The Four - Book 3

Chapter 1

Juris

I used to spend hours upon hours reading history books.

I was mostly interested on how people back then didn't have element powers. They all lived together, nobody was separated by elements, but rather it was by race and culture.

This is what I never understood. How did elements develop? There's nothing in history saying how element powers came about. There were theories from our teachers, but nobody knew. Nobody knew how elements came.

Nobody knew they were still here either.

That guard, who showed me his brown eyes, eyes that I've never seen; he is one of them, a piece of history.

The people outside my cell are one of them, too.

This cell is better than the white room Hanson used to put us in, but it is no where close to comfy. It's plain; gray stone walls, a steel door that has yet to be opened, and a square opening, with bars lined up in it. It leads outside, which is where those people are. The people that I thought were dead are outside my cell, thinking that I'm some sort of piece of history. They stand and shout, and haven't shut up since I got here. I haven't dared look outside, I'm too scared to see.

I'm scared to see if history wasn't even history at all.

But I freeze when I hear someone fiddling with the door.

In comes Hanson, the scientist who claimed he has permission from the government to capture four elements, to test them together.

I look at his eyes; gray.

"What is this, some world where there are millions of elements? What are you, a cloud element?" I point to the outside, "and why are they here?"

"Calm down, Juris."

"Don't." I say. He doesn't have a right to say my name. He doesn't have a right to tell me to calm down.

"You're going to get answers," he says.

"I've been waiting to get answers since I first saw you," I say, and he knows what I mean. When I was first captured, which now seems like it was years and years ago.

"And today's the day."

Guards then come in, the same ones with the black masks. They grab me, not forcefully, but enough to make me follow. We walk down the long hallway all the way to a door that leads outside. More guards surround me, and it startles me. Why are they all of a sudden covering me?

I then know why. The people that were outside my cell come running, cameras flashing and nonstop shouting. I put my head down, almost embarrassed. I'm different. I'm not like them.

I'm not like them.

The thought scares me. When I was captured before and met different elements, I knew I wasn't like them.

But this is different.

I'm so different, that these people are following me, taking pictures and talking about me through microphones.

Finally I'm gestured into a vehicle, and I go inside and sigh, relieved to be away from them.

But I doubt I will ever get away.