When I regained consciousness, my hands were restrained to a stretcher and the room felt cold and sterile, as if someone torched, cleaned, and bleached the room.

Then I opened my eyes, wondering where I was. What happened? The room looked like it smelled, thoroughly cleaned, more clean than surgery tools after being cleaned. The room was blinding white and was mostly empty, only the stretcher I was tied to and a couple of suspicious looking objects laid beside me.

A taser, bone saw, scalpel, and a barbwire wrapped pole hooked up to a car battery was neatly placed on to a rolling table.
"Where am I?" A guard, her hair short and dyed chaotic purple and black, smirked at another and piped up.

"Should we tell him?" The guard she talked to the man with a buzzcut and a "R" carved into his neck. He seemed to want to join in on the fun.

"I don't think the boss would care."The man smirked at her and pointed his thumb at me. The young woman turned towards my face and a sinister grin formed.

"Hell kiddo, you're in Hell. The place where the Republic makes their little toy soldiers." Her voice was gravely as if she had been smoking. I didn't know what this place was like but if it was Hell, she had been through it. One of her cheeks looked made of scar tissue and she had an X slashed on her lips and a skull resting on the side of her face. Even her smile was crazy enough to believe her.

I didn't know what to say I just tried to stay calm and quiet in fear of..my parents!

"Where are my parents?! What did you do to them?" The other guard stepped to the side and pointed at three body bags.

"Adam, your dad. Marcus, the old fool who fought back. Nora your mom. All dead because we killed them, don't you remember?" His words echoed through my head as I remembered the hole through my Grandfather's chest, my mom's scream and her head separated from her body, and Dad's body filled with bullet holes as he laid beside me in the jeep I was loaded in. I saw my hometown burn. Serenity was a compromise between the humans and Gifted, a co-project between them had resulted in a big town. I looked at my ring and saw a pink glow come from it, Alice was alive and well.

That's when I regained control of my actions from fear and broke my restraints with no effort. They raised their guns but that became meaningless very quickly, I launched myself from my current position and seized the guards by their throats. They started to choke and became wide eyes at me when I set my hands ablaze.

"You killed my family..now you share the same fate as them!" My voice was full of hatred, I just wanted them dead. The more I squeezed the hotter my hands got and soon the fire went from their necks to their face and started to burn them off.

That snapped me out of it, I dropped them down and immediately threw up as I saw the flesh that was exposed and the horrible smell of cooking human, their eyes soon expanded and exploded. The screaming of agony and the obscurities said were all too awful to explain as they burned.

Then the woman came in, her amusement written on her face. The paralysis I had experienced was terrifyingly painless but it held me in place.  A metal foot hit the ground as a familiar face came into view, Zoeanne had knelt down with difficulty and looked at me with hatred and the same blasted amusement as last night.

"Oh my sweet darling I may keep you as my pet.." She ran her hand down my cheek. I broke from her spell and then used one of the burning bodies to throw at her. She just reached her hand out and skewered it. She dropped it to the side and then glared at me, my muscles tensed up again. I was paralyzed in place, unable to move.

"I guess you will have to go to obedience school..You're just like the dog your Dad was." I managed to spit on her.

"Go to Hell." She laughed loud and hard.

"Baby I invented Hell..." She laughed and then grabbed an assortment of weapons to torture me with.

Needless to say, it was horrifying for the next week. After I raised havoc, they dragged me into a cell with high volume speakers so anytime I tried to break out a loud and high pitched noise flooded into my ears. Soon the plan failed because I learned how to manipulate my telekinesis with my mind without moving a muscle, but they had plenty methods. Toxins, plastic bullets, a constant moving cell that could move in 360° in any direction, and an electric floor.

After awhile it was knockout and torture, simple as it was painful.

After awhile I gained friendships of different people. Trinity Bennet, a Native American girl with long black hair. I saved her once when she was cornered by a guard who tried forcing himself on her. He cornered her one day and tried sweet talking Trinity but was refused so he thought using force was the answer and manhandled her, ripping off her shirt. I took notice and jumped over to her by propelling myself through the air with a burst of energy. I slammed him into a table and throat punched him, making him suffocate and go limp. Trinity and I had a strong bond as I was always there for her when she needed me although she was strong enough.

Then there was Rico, kid could talk as fast as he can run. I saved him from getting electrocuted and then turned him into a little daredevil, teaching him where to hit and the different pranks he could do. He was a real joker, he liked to distract the guards while we did reconnaissance to see where we could get out. 

Then, the natural leader James. I helped him knockout or seriously injure at least six dozen kids and guards. The kids who attacked lost their humanity long ago, witnessed something horrid or had something horrid done to them. Either way, I knew James wasn't mindless the moment he smiled. "Do you really want to be put through the gas chambers again?" He shook his head no while we waited for the inevitable to happen. "Then let's blow this stand." His smile told me he loved a good fight and that day we caused a large gap in the guard schedule for the next year.

Those gas chambers were an experiment to see how resilient our race was and along with a dozen other experiments the Republic found out we were indeed resistant to most extreme conditions. But little did they know we planned to put a monkey wrench in their plans for a whole three years.