-Eve-
"Let go of it!" I yelled at Katlyn. She held my copy of A Dance with Dragons above her head and out of my reach.
Now, for those of you who didn't realize, Kat had mental abilities, mainly telekinesis, but also a bit of telepathy. Because of that factor, she was holding my book above her head... with her mind.
"Ask nicely!" She giggled, as she knew I hated to ask for things.
"Can you please return my book to my hands?" I asked with an exasperated sigh and she dropped it into my waiting hands and scampered away. Most of my dorm mates knew I had quite a temper and they loved to toy with it.
As the reader of the story of my life, I should explain where I lived, and why.
I lived in a six-story compound surrounded by barbed wire, a concrete wall and armed guards at every elevator shaft, doorway, and exit. It was officially named the Francis' Rehabilitational, Experimental, And Kinesthetic Studies center. Us patients had not-so-lovingly dubbed it F.R.E.A.K.S. school. Named after Eli Francis, who generously donated several billion dollars to the cause of science, the building was originally used in the 1800's to study children with mental ailments. I tried to not think about the 'experiments' that they were subjected to. Later, those tactics were found 'unethical' and the place shut down for half a decade. They tried to bring it back as a rehab center for war veterans and the severely physically disabled. That didn't work out so they shut it down... Again. Around 1990, they needed a place to put delinquents like my roommates and me.
They couldn't keep us in juvenile detention centers because of our genetic adaptations (which is the PC version of saying mutations,) so they sent us all here. We went to school there, get tested on there, ate, slept, and made friends there. It was slightly unpleasant, but not awful. We were treated respectfully and as normal kids would be. It was all well and dandy until the Atrians arrived.
They went to a school nearby for a while... The seven chosen ones messed up big time with the law though, and the American government took it into their own hands to discipline them. Which is why they sent them to F.R.E.A.K.S. You'll later on figure that all of my friends had powers or adaptations of their own, ranging from webbed fingers and toes to shape-shifting, but I was by far the worst.
I was born with superior healing abilities. I would fall, begin to bleed, and then the wound would close seamlessly and the blood would wash away with water, simple as that. This also kept my fair skin and ginger hair continuously healthy. When my parents (both scientists with PhDs) found out, they started doing tests on my blood. They weren't horrid parents as you must think, but they did inject me with some weird serums. That brings me to my next power that I discovered after being injected with a carbon allotrope vaccine.
As most of you know, diamonds are made of carbon. My parents knew this and wanted to see what happened. My body did not disappoint. In my gym class, a dodge ball came flying towards me and in my self defense, I lifted my arm and when the ball hit it, it popped and I felt nothing. My skin had turned to solid diamond. I learned how to control it and cover my entire body.
Next came the eye tests. Because of my healing abilities, I'd always had 20-20 vision. So, my parents decided to test that next. I'm not sure how they did it, after numbing my face into tingly nothingness, they injected my eyes with a clear serum that I never discovered the origins of. After that point, I had incredible night vision. I could see in the day, I could see in the night, and I could protect myself. I was invincible. You must be thinking about why I never left my parents.
I was scared. I was scared about living in a world of perfect humans with perfect smiles who wore glasses and got bruises. I was scared of how they would respond. And I was smart to fear. They never accepted me. When I was thirteen I ran away because they tried to look at my insides. Most of their experiments were external, but I never wanted any needles inside of me.
So, I left. I wandered and ended up robbing a bank. They couldn't hurt me past my diamond skin, but it sure gave them a fright. I was scared of the cops, and they took me in to a detention center, where I promptly escaped. Then I was taken to F.R.E.A.K.S. I was the second person to be brought there, after Jim, who had webbed hands and feet. (He used them to swim through a mote and into a castle where he tried to steal a crown.) At the point where this story begins, I was seventeen and tired of the boring routine of my life, and looking for excitement. I finally found it in a certain Atrian boy named Roman.