A Foggy Beginning - R. Brownell (tools of titans ebook txt) 📗

short curly brown hair, and wore round circular glasses. She was a lot shorter then Frank and he was holding something high above her head, out of her reach. She was jumping up and down trying to grab the object, but he kept laughing and pretending to yawn. I felt the need to interrupt, but I really didn’t want to, I knew I’d end up being the victim again so I tried to ignore him.

A few minutes later I felt something smack me in the back of the head. I cried out and rubbed the area that was hit. On the floor next to me was a small pendant necklace. It looked like a locket. I looked up to see tears streaming down the little girls pale white face. She started in my direction. I stood up with the necklace in my hand and was about to walk over to her when something happened. My whole body froze in place, my heart rate sped up and my vision blurred.

I remember seeing the girl, she was running with a few other people, behind them was the dust cloud. There were people running around them too screaming and crying. The cloud crept forward with each moment that had passed. Then out of nowhere the other people with her disintegrated into thin air like a vampire in fantasy novels after they had been stabbed. Dust scattered to the pavement below and the young girl knelt down and bawled her eyes out. The necklace lay in a pile of ash.

When I woke from the vision a crowd of adults and children had gathered around me. The little girl looked frightened as she stared at me. I heard a small voice in my head.

“How could you see that?”

I looked at the girl again and she nodded her head, she had spoken to me through telepathy. At the time I had no idea. I finally sat up and handed the young girl her necklace. She thanked me, Beatrice is her name… I just call her Bea now; she’s one of my good friends, we’re practically sisters.

I found out Cyrus’s power a few days later while we were playing a game of checkers. He had the black pieces and I got stuck with red. We each made our moves one by one, using our hands to make the movements (I say this now, because in a minute you will understand) It came down to only a few pieces left, Cyrus sat there with his hand on his chin contemplating his next move. What happened next freaked me out at first, I looked down at the board and without him putting his hand on the piece it moved to the next spot. My eyes grew wide and when I looked back up at him he had this huge grin on his face.

“Been meaning to show you,” he smirked as that smart-aleck look crept across his face.

It is my belief and a lot of others down here that the “end of the world”, wasn’t the earth trying to extinguish us, most of us think it was the government trying to kill us off. It was almost as if they knew some of us would survive, maybe they were trying to weed us out by creating this disaster. They also made me suspicious when they questioned our family background and I asked them about my father, told them he worked for the government… they claim they have no record of him.

Besides telekinesis, psychometry, and telepathy; there were several other types of powers on board our underground home. Several scientists have been researching us since day one. There have been several tests done on each of us, and we have had several vials of blood taken, but no one has been able to give us answers on why we had been the chosen ones. If you ask me everything about this is very fishy, but I try not to let it bother me. So far since I have been here I have made great friends and they have been like a family to me, the only thing I wish is that I could have my real family here with me.
“Day dreaming on the job Raine?” speaking of Bea, she stood in front of me as she passed through the breakfast line in the cafeteria. She held up her red lunch tray towards me. She no longer had short hair; her curly brown hair now swooped down to her shoulders in beautiful waves. She no longer wore glasses, contacts were her best friend now, and her once pale face was covered with makeup.

I plopped some vegetables onto her plate.

“At least I didn’t fall asleep in the pea soup again,” I reminded her. That was a really bad day, several items that I had touched has shown me images in random orders. By the time I had to go to work my body was drained from working so hard. I remember one minute I was serving the soup, the next my face was covered in the green goop.

“Very true, are we on for movie night?” she questioned.

“Movie night, right, wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I promised.

We always went to the video library every Friday night to take out a new movie.
(Yes they even had a regular library, a gym; it was pretty much like a small city or town, just underground) This place had almost everything, another reason to believe this whole thing was planned. I always enjoyed our movie nights; they helped us see what it had been like up there on earth. I remember few things, but I have been down here for almost eleven-years it’s hard to remember everything.

So what’s it like to have super-human powers? It’s a scary experience; at times it can be exciting and thrilling other times it scares me and I wonder what is really wrong with me. I wonder sometimes what is in me and the others that helped us to survive the storm. It’s a question that haunts me every day, and one day I will figure this all out… hopefully sooner rather than later.

Chapter 4
Can we really escape?

I was relieved when I finally got to take my hair net off and let my long brown hair fall down my back. I stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom by the cafeteria. It looked like a public bathroom; stalls were lined up along the wall, sinks just opposite of them with rectangular mirrors above each, pink tiled floors, and a pinkwhite combo color for the walls.

My face was extremely pale, which had been the case for most of us down here. I never even had a chance to lie on a beach and tan, when I lived on Earth going to the beach meant playing in the water and building sand castles. My hazel eyes had dark circles under them from the sleepless nights thinking about what happened to my family. I couldn’t help splashing water over my tired eyes; I needed to be awake enough for our movie night.

After waking myself up I headed out of the bathroom. I promised Bea that I would meet her at the video library. The library was on the last floor; it was near the center of “the core”, that is where the latch was to leave. The entrance to the latch had been sealed for a few years back, but a couple of times I had seen groups of people entering the door to where the latch was. They always looked like maintenance men, but maybe that’s what they wanted us to think.

I got into the elevator with two others. They were part of the “special” population like me; and I had known them since I was at least seven. Roger Patton and Danielle Meyers were their names. They held hands and looked at each other like they were the only two in the world. I never really thought about relationships much, finding someone down here wasn’t the top thing on my list, but every time I saw these two I felt a twinge of jealousy, I think everyone did.

The button to the tenth floor lit up and the doors opened, Roger and Danielle waved goodbye and got out. The silver doors closed again and I was on my way up. Five floors later the door opened and I stepped out into the hallway. A lot of people were usually on the fifteenth floor, it was almost like a strip mall up here. The government had set up this floor for people to get books, music, convenient items like; toothpaste, hairbrushes, and other every day necessities. Of course all of the entertainment was nothing new, every movie or CD was anything that had come out at least a year prior to the incident. Each room was visible to anyone walking through, the entire hallway on either side had windows and see through doors, it gave it that mall appearance. I think it kept some people sane, it gave them a taste of what home had been like.

I turned the corner and continued down the hallway. Only three doors down from the corner was the video library. I didn’t see Bea yet so I decided to take it upon myself to go inside. It was very quiet and not many people had been searching for movies tonight. To my left was a counter, it was almost like a check-out counter, but we didn’t have to pay. The only thing that we had to do was show our identification cards to take the movies out and we would have a week to return the item; it was almost like a movie rental store. In front of me were rows of shelving containing DVD’s in genre order. The first row was television, then comedy, drama, horror, thriller, science fiction, family, special interest, and action. I was headed straight for the horror isle, because that is what I was being forced to watch tonight when I heard two voices coming from the drama section. I stopped for a moment.

“They are opening it up tonight,” a deep male voice whispered lightly. I listened through the shelves of the comedy isle.

“Do you think we’ll be able to go back up there soon?” a high pitched female voice responded.

“I doubt it, I heard that there are creatures up there that were once normal, but turned into some kind of mutants from the dust cloud,” the male voice said.

“Yeah, well I heard the other day that a group of people were planning on going up there. I also heard that there were more survivors in another facility,” the female said.

“HEY!” I nearly jumped to the ceiling when a voice echoed from behind me and a hand rested on my shoulder. I turned and placed my hand over my heart, it was only Bea.

“Don’t do that to me, you almost gave me a heart-attack,” I took in a breath. I could feel my face burning.

Bea giggled,