The Accident

Chapter One

I knew I shouldn't have agreed to be a part of that program. I knew it would cause problems, that it wouldn't work. Why did I allow myself to be pressured into it? Now I'm at fault for this, and I have to fix it.

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My name's Charlotte Smith. I'm a pretty average girl. I have long brown hair, green eyes, pale skin; nothing too special. I'm okay at sports, but I don't play any in particular. I have a good group of friends and do a lot of fun things with them. But there is one thing that's different about me; my intelligence is about two years above what it should be at my age. I have been getting A+'s in every one of my classes since middle school and now I'm a junior in high school. I used to be ashamed of that, but now I enjoy it. I'm taking college level courses and I'm going to be able to get a really good education. I've prided myself on my intelligence for as long as I can remember but in the end, my intelligence would be my downfall.

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One day I got a letter in the mail asking me to be a part of a new program the government was funding. Only the smartest kids in the country received the letters, and I was one of them. It seemed a little suspicious to me at first; they wanted to send us to a secret facility in the middle of nowhere for a few months to work on "new technology". There were no other details about it. I wasn't too sure if I wanted to go to the facility, but my parents thought it would be a "wonderful opportunity". Eventually they convinced me towards the end of the school year. The letter said we had to be at the facility by the last day of June, and it was currently June 2nd. I had a little time to prepare for whatever we might be doing and enjoy some of my summer.