[ 1 ] 2008

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"My name is Arthur and I'll at least try my best to help you. How does that sound?"

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They had gotten a warning from their only remaining family member that the government agents were on their way. They had figured out a way to track the special breed of super humans, and were using it to capture them. Dempsey's aunt had begged them to hide, just like she had been doing for years in the most remote corners of the planet.

But Hiram Johannsson and his wife Olivia were tired of running from everything. They had been doing so already for over ten years. Due to their vast amount of time on the run, their eleven year old daughter Dempsey found it hard to make friends and was a bit of a social outcast. Her only friends growing up were imaginary ones, or the stuffed animals her father gifted her in order to keep her some form of company. They never stayed long enough somewhere that she could go to school very long, and the children at the schools were not very nice to her anyway. She would constantly return home with a teacher's note, informing them that she had been given a time out because she had thrown a text book at someone, or shoved a little boy into the mud because he was teasing her. Her parents just wanted her to live a normal life. But that was something they could not give her.

The most recent place they had settled into was Fresno, California. A secluded little town in the middle of nowhere. Where the only things one could see for miles on end were fields of raisins, strawberries, and other kinds of fruits. It was a place empty enough where they could go mostly undetected. But as the population of supernatural beings grew, so did the chances of them being found out by the federal government.

From what Hiram knew, they wanted to use the shifters and hunters to experiment on them, not knowing them to be two different species. They wanted to find ways to replicate their abilities and use them to their advantage in a war. But the experiments were inhumane--some even tested their bodies to their limits--and most shifters and hunters ended up dead by the end of the series of experiments. The only way Hiram Johannsson knew the horrors of those experiments though, was by having experienced them first hand. 

At his thirty two years of age, he had been one of the few, if not the only one, who had escaped the clutches of the scientists at Area 51. He had been lucky that one of the scientists there, Olivia Drake, had been kind enough with him to spare his life and help him escape.

Dempsey Johannsson always loved hearing that story about how her parents met and fell in love, while her father had been in captivity at the base. It gave her hope that despite there being bad people in the world who wanted to hurt her and use her powers for evil, there was still a chance that some of them were different. Her mother had been different, and that meant that not everyone was out to hurt her. Not everyone was evil like that.

Her mother had been a scientist, top of her class, who at twenty three years old had already gotten her masters in the sciences. She was known as a prodigy in the scientific community who had gotten countless awards and honors for her research and breakthroughs. It was said that she would go on to do great things with her knowledge. Her father was from a humble home, her father's parents were immigrants from Iceland and her father had dropped out of high school to get a job in order to help support the home.

But he had extraordinary superhuman abilities and before long he was put on a top secret list to be captured and taken into the Area 51 facilities. He was being searched for by the United States government for experimentation purposes. They were using his family against him--his parents, his sister, and his two younger brothers. The threat was that if Hiram went with the agents without a fight, they would only take him and spare the rest of his family. He agreed, and was taken away as a prisoner, at only nineteen years of age. A scientist was assigned to 'the specimen', as they called him, and he was assigned to no other than the prodigy Olivia Drake.

But Olivia was not cold and mean to him like everyone else at the facility. She looked at him like another human being and her eyes were full of so much pity and compassion that Hiram found it easy to grow attached to her. She showed him kindness and respect, even despite the cruel experiments she was made to perform on him. She even comforted him and gave him hope when he found out that he had been lied to. 

Days after Hiram's capture, the agents went back to his home and took his family into custody. His whole family had been experimented upon and had perished due to the severity of the experiments. Only his sister hadn't been captured because she had been out of the house at the time that it all happened. But she was on the run since then and no one knew where she was. With his family's death and his sister on the run, he only had the twenty three year old Olivia to rely on and without even expecting it, the two fell madly in love. That was when Olivia decided to take matters into her own hands and helped her love escape the maximum security facility. She could not bear to see him in pain a moment longer. She memorized every section of the facility and planned it for almost a year. In that time, Hiram had grown weak, thin, and frail. But the only thing that kept him going was the promise that Olivia would help him because she loved him.

Once outside and once knowing they were completely out of danger, Olivia wished Hiram good luck and was ready to part ways with him. She thought that despite what they went through together, he would want to move on with his life alone and that she would never see him again. Much was her surprise when they stopped at a little diner several miles away from the facility, and he got down on one knee, pulling from his pocket a little ring he had made with a paper clip. Hiram Johannsson asked Olivia Drake to marry him that day, at his twenty years of age, while she was twenty four.

To that day, he had been one of the only specimen known to have escaped the facility.

And since then, to every new town they moved, Hiram made sure to pull apart the floorboards in one of the rooms and made a shelter. Fresno was not the exception.

He had made the shelter under Dempsey's room and when they heard the horrible screeching of tires skidding across the asphalt in the middle of the night, he bolted right out of bed and woke his wife as well. They rushed into their daughter's room to get her, but their hearts dropped when they found out that she was not in her bed. Desperate, they started searching for her in the room. But to no avail.

They turned their heads in the direction of the hallway when they heard the door being busted open and a swarm of agents dressed in black entered the house. "On your knees, hands behind your back!" One of them shouted a command.

Hiram and Olivia did as they were told, both silently praying that wherever their small daughter was, she would not come out until this was all over.

The agent leading the team drew out a piece of paper with information on it. When he turned it around, they saw that it was a wanted poster with their pictures on it. The pictures had been taken from the security footage from when they had both been in Area 51. The agent chuckled darkly, knowing he had succeeded in their capture. "Olivia Drake," He read her name off the paper first. "You could have had it all if you hadn't let your feelings get in the way. You are such a fucking woman." Olivia felt her eyes darken in anger, but she remained silent, not wanting to make things worse for her and her husband. Looking to Hiram, he added, "And you. You can cut the act now. We all know you were only pretending to love her so that she would help you escape."

Hiram gave a firm shake of his head. "That is not true. Olivia is the love of my life, and she knows it."

"Take them away." He commanded, and the agents grabbed them by the arm, dragging them out of the room.

In her parents' room, Dempsey held her breath for as long as she could, but she was terrified. She had gone to hide under their bed when she heard noises during the night, and she had been a witness to everything.

When she emerged from under the bed, she was met with an empty house. The eleven year old sat atop her parents bed and cried. When she had no more tears falling from her eyes, she got right under the covers of their bed and fell asleep. The more she thought about them, the more she missed them. But it was inevitable. The sheets on the bed had their scent. The way her mother always smelled like blossoming flowers, and her father's musky scent. They were both so young--her mother thirty six and her father thirty two--and she wasn't sure if she'd ever see them again.

Perhaps, she thought to herself bitterly, she should have gone with them.

She had no one else, and she didn't know how to contact her aunt. For days, she remained in the house alone. She didn't want to eat, and she spent most of her days sleeping or crying.

The next time she had any other sort of human contact was when she met Arthur Vega.

He had gone into her home upon the request of a friend of his, Annie Johannsson. She had told him that her family members were in danger and would be needing help. But she was having trouble finding their address because they moved around so often. Arthur had done his best to find them and searched Fresno for days, asking around neighborhoods to see if anyone knew the Johannssons.

When he entered the house, Dempsey had hidden in the pantry closet right by the kitchen. With a frying pan in hand, the eleven year old jumped out at him and hit him in the arm.

Arthur, who at that time was thirty six years old, winced in pain. Then he looked down at the tiny little girl who had assaulted him. He instantly felt sorry for her, and his heart ached for his own daughter, Harley. She was probably around this girl's age, and in that moment he was able to reassure himself that staying out of her life was the best thing to do. He couldn't imagine her having to live without parents like that child. She was dirty, disheveled, and her face was tear streaked. Her parents were nowhere to be found and it dawned on Arthur Vega that he had been too late.

It was always unfortunate to see the children of his fallen comrades. Hunters and shifters usually died young and left behind their children who sometimes ended up growing with a sense of resentment in their hearts.

Crouching down so as to get at eye level with her, he started in a friendly tone. "Hi, you must be Dempsey. Your aunt Annie sent me over to help. Although I am sorry that I didn't get here in time. But its pretty hard to find people when they don't want to be found." He heaved a tired sigh, and though he was a stranger, there was something about him that comforted her. He seemed like a good person and she was not afraid of him. Though all of that was true, she also did not know that it was his gift, to manipulate people's emotions. "My name is Arthur and I'll at least try my best to help you. How does that sound?"

Dempsey nodded her head silently.

He then straightened up and extended his hand for her to take. She took it and she was instantly filled with a sense of calm. It was like all her sadness had been lifted away. Once again, Arthur felt a prick in his chest. For a child to feel that much sadness, it broke his heart. So he manipulated her feelings to feel calm, if even for the time being. Some feelings were easier to manipulate than others. Emotions like grief over the loss of a loved one were harder to take away.

He took her onto his private jet and treated her to whatever she wanted. He had methods and despite Dempsey not having a passport, he took her out of the country to Australia, where he mostly did his work.

There, he had a facility called the garden, where he took in recently orphaned children and trained them for two years. Then he'd send them out into the field for hands on training and work. But he also gave them the option. After their two year training, he would ask them the most important question. If they wanted to stay and become hunters for his organization, he would welcome them. But if they decided that it wasn't something they wanted to do, he supported them as well by finding them a nice foster home and giving them money to sustain themselves. But by the end of the two year training period, most of the children in the garden usually decided to stay. Arthur had saved them and helped them when they had no one. They were grateful to him and wanted to stick by his side, the man who they saw as their father figure.

Dempsey Johannsson felt the same.

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dont talk to strangers, kids.

so i thought i would post the first chapter of this story. this is going to be jumping around through the years since im making this about paul and dempsey, but they dont even meet until around 2011. so in the mean time, i'm going to be jumoing around through years and locations, showing you how each of them joined the hunters. 

please bear with me and i also hope you all like this story. it would mean a lot to me if you told me what you think.

thank you!

-clary