Tora stared at the ceiling through the darkness. The glow-in-the-dark stars she'd stuck on the ceiling were dimming. How many hours had it been? Three? Four?

Ross's words echoed in her head. They saw him as a freak. They tortured him. They tried to kill him. Damien talked little of his life before he joined the Seekers, merely that he was adopted and his parents wouldn't – couldn't – accept him. In the end, he was driven away. He would become withdrawn and upset if more questions were asked, so it was a topic Tora avoided, despite her curiosity.

It was strange to believe after all this time, Damien was fighting alongside the Seekers to keep those people safe. The very people who wanted him dead. But it made sense. Damien was such a nice boy. He wouldn't want to hurt anyone – he couldn't hurt anyone. She supposed killing demons was the lesser of two evils, because those demons would kill them and the ones they love, otherwise.

Considering Damien didn't want to kill Tora when they first met, he was definitely the most reluctant of all the Seekers.

Tora reached into the darkness and slapped her alarm clock. The lit face indicated it was three-thirty a.m. She groaned. Four hours into 'sleep' and she couldn't find a comfortable spot. All her muscles were itching to move whenever she finally settled and her eyes snapped open of their own accord. She couldn't stop thinking about the conversation over dinner. The remainder of the time had passed uneventfully, with Damien retiring to his room early for the night, looking withdrawn. It had been a while since his past had been brought up and Ross was never one for tact. If Ross didn't turn out to have special powers, Tora had no doubt she'd have joined the army and whopped the other privates' butts.

It only struck her then that she knew very little of any of the Seekers' pasts. Tora frowned, crossing her arms over her chest and dangling her legs off the side of the bed. She knew she wasn't the ideal person to go to for any heart-to-hearts, but it was strangely lonely knowing everyone – bar Carlos – had seen her earlier days and she'd seen none of the others'.

A creak from next door interrupted her thoughts. Markl was awake, again.

Tora slid out of bed, leaving the blankets to fall in a pile on the floor. She brushed her messy fringe out of her eyes and secured the rest of the hair with a hairband she found lying on the bedside table. She cussed under her breath when she tripped over her converses from a few days back. Careful not to make further racket or she'd face Ross's wrath again, she eased her way out of her room and knocked tentatively on Markl's door. The rustling stopped.

Markl didn't look up as Tora closed the door behind her.

"Staying up late again?" She tiptoed over.

"Something like that. You? Couldn't sleep?"

"No. I'm just here to shave my back."

Markl chuckled. He was sitting on the floor, hunched over a pile of folders with paperwork fanning around him in a meticulous pattern.  She groaned when she saw her folder open and pages upon pages of Ross's neat handwriting. A picture of her stared blankly back at her. Beneath that was written telekinetic and forcefield.

"You're not planning more telekinesis training for me, are you?" she said, kneeling next to him and picking at one of the pages. He swatted her hand away, continuing to add writing to the notes.

"I am. We both know your weakest point is your powers. "

"But Ross said—"

"I've had a word with Ross. She's promised to rein back on the antagonism next time. Your telekinesis needs work. You know she means well," said Markl, glancing up at last, "but she just has her ways of dealing with stress."

"Yeah, 'cos Ross is the only one of us who gets stressed."

"She shoulders most of the complaints from you and Carlos, for one. She also takes a considerable amount of workload off my shoulders with her strategic planning."

"And in her spare time, she likes to rip Carlos and me a new one."

Markl chuckled, turning over another page and tapping a pen to his chin with his other hand. "I can't deny that."

There were a few moments of silence as Markl studied the perfect handwriting, running a long finger along the lines. Tora picked at the cotton bits of her socks.

"She's quite fond of you, you know."

Tora snorted so loudly her nose hurt.

"Pull the other one!"

"No, really. She puts more time into planning your training than any of ours. The size of your training programme is at least twice as thick as everyone else's."

"Lucky me." Tora thought back to the handbook Ross handed her the day she beat her to a pulp. She wondered what had happened to that book. "Maybe she just likes to put more effort into making me suffer. She's a sadist."

"Ross spends a lot of time on these. They are very effective."

He reads them? "So are my fists."

Markl sighed and Tora knew she wasn't seeing things his way again. She had never had much progress in seeing things Markl's way. Or anyone else's way, for that matter.

"She values the team above everything, including her own life."

"She has a very peculiar way of expressing it."

"Her father's in the marine's. She grew up with that kind of attitude and strict household. That's how she's always been."

"If this is love, I feel so sorry for the person she hates."

Markl gave a wry smile. "She may not be the most sensitive of speakers, but she has our welfare at heart."

"Tell me about it. I hadn't seen Damien that upset in a long time."

Markl's hand paused in mid-air.

"You noticed."

Tora rolled her eyes. "I may fight like a meathead, but I do have brains. And eyes. What did Ross mean, anyway? Torturing him? His own family?"

He sighed.

"I suppose you should know. Everyone else knew already."

"Oh, great. I feel so involved with the group."

"It's not a pleasant story. It's not something we can just bring up over dinner – as Ross so tactfully proved. It still has a big impact on Damien even though he doesn't say much about it. So we try to not talk about it unless it's necessary."

"Well, it seems I don't know anything about anyone in our group. How we came to this realm, what we actually are... not even myself."

He tilted his head, a small smile on his face. The lamplight highlighted his chiselled features; his eyes were crinkled at the edges.

"Yes, there's that little mystery, too. I don't suppose we'll ever see that solved."

She shrugged. "I'm not losing sleep over it. Ross probably is, but like I care. I'm here now, aren't I?"

"Indeed."

Markl was quiet for so long Tora wondered if he'd lost track of the conversation again. He had a tendency to do that when he was too focused on something. .

"Um, Markl."

He blinked, back to reality.

"Where were we? Oh, yes, Damien. Well. Ross and I found him. Or rather, he came to us. We were fighting demons one day and he just approached us. Looked past all of Ross's copies and didn't flinch when the demons swarmed him. Before we knew it, they were all lying dead at his feet, and he was totally unharmed. This little boy, who just waltzed up to two bloodied teenagers, and gave us that angelic smile. Well—" Markl chuckled. "—he was fifteen, but he looked about ten."

"He still does."

Markl started to annotate the notes again, a small smile on his face.

"He spoke to us in our head. He said, 'Hi, I'm Damien. I'm a telepath and I would like to join your cause.' And that was that."

"So Damien's... human?"

Markl shook his head. "We don't know. He said he was adopted, so he could be human, he could be an entity. We don't know where he came from. He's attempted to delve into his parents' minds to see, but all he got was the moment they found him, naked and as a baby, in the middle of a field. No note, no trace, nothing."

"A bit like me, then. Alien."

"Well, we have about a decade's worth of history on him compared to you."

"Well, excuse me for being an amnesiac."

Markl shook his head, glancing up at her with a twinkle in his eye.

"Don't play the victim card, Tora. That's not like you."

She rolled her eyes again.

"And your parents didn't try to use black magic to exorcise your powers out of you as far as you know."

Tora nearly bit her tongue. "They what?"

Markl sat back, cracking his fingers and leaning against the wardrobe, his notes forgotten. He straightened his legs in front of him, crossing one over the other, the soles of his feet pressing against the drawers beneath his bed.

"Yep. They tried all sort of crazy methods: holy water, exorcisms, black magic, voodoo, sacrifices – they were convinced he had the devil in him. They tried to bleed it out of him, beat it out of him, squeeze it out of him. Nothing."

"Wait, are we in the twenty-first century or the first century? I know they were bloody crazy, but I thought that was why Damien never liked to talk about them. Not that they tried to exorcise him."

"Think what it looks like to humans, though. Damien knew things he shouldn't have known, replied to questions that were never asked, and started making people do things that were not of their own will. You can imagine: they were scared. They didn't know what was happening."

"Yeah, but I thought we'd evolved from the witch-hunting that was so common back in the stone age – or whenever. He was also their son. They raised him. What kind of parents could kill a little boy?"

"As far as they were concerned, they raised a demon who killed his brother."

"Are you kidding? They haven't seen the real demons!" Tora's eyes widened as Markl's words sunk in. "He killed his brother?"

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