I wake up in a hospital bed. Although, that is one of the only things about this place that seems like it could be from a hospital. The room is dimly lit by naked bulbs strung up in various spread out places around the large room. The equivalents of nurses wear heavy camouflage pants and coats with red embroidered crosses just above the elbow.

"Oh good," A young male voice murmurs. "You're up. I thought the serum killed you. You've been out for a week."

An entire week? I look up at the source of the voice. It comes from a boy about fifteen, a year older than me. He is not the same boy that injected and kidnapped me, but he seems just as dangerous. He has grayish eyes and short blond hair. His face would be handsome if it weren't for the scar running across his face. He wears camo cargo pants and a black tank top. His arms were crossed against his extremely muscular chest.

"Where am I?" I ask, sitting up.

"The Underground," He replies.

He reaches behind my head to fix my pillows. His face comes very close to mine. Why is my heart beating so fast?

"You wanna take a tour?" He asks.

I nod slowly. He kneels down so he's at my level. One of his hands wraps around mine, while the other one supports my back. He helps me off of the bed. I struggle to stand, nearly falling against him. He wraps his arm around my waist, my heart speeds up even more. I'm fourteen, shouldn't I know what this means?

"What's your name?" I ask, trying to start a conversation. Nailed it.

"Dakota Cullen," He answers.

      "I'm Cassiopeia-"

"I know who you are," He says, but not harshly. His tone is soft. "We all know who you are. We've been tracking you for months. You're quick though. Hard to pinpoint. You'll be pretty good here."

"What do you mean?"

He takes a deep breath and starts speaking in a tone that suggests he's said this crap many times, "We are a society called the Dissent. We've found flaws in the government. They're keeping food and supplies from citizens of the West Hemisphere. Having parties and spending all of the money that they could give to help support the poor. We are a rebellion. Our job is to expose and overthrow them."

"And how would I be helpful with this?"

He stops and turns to face me. At this point, I have walked the pins and needles out of my feet. Oh God, his face is so close.

"I know it's a lot to take in Cassiopeia-"

"Call me Cass," I tell him.

"Cass," he corrects himself. "But you can do it. I - we need you. You have excellent coordination and speed and skills. And you have the gift. You're upset about your parents' execution and you're brother's disappearance."

I close my eyes, blinking back tears. I don't even ask how they know about those things.

"You can avenge them. You can fight back. But if you don't want to, we'll let you go. Just please stay awhile and decide after you know what it's like here."

His eyes look pleading. And for a second, a split second, I think his eyes flick down to my lips. I can't help but smile and reply, "Okay. I'll stay."

He smiles back. Then we both realize how close we are and he backs off. I hear voices down the hall. One sounds oddly familiar. The people come around the corner. A guy and a girl are holding hands and talking. One of them looks like - my brother.

"Apollo?" I stare in amazement.

He looks at me. A smile spreads across his face. "Cass. You're out of the coma."

I run toward him and he scoops me up into his arms. He used to do that all the time. Then one day he was gone. I'm surprised he can still pick me up at fourteen.

"I missed you so much," He says, putting me down.

"I thought you were dead!" I slap him across the face. "Damn you!"

"It's okay, I'm here now." He gestures to the girl behind him. "I want you to meet Glenna Marano. My girlfriend."

She reaches her hand out to shake mine, and I oblige. "Cass - you already know who I am."

"Cassiopeia Belacourt, fourteen years old. Parents, deceased. I'm so sorry for your loss. Brother, right beside me." They smile at each other. But there is pain in Apollo's smile. He looks overwhelmed, exhausted. "Identifies as female." Each citizen is allowed to reselect his or her gender when they are thirteen and eighteen. After eighteen, the person must stick to whatever gender they have selected: male, female, fluid, or agender. Not a lot to choose from, but I guess the government's doing the best they can. "Special talents, speed, self-defense, stealth, the gift."

I cringe. "How does everyone know about that?"

"It has something to do with the brightness of your eye colour," Dakota says from behind me. I forgot that he was still here. "The government implanted a brain enhancement into your skull. It was a small project. They took twenty test subjects, yourself included. They took five infants with brown eyes, five with blue eyes, five with purple eyes, and five with green eyes. Fourteen of the subjects couldn't handle the enhancer, and they went insane. They thought that the survivors were only purple-eyed. Until they found you. You were the only survivor without purple eyes. And you were the strongest of all of them.

"The eyes of all survivors got brighter, almost like they were glowing. But the government was worried that the children were too strong when they started accidentally harming the workers looking after them. So they sent the kids back to their homes and made their family members swear to secrecy. But your parents didn't listen, did they? They helped you strengthen your gift. They were working against the government. They wanted you to be able to use it."

I nod. Thinking of my parents still hurts, even though they have been dead for a year, and I've been running for eight months. I've never really had time to think of them, I've always had to be alert and ready to move. But now all of the old feelings are rushing back.

"I think we should keep moving," Dakota says, pulling me along. "See you two at dinner."

Glenna and Apollo nod, and we part ways. Dakota leads me through the dimly lit hallway and stops at a heavy metal door with a black camera embedded into it. He taps a pad below it and it comes to life with three options on it:

SCAN FOR ENTRY

NEW IDENTITY

SELF-DESTRUCT

"I can't read these very well," Dakota says. "Is this the right one?"

His finger hovers over the bottom button. I slap it away. "ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL US?"

"Woah," He smiles. "Someone can't take a joke."

I look down at my feet in embarrassment and mutter an apology. Dakota returns to the pad and taps NEW IDENTITY.

"This is an iris sensor," Dakota explains, punching in the longest password I've ever seen. "Look into the camera."

I obey him. There is a scanning sound, then a beeping sound. And Dakota types my name on the pad.

"Okay, you're in," He says. Then, he taps SCAN FOR ENTRY and looks into the camera. The scanning and beeping noises come, followed by a loud buzz and an even louder clunk, and Dakota pushes the door open.

"This is the training room," He says. I believe him.

In the far right corner, there are racks full of weights. In the far left, shelves upon shelves stocked with many kinds of guns, spears, throwing knives, bows and quivers, whips made of flexible metal, sparring sticks, and grenades (near a sign that said not for training use). In the near right corner, there are punching bags. And in the near right corner, there are harnesses suspended on cables from the ceiling. People are using them to practice tucking and rolling to absorb impact from high falls mostly, but they are also being utilized for flips.

But the middle of the room is more fun. There are three roped-off mats with two people sparring in each of them. Two of the pairs spar with sparring sticks, and the other pair is fighting hand-to-hand. I can see that they are expertly avoiding hurting each other. Their skill is remarkable.

"You'll spend lots of time in here. Especially as a beginner," Dakota breaks me out of a trance.

He guides down another hallway and into an extremely large pavilion with rows of tables, and benches of either side of each table. I there is an opening in the back wall with a pull-down metal separator. On the far left of the back wall is a metal door with a small panel window. I see people in white aprons and hats bustling about inside. Dakota tells me that this is the dining hall. The room behind the door and separator must be the kitchen.

We walk past plenty of rooms, most of them I have forgotten. The only ones I really remember are the training room, dining hall, science lab, and technology lab. And the hair stylist. Because all underground lairs need a hair stylist. We are walking down a hallway now with white fluorescent lights spaced out along the ceiling. There are doors on either side of us all the way down the long hallway. I keep track of the turns we take from the tech lab: right, right, left, right, left, left, right, right, right. That means to get back to the tech lab I will have to go left, left, left, right, right, left, right, left.

Finally, Dakota stops in front of one of the doors. The brass number on it is 336, and there is an iris scanner perfectly at my eye level.

"This is your room," He says. "We found you some clothes from our supplies. They're in the drawers. We think they're your size. Your backpack is on the bed. We've given you some useful stuff that you'll find right when you go in. If you need anything you can ask anyone. They'll help you. We're all friendly here. At least, to each other."

I thank him, and he walks away. Back down the halls with all the turns he has memorized. Left, left, left, right...left? Oh God. I'm screwed. I tap the pad below the camera of the iris sensor, then tap SCAN FOR ENTRY and the door scans, beeps, buzzes, clunks, and I push it open.

My bedroom is very large, much larger than the one in my old home. There are a few weapons lying against the right wall. A bow, a quiver, and a black-and-red handgun. A desk and chair are pushed up against the far left wall, a sleek-looking black laptop closed on the desk. Next to it lies a black composition notebook (these are quite rare) and a jar full of - pencils? How could they have gotten these? I didn't think they even existed anymore. I used to have a bunch of them as a child. I loved to draw nature. There's a big forest near where I lived. Probably one of the only ones that are still free. All of the other forests are contained. I loved to draw people, too. Yes, I'm very good at drawing people. It's one of the only things that kept me sane while I was on the run. Apollo must have told the Dissent that I love to draw. Oh, I love my brother.

A queen-sized bed sits in the middle of the room with black floral patterns embroidered into the black comforter. I pull back the comforter to reveal black silk sheets and pillowcases. It looks so comfy and relaxing right about now. I collapse onto it, letting myself sink into the memory foam mattress. I sigh and close my eyes. After all of the running, all of the stress, all of the sleepless nights, all of the beatings, it feels so good when sleep takes me.