1 The Begining Of The End.

P.O.V: Elizabeth Harmon.

"Happy Birthday!" Amelia, my best friend, squealed beside me as I walked through the school doors with her right beside me. Amelia had light blond hair and blue eyes with tan skin that pretty much everyone in Florida has, myself included.

"Oh, shut up," I mutter, but I was smiling. "Everybody has a birthday, and when yours comes around, I'm going to embarrass the shit out of you!" I glared at her playfully.

"Yeah, sure you will," She rolled her eyes, not believing I would do anything of the such- and she's probably right. "Besides, it's your seventeenth birthday, we got to do something fun to celebrate tonight."

But any talk of celebration died out as we walked down the stairs to the cafeteria and were staring at the large TV mounted on the wall.

"Another attack was made in Washington D.C late last night, but authorities aren't sure who made the attack." The lady on the news said, and pointed to a live video of a tall building that looked as if not only fire, but time have worn it down. There were similar buildings like it burning, but the first one had no match to it's flames as they just seemed to rise higher even though the firefighters were trying their hardest to battle the impossible blaze.

"Police found around two hundred bodies in variant ages in the buildings and on the surrounding street and are warning the public to be on guard and report suspicious activity to your local authorities immediately."

Though that attack happened several states away, I can understand why they felt the need to warn everybody. Attacks like this have been happening all around the country, in other countries even, and it causes the people to be terrified out of their wits because they know it can happen to them. There had been several buildings set on fire, some even exploded, in the past few months. One had been an old mutant prison in Tennessee. An abandoned high school in Michigan. Old buildings left to rot that had been exploded that held hundreds of people as young as toddlers both human and mutant. Oh, sorry, did I lose you? I'll try to keep it simple for you: my name is Elizabeth Harmon and I'm a mutant.

By a statistical view, a little over a quarter of the world is mutant. My entire family is. My dad can control emotions, make a room of angry people calm, or produce fear strong enough to kill. My brother, Brannon, is a Telepath. He can read somebody's mind with a single look, one thing he can do but not many other Telepaths can, is to completely shut down someone's mind. Then there's me. I have telekinesis, meaning I can control solid objects to my will. But I can only control solids, not liquids. Anytime I try the liquid, usually water, just goes haywire and splashes everything in a five-mile radius- which, by the way, isn't fun when you're the one that has to clean it up. My mom could control light, make it so dark you'd think you'd never see the sun again, or make it bright enough to blind someone. I look a lot like my mom. I have her long curly brown hair and fast reflexes. My brother takes more after my dad, inheriting his height and short blond hair, but Brannon has a clumsiness all his own. We both have dad's eyes, a dark brown. A contrast to my mother's bright gold eyes. But I'll never see my mother's bright happy eyes again. It's been almost three years ago now that we all got in that car accident. Brannon my mother and I had been in our bright red Cadillac, when out of nowhere, a black van came speeding toward us and crashed into us so hard that both cars ended up in the ditch. Afterwards, when me and my brother woke back up in the hospital beds, we were informed that our mother had died of fatal head trauma and that the other driver had ran. Even three years later, they still haven't a clue who had been driving the black van. For weeks, me and Brannon wouldn't eat, barely moved, never responded to anyone.

But we pulled ourselves together, we went to school, concentrated on our grades, dad kept the food on the table. That was the hardest year of my life. The year we had to move to Florida because dad got a job offering- also I believe he wanted to be closer to mom's hometown, where we had the funeral. But it was also the year Brannon met Keira, his girlfriend. Brannon and Keira both started fighting with the Gate Keepers that year. Which gets me to the worst part of my world.

My dad told me and my brother about his childhood, a time when humans were oblivious to the mutant race. But humans aren't entirely arrogant. Around twenty, maybe thirty years ago humans found out, and everything was spilled. My parents said it was absolute chaos: humans and mutants both hiding in their houses, terrified of each other. But things eventually calmed down enough for each side to reason with logic. The world eventually settled back into calmness.

Until the war. There are two people that started the war- Hamado and Da Kenshi. I don't know much about Da Kenshi, I only know what my parents told me about him. But this is what I know. After humans found out that mutants existed, Da Kenshi, or at least that's the name mutants who saw him named him, formed a group of mutants who were later called 'The Blood Order'. They wanted to make mutants in charge, believing that mutants were the better race of the two. But nobody could've predicted what lengths Da Kenshi would go to to do it. He killed anybody and everybody that got in his way- human and mutant both. He tried, and almost did so many times, to accomplish his goal. The only thing that stopped him was the Gate Keepers. The Gate Keepers were formed when Da Kenshi was as strong as anyone remembers, when people were scared to death of what he would do next, who would be the next person on the news, pronounced dead by him or his Order. Hamado started the Gate Keepers to fight back against them, they started out small because not many people were willing to fight. But ever since they've grown in size and power until they were as powerful as the Blood Order, and they've been fighting ever since. No side winning. Both sides losing. I know that there's a lot more to the story than that, but I never really looked into it because every time I do, it just reminds me of Brannon, fighting in such a bloody war, knowing he could die at any moment, that I looked away from the talk and the rumors about the truth of it all. I shook my head to try to clear it and slid in at our lunch table to hear the kids at the table were talking about the very thing I would've liked to avoid.

"Ten bucks says it was the Order," Remarked Sarah, a girl with green eyes and, originally, almost solid black hair, but she dyed it at the beginning of the year into a light pink to make an attempt to 'stand out from the crowd' she had said.

"No shit Sherlock, you think Keepers would've done something like that?" Rodrick, or Rod as we usually call him, laughed at her and shook his head.

I wanted to say that they just might've, considering that Keepers have been known to go too far on several occasions, like the Order. The Keepers and the Order are just about equal when it comes to body count. But instead I tuned the whole thing out and ignored it all, a specialty of mine, until the bell rung and we had to go to class. The rest of the day passed in a drone of pointless classes, annoying teachers, and ignorant students. When the final bell rung, I grabbed my backpack and dashed to the door and into the streets, taking the familiar path to my house. Normally, I would be walking with Amelia but she got picked up early for a doctor's appointment. It was only a ten minute walk to my house from the school anyways, and I hated riding the bus because it's always too crowded and could be counted on to give you a headache every time. I grabbed for my phone and stuffed my earbuds inside my ears and pushed play on my playlist as I walked. I felt myself relax as I fell into the rhythm of the song and it felt like no time at all before I was walking up the steps to my house. I turned the song off and turned the nob. No, let my rephrase that, I tried to turn the nob. But instead of opening like it should've, the door stayed stubbornly still.

"Dang it," I mutter and started searching around my backpack for the keys. But before I had even undone the strap on my backpack, the door swung open and there stood my father, looking worried and anxious, his face dead white in the doorway.

"Dad?" I froze, staring at him. I haven't seen him look like that since my mother died, and my mind immediately went to the worst conclusion and I could feel my pace quicken.

"Dad, is it Br-" But I didn't get to finish my question before my father was yanking me toward him and pushed me out of the doorway so he could slam the door closed and bolt it. Wait, no, my father had pulled me toward him and I didn't realize it, out of the way of the door. But if he'd done that, then who had just closed and locked the door? I could barely see anything because the curtains were drawn tightly over all the windows and nobody had bothered with turning on a light or two, but I could make out small things. It was a man with almost a buzz-cut haircut and dark skin that he almost blended in with the darkness, making it harder to see him. I reached behind me and felt for something, maybe a light switch, when my hand touched metal, a small kitchen knife. I grasped it and held it tightly behind my back, even though I wasn't entirely sure if there was something for me to us the knife for necessarily. My father gave the man a nod, or maybe he didn't I can't quite see good right now, and suddenly the room filled with light so he must've turned on the light. I stood there trying to get my eyes to understand what light was again when the man spoke.

"My name is Jonathan, your brother asked me to help with the situation." His voice was deep and hard, like it's been used to say too many bad things in a short while.

"What 'situation'? Is Brannon okay?" My voice came out as anxious as my father looked, even though he probably had more reason to be worried than I did.

"Your brother's fine, it's us he's worried about, Elizabeth." My father assured me and they both began to explain.

"Your brother had a mission he was doing and him and his team got caught right in the middle of it. They knew their names, their powers, everything- they knew about you two. They got away thankfully but Brannon wants you two to be put in a base until he's off the radar, but that could be a while." Jonathan explained and gave a slight pause, as if struggling to explain it right. My father sighed and looked into my eyes like he would to check if I'm lying.

"They want us to go to different bases, Elizabeth, to be safer." He said softly. I could only stare at him, uncomprehending what words coming out of his mouth meant. "Jonathan is going to take me to his base and Brannon has asked a favor for someone to take him to theirs, until things settle down a bit."

Slowly, the words sank in. My father and I were going to be separated-for our own safety?- until Brannon got off the radar. But that could take weeks, no scratch that, years, and some people never get off the radar! But we would be safe, the three of us would be. I seem to have to tell myself this multiple times before I could really see it as true. And if we were all safe, then we were fine. I nodded, because even though I was accepting it, I didn't trust my tongue not to betray me.

"How soon do we have to leave?"

Jonathan cleared his throat and glanced worriedly toward the door. "The other Keeper that Brannon is having help should've already been here, but we can't wait here much longer. I'm going to kill him for being this late-"

"Oh, what're you going to do, Jonathan?" Interrupted a surprisingly teenage-like voice from behind me.

Maybe it was fear, or craziness, or I don't even really know what, but I turned and swiftly threw the knife that I had been holding in the general direction of the voice. The boy, a teenager that couldn't have been more than sixteen or seventeen years old, let out a surprised laugh and wiggled the knife out of the wooden panel about a foot from him where it had lodged itself into the wall.

"Nice to know that you already don't like me," The boy joked with a smirk playing on his lips.

"Don, shut up, would you?" Jonathan snapped. "And what took you so long anyway? We should've cleared out of here ten minutes ago!"

Don, as Jonathan had called him, was tall with short messy brown hair and bright blue eyes. And I had to admit, he was pretty handsome. The boy looked pretty strongly built with his broad shoulders and looked like he always wore a grin on his face that came with a look that said 'try me'. He had on a plain black T-shirt, a brown jacket, old blue jeans and purple-on-black running shoes. At my school, he could've passed for a jock easily, with his height and obvious strength- he probably would've played basketball, or tackled other boys in football or something. And with that smirk of his and good looks he would've been one of the popular people that're always messing around in class, annoying the teachers, and getting into trouble. But there was something in the boy's eyes that made him seem much older than a mere teenager, something I couldn't quite place.

"One of them was following me and I had to ditch 'em," Then his voice turned sarcastic. "No, I was hungry and decided to grab some McDonald's on my way here, what do you think stupid?" he snorted and rolled his eyes. Yep, he'd definitely be one of the kids that would annoy the teachers until they were practically ripping their hair out and wanting so desperately to tell them off.

"Whatever," Jonathan muttered and turned back to us. "I'm sorry, Mr. Harmon, Liz, but we have to go now." He instructed us. I barely had time to hug my father and tell him goodbye before Jonathan was hurrying him out the door, telling him to try to blend in.

Don made me wait five minutes until we could leave out the door ourselves, taking the opposite rout as my father and Jonathan had. I was about to turn around and lock the door and stopped myself as we walked away. It's not like I should really be worried by someone who'd be deterred by a locked door, not that we'd be here anyway. That thought kept me quiet as I followed Don through the streets he took me through. It was when he was leading me toward downtown that I finally decided to bother about where we were going.

"Where exactly are we going?" I raised an eyebrow at him as we passed a group of teenagers, none that I recognized, Freshmen, by the looks of them.

"Well, I'm probably going to Hell, don't quite know about you though," He grinned back at me, even though I was glaring at him.

"Are you always this annoying? because I'm honestly going to end up smacking you!" But he just laughed at me.

"Right, says the girl who tried, and failed, to throw a knife at me. We're going through the train station, it's easier than taking you through the Tunnels." He shrugged.

"Tunnels?" I asked, were 'Tunnels' code word for something?

The kid shook his head. "You newbies always have too many questions, you'd have to see it yourself anyway for you to believe me."

As we walked further, I began to see the station. Neither of us said anything as we walked down the stairs and into the place where dozens of people- mostly business men and women dressed for work- were boarding a train. The man that was handing the tickets out took one look at Don and I and nodded. Don mouthed 'thank you' in return and guided me toward a train that looked ready to leave.

"Do you know him or something?" I ask him once we were in the train.

"Tell you in a minute." He said and guided me towards an empty part of the train and shut the doors.

"He dropped out from the Gate Keepers a while back, but he helps us get to our missions as best he can."Don explained, sitting down on a seat.

"Is it, um, safe? To travel publicly, I mean." I ask nervously, looking around. Since when did I become suspicious? I guess now.

He nodded. "Hiding in plain sight, the tunnels are one of our main ways to travel though. It's just hard to get there, so this is easier for small missions."

Though that didn't exactly settle my nerves down.

"So, is Liz a nickname it is that your actual name?" He asks, catching me off guard with the question that seemed so of place with everything going on.

"Um, yeah, it's just a nickname. My actual name is Elizabeth Harmon.

He nodded and extended his hand, saying, "My name's Donny Keeney." I shook it and tried to calm myself down, but I couldn't.

"So how long is it going to take to get there, to your 'base' or whatever you called it?" I asked- patience was never my strong suite- as he settled into a seat and I took the one facing him as I tried to get comfy in the seat, to no avail.

"A half hour, and a little bit of walking, but not much."

He shrugged and pulled out a good sized black metal knife with a silver hilt from a looping in his belt and started twirling it between his fingers. The knife had something written on the blade, but it looked like it was in another language.

"What's that?" I ask, raising an eyebrow at the odd blade.

"A knife."

"You know what I meant. Where'd you get the knife?" I mutter, quickly gaining back my former annoyance with the boy.

"It was my father's." The boy said simply and looked away from me, out the window as the train started moving- fast.

A half hour later, with no words spoken between me and Donny, we got off the train quickly. I once again followed Donny as we walked down a street that I didn't recognize. We'd been walking for about ten minutes, when I notice something odd. The street that we'd been walking on for the last few minutes, was deserted. And not a 'not that many people' kind of deserted, but a 'there's no sign of life for a five miles' kind of deserted. Like there was something about this place that keeps people away, and made me want to turn back as well.

"Donny, where exactly are we?" I ask, glancing around for any sigh of life, anywhere, and got even more worried when of course I found none.

"On a street in Florida." he said, rolling his eyes and smirking. How the heck am I supposed to get a strait answer from this kid?

"Oh lighten up!" He sighed while I gave him my best 'i'm gonna kill you in your sleep unless you start being serious' look. A look my mother had sometimes used on my brother and I when we would play jokes on her. "We're almost there. And the place is like this because it's so close to the base and we can't have civilians too close to it." But that didn't explain how it kept- what had Donny called it?- civilians from coming near here.

He turning down another alleyway before I could ask though, but this one was, literally, a dead end. All that was there was a flickering street lamp and a trashcan that smelled like it hasn't been emptied since World War Two. But apparently none of this got through Donny's thick skull because he walked up to the street light and held his arm, which I noticed had a dark blood red wristband on it, into the flickering light.

"Hey stupid!" I call, walking up to him. "It's a dead end, do you not know what that means? It means 'turn back', not-"

But I stopped mid sentence out of pure shock. Because the wall was moving . It started to shift and turn and even break in some points until there was enough room for twenty people to walk through. I barely noticed that Donny was laughing at what must've been the shock that must be written all over my face.

"Are you just going to stand there or are you gonna go through?" He asked, appearing unfazed by anything that just happened.

I nodded, still astounded, as I walked through the wall with Donny right behind me. As soon as he was on the other side of the wall, it shifted back with a slam. The other side of the wall looked like a battle ground. There was obstacles to overcome, dummies to train with, dunes to climb over and weapons to train with. There were people practicing with swords, throwing knifes, and weapons that I'd never heard of before. There was a large group of mutants and humans alike practicing dodging and fighting other Keeper's attacks with weapons of their own.

As I watched all of it, somehow I knew that I belong here, with these people. It wasn't like how I decided that I liked reading over math, no, like something in me had shifted. Like my focus had shifted slightly, that my mind's more entwined to the people here than at home. And I knew that I could do something here, if not much, but I could help somehow. And I was determined to do just that.