"You are special Alice."

I had been told those words so many times since I was born. From the moment I was taken from my surrogate mother's womb, I was praised as a savior for humanity. Their last hope, their Alice.

Praise and worship mixed in with experiments and tests from the scientistswas my life. I was pampered and spoiled with all the luxuries affordable within the crumbling future, only the best for our Alice. Ice cream after all the shots. Video games played for hours if I could demonstrate my abilities.

Hearing words so often, you think they'd lose any real meaning. Perhaps they did, but I just didn't notice. When I heard those words, all I could hear was how it was my right for these things. I was better than everyone else and they should feel privileged to be near their savior. Special though is subjective. While I was special to some, I was an abomination in the eyes of another, and to the Others I had been created to defeat, I was a thing to be killed and feared.

Word leaked out from within the hole they had kept me hidden away, from the public and the Others. The word spread and Alice became the name on everyone's lips. My name, no their name fueled a fire.

It was a regular day, the day I stopped being called special.

 The alarms screamed, flashing brights lights. I dropped the book I had been reading to shut my sensitive eyes and cover my ears. I screamed as well, harmonizing in an the inhuman shriek. My caretaker, Ruth burst through the door to my room. She looked terrible with fear consuming her normally comforting features and twisting them into something grotesque. I dove under my covers.

"Alice get out of their now!"

"No! Go away!" More sirens joined the originals. "I just want it to stop! Tell them to make it stop!"

"Alice it's not that simple now get out from under there. We need to leave!"

"I said no! I don't want to!"

Strong arms wrapped around me, picking me up cocoon of blankets and all. Ruth huffed with the effort, but didn't complain. She flew out of the room. I peeked out from among my nest.

Angry and harsh words were spray painted across the stark white walls with red.

"Unnatural"

"Monster"

"Demon"

I hid again. What was happening?

Ruth shoved through a door and jerked to a halt. Her grip tightened.

"Hand her over." A rough voice graveled. "The bitch needs to be killed."

"You don't know what you are doing." Ruth moved backward with me away from the angry person, the person who had called me a bad word. I wrapped a portion of the blankets into my small fists.

"She's our only hope. Please don't do this."

Our hope, our savior, our Alice.

"That thing is like the Others. It isn't even human anymore. It needs to be killed before it kills us all."

I felt the man take action rather than see it. Ruth turned to run when he pounced. He drove a blade straight through her chest. It pricked me from where it had emerged. I rolled across the floor as Ruth fell and dropped me from her arms, the only arms that had ever held me like a child and not a savior. I sat up, bundled in my blankets to shield me from the world staring at her.

A sob wracked through Ruth, her bloodied hand reaching for me. "She's just a child." She whispered.

My child, my Alice.

The man swung cutting her head off. It rolled to me and I couldn't stop the scream. The room shook around me. Glass shattered and rained down, causing the man to run for cover. The sparkling shards looked like tears, like Ruth's tears for me. The world I had always known was being ripped to the ground around me. So I screamed, I screamed for no longer being special and for never knowing what it was to be normal. I screamed for the name that was not mine and for the name of the person's head in front of me.

The pristine white building began caving in on itself. Tiles fell from the ceiling all around me and cracks raced up the walls. Still I screamed, my throat cut raw by the sound.

My voice cracked and ebbed into a squeak. Pain was flooding my stomach. A hole in my body was leaking out my insides onto the floor. I looked up to see the scary man again standing over me with the gun responsible.

He lowered it, a grim face. "Let this be your tomb."

The man left me. For the first time in all my existence, I was truly alone and I was dying. I was supposed to be invincible and strong, a savior for man-kind. However, as my fingers touched the wound and became sticky with my own blood I realized how wrong that was. I was nothing. I was no one.

With a shudder, the building also gave up on me, burying me beneath it.

The Others swept into destroy what was left. I could feel their presence. It was so much stronger and powerful than any humans. Their magic seemed to charge the air and Earth to attention. All the papers, the vials of blood, the people...anything that could have been considered salvageable and was involved in the research was wiped from the Earth.

Nothing but a memory.

I myself was a memory as well. I was no longer their Alice...I was nothing, nothing but bleeding girl pressed beneath the rumble. Unnoticed by even the Others, I was becoming forgotten on my own.

Days passed in the darkness. My wound slowly began to feel itself, fighting back with the abilities the scientists had cultivated. Still, I remained within my tomb. I didn't want to live if I was no longer special. If I wasn't wanted by the Earth I had been created to save.