CHAPTER 1

 

 

 

 

It was insufferably early on a Saturday morning, so early that when fifteen year-old Dani Logan was jolted into consciousness by her alarm clock, the sky was still an inky blue. She slammed the snooze button with all of the force she could muster at five in the morning and allowed herself a full two minutes of peace and quiet, just to lie there in her warm, toasty bed.

She tried to remember the dream – it was probably closer to a nightmare – she’d been having just before waking up, but as the seconds ticked by, the images and the sensations she’d felt disappeared. She could only remember falling… forever falling…

But then the two minutes were up, and her alarm started blaring again. She slammed it harder this time, a muffled groan escaping her lips and then losing itself in her assortment of pillows. Today was going to be a very long day.

The house was dark and quiet as Dani padded across the landing and made her way to the bathroom at the end of the hall, the hardwood floor cold underneath her bare feet. She locked the door and flipped open the lights, blinking a few times to allow her vision to adjust.

A pair of tired brown eyes looked back at her through the bathroom mirror; her skin seemed sickeningly pale and her hair was piled up in a very messy, lopsided bun on top of her head. She sighed, opened the medicine cabinet and grabbed her purple toothbrush and the tube of toothpaste.

Laboriously, she went through the motions of getting ready. It was such tedious work; Dani wanted nothing more than to curl back in her bed and sleep the morning away, but she knew that her coach – and the rest of the girls’ JV hockey team – would murder her if she did.

Her coach, Mr. Ryan, was particularly cruel the week before an important game, giving them ridiculous practices and even more ridiculous drills to complete. If she bailed on the torture, her teammates would never let her live it down. They were a team, and as a team, they needed to live through the suffering as one.

After brushing her teeth and braiding down her pin straight, light brown hair, Dani returned to her room to get dressed. She was only half-aware of her movements as she pulled her favorite pair of jeans from her wardrobe and a gray hoodie from her closet. She didn’t bother to put on any make-up.

She was packing her gym bag with all of her hockey gear when her phone vibrated on her desk. She went to it and slid her index finger onto the glossy screen, unlocking it. It was a text from her friend Wyatt.

“You up yet?” he wrote.

“Define up.” Dani replied, grinning at her phone.

As she waited for his reply, she had time to pack the rest of her things, pull on her boots and zip up her fitted black leather jacket.

“I know the feeling,” Wyatt wrote back. Dani was downstairs in the kitchen by then, looking through the fridge for something that could consist of a somewhat decent – and quick – breakfast. She settled on a bagel with cream cheese.

“At least you don’t have to freeze your butt off doing drills at six in the morning,” Dani commented, leaning against the island counter in the semi-dark kitchen. She had her bagel in one hand and her phone in the other.

They sent each other a handful of texts while Dani ate, but one look at the neon green numbers on the microwave startled her into action. Damn it, she was going to be so late! She had to walk all the way to the arena, so she shoved the rest of her bagel in her mouth and told Wyatt she’d talk to him later.

She was careful not to make a sound as she closed the front door to her foster parents’ house. Her stomach gave a disappointed lurch at the sight before her. There was snow everywhere. It wasn’t just a light dusting of it either; no, it had snowed a good foot overnight, and since the plow hadn’t gone by yet, the sidewalks were completely and utterly covered.

It wasn’t even Halloween yet!

She sighed, hoisted her gym bag higher over her shoulder and started to walk in the wet, slushy snow. The journey to the arena was a workout in itself, and by the time she arrived, her cheeks were frozen, her back was covered in a thin sheen of sweat and her braid was starting to come undone.

“Where is everyone?” she asked when she walked into the locker room, only to find it half-empty. Practice was in ten minutes, and they were missing a good third of the team.

“I just got a text from Bridget – she’s gonna be late, her dad’s car won’t start. As for the others, I have no clue.” Stella commented with a shrug.

“Knowing Karissa, she probably overslept.” Megan added, halfway through pulling on her hockey gear.

Dani let out an ungraceful snort, dumped her bag heavily onto a bench and started stripping out of her damp clothes.

Practice that morning was even more brutal than usual, perhaps because Coach Ryan was annoyed that three girls arrived late, while another – Janelle – didn’t even bother to show up. He made them do double the laps around the rink and ten extra breakout drills.

By eight o’clock, all of the girls were pretty much dead on their feet.

“…and I have to go to work after this,” Megan was saying to the other girls as Dani made her way out of the shower in a fluffy white towel, her wet hair plastered to her skin.

Her attention on a complaining Megan, Dani reached for the handle on her locker to grab her clothes, but all she felt was air. She glanced towards it in mild bewilderment; she would have gasped out in shock at what she saw, but no air came out of her mouth.

She wasn’t reaching for air – the locker was clearly still there, solid as ever, but she couldn’t quite say the same for her hand. It was going right through it.

She quickly pulled her hand away; her heart was racing so fast in her chest, it felt as though it was going to explode. She glanced at the other girls, but no one was paying her any mind. When she glanced back at her hand, it seemed completely normal.

She reached for the locker again and almost laughed out loud at her foolishness when her fingers gripped around the handle. She was achy and exhausted – it only made sense that she’d imagined it. It’s not like her hand had actually gone through the stupid locker, right?

She shrugged it off and got dressed.

By that afternoon, Dani wasn’t even thinking about what had happened with her locker. She’d pushed the peculiar event to the very back of her mind, chalking it up to a mere trick of the eye, or perhaps a result of her own tired mind. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t real.

She had lunch with Wyatt and another one of their friends, and then made her way back to the Millers’ house. She couldn’t quite consider the place home – to be perfectly honest, she’d never considered anywhere anything close to a home. She didn’t usually stay in one place long enough to form any lasting attachments, anyway.

She’d been with the Millers for six months now, so she suspected they’d get tired of her and send her back any day now.

“Hello?” she called as she unlocked the front door with her key. No one answered. She made her way into the kitchen, but there was clearly nobody home. The house was completely silent, the same way it had been when she’d left that morning.

She was about to leave when she spotted the post-it note on the fridge.

She grabbed it and read: Dani, I left you dinner in the fridge. We’ll be out late tonight, don’t wait up.

Richard Miller was a trauma surgeon at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, while his wife Debra worked as a homicide detective for the Chicago PD. They were both dedicated to their careers, and in the handful of months she’d been living with them, Dani couldn’t say she’d seen them around all that much.

Sometimes, she wondered why they ever bothered with fostering. I mean, it’s not like they wanted to be parents or anything.

She shrugged, checked in the fridge to see what her foster mother had left her for dinner, and made her way upstairs to her bedroom. She closed the door and, still fully clothed, she let herself fall onto her unmade bed. She was out within minutes.

She had that dream again, the one where she kept falling… only this time, it felt so much more real. She was falling, falling, falling…

She awoke with a start, unaware of how much time had passed or where she even was. She felt so disoriented, trying to remember…

Right, she’d fallen asleep in her room; but she wasn’t there anymore, and her head felt as though it was about to split open. She pressed her fingers to the back of it and felt something warm and wet. It was too dark to make out what the substance was, but the sharp pain was indication enough. She was bleeding.

It took her eyes a few moments to grow accustomed to the lack of light. She glanced around at her surroundings, her mind hazy with pain. There were boxes everywhere, some piled all the way up to the low ceiling. She could faintly make out a shelf lining the eastern wall, stocked to capacity.

Her hand felt the concrete floor underneath her. Then, realization set in. She’d only been here once before to get an old toolbox for Richard, but she knew exactly where she was: in the Millers’ basement. She must have come down here in her sleep… She couldn’t remember ever sleepwalking before… but…

It was the only explanation that made sense.

With a great deal of effort, Dani climbed to her feet and felt her way towards the rickety staircase leading back to the main floor. She grabbed the doorknob and turned, but it wouldn’t budge. She was locked in.

“OK,” she breathed, trying hard to keep her cool. “Don’t panic…” she added, but it was so much easier said than done. She tugged at the doorknob, but it was useless. She was locked in.

This made absolutely no sense. How could the door be locked from the outside when she was the only one home?

The image of her hand passing through the solid locker door jumped to the forefront of her mind. It was impossible, wasn’t it? She couldn’t have– no, there was no way! This was stuff right out of comic books and lame science-fiction movies.

Nonetheless, she placed the palm of her hand flat against the center of the door, willing it to do whatever it had done at the arena after hockey practice. Nothing happened – of course nothing happened! She would have been nuts if she thought there was a slight possibility that she could actually walk through walls, or fall through ceilings…

“Come on!” she hissed, closing her eyes.

It happened again. She didn’t realize it at first, but it was as though the door had vanished underneath her touch. When she opened her eyes again, the door was still there, but her hand wasn’t. Everything above her wrist had disappeared through the door.

“Oh my God…” she tried to say, but no word came out of her mouth. In fact, nothing at all was coming out of her mouth – she couldn’t breathe! It was as though her lungs had ceased expanding. The panic she’d felt earlier increased tenfold.

Her hand was still inside the door!

She pulled it out quickly and the air came rushing back into her lungs. It took a few seconds for her to catch her breath, but then determination set in. She didn’t care how unreal this whole thing was.

Come on! Concentrate!

Against her better judgment, she tried again. This time, she took a deep breath before her hand disappeared through the door again. She was stunned when it actually worked, but she didn’t break eye contact with her hand as it kept on going. Her whole arm was through the door, then the other, and soon enough her head and shoulders had gone through as well.

She blinked, getting used to the onslaught of end-of-afternoon light peering through the window in the hall. Just a little bit more, she thought as she gave one big mental push and the rest of her body tumbled through the door.

She hit the floor with a loud thud.

2: CHapter 2

 

 

CHAPTER 2

 

 

 

 

She didn’t want to think about how insane all of this was, but she couldn’t ignore it either. Her throbbing head was certainly enough of a reminder in itself.

After further inspection, she decided the injury wasn’t as bad as the blood had made it seem; besides, after a hot shower and some food in her belly, she was already beginning to feel somewhat better.

She was still so terrified of having that dream again and waking up on the floor of the basement. What if Richard or Debra saw her tumbling through the floor this time around? They would want to send her back for sure! She didn’t want to end up in another group home, certainly not after what had happened the last time, before Richard and Debra took her in.

Would anyone want her if they found out what she could do? I mean, who wants a freak living under their roof anyway? She’d probably end up a beggar on the streets.

She didn’t quite know how she got through the rest of the weekend without going absolutely nuts, but somehow she did.

That following Monday, Dani made her way to her first period English class, barely noticing what was happening around her or listening to what her friend Wyatt was telling her.

In history, Mrs. Lafferty had to call her name twice in order to get her attention back to the presentation on the American Revolution. Everyone was staring at her now, and a part of Dani actually wished she could disappear through the floor to avoid all of the pairs of eyes.

At lunch, she made her way to the empty library for some peace and quiet. She took a book out at random from her messenger bag under the pretense of doing some reading, but the book remained closed, her light brown eyes fixed unseeingly on it for whole five minutes.

And then, as though something within her had clicked, she glanced around, made sure she was truly alone, and then slowly allowed her hand to pass through the hardcover book sitting on the table in front of her. Once again she felt as though her lungs had stopped functioning. She frowned in concentration as she moved her hand downward, right through the wooden table.

She was about to do it again, with her other hand this time, when two voices, way too close for comfort, made her jump about half a foot from her seat. Two guys were now sitting down on either side of her, both identical in appearance. They had dark brown eyes under thick brows, and shoulder-length jet black hair framed their angular faces. They had to be about seventeen or eighteen.

“Hey, how’s it going?” said the twin on her right, resting his shaggy head on his palm and watching her intently. He wore a dark gray sweater.

“Cool trick you did there,” the twin on her left said with a goofy grin plastered all over his face. He wore a bright red t-shirt. Her head whipped to look at him, stunned. He hadn’t seen, had he? The look on both their long-nosed faces told her they had.

“I…” she began, but she had no idea how to explain what they’d just clearly witnessed.

“No point in denying it,” the first twin said, and Dani twisted in her seat to look at him. He wasn’t paying attention to her anymore however, having grabbed her book, inspecting it with mild interest. “Catcher in the Rye… Interesting book… aren’t you a sophomore though? Last I checked, we read that in junior year, didn’t we?” He glanced over towards his brother for confirmation. The other twin nodded.

“I wasn’t reading it for school,” Dani commented absently.

“Didn’t seem like you were doing much reading at all,” the twin dressed in red told her with a wink. Dani frowned, but once more she didn’t say anything.

“Oh, don’t worry about us telling anyone – most people would just think we’re nuts,” the other one added, and Dani turned to look at him again. “But if it makes you feel any better, we’re like you, so we’d be, you know, incriminating ourselves in the process.” he added.

Dani stared, confused.

“Meta-humans.” the twin on her left said in a hushed voice, even though they were alone. Then again, Dani thought she’d been alone earlier, too.

“It’s not an official name… since, well, technically we don’t exist… we’ve been called other things too. Superhuman, mutant, and my personal favorite: freak.” the first twin, the one with the leather jacket, said beamingly, and Dani looked back at him.

She didn’t understand what was happening.

“Meta…?” she began, but both twins shushed her dramatically, their identical eyes fixed on a group of freshman girls that were passing by. Dani recognized one of them as Karissa, one of the girls on her JV hockey team – the one known for sleeping through her alarm during early morning practices. “I don’t understand,” she added in a whisper once the girls were out of sight.

“Come on, we’ve got to show you something,” said the twin dressed in red. “I’m Nate by the way, and that’s Brandon.” he added, offering her his hand.

“I’m the better-looking one,” grinned the twin named Brandon.

“Like hell,” Nate replied with a snort.

“I’m… uh… Dani,” Dani introduced herself, although she didn’t take the offered handshake. Her mind was reeling, and it was taking every ounce of willpower she had not to collapse in a heap on the floor.

“Come on,” Nate repeated, and the twins stood up, waiting for her to do the same.

Like two tall bodyguards, they remained on either side of her as they walked through the hallways, towards an exit at the opposite end of the school. Nate pushed the heavy metal door open for Brandon and Dani to walk through, and then he followed after them. They were out on the quad now; although it was considered outdoors, they were surrounded on three sides by brick walls, the fourth leading down to what was referred to as the smoking pit.

Dani wrinkled her nose; she could smell the faint stench of cigarettes.

During the warmer weather it was crowded with people, but since it had started to snow again, it was completely and utterly deserted.

“So what are we doing here exactly?” Dani asked, shivering. She was beginning to think these two boys were toying around with her for mere kicks and giggles.

“We’re gonna show you what we can do,” both twins said in unison.

“Oh, um, okay…” Dani said uncertainly.

“You might wanna back up,” Brandon warned as he shrugged out of his black leather jacket. He wore only a white tank top underneath, but he didn’t seem all too fazed about the cold.

“Things are about to get hot,” Nate added. Dani was clearly the only one shivering her butt off, since clearly Nate didn’t mind the cold either.

Dani obeyed just in time. The moment she took two steps back, both boys’ arms went up in flames – literally! Fire licked at their fingertips, and then spread over their hands and across their forearms. Dani could feel the burst of warmth from where she stood.

“Holy shit,” she hissed, slamming both hands over her mouth. Automatically, she took five more cautious steps back. This was way too weird! It couldn’t possibly be real! It was just some twisted dream or some stupid prank! The twins were on fire, and yet they were grinning at each other like it was the most pleasant feeling in the world!

No more than five seconds had passed when the flames started to die down, but it was enough for Dani’s jaw to go completely slack, her brown eyes wide with shock. Soon enough, the boys were standing in front of her again, looking completely normal and completely unharmed.

The twins were laughing at her. Dani stared at them.

“Are you completely insane?” she hissed after a few moments.

“Not completely,” Brandon replied with a smirk.

“Just a little,” Nate said simultaneously.

Dani couldn’t stop herself from staring. She was trying really hard to wrap her head around everything, but finding it excruciatingly painful.

Just a few days ago she’d been a perfectly normal person, and now…? Now she was seriously questioning her own sanity. This couldn’t be real, could it? She’d seen too many lame horror flicks and it had all become too much for her brain to take. She could have easily had a mental breakdown or something, right?

At this point, anything seemed more plausible than the truth, but somehow she knew… She knew meta-humans – or whatever Nate had called them – were a real thing, and she just so happened to be one of them.

“So? Are we cool or what?” Nate asked, grinning crookedly at her.

“It’s not even the bulk of what we can do – we can burn even hotter than that,” Brandon added as he pulled his jacket back on. “But we won’t, since, well, we’ve already set the school on fire once before… and it took a lot of work to cover that up.” Both boys looked sheepish.

“And we can manipulate the flames too… you know, create fireballs and hurl them at whoever’s pissing us off,” Nate went on, concluding Brandon’s train of thought.

“Remind me not to get on your bad side,” Dani deadpanned, finally managing to find her voice deep in her throat, somewhere with her frantically beating heart. She ran her hand through her honey-colored hair and along her jawline. Finally, she wrapped her arms around herself in an attempt to keep warm. “So this whole thing… meta-humans… it’s all real, then.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Oh yeah, very real,” Nate answered her with a nod.

Dani had so many questions she wanted to ask the twins, but the moment she opened her mouth, a bell sounded throughout the school, signaling the end of the lunch period. Dani closed her mouth again.

“Well, that was an eventful lunch,” Brandon commented, looking satisfied. “You’ve got biology with Miss Sylvester?” he added to his brother, clasping his hands together in a very final sort of way.

“Yeah,” Nate replied, making his way across the quad, completely ignoring Dani, who was still gaping slightly at them.

“Lucky bastard, I’m stuck with Marsh in trig. He’s a lot less good-looking than Sylvester,” Brandon sighed as he fell into step with Nate.

Dani had to sprint in order to catch up to them. “Wait,” she said quickly. “What about all of this? You can’t just dump all of this on me and… and then just go to class!”

“We don’t wanna be late,” Brandon said dismissively, as though they’d been talking about the Halloween dance taking place on Friday night, or something just as trivial that could easily be pushed to some other time.

“Besides, we shouldn’t even be talking about all of this here,” Nate added with a shrug. “We’re probably gonna get an earful for actually approaching you…” The look Brandon gave his brother told Dani that Nate had said too much.

They weren’t supposed to approach her? What did that mean? And who would they get an earful from? What the hell was going on?

“But…” Dani began as she followed the twins back into the school, the sudden warmth hitting her like a ton of bricks.

“Later,” Brandon told her firmly.

“We’ll explain everything later,” Brandon added with a nod, his tone a little more understanding.