Fugitives

Chapter 1

Ashton

Sirens rang loudly through my head and echoed like a long-wailing scream that pierced the stillness of the night. The humid air formed beads of sweat on my forehead, my heart hammered against my chest and fire ripped through my lungs as I ran as quickly as I could through the thick foliage of the forest that surrounded my school, what used to be my home.

Sam's heavy footsteps thudded in a consistent rhythm behind me as we fled from the horrific scene. The screams of my friends being slaughtered still rang through my ears. As we ran we could hear shrieks of terror echoing throughout the woods, every scream signifying another lost friend trying to escape, just like us.

My chest began to heave up and down with exhaustion but Sam insisted on running through the dark forest to find refuge as far away from the school as possible. The further we got away from this place the safer we would be. All I could think about was the kids, who I had grown to be friends with since birth being massacred right before my eyes.

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The beige tray I held in my hands was filled with mostly mac 'n' cheese and meatloaf, or what the school liked to think was meat loaf when really it was a tasteless mess that had chunks of whole pepper corns that would explode in your mouth.

The cafeteria was filled to the brink with every single kid who attended the reform school, all munching away on the provided dinner that we all craved after a long day of training, even if it did taste like cardboard every night.

Our uniforms were a disgustingly grotesque turquoise that resembled hospital scrubs and looked like a cat had vomited all down the front of it. If you looked at it for too long it was almost nauseating to anyone who wasn't used to it. We wore plain white runners that didn't have laces and our hair had to be all the same, straight braid down the middle. We didn't really mind the unfortunate uniform choices, it was all we knew.

All the kids here had been here since birth, torn away from their true families once the WF test had come back positive. We were all wayfarers, they had told us on our first day of training, and 'we are going to teach you to hide and contain your powers'. The officials voices ran through my head like it were yesterday even though it had been 10 years.

The officials started training me to hide my powers when I was six years old with all the other kids my age, they taught me how to suppress my powers to the point where they were almost unnoticeable, besides the barcode that we all had on our wrist that linked us to a society where wayfarers were not welcome. Our barcodes were given to us at birth and with the use of a scanner anyone could see what species I was, my genetic coding even my goddamn eye and hair colour like they couldn't see that for themselves. Even with all this information I still never knew my true parents, my screen just entailed 'wayward daughter'.

I sat down next to my best friend Sammy, he was 16, same age as me and had long dark brown hair that came down to the end of his ears, somehow he got away with not having the standard buzz cut that most if not all of the boys had. Sam's brilliant brown eyes had flecks of gold in them that made him look like a Labrador puppy when he smiled.

"Do you think that we have early morning training tomorrow because I'm so not in the mood" he whined to me with a mouthful of the meatloaf. Sam never cared what the officials said, unlike me. If they said no coloured shoes he'd turn up the next day with rainbows for feet. Sam made me feel rebellious and excited which was something very hard to find in this place.

"They haven't scheduled training" I shrugged, taking a bite of the cardboard tasting dinner and catching an exploding pepper corn that made me cough and my eyes water slightly. "This stuff is disgusting yet I can't stop eating" I smiled at Sam and he chuckled in response, nodding slightly in agreement and giving me that trademark grin that made everyone fall in love with him.

All of a sudden, several loud bangs erupted in the cafeteria and I saw Sam drop to the ground in horror. I sat still, staring at the once white wall in front of me that was now splattered in a fine crimson mist of someone else's blood, there was no screaming or yelling but silence around me and the sounds of my staggered breaths in my ear in slow motion.

I felt Sam tug me underneath the table and suddenly the weight of the situation dawned on me and I started catching up to the world around me. We crawled together on the hard cafeteria floor, dodging the bodies, the bodies of people I knew dropping to the ground with their throats viciously torn open and leaking hot, sappy blood on the blue lino floor.

Sam and I ran to the kitchen, I spontaneously grabbed a medium sized kitchen knife from the knife block  without thinking and tucked it away to somewhere I could access it. I heard a smash of glass as I approached Sam and I flinched to the sound. Sam had used his hand to punch the window through for our escape, leaving fiery red blood seeping out of his knuckles but he didn't seem to mind. I didn't take time to fuss over him, I knew if we didn't get out soon we would be dead like the others, my once friends. So we ran as far into the forest as possible and left behind everything we ever knew and everything we were going to be.

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A/N: Okay so I hope you liked that :) I've been working on this for a while so idk ah I'm nervous to see what people think so please comment, vote and most importantly READ!