REBEL

1. MADDIS'N MAVERAI

MADDIS'N MAVERAI was used to running. Though not because she wanted to, usually, and look at times she had to admit, it was a delight to fall.

Heck since the moment Maddis could say the words "here we go again, " she's known her family to go from place to place like a travelling circus. She was used to keeping all of her stuff along with their necessities for survival, packed and ready to bolt at a moments notice. No questions asked.

That's just the kind of people they were.

The kind to take up residence somewhere and have no one know who they were or how they got there. Only for someone to catch them out one day, realize something was off, then find the family had mysteriously disappeared. As if they'd never been there. You know the type.

Figured it'd probably take them 5 maybe 10 days tops to find their next best hideout. That's how it's been for the past 15 years. Everytime they'd only been chased as far as a safe zone surrounding a town/city went, before being left alone.

Trailers, abandoned buildings, sewers, you name it, Maddis lived in.

This, where she found herself alone in a dark underground crypt, currently barred shut -a vault-like trap by her own mother-was no exception. She had it coming. As a lot of the time they had to run from various locations around the Occident, Maddis'n was the reason.

Although I must admit. Maddis thought. That kind of chaos...

Was somewhat addicting.

Maddis smiled slightly in the darkness.

She thought back to the events that lead her here. They'd been camping out under a bridge somewhere within the safe zone, just another anonymous stop across the Occident. Maddis had gotten bored, naturally, and decided to sneak out with her unidentical twin, Khari and explore the abandoned aquarium nearby. So what if there were signs everywhere that said they'd be detained if found trespassing. So what if they technically weren't residents from this area. A regulation by Havoc that could lead to a punishment worse than all of the above. They needed something to entertain themselves. Riding the trollies from the gift shop around the passageways had sounded harmless enough, until they'd crashed into one of the glass walls holding the place together, and gallons of murky came water rushing out. Alarms blared with flashing lights, as Maddis and Khari fled the scene knowing that no matter what, their biggest rule, wherever they moved, was to not get caught.

And that exilerating feeling of peeling away in that the last second, leaving the Havoc officers coughing in the dust... Maddis lived for those moments -the thrill of the chase, the excitement of a narrow escape. As scary and stressful as it was for her family, there was just something so freeing about causing a little chaos every now and then. Made her feel alive in a way she couldn't quite explain. With the state of the world as it is. Maddis thought. I just wanna live, man. Not just survive.

Maybe one of these days, her little stunts would show them that.

Sliding down the cold stone wall of the crypt, Maddis sat with her knees pulled up to her chest. She wondered how long her mother planned to keep her in here.

Long enough to teach her a lesson, no doubt.

She was trapped.

And not just in here, but in her whole situation.

What's worse was having the person who trapped you, with only spiders and mildew for company, be your mother? That was just another level of cruelty. Maddis thought.