Moon Angel

Chapter 14: Settling In

Chapter 14: Settling In

By week two, I had settled into the routine at Omega. The early morning exercise programme became easier as we got fitter and the classes were hard but fun. Every night we would be so worn out from the classes and training sessions that we would have dinner and go straight to bed. My favourite class was outdoor survival. We learnt everything from making a fire to building bivouacs. Being outside every lesson was as close as I got to flying but just being in the fresh air was enough. I don't know what I would have done being inside all day, every day.

As there were only thirty-one other children at Omega, we all got to know each other fairly quickly. Of course not everyone was best friends with each other, but at least we knew everyone's name. I soon found out that while on the outside the other children appeared friendly, the reason we were here was always at the back of their minds, mine included. It was a competition, and nobody let you forget it. I did manage to make some friends, even with the competition always looming over us. The first friend I made was Mackenzie. Even with our first, rather strange, conversation, Mackenzie and I got on really well. As she knew I wasn't going to tell her what my 'power' was, she didn't ask again. Kelsey joined our small group of friends shortly after Mackenzie had. Kelsey was Mackenzie's roommate and the two of them had become fast friends. They were both easy-going and fun to hang out with. Mackenzie, Kelsey, Em and I spent nearly all our free time together. The fifth person who joined our group was Jay. I had encountered Jay on the sixth morning of Omega, as I was entering Linguistics- a class that I found out we shared. It was a welcome surprise to find that both my friends from Camp- Em and Jay- had joined the Omega programme. We worked out that as the boys and girls were separated for basically everything, it was no surprise that we hadn't bumped into each other before then. The last person who joined our group was Luke. He was Jay's roommate and it seemed that every pair of roommates across the whole of Omega had become friends. Everyone seemed to come in twos. Another thing I found out was that nearly every candidate at Omega was an orphan, adopted or one of their parents was one of the guardians or a staff member. This was one of the facts that brought us all together even closer.

It turned out Mackenzie was right about 'Special Abilities' or as she liked to call them 'powers'. Most people seemed to have a power of some kind. We weren't meant to use them around the school so unless someone told you their power, you didn't really find it out. There were a few candidates that couldn't hide their powers though. A girl named Michelle was one of them. She was completely blind but if you glanced at her you couldn't tell. Kelsey told me that Michelle had 'enhanced senses' helping her to do everything that others could. What surprised me was that she didn't just do what everyone else did, she went further. Even in the self-defence classes, which other candidates found hard, she excelled. Not being able to see the opponent, or anything for that matter, didn't hinder her in the slightest. Another candidate's power which became known belonged to a boy named Benjamin. He had the power of a photographic memory. But it wasn't like most ordinary photographic memories, because if Benjamin saw, heard or read something, he never forgot it. This ability was most obvious in Linguistics when he could pick up entire languages in about three days while the rest of us struggled to memorise all the new words.

What I found the best about Omega was that, when somewhere else these abilities would have been strange, alien and even sometimes outcast, at Omega nobody gave strange happenings any thought but viewed them as normal. Everyone was seen as equals.

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-A/N- Hope you like it. Please review. Your comments make my day :)