Stuff Of Legend

Chapter 5

          Dear Moon,

I know that I disappeared from jail. Again. But this time it wasn't my fault. It wasn't even intentional. I got called back into the conference rooms. I didn't know who it was at the time. It turned out to be two agents from ATLAS. Yeah, ATLAS. No, I wasn't in trouble with them, kind of the opposite really. Long story short, my parents were actually ATLAS members and I was born here. I had gone missing seventeen years ago and they saw my name in the prison files and came down to see if it was really me.

And now I bet you have about a thousand different questions running through your mind so I'll try and answer as many as I can now.

My parents died the night I was born and ATLAS doesn't know who took me. I don't know why I came to King's Valley, I only ever felt like something was here and now I guess we know why. And you're probably wondering why I'm still at ATLAS even after being here for a week. They say that I'm a deviant, like them. Enhanced intelligence is apparently my ability. I don't believe it, but hey, it's better being here than in jail. Well sort of.

In prison, I'm just me. Here, I can't be me. That's one of the reasons why I haven't visited you and am just now being able to write you. The director of the ATLAS team doesn't want my true identity getting out amongst the group. I can say my name, but my kidnapping, my jail record, my history, my journey, I can't mention any of it. I guess he thinks it'll reflect badly on the institute or something. Having a junkie on their roster probably isn't what they want people to know.

Aside from lying about who I am and all that, things here are fine. The food is fine, the housing is fine, the people are fine, but I'm not all fine. It reminds me of prison here. Not much contact with the outside world, there's a set schedule for the day, people are always giving you strange looks, and their strict on what goes on around here. I think it's because the team is so small and that if anything goes bad, it'll be a bigger shame on the group already. There's only like thirty-two members that are still in town field agents.

Everything is much more nebulous and confusing than I originally thought. For example, there's the Rockwood Institute. This is like a boarding school for kids, but they don't have school here. They go into town for school and just live here. They do special training here. They're like preparing to be servers for society and the ATLAS teams around the world. They aren't deviants, they're just kids. Then there's the ATLAS team. There are different levels to that. There's my level and on this level they only do work in the city or state unless told otherwise. And most of the work is actually done here at the camp. (The base is a rundown summer camp by the way. We sleep in cabins.) And then there's the ATLAS Superiors. You can become one when you turn 22. There's five here that are still young and just out of being a regular ATLAS Officer. The other ATLAS Superiors are the teachers and trainers and workers here at camp. There are other's that are in the middle of field work that I haven't met yet, but in total, there's like twenty. The Rockwood Institute actually outnumbers the ATLAS team here in King's Valley.

I haven't done much here. There isn't much to do. We have classes that we go to so that we can still get sort of an education, but classes are only on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. And that's if you aren't doing work for a mission. You get to leave class early if you do all your work, so I finish first and then have the rest of the day to do whatever. There's training sessions every day, but they're divided based on your ability. There's physical ability training, then manipulation ability training, and then mine, mental ability training. But this week I've been here there haven't been ant mental training sessions because they're short on staff or something. My first session is tomorrow.

I don't know what to do, Moon. I'm grateful that I have learned some insight on who I truly am, but I don't feel right here. I felt more like I was accepted in prison, but here, I'm a fish out of water. I'll write to you as often as I can and if they let me, I'll visit you if I can. Anything I can do to make the days pass by. Hope you're doing well. You probably aren't considering you're locked up and all, but I'm working on being more considerate and that sounded like the right thing to say. Hope to see you later.

From,

Piper Scott

P. S. I know that I revealed a lot of important stuff in this letter, so if you could do me solid and flush this letter down the toilet when you're done. And don't worry about the jail staff checking this letter beforehand, they stopped checking mail ages ago. Just get rid of the letter once you're done. Thanks.

Piper felt good after writing that letter. It was away she could still be connected to who she was, even if she couldn't be druggie Piper anymore. Moon knows much on Piper's journey, so it only felt right to tell her all about it. Nothing about her childhood could come to light here. For as long as Caldwell wanted, she had to become something of her own imagination. She was still the Piper that grew up on the streets, alone. She was still her. She just couldn't say that.