P.O.V Elizabeth Harmon.
"Come on. Let me show you the rest of the base." Donny urged and started walking toward one of the main buildings.
I had been so focused on the training-like area in front of me, I'd barely noticed anything else. The entire base looked to be in a giant square, made up with four walls that looked like it was made by a mix of brick and silver metal that someone had combined together, like two pieces of cloth being sewn into one. There were three buildings lined up in a row with one building standing a bit far off from the others. The building that Donny was directing me to was the one in the middle. It was the largest of the three and didn't seem to have but a few windows. It looked slightly worn, stable yes, but looked worn down, as if it had been standing for hundreds of years and just wanted to crumble into the dirt. It looked like it was about to, too. Donny must've seen the look on my face because he said,
"Yeah, yeah. I know, it doesn't look like very much, but you'd be surprised."
I doubted this.
The large metal door was cracked so all Donny had to do was push it slightly and it swung open. My bedroom was more stable than that. The thought made me think of my home. I hadn't been gone from it for even a day and I was already missing it. Would my friends be looking for me?
It doesn't matter, I reminded myself. You won't be here long.
The door creaked slightly as Donny closed it behind us and I took a look around the room.
The room we had entered was more of a long hallway, with doorways lining the walls leading to different rooms. The hallway curved out of my view, and as I looked closer, I realized that not a single one of the doorways had a door. Not one. Like whoever had built the place hadn't understood the concept of a door. I don't know why it confused me so much but it did. The next thing I noticed were the walls. The hallways were made of an odd mixture of what looked like brick and cement ground together. The writing scrawled on the walls was odd too. If you glanced at it, you could mistaken it for sloppy English, but the closer I looked, the more apparent it became that I was wrong. Not only was it not English, but I wasn't sure it was any language that I had ever heard spoken- or written- before. It even had symbols mixed into the odd words that I found hard to even pronounce, so I stopped trying. But that was also partially because Donny was laughing at my quiet attempts that I had hoped would have gone unnoticed. Of course they didn't. He opened his fat mouth to say something but a girl interrupted him.
"Don't be an ass, Donny." A voice said from the stairs.
We both turned to the person who had spoken.
The girl looked my age, with long dark red hair and bright green eyes. Her eyes were amused but there was a look in them that you didn't often see in a teenager. They had a maturity in them that was more fit for a middle aged adult than a sixteen year old.
She had blue jeans that fit her long legs perfectly and a black tank top that hugged her slim frame. The girl had freckles covering every inch of her light skin and a face more fit for a run way than whatever this place was. On her wrist was a white wristband similar to Donny's only hers was much wider, covering most of her wrist.
Just being in her presence made my self esteem take a blow.
The girl jumped down the last two stairs to meet us. She held her hand out to me without hesitation.
"I'm Renae Aloe." She smiled at me warmly. Her smile revealed her perfect white teeth and rose red lips. Another hit. No, a kick.
I shook her hand, and noticed how strong a grip she had "Um, I'm-"
"-Elizabeth Harmon. Sorry, I forgot, you prefer Liz, right?" She smiled at me expectantly.
"Uh, yeah. Liz." I mumbled. How did she know that?
The smile on her face faltered slightly and she turned to Donny.
"You better go get ready," she said to him. "Jacob's waiting for you in the Center."
He nodded and started toward the stairs only to turn back to face us but before he could say a thing, the girl answered whatever he had been about to ask.
"Yeah, we'll show her around." She said, answering his unasked question.
But Donny didn't seem to think anything of the odd exchange and quickly dissapeared up the stairs.
Had I missed something? Had Donny said something and I just didn't catch it? Or is being here already making me insane? I was thinking the ladder.
I've been here for five minutes and already I was losing my mind.
Renae turned to me. "We'll show you the bedrooms in a minute, but we have to wait a moment for him."
I still couldn't get over the mystery of the last couple of minutes. "Renae?"
She looked from the front door to me. "Yes?"
I tried not to show how confused I was. "How did you know my name?"
"Huh?" Now it was her turn to be confused, but it only lasted a second before it was replaced with understanding.
"Oh," she laughed. "How rude of me. I'm sorry, everyone is so used to me here they don't even bother to question me anymore. I'm not used to newcomers."
"Renae is a physic. She sees the future. She saw you comming yesterday and she's been a menace ever since, waiting to show you to show." Said someone behind me.
Renae rolled her eyes and muttered under her breath.
I turned around.
Behind me was a teenage boy. He had brown eyes, pale skin, a strong build, and shockingly white hair that reached the nape of his neck.
And I don't mean light blond either, I mean white. Like lightbulb white.
It stumped me for longer than it should have. Obviously he had dyed it. Tons of people dye their hair much more exotic colors, so I wasn't sure why this seemed to stun me.
I didn't realize I had been staring until he raised his eyebrows and I dropped my gaze.
He smiled and stuck out his hand. "I'm Thomas Woods."
I glanced at his hand. Yep. His wristband was a mix of light and dark green.
"I guess you already know my name too then?" I muttered but I shook his hand.
He grinned. "Do you prefer Liz then?"
I sighed. "Yes, actually."
Renae smiled. "I see different versions of the future, and you had a eighty two percent chance of getting here, so I've been waiting."
It shocked me how openly she said it. How honest she was about her abilities, like she wasn't surrounded by people. Like she didn't care who heard her. The way she talked about it, it almost seemed like normal conversation.
I looked to Thomas to see if he shared my surprise but apparently he thought nothing of it.
These really are strange people.
Renae interrupted the silence. "Alright then, I believe a tour is in order."
They led me up the stairs, which seemed less stable than the door had, and showed me the bedrooms.
The bedrooms held only simple things. Three beds in each room, three on one side, three on the other, with a small dresser beside every bed. To my slight amusement, the bedrooms did have doors. The rooms were always neat and tidy, the beds made, nothing left on the floor, nothing spilling out of the dressers like mine at home. I
Part of me thought it was odd. It was like no one even slept here. Maybe nobody did.
We left the room and started down the hall. We stopped at one particular door near the end of the hall and Renae opened the door and let us inside. The room looked exactly as the other did. There wasn't a thing out of place, nothing to distinguish this room from the one we had just visited. I felt like I was going to become a serious mental patient by the end of the week.
You won't be here that long, I reminded myself.
Renae sat on one of the beds and nodded at the one beside her. "You can take that one. I'll get you some clothes later, if you need to change you use mine,"
She looked me up and down before nodding. "Yeah, you should be able to wear my clothes until we can get you some."
I nodded because I had to, but I knew I wouldn't be staying here long enough to change my clothes.
"Donny and Jake are in the Center, we should go watch." Thomas suggested.
Renae grinned. "Sure, if you want to get your ass wooped by Jacob again."
"Oh, please." Thomas snorted and walked out the door.
Renae grinned at me as we followed him out and this time my returning smile was real. They may be weird but they seemed alright. For being Keepers, that is.
I followed them pass the bedrooms that never changed and down the stairs that made me feel like I was going to fall through. Once we were outside of the building, I felt like I could breath a little better. There was still Keepers in the 'yard', as Thomas called it, training and I felt like every eye was on me. I looked away from them, not wanting to meet their eyes.
Then my eyes caught sight of the smallest building. Though it was the smallest of the three and looked like it would barely hold a small room, it seemed to command attention, like it just couldn't allow itself to be ignored. It looked to be made of pure black type of metal that seemed to twist and turn as you looked at it.
"What's that?" I asked without looking away from it.
"We don't go in there,"Renae said sternly. "Ever. That's Command. It's only for the Commanders."
"What're Commanders?" I asked, confused.
"Okay, so every base has three Commanders that run it. A First, Second, and Third in Command. The first in Command, ours is a woman named Kaylee, has a bit of higher authority over the other two. She makes the decisions on what missions we go on, when the next Raid is, that stuff."
I had no idea what a raid was but I didn't feel like asking.
"The second in Command is chosen by the First- ours is Jacob, you'll meet him soon- and the third by the second, you get the idea. We have a Council that decides our rules and laws and such that is made up by these Commanders from all of our bases."
She looked over at Thomas. "Did I miss anything?"
He shook his head. "No I think you got it all."
"Wait," I said. "You guys have laws?"
I was met with two very confused stares.
It seemed unfamible to me that there would be rules in this type of hostile environment. I mean, who would follow them? Gate Keepers aren't the type of people to follow the rules. These are the people who didn't want to abide by the rules of the country so much that they made their own type of living.
"Of course we have laws, Liz. Why would we not?" Renae asked, confused.
"You need laws if you have a group of people living together. You look surprised." Thomas observed.
I tried to fix my expression. "No, I just, I guess I thought you guys didn't do that stuff." I fumbled for any kind of explanation.
"We don't like all of them." Thomas grinned and started walking to the only building I hadn't yet looked at.
It was a simple structure, made seemingly out of brick and wood.
Hey, this one has a door too, I thought to myself and suppressed a laugh.
The inside of the building was weirder than the bedrooms.
All along the walls was that same odd writing. And I mean on every wall. The only surface that wasn't covered in it was the brick floor. The hallway was short, leading to one large room. The room was filled with training equipment, almost mimicking the yard outside. Only this one was more elaborate.
It had weapons of different variations and purposes set up around the room. There was a climbing wall, only there wasn't any places to put your feet and hands. I watched in amazement as they used hand held magnets to climb the wall and back down. And I watched in shock as a little boy, who couldn't be any older than ten, put his hands to the wall, no magnet in hand, and began to climb. He was faster than the others, reaching the top and making it down again before most had mad it half way up. His friends cheered as he dropped to the ground, and he turned to them, grinning widely. His eyes were a dark silver.
I looked around wildly, hoping no one had noticed the foolish boy's actions, but they had. Only, instead of glares and whispers, he was rewarded largely with applause. Only one other little boy seemed unhappy with him, but I suspected that was mostly out of jealousy.
I couldn't speak. The boy didn't seem afraid in the least about the consequences of what he had just done. Now they know he's a mutant, but by the way they act, they seemed to have already known that, and welcomed it. They were happy to see it.
It didn't make any sense to me.
Still confused, I followed Renae and Thomas to a section cut off from the rest of the room. It was marked with a sign that read,
Mutant Ability Testing Zone.
I looked at Renae. "What's this mean?"
I felt like a four year, old asking mommy what type of dinosaur was on the coloring book.
"This is where Mutants go to test their abilities. We have to mark it because some of the kids kept running in and it can get dangerous at times." She answered.
I followed silently as they led me through the room. I couldn't help but look around. Mutants wove around the room, exercising their powers without restraint, their auras glowing. It baffled me.
Not only do they not condemn their abilities, not only welcome it, but they embrace them. They have an entire section of the room just for them.
We stopped across a mat where two people were sparing, careful to stay behind the line they had drawn there. I recognized one of them. It was Donny, and he was apparently loosing. He was almost on his back, the only thing keeping him from fully hitting the mat were his elbows, which he used to propel himself off the mat and into the other boy. I noticed how his right arm shook for the couple of seconds that it held his weight.
Maybe boy was wrong. He looked much older than Donny, or any of us for that fact. He had to be in his late twenties or early thirties. He had dirty blond hair, a simularly strong build to Donny and Thomas, and dark blue eyes. On his wrist he wore a black wristband.
What is with these wristbands?
After several minutes of sparing, the man got Donny in a choke hold. Donny finally tapped out and the man jumped up, smiling, and reached to help him up but Donny shoved the helpful gesture away and stood. Donny scowled at his right arm, as if he held it personally responsible for his loss. The man frowned but said nothing. Thomas threw them each a water bottle and they had them drank in under a minute.
Renae sat by Donny on the floor and I saw him take her hand and smile.
I noticed the man staring at me and I made the mistake of looking back at him.
He smiled and walked over to me, holding out his hand. "I'm Jacob Wills."
This was the Commander Thomas and Renae had been talking about.
I wasn't sure how I was supposed to act. What if this was their form of a president or something? Or a king? Should I bow? Salute?
But he still had his hand out and I realized that I had been staring at him as I thought this through.
"Sorry," I apologized, shaking his hand. "Elizabeth Harmon. Liz."
"I think you're the first new arrival in about two years." He said. "Welcome to Coneola."
"Thanks," I mumbled, not sure how to respond.
Do wardens welcome new prisoners to their cells?
He looked me up and down, studying me. He must have realised what he was doing because he quickly stopped and started talking to Thomas. Thomas tried engaging me in the conversation but I was barely listening to them.
I was plotting my escape. I would have to find out how to open those walls, maybe probe for information from Thomas. I couldn't make the others suspicious of me, or they might stick too close to me. I'm not sure how far they would go to keep me here, but I doubted nothing. But they would already be sticking too close to me. I was new, of course they would keep an eye on me. Okay, so I just wait a few days. Then I would go to the police, tell them my father, brother, and I were kidnapped. They would help me find them. It was a plan, or an idea of one.
As I was finishing up the plan in my head, I looked over at Donny as he shook his arms out of his jacket.
Once his right arm was out of it's sleeve, I saw it.
The skin on his arm, from his shoulder to his wrist, was black in the middle, almost having a leathery look, the skin around it a surprising white.
It seemed to command my attention, like the small building had, and wouldn't allow me to look away.
I didn't realize I had made a sound until Donny's head turned in my direction. He scowled slightly at my reaction but I looked away before he could say anything. I threw myself back into the conversation with fake enthusiasm, trying maybe a little too hard to seem engaged now.
Thomas looked up at a clock on the wall. "We better get back to the House before they eat everything."
Renae glanced at the clock too. "Oh, is it supper already?"
Donny stood up and held out his hand to Renae and helped her up. He didn't look in my direction.
We started back toward the middle building, the one Thomas had called the House, and went into one of the larger rooms.
The room resembled a cafeteria you would see in a high school, the wild teenagers included. There was as much teenagers as adults, and more than the children.
As we stood in the ridiculously long line for whatever food they served here, I turned to Thomas.
"How many people live here?" I asked him.
"Fifty." He responded, then corrected himself. "No, fifty three, including you."
I didn't want to be included in that number, and if everything worked out, I wouldn't be much longer.
Sandwiches were laid out along with bottles of water and some fruit on a counter. I took a sandwich and a bottle of water and followed the others outside. The room itself was too overcrowded for us to stay in there. We sat down on the lawn to eat comfortably and I noticed others doing the same.
After a few minutes of silent eating, Thomas turned to me.
"So what are you?" He asked.
"What do you mean?" I countered.
"He means are you Human or Mutant." Renae explained.
"Human." I answered, confused as to why we were having this conversation.
"Yeah, most people here are." Thomas nodded. "Donny and me are Mutant and you already know Renae's a Mutant. Jacob's a human too."
Jacob nodded his confirmation.
"So, um, what can you do?" It felt weird to ask such questions. You don't just ask someone what their ability is, but the normal rules of etiquette didn't seem to apply here.
Thomas thought nothing of it.
"I'm a Portaler." He said as if I should know what that was. He saw this. "I make portals." He hinted.
Oh. Now I felt stupid.
"So you teleport?" It still felt weird to talk about this kind of thing so openly.
"No, Teleporters make the portal inside of their own bodies. I'm a Portaler, I make the portal on the outside of mine." He said with a slight annoyed edge.
I wasn't the first one to get that mixed up.
Donny smirked.
"Here," he said. "Watch that dummy."
He pointed to a dummy a couple feet away.
He opened his arms wide and a spinning oval began to grow between his hands. It grew until it was larger than his chest. He flicked his hand and the portal flew at the dummy, the upper half of it disappearing with the portal.
"Wait for it," Thomas said, holding up a finger.
He raised a hand and the spiraling green oval appeared again, just in front of me, and the missing upper half of the dummy dropped out in front of my feet.
Thomas turned to me, grinning. His eyes were the first thing I saw. His light brown eyes had changed to a swirling green, which faded as the oval dissapeared at his command.
"That's so cool." I said and I would be lying if I said it wasn't the truth.
I might not be accustomed to it, but the way they shared their powers so openly intrigued me.
In my air of curiosity I turned to Donny. "You're a Mutant too?"
"Yes." He said, but offered no further explanation and turned his attention back to Renae, who gave me an apologetic smile.
"Come on guys," Jacob rose from his spot on the ground, stretching. "It's almost time for lights out."
Thomas answered my question before I could ask it. "We're not allowed out of the House after a certain time, we call it lights out. Only the guards are allowed out after that."
Not allowed out of your room- or cell, depending on how you look at it- after a certain time, guards outside preventing you from leaving. What does this remind me of?
Thomas must have seen something on my face because he quickly explained.
"The lights out thing is so nobody is fooling around when they're supposed to be sleeping and so they don't interrupt the guards. The guards are out so we have some protection in case we get attacked."
Yeah, sure that's what they're for.
But I nodded like I agreed, said goodnight to the boys, and followed Renae up the stairs to the bedroom we now shared. I didn't know how Renae remembered where it was, I know I never would.
And I also knew I wouldn't be here long enough to remember it either.
I didn't bother to change, though Renae offered a t-shirt that would've done fine. I was too exhausted. The other girls said quiet hellos, all except for one. She was younger than the other girls but her eyes made her seem much older. They were green, yet they seemed to hold so much misery that I could only look at them for a moment before I had to look away. Her red hair was cut almost as short as a boy's, which I thought was odd but I didn't think too much of it. As I looked between her and Renae, I began to suspect they were related. The more I looked between them, the more certain of this I grew. But I didn't say anything, partially because I was too tired, and also because it was none of my business. Mostly though because I was tired. It had been a long, aggrivating day. I was just getting into the bed when, suddenly, the lights in the room went out, covering us in darkness.
I guess that's why it's called lights out.
The others had no problem getting into their bed without light, they were so used to it, but I wasn't. I fumbled for the thin blanket, trying to pull it over my chin at least, but whoever had made the bed must have sewn the covers into the bed for all the good it did me. Finally I gave up and slammed my head down on the pillow, a little too hard since the pillow was so small it did little to cover the smack of my head against the wooden frame. So now I had a headache, I couldn't even get the covers off the stupid bed, I was no closer to finding a way out, and I'm pretty sure I was stuck in this prison until I did.
Worst birthday ever.