Chapter 1

The siblings wake up in a strange place after being asleep for who knows how long? While they're still together, something strange is happening to them that none of them could ever begin to explain.

I awake to the sound of a blaring alarm, but I can't identify the source. I can't see anything, but my eyes are open. I can't move, but I can feel things around me. My mouth tastes of bile, as if I've been sleeping for days. The smell of metal wanders around in my nostrils, but I can't imagine why.
Suddenly I hear a yell from a person somewhere. "What's going on?! They're malfunctioning!"
Then there's a burning sensation all around me. Like I'm being cooked inside a preheated oven, and there's no space for me to shift around because the space is so tight. I try to squirm and free myself from whatever thing I'm contained in, but it's no use. There's no escape from this thing!
After what feels like minutes, the burning fades away and becomes more warm and comforting. As if the oven I'm being baked in has cooled sufficiently and is now just keeping me warm and toasty.
Then another shout from outside. "Turn them off! They're gonna explode if we don't!"
Wait what!?
I start squirming again, trying to get myself out of this thing with fear inspiring me more than discomfort. I use what strength I have to try and push whatever is in front of me. A door, a hatch, a button, something.
I'm not sure if it was my struggling that did it, or something else, but something eventually does open in front of me. But the strange thing is whatever let me out of the container opened downwards, not outwards. I fall and land flat on my face. My head aches as if I got hit over the head with two tons of bricks. The Earth seems to have doubled its mass, weighing me down with an extreme gravitational pull. The ground is cold.
Two more people fell next to me at the same moment I did. I somehow turn my head to the right to look at one of them. It was my sister, Lexi. She was lying a few feet away, her eyes are shut but her head was facing me. Her expression looked almost peaceful. Then turns twisted after a moment. Her breathing becomes more rapid. She's having a nightmare. Her eyelids fly open, her pupils in direct line with my own. "Darien," she breathes my name, frightened.
I turn my head to the left now. My older brother Percival �" we call him Percy �" is lying an equal distance away from me as Lexi. His head is turned away from me, but I can hear him moaning. He moves his arms and pushes on the ground lifting his chest up. Now he looks at me. His eyes are filled with confusion. He holds his right hand up to his face, bending his fingers curiously.
The three of us never actually turned our heads forwards at the various people in front of us until now. There are people in lab coats, younger looking ones wearing white coats were somewhat shorter than the older ones in black lab coats. All of them had the same expression on their faces: shock. None of them moved, nor breathed.
"Where�"?" I start to say.
But I'm cut off by murmurs from the crowd. They're whispering things amongst themselves, things that none of us can hear. I can see a hallway on the other side of the crowd, which seems to be the only exit. Then there's a sentence I can actually pick out from the crowd. "Are they here yet? Did you notify them?" I don't hear the reply.
Metallic footsteps are heard down the hall behind the crowd. They all step to the side to allow three more people in. These people were too familiar though. They were six feet tall and wore black armor. They held rifles and had swords in the loops of their belts. But the rifles looked odd. They weren't normal looking guns that we're familiar with, they glowed various shades of red and green in some places. The barrel wasn't a hole, but just a glowing white rectangle. And the guns were shaped in a strange polygonal figure.
Percy, Lexi, and I get on our feet quickly and take a step back. One of the soldiers speaks to us in a muffled voice. "Don't move. We have orders to take you in. Follow us."
The three of us don't know what to do. Lexi and I look at Percy, hoping he would have an answer. But all he does is look back at us and shrugs. The soldiers take a step forwards, pointing their rifles at us. "We won't repeat ourselves. Follow. Us."
I can't take the suspense anymore. "What happened to us?!" I shout angrily at them. "Who are you, and where are we?!"
The crowd of scientists recoil, so do the soldiers, surprisingly. As if they didn't know I could even speak.
"Yeah," Percy adds, "Tell us, or else!"
I honestly didn't know what else there could really be, but I just went with it. Lexi doesn't say anything, but stands behind me and Percy, wringing her hair in her hands.
The three soldiers recollect themselves and aim their guns at us again. "Everyone leave," one of them says. "They aren't ready yet."
Gasps from the crowd. Some of them shake their heads saying, ”I can't believe it. After all that time?" After another order from the soldiers, they all scurry out of the room and down different directions in the hall up ahead. The soldiers walk towards us slowly, telling us not to move, or speak.
Lexi can't help herself and shouts, "S-S-Stay back!" holding up her hands in front of her. They keep approaching us. "I said stop!" she shouts again. They still don't listen.
"Lexi, quit it, we'll find a way out of this," Percy tries to reassure her.
"The Gods will have something to say about that," one of the soldiers says to him.
"The what?" I ask.
"You'll know if you'd stop talking and come with us quietly!" One of the soldiers aims the barrel of its rifle directly in our faces. I close my eyes as they get even closer.
"Stop it!!"
Three eardrum-shattering bangs are heard. But I don't feel anything. I slowly crack open one of my eyes. The three soldiers aren't there anymore. They'd fallen on the ground, unmoving and fainted. I look at Percy, who's looking at Lexi with a mix of wonder and shock altogether.
Lexi stood there, facing the fallen soldiers, her arms stretched out with something in her hands. Our sister held a pistol. A pistol you'd see in like an old western movie or something. A Magnum revolver pistol. An expression of pure terror was printed on her face.
Percy and I take a step away from her. "Lexi...?" I say. "Where did you get that...?"
The gun falls out of her hands onto the steel floor. "I... I... I don't know. I just... had it... It was just... there..."
Percy nudges the fallen soldier in front of us with his foot, then kneels down to inspect it as I try to calm Lexi down. "It's metal," he says. We look at him. "I don't think they're human," he says now, standing up.
"Then what could they be?" I ask him.
He shrugs in reply. "Robots, I guess?"
I bend down and look at the soldiers as well. Specifically where Lexi shot them: their heads. There isn't any blood coming from them, just shards of black metal and wires scattered on the ground. "He's right," I tell Lexi. "They aren't even human."
Lexi breathes a huge sigh of relief. She's clearly happy that she never killed any human. But that raises the question: how come they seemed so human if they were artificial intelligence? Seemed like normal robots would at least have some monotone sounding voice and moved a bit more slowly, wouldn't they? These ones acted as if they had actual human brains inside them. How could such advanced technology exist in this day and age?
Percy notices their strange looking rifles lying in the ground. He picks one up and examines it. "Be careful with that," I tell him. "You don't know what they do."
"What else could they do?" He says to me. "They shoot bullets." He accidentally pulls the trigger and fires a bright white beam of some kind right in between me and Lexi, hitting the wall and leaving a black smudge mark on it.
All three of us jump back and Percy drops the gun. "Percy!!" Lexi shrieks, scared out of her mind, again.
"You coulda shot us!" I add.
"I didn't know it wasn't gonna shoot bullets!" he excuses. "What the hell was that anyway?!"
"I haven't got a clue, but let's not mess around with it anymore!" I answer him.
"Uh, why not? How else are we supposed to defend ourselves?" Percy picks up the rifle again and holds it with the barrel pointed at the floor.
"How do you expect Lexi to carry one of those things?" I ask him.
"She can do that pistol thing again."
"Uh-uh, no, I'm not doing that again," Lexi tells him. "That was freaky and I don't like it."
"Why? I thought that was awesome!"
"No you didn't, you were scared!"
"Startled, not scared. It's cool now though."
"I don't even know how I did it!"
"Just pick up the one you dropped!"
Lexi looks around for the gun she dropped on the ground, but it wasn't anywhere it be found. "It's gone," she says.
"How could it be gone, you just had it."
"I don't know, Percy, it's just not here! I don't really care either way, I just don't want to do it again."
We keep arguing for a while until I break us all up and say we need to get out of here. Lexi and Percy agree and Percy takes the lead down the hallway up ahead and take the left path. He keeps the rifle he took and I pick up one as well, hoping it will help.
A few moments later, we round a corner and more soldiers appear down the hallway. They immediately raise their guns and fire at us. White beams of light zoom past us as we dart back around the corner, out of range. After a couple deep breaths, Percy aims his rifle around the corner and fires a few shots. But to our surprise, the white beams didn't do anything to the soldiers at all! They hit them, but they didn't flinch or act like they even felt it! "Oh what the�"!?" Percy curses.
Another one of the soldiers draws the katana in the loop of its belt and sprints at us, leaning forwards as it runs. "Well, if I can't shoot it, might as well..." Percy flips the rifle in his hands, spins around completely and smashes the butt end of the rifle over the soldier's head just as it gets close. The rifle shatters, as does the soldier's skull. Lexi and I stare with amazement at Percy's ability to hit the enemy so easily.
The other soldier who shot at us before raises its weapon once more and fires multiple shots as Lexi and I duck back behind the wall. But Percy dodges the beams somehow by sidestepping and shuffling as if dancing, then begins to run at the soldier provoking him. He runs his hands along with wall while running, then suddenly, the steel plating is torn right off the wall! The metal lingers in Percy's right hand for a moment, then begins to bend and reshape itself so that it wraps perfectly around Percy's fist! Using an armored hand to block a few more of the beams rather effectively, he finally gets close enough to give a wild uppercut to the soldier, whipping its head back and knocking it to the ground, motionless after that.
Percy looks back at me and Lexi, the two of us standing at the end of the hall now, with an elated smile spread across his face. "Did you see that?!" he shouts at us. "That was awesome!"
But our small victory is short lived when more soldiers appear down the hallway me and Lexi are in, Percy can't see them. But before they can even raise their weapons, Lexi has another revolver pistol in her hands and puts a bullet into each of their heads; skillfully aimed and fired perfectly.
When both the soldiers drop dead, Lexi realizes what just happened and yelps. "It happened again!" she shouts, dropping her gun.
"Yeah, so you can do it!" Percy says to her, jogging back over to us.
"I never doubted that I could, I just never wanted to in the first place," Lexi tells him.
"Why not?"
Lexi recoils. "Wha-?! Because it's weird! I don't know what I did, how I did it, or why I even did it! I coulda just tripped it or something, but no, I shot it for crying out loud!"
"I don't know why you're upset, I think this is the coolest thing ever," Percy says, flexing his metal hand. He puts his unarmored left hand on the wall and tears another plate off it. From there, the metal reshapes and wraps around his hand again like the first one.
"You better be careful with what you're doing or you're gonna tear this whole place down," I tell him.
"I'm not gonna destroy the place by removing a couple of pieces of the wall," he says back to me.
"Any machine stops working if you remove even one screw or wire from it," I keep arguing.
"I think you're overthinking this a bit."
"Guys," Lexi gets our attention now. "We should keep moving. Hopefully we can get an idea of what's happening to us if we can find someone who won't shoot at us first."
"Good idea, but I'm not sure how we can do that," I say to her.
"Bet we could beat it out of someone," Percy suggests, hitting his fists together.
"You mean like torture?!" Lexi's hands go into her hair again.
"No, not torture! Like, interrogation, you know? We just ask questions and if they don't answer, we just hit 'em."
"I don't like the sound of that," I say. "It sounds... mean."
"Of course it's mean, that's why it works," Percy tells me.
"Isn't there a better way than to hurt someone though? We could just, like, ask someone, you know?"
"Oh yeah, just 'cause everyone here is trying to kill us, doesn't mean they'll be nice and point us in the right direction, yeah?" Percy sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. "Darien, when are you gonna learn? There's a time for conversation, and there's a time for confrontation. This is a time for confrontation. Let's just find someone who knows this place and make them tell us how to get out. If they don't, then, well, you don't have to look."
I think of an argument to give him, but have no choice but to accept his terms. "Just promise me you won't kill anyone."
Him and Lexi are both visibly appalled. "What?! No! Who said anything about killing?! No way I'd kill someone, I'll just... you know, hurt 'em. Punch 'em or something. You know?"
"Stop saying 'you know.' And good, thank you. Makes me feel a little better knowing you aren't that insane."
"You think I'm insane?"
"Oh jeez..." Lexi groans and moves on without us.
As Percy and I follow her, something else crosses my mind: two of my siblings seem to have weird powers they can perfectly control (as far as I've guessed), and I'm here defenseless. I wouldn't be thrilled, like Percy, to have a power, but I don't really think it'd be a curse to have one like Lexi thinks either. I find it suspicious that the three of us were chosen to be given these things. If it's even all three of us at all.
Even so, whatever is happening to us, clearly was set up by someone else. My mind keeps tracing back to that German guy with the lab coat. Thinking back, I think he wore a coat almost exactly the same as the ones the people here wore. When we first woke up out of those things, the people staring at us like a bunch of enthralled tourists at a zoo looked like scientists. Could that guy have been one of them?
If he is, there's a definite chance he knows what's going on with us, where we are, and why we were brought here. But as to how Percy and Lexi's powers work, I'm not sure that even the most incredible genius on modern day Earth could figure that out.
I also want to find out if I have one of these powers too. And if I do, then I want to be able to fight for my siblings so that they'd respect me a bit and listen to me more. If I don't have one, then I guess they'll have to fight my battles for me and I won't have any power over them whatsoever.

Author's Note

This is the first chapter of my novel. Review honestly, and if there's any problems, let me know and I can change it if I can.