Young Writers Society

PROLOGUE

There are too many vampire stories in the world. Mine is of another sort of demon, monster, whatever you would like to call us. But in nature, we are matter manipulators, atom movers, telekinesis users. We are shape shifters.

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CHAPTER ONE: NIGHTMARE

I woke for the first time in a small, square world. I could speak clear English, and I could do simple math. I was born full sized, about five foot five inches, and dressed in plain, white cotton clothes. I had straight, dark brown hair that reached to the bottom of my shoulder blades.

But I couldn't tell you who I was.

And so I sat in that steel box for too long. It was roughly 10 feet in every direction. It was barren; no bed, windows, even a door. The only fixture was a light bulb in the center of the ceiling. Another question; Where was I?

But in all honesty, I didn't care either. My head was empty: I had no memories, nothing to remember, nothing to live for. Confusion and fright ran rampant in hy head.

I can't tell you how long I was there. But after a long while, the wall opposite me began to shake. Or so it appeared. In reality, an arch-shaped section of steel was stretching, separating, and twisting like silly putty. I scrambled back until my back hit the wall and stared at the wall with wide eyes. After a few minutes of this insanity, the writhing tendrils of steel retracted into the rest of the wall to reveal a thin teen-aged boy with overly shiny blond hair and a snide look. I didn't realize I had spoken my thoughts aloud, but he did.

"You're greasy."

I watched as he made a lunge toward me and disappeared to be replaced with a heat haze that ended just as quickly as it started. I waited with shaking hands for a half second before I was pinned to the steel by my throat a good couple inches above the ground. The snooty boy stuck his hooked nose a hair's breadth from mine.

"Shouldn't you be begging for mercy about now?" he said in a nasty whisper. "Fight back. Make me think you shouldn't be killed because you are weak." He spat the last word like it was a disease.

I contemplated him as calmly as could manage. If he said to, then why not? I pulled my trembling fist up and pushed it towards him with all my power...

...And he flew into the steel wall to the left.

I slid to the floor with what little shock I was capable of in my terror. What was I? Some sort of superhero?

But he wasn't to be taken down so easily. He picked himself up off the floor. Nothing but his ego was even faintly injured, but the steel wall behind him held an almost comical impression of his lanky body. His nostrils flared and his eyes went wild as he tensed to launch himself at me, but surprisingly, he stopped.

Instead, he closed his eyes, placed his hand against the wall. The steel my back was against turned soft, wrapped around me and pulled me into the wall as it retracted before I had time to even let out a fearful huff.

He walked towards me and pulled out a tiny syringe with a sharp-looking needle on the end. It was full of a fluorescent green liquid. He jammed it into my neck with less than a delicate push, and the wall rejected me back into the room. The blond boy put a knee on my back and held me down as he swept my hair from my neck. I shifted, but he pressed my back sharply and winded me.

And there, though I couldn't tell at the moment, appeared the word MINNION in Gothic letters, like a tattoo on the back of my neck.

"Disappointing," he murmured to himself. "Nick has to be wrong sometime, I guess."

But as he said these words, the word began to flicker, and the word MINNION faded into MINN. The font became curly and cursive. The teenager's eyes narrowed as he muttered, "But that isn't a title. It's a... Name?..."

He stood up and dusted himself off (though there was no dust or dirt in the room) while hiding his interest. "Nicole was right, I suppose... Too bad. I was sort of hungry. You might be skinny, but you looked awfully tasty." My chest seized. Was he a cannibal? "I'll be back tomorrow and we'll place you in the colony."

Before I could say anything, he crossed the room, put his hand on the wall and passed through the steel like it was liquid, not bothering to put on the fancy show he had on his way in. Suddenly realizing that all my strength had gone into my struggle, I fell asleep on the cold, hard cell floor...

---

When I woke, the rest of the shock set in. I was in a steel prison, and had been attacked by someone with super powers. I had no idea who the hell I was. This was a little much for being alive (conscious?) for somewhere around... A day? I had no idea how long I'd been here.

I am not ashamed to admit that I put my head between my knees and let chaos control me. I had to get out of here. I would die of hunger and thirst. If I didn't die from lack of air first. All this added to my I could see no ventilation in this prison, and the metal walls would trap the air out. I stood up, and stumbling like a drunk, I threw myself at the wall. I could feel the air thinning, my stomach aching, my throat like sandpaper as I screamed and hit the steel with my fists. My frantic screams bounced off the walls and increased my volume ten times. As my screams died into quiet sobs, a nasty voice reminded me that I didn't even know if there was a world beyond this. Was this a hallucination? Or was this steel box all there was?

I screamed like I was being tortured (wasn't I?), banged on the wall, and let anger take over. I couldn't be imagining the lack of air: I saw spots in front of my eyes. I lost the strength to sit up and I placed my hand on the steel to keep myself from collapsing on the floor. This reminded me of what the boy had done before. I closed my eyes and willed the nonexistent door to appear for me.

Somehow, my mind fell from panic and sank into calm, and the psychotic panic left. All I could think of was steel. I could almost imagine those tiny atoms of iron and carbon almost completely motionless. I thought of them floating apart, going into the rest of the wall, opening the way for me. When I opened my eyes, the way was open. Was I the same as the boy? What were we?

I was absolutely clueless about how I had just done this. I felt another panic attack coming on, but there was no time. I had to get out of here before I was caught and the greasy blond boy decided to to kill me.

More importantly, I needed to figured out who I was.

I ducked out the small opening and into a steel hallway. The hallway was the same as my room, steel and ten feet high and wide. But instead of being square, it seemed to stretch in both directions forever. The way to the right trailed off into darkness, as the only light came from the opening to my cell. The way to the left had a bright, square opening a couple hundred feet away. I made a run for the light. Maybe I could find someone to help me above ground. It was worth a shot.

So I ran, with a disconcerting speed and grace, towards the lighted opening... And ran into a giant pane of glass.

I must have bounced back about a foot before falling onto the floor. I laughed in a hysterical manner before standing up. I figured this was a measure in case I escaped. Then, looking down the hallway, I realized something I hadn't thought of before. "What if," I thought out loud, "I'm not the only one trapped here?"

Sadness and fear for anyone else who could be suffocating merely feet away from flooded me. I pushed this to the back of my mind. To get out of here, I'd have to worry about myself first. I placed my palms flat on the glass and concentrated like I had before.

As the world zoomed in on a molecular level, I saw that the centimeter-thick glass was formed from the atoms of glass being packed super-tight together. This was obviously built to keep in the prisoners kept here. I tried to move the atoms with my mind, like before, but I couldn't move them fast enough. It would take days at this rate. I gave up and came back to real life.

I sank on the floor and rested my head against the cool, impenetrable glass. I had tried. I had made an effort to live, an effort to care. Now, I had to prepare myself to die. This was my reward. It truly was a reward, in a way: I could leave my empty life and go into nothingness.

It also made me fly into an incredible rage. Who was this boy, these people to control my life? I began to kick and punch and throw myself at the glass in my fury. This glass was the only thing separating me from... What? Something better, at least. I hit it with all my superhuman strength.

As I slammed the glass again and again, something yellow reflected back for a second before an amazing thing happened.

A small crack had appeared in the glass.

This was no time to stop and be stunned, though. I continued with my barrage of attacks, and once again something glinted gold, and the crack spread further and further until the entire pane fell to the ground in little pieces.

---

I ran down the rest of the hallway, watching the light grow stronger as the door grew bigger. As I came into the light, I was temporarily blinded after being in the semi-darkness for so long. When I could see again, I could see I was in a room full of people. Not only people, but teenagers. Teenagers of every race, size, and gender.

The teenagers themselves had odd outfits. They had cloaks that were white with two buttons at the neck, and the bottoms flowed and billowed like skirts. The buttons were the same color as the half-inch trim across the bottom and up the part to the neck. I saw several colors: browns were the most common, followed by bronze, silver, black, and gold. There were only a couple of the gold-trimmed ones. Their owners were all also the most beautiful, though in different ways; in fact, some were a scary sort of beauty, with cruel eyes. One had vampire teeth.

They were all heading towards doorways like the one I had come from. There were about twenty rectangular doorways, arranged in a circle. They all had engravings above them: One had a vial, another a collection of math signs, a grouping of what looked like stars, a bed, and many that I did not understand. But the door directly across from me was the most ornate: it was surrounded by a gold border covered with beautiful engravings. A dramatic scene of angels, demons, dragons, and grotesque monsters chased each other around in a delicate and complicated dance of war and death. It was hypnotic, and I could see the scratches on a devil's horns that had been individually carved.

As I took in my strange surroundings with a fearful curiosity, I failed to notice one of the odd teens with a brown trim looking at me. He nudged the girl next to him and pointed at me. As people saw what they were staring at, more and more people turned. By the time I looked to the crowd again, everyone was standing still and looking at me with murderous glares. I knew I was about to be caught, and most likely tortured to death, so I asked what I escaped for.

"Who am I?"

It was the last I spoke. Before I knew I had been even touched, the world went dark.

---

When I came back into the world, I was sitting on an antique wooden chair. Not restrained, or dead, for that matter. Just there. I was in a sort of drawing room, with walls the color of dried blood. It was furnished with dark, carved wood furniture, and once again, paintings of demons and bloody battles. Gold was everywhere; for example, a sculpture of a beautiful young girl with a heaven-turned face sat on the desk. She had wings on her back. It provided a little peace to my rabbit heart.

And there, the girl who was depicted, but in flesh and blood, sat across the desk from me.

She was obviously pretty. Her body was slender and slightly muscled. Her face was in perfect symmetry, lips the correct size, with high cheekbones. For moment, I was freed of my terror.

But her best (and most frightening) feature was her icy blue eyes, and they dragged me back into horrifed consternation. They were huge and intense, and the texture themselves was as if a part of a broken iceberg had replaced her eyes. I could almost feel the jagged peaks of ice cutting into my skin, dissecting my thoughts. If I had held secrets, they would have been dragged into the open.

And then her voice!

When she first spoke, I was blown away by the high, melodic sound. It would have lured men and boys to their deaths to answer the siren call. I didn't even hear her question the first time.

"Answer me, or I will be forced to use torture. Who helped you escape?"

It took me a while to collect my thoughts and answer. I wasn't used to speaking yet in someone's presence. And what a someone!

"I escaped by myself."

She just shook her head. I felt ashamed and afraid giving someone so angelic and powerful the wrong answer.

"Impossible. How would you have shifted the opening of the cell?"

I blinked in a confused manner, and she elaborated. "Moving atoms, I mean."

"That's what I did. Who are you?"

She sneered at me. "I am Nicole Flame, you twit. That's not true. I will kill you no matter what," she threatened. "You might as well tell me who helped you escape. I will ensure you do not suffer long when you die."

I scrambled for something to say, do to prevent my demise. "I can prove it."

She raised an eyebrow. "Lying won't help you."

"But I can!" I insisted. I felt my temper flare with my fear this time. I did not get this far to give up now.

She rolled her eyes and stood to dismiss me from the room.

Ignoring her and the tempo of my heart, I stood up and placed my palm on the golden statue. I closed my eyes and made the atoms change into the shape I wanted.

When I opened them again, the angelic Nicole was gone. Instead, a demonic version, complete with with hellfire dancing up and horns on her head was in its place. I looked up, conquering at least part of my trepidation.

"Who am I?"

She looked resigned, annoyed and shocked as she stood up and walked behind me. She swept the hair from my neck like the boy had and gave a confused look. "You are... Minn?..."

As she spoke my name, it was as if someone threw a stone and hit me and the back of the head. The word- my name- sent my head reeling.

My personality rushed into my head. I knew who I was: I was arrogant, I was comical, I was random, I was curious, I was optimistic. I was Minn.

Minn Azarola.