Tanner's Story: The Before

The Strangers

Sorry this one is a bit boring and slow. I'll try to make it a bit more interesting in the next chapter.

I was in a daze. My head felt like it was going to explode and several people were crying. I couldn't tell who, it may have been one person, it may have been everyone. I was walking next to Nathan and Mary like before when someone grabbed my hand and lead me to the back. It was Marcus.

"Hey Tan are you okay. You look really sick."

I could only grumble, "head."

His concerned face swam into my vision, "sit down, I'll get mom and dad."

Less than a minute later my parents knelt down beside me.

"Hey sweetie, Marky says that you have a bad headache. Can you try to rate the pain on a scale of 1-10?"

"10," I managed to say.

She said something I didn't quite and walked away with my dad, Marcus sat down besides me. I started to have trouble breathing. My elder brother had started to rub my back said something. Though like with my parents I didn't hear it.

Then the world went dark.

When I came to hours later I was on a cold metal floor. My eyes were still closed but I could tell we were moving. I groaned and struggled to sit up. When I became conscious of a girl about my age watching me with a savage smile on her face.

"Good morning sun shine," she said.

"Where am I and who are you? Where is my family," I said with a certain amount of panic.

"Wow so many questions," she said. "I guess it is up to me to answer them."

I just stared at her. I didn't understand what was happening, not yet at least. The pounding in my head wasn't making things any easier. What's more it seemed to get worse whenever I met her eyes. My hands and feet were bound together, so I couldn't really get comfortable. I was waiting for her to continue but she just leaned back and smiled viciously.

I had tried my best to remain confident and unconcerned when I said, "Well are you going to respond or not." That was a mistake.

It was like my head was burning. The pain was worse than I had ever experienced, well before it anyways. Though through the pain I had heard her hiss in my ear, "Don't speak to me like that ever again, understand." She didn't pull back until I nodded as best I could. When she did move away the pain lessened a bit.

When I could manage it I said to her, "What are you?"

"Ah now there is a good question. I guess you could say that we are the same, though with different abilities."

I froze, "What abilities," I managed to choke out.

When she laughed the noise seemed to bounce around in my skull.

"Well I know you have some idea on what I am talking about. I mean just this morning you brought down 3 airplanes. It would have been more if I hadn't stepped in."

For a second I had thought about denying it, but that wouldn't have done much good. "I don't know how I did that," I mumbled instead.

She shrugged, "I didn't think you would, though where we're going you will have plenty of time to find out." With that she leaned back and put some AirPods in. She looked content to ignore me.

We stayed like that for hours. I knew we had to be going really far away. I lived in Florida, so I knew some of the surrounding states and areas. Finally we stopped. A couple of guards opened the door to the van and one pulled me outside. I couldn't tell where we were, just that it was night and we were at a runway. The girl(she hadn't told me her name yet) led the way into a airplane. I hesitated for a moment remembering the takeoff, but was pushed up the steps into a nice looking plane. I was tied to a chair in the front row close to the girl. Then after a few minutes we took off.

Four hours later

I was exhausted. It felt like I had been awake for days, even though it was probably only 7 hours or so. It didn't help that I couldn't sleep on the plane though. Every time I tried I remembered what I could do. After we got off of the plane I was shoved into another car, though not for very long it seemed. After less than ten minutes the van stopped. I would know very soon where I was. When the door opened I got shoved out into a large building. From there we walked down a hall till we reached a door that said Exam Room C. By the door there was a middle age man with a white lab coat and holding a clipboard.

"Is this Tanner Wesley," he said quietly but authoritatively.

The guards nodded and signed something. From there only the girl, the doctor and myself walked into the room. It looked like a room you would go to have an annual physical.

I finally mustered up the courage to ask a question, "Where am I?"

The doctor looked at me and frowned like he didn't know whether or not to tell me. Finally he shrugged and said, "You are in my office at Elgen Academy. I am just going to give you a routine check up to see how healthy you are.

True to his word it was a normal check up. That was until he asked Nichelle-apparently that was her name- to leave. Then he had me step between two chrome bars and hold them. Then put on protective glasses and went to monitor some type of readings. He kept murmuring interesting and jotting down notes. Finally he told me to put on a thin jumpsuit and called Nichelle back in. He said it was time for my interview.

Again sorry for it being really boring. I didn't know how to make Tanners trip/check up interesting.