The girl blinked a few times before closing her eyes again and recoiling from the pain in her head. She blinked a few more times as lights flashed in and out of a window. She sat up slowly and looked around. She had no idea where she was. This wasn’t her bed chamber, she wasn’t in the shack that the people had taken her to, and she wasn’t in the metal vehicle either. She was in a bed with scratchy blankets overtop of her. She looked out the window nearest her and watched as headlights passed by. 

They were moving. The girl laid back down and tried thinking about everything that had happened since her imaginary friend took her away. She wondered how many days she had lost or how long it would be until they found her and brought her home again. The girl flinched and thought back to what was said to her. They take children like her and hold them prisoner because of the gifts they possess, that was what they all said to her. But she didn’t understand how that could be. She had always been in her bed chamber. 

“You’re awake,” A voice said further away from her. The girl sat up to see her imaginary friend was back. 

“I am. And you’re still here.” She said. 

They smiled and walked closer, sitting next to the girl on the bed. “Are you feeling okay?” 

The girl didn’t really understand how else she was meant to feel, so she nodded her head. 

“They put us on a cocktail of drugs that doesn’t allow our brains to get over stimulated or our heart rates to get too high, so when you started panicking you passed out. I think it’s how they control us.” 

“Us?” The girl whispered. 

They nodded. “I was under their control too.” 

“So you have gifts?” The girl asked. 

“I’m a telepath. I can read peoples minds. It’s how I found you.” 

“You were in my mind?” 

“You thought you had dreamt me up, but I was really there, I was in your mind trying to find you.” 

The girl reached out and felt the fabric of their shirt. “You were real then?” 

They nodded. “You can call me Syd. Do you remember your name?” 

The girl shook her head. “They never gave me a name.” 

Syd sighed. “You have a name, it will come back to you soon.” They stood up again and began walking out a doorway before turning back towards the girl. “Come out when you’re ready. Everyone wants to meet you.” 

The girl watched as the door to the small bedroom shut. She looked, there was a bed and few small cabinets. She looked out again at the road. It was very dark outside, she looked up at the sky. They were hurling along a road, passing fewer and fewer cars. The girl took a deep breath in before standing up and finding her way out of the small back bedroom. 

They were in a larger vehicle with a small corner bathroom off the bedroom and a kitchen burner a refrigerator off to one side further up, across was a table that housed two other people. The girl vaguely remembered their faces. The blonde one smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners. 

“You’re awake,” he said that smile never leaving his lips. “We haven’t been properly introduced yet. I’m Jer.” 

“Okay,” the girl said quietly eyeing him before eyeing the boy sitting next to Jer. His face was cold and sharp. His green eyes were piercing into her making her squirm. “You told me the truth.” 

The boy blinked and turned away eyeing Jer before leaning back. 

“This is Marco,” Jer said nudging Marco with his elbow. 

The girl looked between the two before fixing her gaze to Marco again. “They had you too, right?” 

Marco slowly raised his head to meet her eyes. “They did.” He said. His voice was more tired than the girl had expected. 

The girl sat down across from him, neither peeling their eyes away. She wanted to say something, she wanted to ask him questions about what all of this meant, but she had no idea where she could start. Up until a day ago she thought the facility had been her only home, it was the only one she knew. She thought she was the only one like her, the only one with gifts, but all of that had been thrown away. 

“It gets easier.” Syd was standing next to Marco now, another girl climbed out of the drivers seat and flopped herself into the seat next to Marco, ignoring the way he flinched and leaned away from her. 

“I’m Lily. Jer’s better and more powerful half.” She smiled at the girl and her nose crinkled. 

“More powerful my ass,” Jer said. “Who was the one that took out all of those cars?” 

“And who was the one who gave you the energy?” Lily asked turning towards the blonde haired boy.

He chuckled and raised his middle finger towards her. 

“Jer and Lily are twins,” Syd said sliding into the seat next to the girl. “Their gifts go hand in hand with one another. Lily can take the life force from anything, people, animals, even some plants, and then can transfer it to Jer who can turn it into electrical energy. It’s very destructive, but very useful.” 

The girl nodded then remembered seeing the flash of blue electricity when they escaped. 

“Yeah, that was them.” Syd said answering the girls thoughts out loud. 

The girl looked between the two of them, she had never imagined so much power could come from a single person, it made her abilities to move water and wind seem fiercely inadequate. She turned towards the young man now in the middle of the two blondes. 

“And what can you do?” She asked. 

Marco stared at her for a minute before turning his attention to Syd. “I can move things with my mind.” 

“What kinds of things?” The girl asked. 

Marco seemed confused by that question and cocked his head at her, his brow furrowed. Very suddenly a jar of liquid began to rise above them, followed by a handful of books and pots and pans and plates. 

“Enough,” Syd whispered, barely loud enough for the girl to hear it. 

“Everything,” Marco finally said as everything settled back into place. 

The girl hadn’t realized she’d started shaking until she couldn’t stop. These people were far too powerful. She didn’t feel any safer here than she did in her facility.

“You have questions,” Syd said very quickly. “You can ask them.” 

The girl ripped her attention away from the boy with the piercing green eyes and looked at her imaginary friend. They were smaller than the girl had originally thought. Their hair curled like flames on top of their head, and their freckles covered almost every inch of exposed skin. 

“You took me from that place,” it wasn’t a question, so Syd said nothing. “Why?” 

“Because you asked me to.” Syd said as if it was the most obvious answer, but the girl couldn’t quite remember when she had asked. 

“How did you know I’d come with you?” The girl asked. 

“You trust me. I can tell, I knew you’d come. And I knew you wanted out of there. No one wants to stay another person’s prisoner.” 

“How long did they have me?” The girl asked. 

Syd hesitated and took a breath before glancing over to the three across the table. “I’m not sure. Your memories should start coming back soon, but it’s not an exact science outside the facility as to when. They follow your brain scans so they can tell when to inject you. Out here, you’ll go through withdrawals first, after that your memories will all return. Then we can know exactly how long they had you.” 

“How long did they have you?” The girl asked. 

Syd chewed on their lip for a second before answering. “Three years.” 

“And how long did they have them?” The girl moved her eyes briefly towards the three on the other side of the table. 

“Oh they never had us.” Jer spoke first. “Lil and I were on the run when these two found us.” 

The girl finally faced them, meeting eyes again with Marco. “How long did they have you.”

Marco said nothing for a while, but the way his eyes hollowed into lifelessness gave the girl an answer. “A long time.” He finally said.

The girl didn’t press more, she didn’t want to know how many days it had taken to break a person. 

“So what are you doing now?” The girl asked.

Syd cleared their throat. “We’re trying to find more kids like us, but we’ve been searching for two years and you’re the first, so you could say it hasn’t gone very well yet.” They laid their palms flat on the table, as if that would ground them to that spot. “Other than that, we want to try and find a way to take down this faction of the government at the source, only I’m not quite sure how to do that yet. I don’t know how big it is.” 

“I’ve been saying it for over a year now Syd… creepy underground facility in Canada.” Jer said leaning forward. 

Syd just snorted and turned away. “Either way, we don’t have a great direction yet. But we found you, and we got you out. And that’s huge. So I’d say we’re on the right track.” 

“How did you get me out?” the girl asked. “Why am I the first.” 

Syd considered this for a while before glancing towards Marco. “You had special circumstances.” 

“What circumstances?” The girl asked. 

“They let you outside. That’s when I knew I could get to you.” 

“And how did you? The metal wall? The guards?” The girl asked. 

Syd turned to Marco and nodded at him. The girl followed and her eyes got large as she realized that it was all this cold person sitting in front of her. She thought about the men hitting the wall so hard their bodies exploded and broke from impact. 

“Marco won’t hurt you.” Syd said.

The girl struggled to believe that. 

“He only pretends to be all broken and damaged.” Jer said cheerily. “It’s all an act, right Marco?” 

Marco turned his glare towards Jer who only smiled, his nose crinkling just like his sister’s. The girl almost thought she saw the hard line of Marco’s jaw twitch if only for a moment, but just as quickly as it happened his jaw was once again set and his eyes dead. 

“And… what do you want with me?” The girl finally asked. 

Syd took in a slow breath. “I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do.” 

“But you must want something from me.” The girl pressed. 

Syd said nothing for a long time. “Right now, lets focus on getting your memories back. The rest will come later.” Lilly stood and Jer practically leapt over Marco to follow her towards the front of the motor home. He plopped himself into the driver’s seat and turned the radio dial to a low hum, whispering something to his sister, who immediately rolled her eyes and laughed as she splayed herself into the passenger seat. 

“They seem different,” the girl finally whispered, mostly to herself. She was surprised when Marco was the one to answer her quiet observation. 

“They’re still alive.” He said before standing as well and walking towards the back bedroom. He shut the door so none of them could get to him. 

“He’s not a bad person. He’s a good person.” Syd said next to the girl. “But a lot of bad things have happened to him.” Syd stood up and squeezed the girl’s shoulder. “Welcome to the group.”