Never. (Liam Stewart)

1

It all started with one girl from my class, for me anyways. Her name was Grace and she was the first in my class to experience the disease and die from it. They have come up with a name for it now too, Idiopathic Adolescent Acute Neurodegeneration or IAAN for short (also known as Everhart's disease, named after its first fatal victim). They tell us that it is a fatal disease affecting children between the ages 8-13 and that it is highly contagious for children in those age groups. As things change, what never changed was the fear. But they weren't scared of the dead children or the spots they would leave in the world, they were afraid of us, the ones that lived...

The day before my tenth birthday was just a normal day for me. My family and I were going through our normal routine when one of my younger brothers asked me about a rumor he heard. "I told my friend that it was your birthday tomorrow" he stated. "ok, so?" I respond, sitting on my bed in my bedroom thinking that today this will be the last thing that I see. "He said you were going to die and leave us, is that true?" He asked with tears filling his eyes at the thought of it, I blink a few times while debating what to tell him but before I could speak, my mouth hanging open at the cry of my mother, "Lucas!" revealing that she was listening in on our conversation. "no, mom, he is being honest and he deserves to know" I reasoned, I knew I would either die or change and have to go away. It affected him just as much as anyone else who knew me. "Lucas go to your room, for now, we need to talk about something," our mom said to him as though he were two. He looked unsurely at me and our mom but as if winning an inner battle with himself he said with a cracking voice, "no, we need to talk about this now if it is true. Is my sister going to die tonight?", but she would have none of it "I said go to your room, do as you are told!" my mom was furious about this, she was always acting like I wasn't turning ten, I think she was just caught up on when she went through my older sister's death after her tenth birthday, her name was Beth and I miss her so much. Lucas barely even remembers her, neither does Annie who is just below me in age. Everyone below Lucas in our family doesn't remember her at all, they were either not alive yet or were too young to. It still stings but it had always made me want to be a better person to the others, Annie, Lucas, Ray, Kim, and Joko.
She abruptly slapped a hand to his cheek leaving him in tears when it struck him.

 He ran off to his room and she looked to me as though it was my fault. "don't look at me like that, you did that" I retort, trying to get her out of her bubble of self-loathing for Beth, she had always blamed herself for it. The last thing she did with Beth was arguing over her dating, mom didn't want her to because she knew something Beth didn't, she would die that night. The last thing my mom said to her was that she was a bitch for being so difficult, she died four hours later that night.

I stormed away from my mom and after my brother, I would not let this go unnoticed. I walked into his room to him crying and holding his cheek looking less in pain, more in shock that she did that. I curled up next to him and we just sat there for about 10 minutes before she came in. She didn't speak a word to me, just grabbed my arm and dragged me to our barn while I was flailing about once out of sight from my five siblings. She took me inside and grabbed for our rope, tied me to a support beam, "this is for yours's and their own good. This will be what's best" she had told me before leaving. I survived the night, but I wish I hadn't because that next morning my mother came out to check on me, likely to see if I'd died. She had turned on the balls of her heals and walked straight out as if she didn't want to be in the same room as me. I was left alone in the stuffy old barn for a bit until a group of adults in black uniforms came through the barn door, I thought they were there to help me but oh what I wrong. 

They put zip ties on me and took me into their bus, sat me down next to someone I had never seen before, and didn't talk to us at all. We rode into Thurmond that day in the rain. I had seen more things that day than anyone should in a year, I saw death, slavery, torture, violence to children, someone getting run over by a bus, and so much more. We got out of the bus inside that camp and were taken to a room and were forced to go in one at a time and then they came out with colored outfits and a look of hopelessness on their faces. I was dreading my turn until the moment I stepped in, then it was only petrifying fear of this creepy looking man with all sorts of lab equipment around him. "So, do you know what color you are?" He shot out to me. "color?" I was so confused about what colors were, but I knew how each were treated based on what I saw out there. "ok, so that's a no" he confirmed to himself, "come here we will get a brain scan and tell what color you are" he informs me as he grabs for my arm. "I'm blue, I'm blue" I chant to him, he seemed dazed but then repeated it to me, "you're blue, you're blue" He seems to snap out of it and grabs me a blue uniform and sends me out of the room. 

I was assigned a group of others in blue uniforms and a cabin. It has been raw hell through it all but if there was one thing that I learned it is that I am not blue, I am a maroon, the most dangerous of us all. I can do all of the abilities from the other colors and more, I can turn invisible (sometimes, it works on emotions), I can cancel out other people's powers when I am scared, and I can feel other people's emotions when they do. They aren't much but I can't tell anyone what I am. My "kind" are killed on site. 

But that was seven years ago. 

A/N: I'm sorry if this is long but give me some feedback, I need to know if people would like me to change my style or anything.