Soul Stone

Take The Red Pill

Hansen Academy is, for the most part, quite similar to most private secondary schools. Well-funded, well-connected, and home to the children of western society's social elite, both legitimate and illegitimate. Unlike most schools, however, it is well off the grid. The nearest city is a few miles away, and students are only allowed to visit every other weekend. It is a safe-haven for children who have secrets that need to be kept. In fact, it's entirely possible for a child to be there for only a couple of weeks before vanishing from both the campus, and the school's history without any questions asked or answered. Possibly the best kept secret at the Academy, however, was the one that nobody would've believed, even if it HAD been leaked. It was easy to keep because out of the thousand-or-so students who took up residence on-campus, it only involved a select few.

Comic books like X-Men lead us to picture a school for "gifted" teenagers as a school full of shape-shifting, immortal, element-controlling, mind-bending mutants of all shapes, sizes, nationalities and colors. Not so, in this case. In this incidence, the ones who possessed "the gift" looked just like anyone else, because the gift wasn't inside them. It was under their pillow, around their neck, possibly (god forbid) in their pockets, but never inside them. That was because that "gift" was known simply as a "soul stone". Nobody was quite sure where the soul stones came from, or why the people who had them had been chosen to possess them, but the undeniable fact was that "soul stones" were both a gift and a curse. The gifts the soul stone bestowed on it's owner were obvious: The abilities those stones gave their owners were on par with the average comic book super hero. It was even rumored that at least one soul stone owner was capable of flight. Even the soul stone owners weren't entirely sure who else shared their gift, because ownership of such an item was generally kept under wraps.

Zeke Alistair remembered when, but not how he'd come to acquire his soul stone. He knew it had been a birthday present, but had no idea who'd sent it. He'd been estranged from his parents for years, and his Uncle considered tuition to be a sufficient birthday present (as well as a sufficient Christmas present... An all-purpose anti-gift for any occasion, to be honest), and besides those three, he didn't really have anyone with a vested interest in finding him a present that rare, or invaluable. Realistically, of course, he had no practical use for it. He kept it purely out of a sense of obligation to whoever had bought it for him. He knew other people on campus had gotten similar gifts to his, but he didn't know exactly who, nor did he want to know. Generally speaking, that was an anomaly for someone like Zeke, who generally craved attention, and was known to do virtually anything for it.

Not that kind of attention.

The "soul stones" had been branded as the cause of a series of attacks on school property in the last couple of weeks, and while Zeke wasn't positive whether or not the rock he'd gotten for his birthday was one of them, he sure as hell wasn't about to start showing off that particular birthday gift.

Then there was Sara. He wasn't entirely sure who she was, where she was from, how long she'd gone to Hansen Academy, or how she knew about the stone, but she'd pulled him aside a few hours before the first attack, asked him if he was Zeke Alistair, and warned him not to tell anyone about his soul stone. After that, she hadn't done much more then shoot meaningful glances his way whenever their paths crossed.

He shook his head, in a futile attempt at waking himself, blinking his light green eyes a couple times. He had an essay due in third period which he'd put off until the night before it was due, and now here he was, awake at two in the morning, just trying to do a mediocre job at it. Just as he was getting himself back into the homework mood, he heard a sharp rapping on his door. Who would possibly be banging on his door at this hour of the night?

Curfew had been hours ago, and he knew the RA was generally asleep by now.

Yawning slightly, he grabbed his stone without thinking as he made his way to the front door of his dorm room. Even though he had no reason to do so, he never let the stone out of his sight. He'd explained it away to himself as just thinking of it as a good luck charm. Had it been earlier in the night, he'd have probably thought to check who it was before opening the door. However, all he remembered was getting the door open, before a searing pain shot through his skull, and the next time he blinked, he was no longer in his dorm room.