they might've, considering that Keepers have been known to go too far on several occasions, like the Order. The Gate Keepers and the Order are just about equal when it came to body count. Of course, while both the Order and the Gate Keepers are at war, only the Order was truly considered an army. The Gate Keepers didn't seem to have the same organization that the Order did, less of soldiers and more of savages. Indeed, there has always been something oddly barbaric about the Gate Keepers. So while taking down the Order has been the military's focus, they target the Gate Keepers when they can. The less of them, the better.
I tuned the whole thing out and ignored it all, a specialty of mine, until the bell rung and we had to go to class. The rest of the day passed in a drone of pointless classes, annoying teachers, and ignorant students. When the final bell rung, I grabbed my backpack and dashed to the door and into the streets, taking the familiar path to my house. Normally, I would be walking with Amelia but she got picked up early for a doctor's appointment. It was only a ten minute walk to my house from the school anyways, and I hated riding the bus because it's always too crowded and could be counted on to give you a headache every time. I grabbed for my phone and stuffed my earbuds inside my ears and pushed play on my playlist as I walked. I felt myself relax as I fell into the rhythm of the song and it felt like no time at all before I was walking up the steps to my house. I turned the song off and turned the nob to the door. No, let my rephrase that, I tried to turn the nob. But instead of opening like it should have, the door stayed stubbornly still.
"Damn it," I muttered and started searching around in my backpack for the keys. But before I had even undone the strap, the door swung open and there stood my father, looking worried and anxious, his face dead white in the doorway.
"Dad?" I froze, staring at him. I haven't seen him look like that since my mother died, and my heart stuck in my throat at the thought.
"Dad, what's-" But I didn't get to finish my question before my father wrenched me toward him and pushed me out of the doorway so he could slam the door closed and bolt it. Wait, no, my father had pulled me toward him, out of the way of the door. But if he'd done that, then who had just closed and locked the door? I could barely see anything. The curtains were drawn tightly over all the windows and nobody had bothered with turning on a light or two, but I could make out small things. It was a man with almost a buzz-cut haircut and skin so dark that he almost blended in with the shadows, making it hard to see him. I reached behind me and felt for something, maybe a light switch, when my hand touched metal, a small kitchen knife. I grasped it and held it tightly behind my back, even though I wasn't entirely sure if there was something for me to us the knife for necessarily. My father gave the man a nod, or maybe he didn't- I can't quite see great right now, and suddenly the room filled with light so he must've turned on the light. I stood there, blinking repeatedly, trying to get my eyes to understand what light was again when the man spoke.
"My name is Jonathan, your brother asked me to help with the situation." His voice was deep and cold, and wasn't exactly soothing.
"What situation? Who are you?" My voice came out higher than I expected, like I was a kid again. My father wrapped an arm around my shoulders, trying unsuccessfully to comfort me.
"It's alright, Elizabeth." My father tried to assure me, but his eyes were too distressed to sooth me. I shook his arm off.
"Why are you here?" I demanded almost in a snarl. "How do you know my brother?"
The silence drew on. Jonathan glanced at my father uneasily.
"She doesn't know?" He asked in subtle disbelief.
"It would've been dangerous for her to know, but I'm afraid we don't have that luxury now, do we?" My father answered gruffly in return.
"I'm still in the room, you know. Stop treating me like a child." I muttered. My fear had finally calmed down enough for irritation to make an appearance. They ignored me still.
"How long do we have?" My father asked in an agitated voice.
Jonathan checked the watch on his wrist. "Five minutes. I can't give you any longer than that, Mr. Harmon."
My father nodded and took a breath to calm himself, and I quickly spoke before he had the chance.
"What has Brannon done?" I demanded.
Surely, Brannon couldn't have gotten himself into this much trouble for my father to be this anxious. He never got into trouble- ever. The worst he's ever done is gotten a B on a test. It's not that he's uptight, he just never saw a reason to miss a homework assigment or not to try on a quiz. He also never saw the point in going to a party, like I did, or drinking. Anything I considered fun, he considered foolish and proof of my immaturity.
"Did he do something? Really, you shouldn't be worried-"
"Elizabeth," My father interupted me, voice like steel. "You don't understand." He was quiet for a moment, pinching his nose and sighing like the conversation had aged him years.
"Brannon...isn't at college, Liz," he said slowly. "He dropped out two years ago."
I was speachless for a moment. Did he really use the words dropped out? With Brannon's name in the same sentance? This was a joke, absolutely and positively, and indefinitely a joke. Brannon had never even willingly missed a day of school in his life. Dropping out of college was probably higher up on his blacklist than murder.
I stared at my father for a long moment, then at the man, then back to him. "Alright, let's say that's believable. Let's say for a moment that Brannon- our Brannon- voluntarily dropped out of his dream school. What's he been doing in his free time? Has he took up some new hobbies lately?" I scoffed.
"One." My father's voice was quieter than I ever remember it being.
"He's in the Gate Keepers, Elizabeth." He said the words slowly, as if they weighed a ton. "Something happened with his mission and we might be in danger."
There was a beat of silence before I burst into a fit of laughter.
Brannon? The Gate Keepers? I had never heard of anything more hilarious! Brannon wasn't afraid of a fight, certainly not, but he wasn't the type of person to go looking for one, either. Sure, Brannon wasn't as outspoken as I was about his dislike toward the Keepers, but to be a supporter- no, worse- to be one of them? Never. This was a joke, an almost convincing and well thought out one, but a joke nonetheless. I had to give Brannon props- he could put on a very convincing prank.
My father, on the other hand, didn't find it nearly as amusing as I did. And neither did Jonathan, apparently. Right- they were still going along with the joke.
"You think this is funny, girl?" Jonathan growled, glaring at me with such venom that I could've believed he actually was a Keeper. Had Brannon paid him to play along? Well, even if he didn't, he deserved an award for his performance.
My father threw him a look that I didn't see and Jonathan took a step back, still glaring, and my father put his hands on my shoulders, forcing me to look at him. His eyes were gave, holding my attention and knocking me out of my humorous mood instantly.
"Elizabeth, this is not a joke." He rumbled, voice heavy. "Brannon really is with the Keepers, and we really are in danger."
The mood of the room finally hit me full force and I suddenly forgot how to breathe. This was real. This wasn't a joke. And they weren't kidding.
I stared back at my father, too stunned for words as my mind reeled.
There's always that one moment in your life, that one sentence or action that flips your world upside down and after it's said or done there is no turning back. Everything changes after that moment and everything that happened previously becomes the before and the after is just spent looking back with regret that it can't be changed.
I used to think that I knew this feeling, that it was my mother's death that flipped my world upside down. But I was wrong. My mother's death merely tilted my world. This, this took the reality I had grown so used to and didn't just break it- it destroyed it. I felt hands directing me and I barely registered the fact that there was a chair beneath me before I fell into it.
This wasn't happening, this couldn't be happening. Why? Why did Brannon have to go and mess everything up? Things were fine before he dropped out of college and and now he's put us in danger, and all for what? Some noble cause? For the Gate Keepers? That was it. Of course Brannon wouldn't do this willingly. He had to have been forced, that's the only thing that makes sense. Why else would this be happening? He never would've put us in danger. Was he brainwashed? Maybe.
My mind was still reeling by the time I realized my father and Jonathan were still there, staring at me, waiting. I wanted to demand to know what they had done to Brannon to make him do this, but even I knew this wasn't wise. I would wait until the right moment and figure it out from there.
I took a steadying breath and looked up at them, and Jonathan began to explain.
"Your brother was on a mission and him and his entire team got caught in the middle of it. They knew their names, their powers, everything- they knew about their families, and they knew about you two.
"They got away but Brannon wants you two to be put in a base until he's off the radar, but that could take a while." Jonathan explained and gave a slight pause, as if struggling to explain it right. My father sighed heavily.
"They want us to go to different bases, Elizabeth, to be safer." He said softly. I could only stare at him, uncomprehending what the words coming out of his mouth meant.
"Jonathan is going to take me to his base and Brannon has asked a favor for someone to take you to theirs, until things settle down a bit."
Slowly, the words sank in. My father and I were going to be separated- for our own safety?- until Brannon got off the radar. But how long does something like that take? I didn't want to ask for fear of the answer. What if I never saw my father or Brannon again? But we would be safe, the three of us would be. No, we would only be as safe as they allowed and under no circumstance was I going to trust any of them to keep us safe.
"How soon do we have to leave?" My father asked, oblivious to the plan already forming in my mind.
"And what if we don't go with you?" I demanded.
My father turned to me with open surprise while Jonathan gave me a reprimanding look.
"I'm not sure the choice is yours to make, girl." He said, turning to my father and ignoring me completely.
I was fuming. My father is going along with this? And I had no choice in it.
"The other Keeper that Brannon is having help should've already been here, but we can't wait here much longer. I'm going to kill him for being this late-"
"Oh, what're you going to do, Jonathan?" Interrupted a mocking and surprisingly teenage-like voice from behind me.
Maybe it was fear, or craziness, or I don't even really know what, but I turned and, clenching the knife in my hand, threw it at the voice. The boy, a teenager that couldn't have been more than sixteen or seventeen years old, let out a surprised yelp and wiggled the knife out of the wooden panel about a foot from him where it had lodged itself into the wall.
"Nice to know that you already don't like me," The boy turned to me with a smirk playing on his lips.
"Shut up, would you?" Jonathan snapped. "And what took you so long anyway? We should've cleared out of here ten minutes ago!"
The boy was tall with short messy brown hair and bright blue eyes. And I had to admit, he was pretty handsome. The boy looked pretty strongly built with his broad shoulders and looked like he always wore a grin on his face that came with a look that said 'try me'. He had on a plain black T-shirt, a brown jacket, old blue jeans and purple-on-black running shoes. At my school, he could've passed for a jock easily, with his height and obvious strength- he probably would've played basketball, or tackled other boys in football or something. And with that smirk of his and good looks he would've been one of the popular people that are always messing around in class, annoying the teachers and getting into trouble. But there was something in the boy's eyes that made him seem much older than a mere teenager, something I couldn't quite place.
"One of them was following me and I had to ditch 'em," Then his voice turned sarcastic. "No, I was hungry and decided to grab some McDonald's on my way here, what do you think stupid?" he snorted and rolled his eyes.
"Whatever," Jonathan muttered and turned back to us. "I'm sorry, Mr. Harmon, Elizabeth, but we have to go now." He instructed us. I barely had time to hug my father and tell him goodbye before Jonathan was hurrying him out the door, telling him to try to blend in.
The boy made me wait five minutes until we could leave out the door ourselves, taking the opposite rout as my father and Jonathan had. I was about to turn around and lock the door but stopped myself as we walked away. What was the point in locking it now? We wouldn't be here. That thought kept me quiet as I followed the boy through the streets he took me through. It was when he was leading me toward downtown that I finally decided to bother about where we were going.
"Where exactly are we going?" I raised an eyebrow at him as we passed a group of teenagers, none that I recognized, Freshmen, by the looks of them.
"Well, I'm probably going to Hell, don't quite know about you though," He grinned back at me, even though I was glaring at him.
"Are you always this annoying? because I'm honestly going to end up kicking the shit out of you!"
But he just laughed at me.
"Right, says the girl who tried, and failed, to kill me with a knife. We're going through the train station, it's easier than taking you through the Tunnels." He shrugged.
"Tunnels?" I asked, was 'Tunnels' code word for something? These people were so confusing!
The kid shook his head. "You newbies always have too many questions, you'd have to see it yourself for you to believe me anyway."
We were both quiet as we walked, but that didn't last very long.
"Hey, do you have a phone I can borrow for a sec?" He asked suddenly, turning to me.
I studied him for a moment, but what was he going to do? He stared back at me, an eyebrow raised, waiting on my answer.
"Um yeah, sure." I pulled my phone out of my pocket and handed it to him, wondering if I was going to regret doing it.
"Here."
"Thanks."
And regret it I did.
He took the phone and before I realized his intentions, looked it over once and threw it in the nearest trash can. He pulled me away, okay it was more of a shoving situation, before I could reach in and grab it again. He had pushed me a few more steps when I finally found my voice.
"What- why- my phone- why did you do that?" I finally managed to spit out.
"Oh stop your screeching," he muttered, rolling his eyes. I thought that was overdoing it a bit.
"Why did you throw my phone in the trash?" I almost yelled, at which he gave me a glare and I had to remind myself to lower my voice.
"The Order can track you through it, and we can't risk you having it on you when you're in the base."
"I could have turned the locations off!" I fumed.
He gave me a look. "You actually think that works?" He laughed. "Besides, there's no outside communication allowed in the base."
"Do you know how much that phone costs?" I demanded.
"No," he turned to me with an expression that supported his next statement. "and I don't care, either."
He started to pull me along but I shoved him away and began stomping beside him.
Worst. Birthday. Ever.
As we walked further, I began to see the station. Neither of us said anything- though I noticed that the boy had a small but definite smile on his face the whole time- as we walked down the stairs and into a place where dozens of people- mostly business men and women dressed for work- were boarding a train. The man that was handing the tickets out took one look at the boy and I and nodded. He mouthed 'thank you' in return and guided me toward a train that looked ready to leave.
"Do you know him or something?" I asked him once we were in the train, finally breaking the silence.
"Tell you in a minute." He said and guided me towards an empty part of the train and shut the doors.
"He dropped out from the Keepers a while back, but he helps us get to our missions as best he can." He explained, sitting down on one of the seats, seeming to be perfectly relaxed.
"So, is Liz a nickname or is that your actual name?" He asks, catching me off guard. Did I ever tell him my name?
"Um, yeah, it's just what people call me. My name's Elizabeth. Elizabeth Harmon." I sat down on the seat across from him as I tried, and failed, to get comfortable.
He nodded and extended his hand, saying, "My name's Donny Keeney," I reluctantly shook it, unable to think up a way out of it.
I was halfway afraid he was going to, I don't know, bite it. I mean, he is a Gate Keeper. I dropped my hand as soon as possible, looking out the window.
"So how long is it going to take to get there, to your 'base' or whatever?" I asked. I didn't actually care, in fact, I dreaded the moment when I would have to leave civilization and replace it with the barbarism that was to be expected of such a society. I just didn't like the silence.
"A half hour, and a little bit of walking, but not much." He shrugged and pulled out a black knife with a silver hilt from a loop in his belt and started twirling it between his fingers. The knife had something written on it's blade, but it looked like it was in another language.
"What's that?" I ask, raising an eyebrow at the odd blade.
"A knife."
"You know what I meant. Where'd you get the knife?" I mutter, quickly gaining back my former annoyance with the boy.
"It was my brother's." The boy said simply and looked away from me, out the window as the train started moving faster.
A half hour later, with no words spoken between Donny and I, the train pulled into the station and we quickly got off. I once again followed Donny as we walked down a street that I didn't recognize. We'd been walking for about ten minutes when I noticed something odd. The street that we'd been walking on for the last few minutes was deserted. And not a 'not that many people' kind of deserted, but a 'there's no sign of life for a five miles' kind of deserted. Like there was something about this place that keeps people away, and it made me want to turn back as well. It left a churning in my gut, a feeling of fear and dread, though that could've been chalked up to the day's tension.
"Donny, where exactly are we?" I ask, glancing around for any sign of life and became even more worried when of course I found none.
"On a street." he said, rolling his eyes and smirking. How in hell am I supposed to get a strait answer from this kid?
"Oh lighten up!" He sighed while I gave him my best 'I'm gonna kill you in your sleep unless you start being serious' look. A look my mother had sometimes used on my brother and I when we would play jokes on her.
"We're almost there. And the place is like this because it's so close to the base and we can't have civilians too close to it." But that didn't explain how it kept civilians from coming near here but he didn't look like he was going to answer that question. Civilians? Really?
He turned down another alleyway before I could ask though, but this one was, literally, a dead end. All that was there was a flickering street lamp and a trashcan that smelled like it hasn't been emptied since World War Two. But apparently none of this got through Donny's thick skull because he walked up to the street light and held his arm, which I noticed had a dark blood red wristband on it, into the flickering light.
"Hey dumbass!" I call, walking up to him. "It's a dead end, do you not know what that means? It means 'turn back', not-"
But I stopped mid sentence out of pure shock. Because the wall was moving. It started to shift and turn and even break in some points until there was enough room for one or two people to walk through at a time. I barely noticed that Donny was laughing at what must've been the shock that must be written all over my face.
"Are you just going to stand there or are you gonna go through?" He asked, appearing unfazed by anything that just happened.
I nodded, still astounded, as I walked through the wall with Donny right behind me. As soon as he was on the other side of the wall, it shifted back with a groan. The other side of the wall looked like a battle ground. There was obstacles to overcome, dummies to fight, dunes to climb over and weapons to train with. There were people practicing with swords, throwing knifes, and weapons that I'd never heard of before. There was a large group of mutants and humans alike practicing dodging and fighting other Keeper's attacks with weapons of their own. And for some reason this surprised me more than anything. Those mutants were awfully brave, using their powers like that in front of all those people, but nobody seemed to care much, which surprised me even more. As I looked around, I realized Donny wasn't the only teenager here. There were people of all ages, from full grown adults to kids that couldn't be older than ten. Some of them were smiling and joking around while others wore permanent scowls on their faces, mainly directed at the smiling, happy faces around them.
This wasn't what I expected. I wasn't sure what I was going to find here, but it wasn't this.
It felt almost... Homey.
But I pushed the thought aside. This place was more of my prison than anything that could resemble something hospitable. That plan that had began to form was now blooming in my mind. I would play nice, do what they expected of me, try to fit in, if only for the moment. Then I would get out of here and find my father and Brannon. I didn't know how I was going to do it, I just knew it was my only choice. Staying here wasn't an option- I wasn't one of them, I refused to be a war criminal and I wasn't going to let my family become one either.
"What is this place?" I asked, forcing my voice to sound interested.
"To other bases, it's called Coneola." He smiled at me and motioned around us.
"But us, we call this place home."