Ellie

     Ellie awoke, for the second time, in the grips of the Central Intelligence for National Assurance. A feeling of deja-vu passed over her, and she forced air through her nostrils in frustration.

     National assurance or not, they were beginning to get rather annoying.

     She was in a cell of some kind, but the material felt odd to her. Ellie tried to sit up but quickly discovered she was tethered to the mattress with leather straps. She flailed her arm and accidentally bumped one of the walls of the cell. The sound it made was hollow; wooden.

     Ellie was encased in a wooden tomb.

     "Hello?" she called out. "Hello?"

     There was, of course, no response and Ellie rolled her head to the side to get a better view of her surroundings. Some natural light filtered in through the wooden bars on the other side of the room, but it didn't reveal much. As she lay there the soft murmurings of voices could be heard from outside the cell:

     "Her biological readings are extremely abnormal, they seem to indicate that technology is present throughout  her system..."

     "She's more machine now than human..."

     "So the reports are true then, she can interface with technology...."

     "The possibilities...they're endless..."

     "Don't forget that she's a threat doctor..."

     Ellie shook her head at what she heard, her worst fears being realized.

     "She should be placed with the others for her own safety...and ours..."

     "But what about what Agent Jones said? She explicitly told us not--"

     "I have direct orders from the director. Besides, Jones is a freak like the rest of them...she's probably sympathetic..."

     Ellie remembered to when Olivia did something in Times Square. She'd created an energy field, or something, that stopped the bullet. Ellie had trouble contemplating everything, trying to apply scientific rationale to her situations.

     Then again, how could one know the difference between science and magic after what she'd seen?

**

Gabriel

     Gabriel walked down a hallway with flickering lights and scanned a keycard on a wall terminal. The keycard had been pried from the dead hands of a scientist, but it was all right. The visions had told him the the doctor was supposed to die.

     There was a click and the door unlocked. Gabriel opened it and stepped inside the dark interior, feeling around on the wall for a switch of some sort as he did so. There was another click, and lights flickered on above revealing several stations of computer monitors.

     An advanced facility nestled in the isolated wilderness.

     The visions told him it was where he needed to go, and their persistence was relentless. They spoke to him, telling him what he had to do. Listening to their bidding, Gabriel picked up one of the computer monitors and smashed it to the ground. Carefully, and meticulously, he picked out several important pieces from which he would create something. For hours he sat there, constructing the one piece of technology that would complete his mission.

     Gabriel clawed at his eyes, more visions erupting in front of him. People, all around the world, flashed in front of his mind's eye. Faces, pictures, and events of which he had not seen laid themselves out to him.

     "Argh!" he screamed, falling and writhing on the floor.

     Death.

      Gabriel's screams turned into painful laughter.

     Destruction.

     The laughter echoed throughout the corpse-ridden facility.

     The figure.

     Gabriel got up and fumbled around, looking for anything he could write with. On the desk was an old Expo marker that he greedily grabbed and tore off the cap. There was a picture on the far wall, but Gabriel tossed it to the ground and began to scribble. His giggles intensified even further and blood oozed out of his nose. He wrote what he needed to write, and then he took a step back.

     Fear smothered him, a field filled with corpses appearing to him. Gabriel the Prophet fled the room, with his device in hand, and to the destination he knew he had to go to. On the wall, there was only one word crudely scrawled in jumbled handwriting:

     "DARKNESS"

**

Ellie

     She had been cooped up in her cell for hours, and her pleas were obviously not getting to the people that needed to hear them. Ellie tried, once more, to rip herself from the leather bondages but failed. She laid back down on the bed and sighed.

     Then, the door to her cell opened.

     "Yes!" Ellie cried, trying to pull herself up. "Finally!"

     A couple of people, one woman and a man dressed in scrubs, entered her wooden tomb. The agents did not respond, instead they wheeled her out and into a hallway.

     "Where are we going?" asked Ellie, the familiar feeling of unease crossing her mind.

     She was wheeled through dozens more hallways until they reached a giant, cavernous room. It was reminiscent of a modern several-leveled prison, with rows upon rows of concrete cells. Ellie was pushed past them, and she craned her neck to glimpse inside each one.

     "Whoa..." Ellie whispered, to herself.

     Each cell was filled with a different person dressed in a dark-blue uniform. However, it wasn't the prisoners that caught Ellie's attention, for it was the labels on each of the cells that were out of the ordinary. Each one of them exhibited a unique characteristic of each individual, and that was when it dawned on her.

     She was not alone.

     There were hundreds, perhaps thousands, like her in the prison. Each one of them had a different ability indicated on the exterior panel outside each cell. One indicator read "Ice-Manipulator" while another was labeled "Telepathic". All were locked in cells behind thick, vault-like, doors, unable to reach the outside world even if they tried. Ellie wondered why they didn't use their powers to escape.

     Ellie was taken to a cell labeled "A-113" and the door was unlocked. She was wheeled inside and put in the corner. One of the doctors loosened the straps a little, and Ellie began to hastily release herself from the bondages. Just as she managed to escape, the vault door closed and was locked from the outside.

     "No!" Ellie protested, leaping from the stretcher and sprinting towards the door.

     She pounded on the barrier before realizing that she could open it with her mind. Ellie took a step back, reached out with her arm, and commanded her consciousness to extend from her fingertips. She visualized the door opening, but for some reason it didn't.

     "Open!" Ellie commanded, her arm shaking. "OPEN!"

     "It's no use," a deep voice said from somewhere. "The walls are laced with a unique elemental compound that renders abilities useless."

     Ellie staggered back and looked around for the source of the voice. There was no technology in the room, not even a speaker for the voice to resonate from.

     "Who..." Ellie whispered, in shock. "Who is that?"

     "Through the vent, Einstein," the voice responded. "I'm in the cell next to yours."

     Ellie stooped down to the small metal grate just a few inches off of the ground. She tried to peer through the grates but all she saw was blackness. Ellie tapped on the metal surface before asking:

     "Who are you and what is this place?"

     "Good morning to you too neighbor," the voice sarcastically spoke through the grate.

     Ellie crawled to the ground and shook her head. She felt helpless, scared, and confused all at once. She didn't even know she could feel so many emotions at the same time. Suddenly, all of the events of the past few days sunk in on her and she began to cry. The tears seeped through Ellie's eyes and down her face as she remembered the lifeless Gabriel from the A.O.S.S.

     "What am I going to do?" asked Ellie, to herself, while rocking back and forth. "What am I going to do?"

     "Look...calm down," the voice echoed through the crate. "It's going to be okay."

     Ellie wiped her eyes and she shook her head, "No, no it's not. I'm going to die in this screwed-up world!"

     There was silence from the other side of the vent. Ellie continued to cry until she couldn't cry anymore. She was so scared because she didn't know what to do; there was no manual or protocol waiting for her. Ellie knew how to pilot million-dollar space equipment, or how to land a shuttle travelling hundreds of miles per hour, but she had never been taught how to escape a high-security government facility.

     Ellie kicked the cot she'd been wheeled in on and it tumbled to the ground. It wasn't fair, she thought, that she had to get cursed with an ability that she didn't want. All Ellie wanted was to be normal again, all the thoughts about being special were gone. She thought about her sister and closed her eyes, the pain of the memory increasing in weight.

     There was silence for a long time. Nothing could be heard except the hum of the vents as it recycled the air through each of the cells. Ellie knew that she belonged, locked up, in the prison of people for powers. She was, after all, a super-villain.

     Ellie was the bad guy.

     "Merlin," the voice suddenly stated from the other side of the vent.

     Ellie sniffled, "Wait, what?"

     "My name," the voice explained. "It's Merlin Kingston."

     Ellie wiped her eyes, "So...Merlin...what're you in for?"

     There was a moment of quiet, before Merlin vaguely answered, "I'm no different from anyone else in this hole. I got something I didn't ask for, misused it, and was locked up before I even knew what had happened."

     Ellie looked at the ground, "What do you mean?"

     "You know exactly what I mean," Merlin countered. "It's hard to be a hero in a world that doesn't want any."

     Ellie leaned her head back up against the cold concrete wall. She closed her eyes and swallowed, trying to keep her voice steady.

     "Merlin..." she started, "have you ever...hurt anyone with your powers?"

     There was more silence before Merlin answered, "In a manner of speaking...yes."

     Ellie licked her dry lips, "Have you ever been afraid?"

     There was some shuffling before Merlin answered, "I'm always afraid."

     "Are you afraid of yourself?" asked Ellie.

     "Only the part of me I can't control," answered Merlin. "But I've been here for a long time, so maybe things have changed."

     "How long?" asked Ellie, a little nervously.

     "I don't know," Merlin sighed. "They didn't exactly give me a calendar or anything. By my guess, I'd say at least a year or so."

     "A year?" Ellie exclaimed.

     "The days feel longer when you don't have the concept of time," Merlin explained. "It's all just an illusion, and it's a sense that I've lost. It feels like a year, but maybe it's only been a couple of months."

     Ellie let herself lay on the ground and she stared up at the ceiling. A small part of her wondered if there had ever been anyone else who had been stuck in a cell, far away from home, and held hostage by a questionable organization.

     Perhaps, it was simply wishful thinking.

     "Merlin..." Ellie sighed. "Let's talk."