Mutation

Chapter 1: New Beginnings

Trista had always known she was just a little different, ever since that day, when she was four. She had shown her mother her powers, and then she knew for sure.

Trista had practiced it a few times before, and thought it was so much fun! She could take cookies without her mom knowing, and sometimes even find her Christmas presents, but she didn't understand why her mother was so worried about it.

Laura, her mother, had put her hand to her head and her brow wrinkled with creases that had been there years before she had gotten married. She rushed inside the house and called her husband. Trista followed her curiously.

She went in her bedroom and dialed the number, her hands shaking. She sat down as she waited, stroking the faded blue quilt on her bed. "Hello? Neo? Yes, I need you to come home. Now. Trista . . ." she paused. "She . . . she has powers. I don't know. I thought we were cured ever since . . ." Laura bit her lip to keep from crying.

Trista was confused. Cured? Did her parents have powers too? She thought they were a good thing.

"There must still be some of that left. That . . . that damn thing, that strain followed us, Neo!" Tears were running down her cheeks in anger and sadness. "Will we ever be free of Mr. Black and the things he's done to us?" Laura had started sobbing now, rubbing furiously at her cheeks until they were red, and then noticed that Trista was watching her. She wiped her nose, stood up and pushed the door until it clicked shut.

Yes, that was the day. When she was older, she would think back to that day as well as all the others and wonder how she didn't see the signs sooner, of the whole story that was unfolding right before her eyes.

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Laura was very careful of what she said and did after that. Neo had come home soon after she called him, and they had a private discussion about what to do. After many tears, they finally decided to homeschool Trista, change their last name to Hartford, Laura's maiden name, and move to a different place to keep Trista's powers hidden. And to not have any more children.

"I just . . . I don't know how this could have happened." Laura said for the hundredth time.

"It's going to be okay." said Neo firmly, clasping her hands in his. "We just have to do what's best for Trista."

"I know, but . . . why now? Just when we thought that we were safe, that she was safe . . . from . . ."

He kissed her right above her drawn brow. "Life is unexpected. We'll get through this, I promise. We just have to trust God."

Laura nodded. "I love you." she whispered.

"I love you too."

And so that's just what they did. They moved to an old fixed - up farmhouse in the country, about thirty miles from anywhere, and there they raised Trista.

The family had many beautiful moments, playing hide-and-seek among the pines and making fairy houses out of sticks and stones and moss, and lying on the ground, just listening to the sparrows and smelling the deep, rich scent of the earth, and feeling the softness of new green shoots, and just being quiet. But all good things almost always have to come to an end.

New powers appeared. One day, when Trista was eight, her and her mother were driving to town for the monthly groceries, and also letting the manager buy some of their home-grown fruits and vegetables that kept the bills payed.

Trista was staring out the window, twisting her curly brown hair around her finger, and looking at the beautiful yellow-pink of the sunset right behind the pine forest. They flew past her in a blur, Trista coming closer and closer to where she was supposed to be. She loved the sight so much, and she wished she could sit up there in the treetops and bask in the warm light until it was gone and the stars came back.

She then felt a tingling all around her, like goosebumps, and then she disappeared. Laura immediately saw that she was gone, but thought she turned invisible. Laura scowled.

"What are you doing, Trista? We're almost there." she felt around in the air where her daughter had been and paled when she didn't find her. "Where are you?"

Up high, in the treetops was where Trista was. Standing precariously on a tree branch and gasping for breath. She looked around and clung to the tree trunk. How did I get here? she thought. Mom's gonna be so mad . . .

Laura pulled over to the side of the road and got out of her small truck. "Trista!" she yelled into the woods.

"Mom?" she called back, but lost her balance and fell from the tree. She screamed and wished she was by her mother's side. That tingly feeling came again, and then she was standing right beside her mother. Shaking and crying, she explained what happened.

"That was my power . . ." said Laura, astonished. How could she have two powers?

More powers appeared as she got older, and Trista got the sense more and more that her parents were keeping something from her.

Her and her father were walking in the woods one day when she was eleven, looking for berries to eat, and they found a mulberry tree.

Trista reached for some berries, but couldn't reach. She sighed angrily and stretched her hand out, palm up, and an invisible force plucked the berry and it fell into her hand.

Neo looked over at her and smiled. He was not as bothered by her powers as Laura was. "Wait, before you eat it, let me show you something."

He broke apart the berry, juice bursting onto his fingers and dyeing them red.

"You see all these little seeds in the berry?"

Trista nodded.

"Well, each one of them is a little baby tree." he smiled at her. "If a berry gets old and drops to the ground, the seeds are planted and a tree grows. All of these trees are connected to each other by their roots. So this tree will grow up, and connect to another, and produce berries. And the whole thing will start over again."

She looked at all the trees around her. "So all of them are babies or parents and grandparents?"

"Yes."

Trista turned her head to the side and thought. "So I have grandparents?"

"Yes . . ." Neo said uneasily.

She turned and looked at him. "Can I meet them?"

Neo shook his head quickly. "No. No, no." Thoughts swirled inside his head as he tried to guide her attention elsewhere. "Hey, do you see that bird? Do you know what it's called?"

But she was not so easily fooled. As the years went by, she noticed other girls and boys her age could not do what she could. They were playing hide-and-seek while she could disappear completely. She kept asking her parents about these differences, but she could never pin them down.

Whenever she had asked them about the powers that Laura and Neo had, they had always told her that they never needed to use them much, and that they could fade over time.

But Neo and Laura finally decided that they would tell her about their past when she was fifteen, the same age that Laura was when she was taken to the Facility. And so, after Trista blew out her candles on her double chocolate cake, her parents sat down and got ready to tell her their story.

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Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed this first chapter of Mutation, the sequel to Experiment! Let me know your thoughts in the comments and don't forget to vote! I love you guys! ♥

_pure_imagination_