Overdose

46. The Executioner

My mom got called to work in the evening, so it was just Nathaniel, Tristan, Yvonne, and I in the house. Tristan was playing video games, and Yvonne was up in Tristan's room. He offered to let her sleep in there and he would sleep on the couch. I'm sure that he wasn't took broken up about it, as now he had the ability to play video games all night.

Yvonne came downstairs. "I asked Damion and Lilith to come over. I hope you don't mind."

"No, that's fine. It would be good for all of us to get together." I nodded.

"Alright well if you're inviting your friends, then I'm inviting Kieran." Tristan yelled from the living room. I sighed.

A few minutes later, my living room was full of people. Nathaniel had even come down to join us.

"Ooh, I feel like I'm at a sleepover. We should tell ghost stories!" Kieran clapped, jumping up and down on the couch.

"Stories about dead people are the last thing I want to hear right now." Yvonne said under his breath. Kieran looked a lot less excited after this remark.

"Why don't the rest of you introduce yourself?" Tristan suggested. I remembered that he probably knew nothing about Nathaniel, Damion, and Lilith besides what Yvonne and I told them. And Nathaniel was quite a closed book.

"I'll go first, I guess. I'm Lilith. I was in The Facility for a long time. In fact, it was really the only home that I knew. I don't know much about my parents, but there was a woman there, Dr. Evelyn, and she became something of a mother figure to me. I tried to stay upbeat in The Facility, and I think that's why I was able to befriend people like Damion and Yvonne. I'll be honest, I thought Evan was very bad news considering the things he had to do to people. But if it wasn't for him, I might not have made it out alive. I was grateful to meet your brother, Tristan, and I was grateful to meet Yvonne and Damion. I'm glad that we're all back now."

I saw her rest her head on Yvonne after she told her story.

"I'm Damion. I came to The Facility a bit after Evan. I hated being in The Facility. They made me fight other people, they treated me like an animal, and if I didn't do what they told me to do, then someone," Damion shot a look at me, and I shifted in my seat uncomfortably, "would beat me. But the worst person there was Xander. He ran the show."

Nathaniel scoffed. Damion looked at him, crossing his arms. "Did I say something that was incorrect?"

"Xander didn't run anything. The Facility wasn't his, it was Lazarus'. Xander just thought that he was the king of the hill. But he was nothing. Lazarus could have easily taken everything back."

"Then why didn't he?" Damion shot back. "I didn't see that man once since I was brought there."

"He was working on something in America. Something that Xander couldn't ruin."

"Really? He ruined The Facility." Damion seemed to know that he was going to win the argument. But the difference between Damion and Nathaniel was that Nathaniel knew Xander a lot better than any of us in that room.

"Uh, I don't want to interrupt anything here, but I know nothing about The Facility, or Xander, or Lazarus, so if we could maybe backtrack and put some explanations in our backstories, that would be great, thanks." Kieran chimed in.

"The Facility was supposed to be a safe haven for Prodigials. People who had special powers. Lazarus Valentine created it so he could help children and teenagers who needed to learn how to control these powers. But after his wife, Gwendolyn, died, he shut down, locked himself up and didn't come out unless he absolutely needed to for press reasons. Xander, the man who made my life a living hell, stepped up and decided to do what he wanted with the place. Xander made people learn how to fight, as if he was building his own army. He started doing experiments on the prisoners, giving them powers like Yvonne's Pyrokineses or Lilith's Electrokinesis. He locked me up after I wouldn't kill somebody. He was obsessed with finding my power, and when he felt that I didn't have one, he decided to turn me into a miniature version of himself. When that didn't work, he gave up and locked me into Containment, along with the rest of his failed experiments."