The Fallen (On Hold)

Chapter One

The wind howls and rustles the leaves around me. It seeps through my light jacket, sending a chill up my back. Rain falls down, causing puddles to form around my feet and mud to surface. One droplet falls upon my forehead and slowly trickles down my nose. A cooling sensation washes over me as it slides across my upper lip and around the curve of my mouth until it gently slides off my chin onto my black rain jacket.

"Seraphina, do you know where we are?" My brother calls out from somewhere in the darkness of the forest. "They were expecting us back at base two hours ago!"

"Just give me a second," I call out into the open air behind me as I stick my hand in my jacket pocket in search of the compass.

My hand slips around the small, bronze compass and I pull it out in a haste. The arrow spins around inside the glass one, two, three times until it finally stops. The red arrow points right at the wooden box in my arm.

Carefully, I set the box down on a damp rock wedged into the ground.

As I straighten up, the compass flies out of my hand and clings to the side of the box.

"It's messing up the compass. I can't tell which way is East!" I scream out.

My brother fights his way out of a tangled bush and collapses.

He looks nothing like me. He has blonde hair and blue eyes, I have brown hair and dark brown eyes. He is beyond handsome with his angled cheekbones and inset eyes. I am far worse than ugly with my crooked nose and large forehead. When he stands straight, he is six feet tall. I'm only five foot two. Plus, he's only a year older than me. He's 16 and I'm 15.

He looks up and I can see in his dark blue eyes he's confused. "What do you mean 'it'?"

Dang it, I wasn't supposed to let anyone know. I could have just jeopardized this mission.

"Nothing," I bend down and pick up the box carefully, making it look natural so he doesn't notice. "It's just the rain and the wind are messing it up."

"Oh, let me see," he reaches his hand out to me, palm up.

"No, that won't be necessary," I pry the compass off the box and stick it into my pocket. "We'll just wait for morning when the sun rises."

I sit under under a tall tree that blocks out the rain and my brother moves next to me.

"What do you think of the Fallen?"

His question surprises me. We learned about them in school but we're not allowed to talk about them elsewhere, ever. If they ever catch you talking about them or even referring to them, they'll shoot you in the town square for everyone to see. It's not the only way they can scare you into following the rules.

"Chase! We're not allowed to talk about them!" I scold him.

He looks me straight in the eye. "There's no one here, it's okay." He lowers his head and twiddles his thumbs. "I know the Fallen are dangerous, but so are we. We're trained to kill our whole lives. So what makes us different from them?"

He's right, we are trained to kill our whole lives. And we have killed, just the same as they have.

"What makes us different is that we have hearts, they don't," I say trying to convince myself.

"Do we really have hearts? Because if we did, we wouldn't kill innocent people," his words sting even though I know he isn't talking about me directly.

I curl into a tight ball around the wooden box, hiding it from his sight. "Chase, drop the subject." I guess the one thing I have that Chase doesn't have is maturity.

"Goodnight Seraphina," and just like that we're both out.