Year: ???

The glass is stained with specks of dirt and the scorches of ashes.

Everything is real, none of it the visions of hers. Lena would know; she already misses how passively her latent ability can take form. Before, it'd been so annoying to see scenarios that don't add up play through glass surfaces while no one else can see them. She couldn't even turn it off. Now that she's unable to do even that, it's painful to have something that's such a fundamental part of herself taken away. It's always like this: not realizing the value of something until it's no longer yours.

Lena stares down at the reason she's now powerless. The pair of cuffs over each of her wrist are but dull metal rings, but they are made from a nullifying ability taken from one of their very own. As long as these are on her, some part of her is hollowed out. This technology is the bane of their existence; it has turned the tides for those like Lena for the worse. Because it isn't enough for the population to fear what's different. They're out to eradicate them too.

It's only been a few hours since Lena's capture, and she already feels the strain these cuffs do to her body and her wellbeing. She silently hopes her captors spare her soon by simply ending this misery.

And yet a question she doesn't want an answer to forms in the back of her mind: why haven't they killed her already, like the rest of the group back there?

Lena's palms are beginning to hurt from her own tightened fists, her fingertips creating half-moon dents into the skin of her palms. Nervous habit. The rumbling of the vehicle transporting her to an unknown location doesn't help calm her nerves.

There are two uniformed guards—dressed head to toe in black, including an obscuring black helmet over their heads to hide their features—on this tiny, glass enforced transport with her. They keep a distance; there's no need for them to be too overbearing anyway as Lena's abilities are as good as gone: she's harmless.

Lena eyes the two and catch them slacking; one of them is nearly nodding off. She promises that this ignorance will get them. Besides, why lock her up? Unless they know she's more than glass visions. And even if so, they should know that Lena's true strength lies not in her abilities they had just taken away but in her deadly aim. With passive style abilities like hers that are versatile but non-offensive, the user tend to be more combat trained. She can't wait to kick their asses, if only she gets her hands on a weapon—anything threatening enough, really.

These thoughts help calm her nerves. Sure, she's panicking, with no idea where they're taking her or what they have in store for her, but it's easy to imagine your enemy's downfall and dream on it. In another life, they'll be the ones ruling. There might not be a future for her or any of her friends here and now, but she knows there's one out there, and it's still up to her—if only she can get her hands off this technology turning her abilities off. She'll rewrite history in as quick as a blink of an eye so long as she has a piece of glass in range the moment she's free.

Plotting now gets her no where, unfortunately. She'll be stuck in this timeline, this body, facing whatever doom that's about to come. Her thoughts are now turning factual, but she refuses to settle for the reality of a potential dead end.

This will not be the end. It can't end with her. Everything depends on her, even if no one will ever understand.

Lena barely feels the transport coming to a halt as it cuts the engines, and with it, the silence stretches. She's not the only one dazed—the two idiots scramble to their feet as the heavy door of the vehicle opens.

"How many?" a gruff voice from beyond demands.

"Just one, sir." The one who'd been nodding off straightens his back. "Female."

"Take her in."

Lena doesn't wait to be pulled or pushed out. She brushes past the guards and steps out of the narrow doorway that leads out to possible freedom—

A hand stops her in her tracks. "Not so fast." This new, probably higher ranked officer barks to the other two, "What are you doing just standing there? She's a prisoner!"

Clumsy scuffles of feet are then followed by her being grabbed, and a blindfold is placed over her eyes. Lena's heartbeats quicken; she's losing each and every layer of the bit of control she has left. She'll have to find a way, fast. There's no guarantee how long she will last under the effects of these ability nullifiers, and then everything will be futile.

She is made to walk forward, and she trudges on blindly, barely tripping over more than once. Eventually, they come to a stop. Just when Lena thinks they will finally be isolating her in a confinement cell so she can be left alone, they surprise her by grabbing her arm and forcefully clip something on. It presses into her skin, and seconds later a sharp needle sinks into her flesh.

Lena jerks away instinctively from the pain, but arms hold her firm.

"What are you doing?" she snaps, thrashing in their hold. Somehow, not being able to see anything makes it worse; she doesn't know what they're doing, and what's next.

"Relax," the more authoritative voice says as Lena finds it in herself to scoff despite the situation. "Just protocol. Trackers to keep you lot under surveillance."

Questions swarm Lena's head as she struggles further. More of them taken like her? But they'd been told—she'd very much seen—all her companions get killed. Her mind flashes back to the moment she'd been taken, with Neesha and Nova fallen to the ground—

She stops herself, but this all only brings back the question she'd had at the back of her mind, resurfacing once more: why are they keeping her alive?

"That hurts," Lena mumbles, pulling away when they lift the needle.

"We should consider having a tape over their mouths to prevent them from speaking next time around," one of the useless guards remarks. "They're so loud and feisty."

"They won't be for long," their leader's voice reassures them. "This draining technology has turned the tides for us; we don't need to deal with so called supernatural talents any longer. Lock them up, and they're just humans like the rest of us—humans bred wrongly for some reason. And that's what we're about to find out."

Lena flinches from their touch as they shove her forward. She bites her tongue, refraining from comment or a question. Nothing might help her case now, and she'll only make them more attentive to her if she continues to misbehave. So she quietly stumbles along, still in a blindfold, as they lead her a short distance until they eventually come to a stop.

"Your home for the near future," the one in charge whispers in her ear, sending goosebumps down her skin. "Try to fit in and follow the rules."

With that, they pull the blindfold off her eyes and she is greeted by the opening of metal doors and a harsh white light. As her eyes adjusted, she catches movement beyond. The guards shove her forward, and she hears the ominous sound of locking doors behind her.

The sight she takes in is going to be her home for the foreseeable future.

Lena isn't sure what's she's expecting, but perhaps it isn't that bad. It's just like a prison hall: people who, like her are cuffed with the ability nullifiers on their wrists, are dressed in plain white and milling about the common space, as they are served the artificial kind of food that only serve to provide the necessary nutrients but not the taste.

A loud thang of metal on metal draws not only her attention but the entire group below. A guard on the second floor walkway overseeing the space below bellows, "Ten minutes. You'll be led to your respective sessions next."

Sessions? Lena trails the guard as he stalks the raised walkway, passing yet more guards on the upper floor. When she looks up, she realizes that the place is huge, with multiple floors layering out  and up over the space she currently stands in. And yes, there are definitely just a few of the uniformed individuals serving as their babysitters, as if the captives don't pose any threats. Lena clenches her fists in anger and in shame.

One of them hands her a fresh set of clothing to match the others, and indicates her to follow the line. She follows numbly as they provide her with a shabby looking slab of cube and two pills—the whole thing looking terribly disgusting. Are they expecting to feed her these every single day? She looks around miserably, and sure enough, people are actually consuming these sorry excuses for real food.

"You really should swallow that," someone says from behind her. "Keeps us alive, pretty much."

Following her, a boy her age gets his own fill and nudges her to not block the line of impatient and lethargic people. Only as she's steered by this new stranger to sit down on one of the bench tables does she turn to properly look at him—and is stunned by how good he looks despite the situation they're in. His blue eyes are startling, and with his blonde hair that looks clean and tidy despite being a prisoner, he seems to be the one out of place. Lena frowns, wondering what is someone like him doing here while the rest of the captives feel like a muted, dull grey tone. Besides, he feels somewhat... familiar.

He must have read her mind somehow—or that he probably gets the wondering stares a lot—because he bursts out laughing, quickly stoping himself as people from the next table are glaring gloomily back at him.

"My bad." He collects himself, then introduces, "I'm Roen."

"Roen?" Lena wrecks her brain for that one name. She's sure she's heard it before— "Wait. You're that famous guy's son!"

He looks away, and Lena immediately regrets her boldness. "I'm sorry. I'm just—I just remember seeing you somewhere before."

"Yeah, and they pretty much announced my death, no surprise there," Roen more or less mutters, though Lena hears the underlying hatred there. "'Golden boy who's managed to manifest superpowers—that's what I like to call it, but no, they call it a disease or a calamity don't they?—killed by an enforcer, family weeps over loss', or something."

Superpowers. That's right. In another world, they may as well be superheroes with these strange yet unique abilities they manifested. Lena's head throbs at the thought of being respected instead of feared; humanity has always proven otherwise, hating what's different from them. Her multiple timelines are proof of that. But what if...

Lena files that thought away for later when she notices the tightening of Roen's fists and the slight clenching of his jaw. When he has her attention again, he adds with a shrug that's all too tense, "They don't even care what I can do, and it doesn't matter even if it's useful, because we've been feared by the society for having talents that are beyond human comprehension. And they're killing us off."

That gives Lena the opening she needs, for the questions she herself has left unanswered. "So why did they take us? Some of us, and not the rest?"

"We're probably useful."

Lena shivers. "What do you mean?"

"I'd say I hope you wouldn't find out for the sake of your sanity," Roen replies grimly. "But you're already here. That means your superpower is something important that they'll want to... harvest."

Cringing, Lena says, "Don't say superpower" when in fact she means that the world 'harvest' is too cold of a word to be using as her fate. She'll have to find a way out of here fast. She doesn't even need to exit this place. So long as she gets her hands off the technology binding her abilities shut, she'll leap the hell out of here—out of this timeline and to the next universe, in fact. Glass is easy enough to find; it's built over the distribution station behind her where they'd collected her food, and lined up in the hallway she'd glimpsed earlier.

Her desperate scheming is ruined by an interruption to their table. Someone quite literally stumbles into the table before Roen—who had automatically jumped up from the arrival of this new person—helps him or her ease into the bench seat opposite Lena. Two guards are standing over them as if to ensure the one person they are overseeing does not cause any trouble.

"I've got him, all good now," Roen dismisses the guards so nonchalantly Lena is confounded that their captors let it slide—they merely appear bored of their job. As emphasis to leave them be, Roen adds, "We'll be done in five. Hurry on."

Then again, this probably happens a lot because nothing about this scene before her appears out of the ordinary for any of the parties involved. Now that the two guards have shifted, Lena is once again surprised by the arrival of yet another boy close to her age, one with a mess of dark hair and pale skin. She watches as Roen supports the other boy by slinging the boy's arm over his shoulders, even while the other boy tips over, his head still hung low that Lena still can't see his features.

When they finally settle down opposite of Lena, instead of looking up, the boy beside Roen just slumps completely over the table.

Concerned about this whole situation, Lena asks, "Um, is he okay?"

Roen pulls an awkward smile with a shrug, but oddly enough, the boy picks himself up and then registers Lena with propped elbows as if he cannot find it in himself to sit upright.

Their gazes meet, and Lena finds a pair of blue eyes so very different from Roen's. If Roen's blue is the bright kind, this new stranger is the deep one. She finds it difficult to look away from his eyes, barely noticing the bruise forming on his cheek and the greying streaks in his hair despite his age.

Something in her chest tightens, and the next breath Lena takes comes harder for some unknown reason.

"Have we met?" She finds the words out of her mouth before she even thinks it through, and reactively she puts her hand over her mouth as if to take the words back.

Well, this might have been worse. She did blurt out how she'd recognized Roen when she first saw him, after all—maybe they'll just think she's high on something.

Lena is just about to bury herself in a hole from embarrassment from the boy's unrelenting gaze. He simply stares straight at her—not in a glare but in a dazed sort of way—without a hint of emotion or even a trace of whether he'd heard her. As seconds tick by, Lena feels her face burn with heat—

Then Roen bursts out laughing, making Lena flush even further. Her fists tightening, she turns to him. "What?"

"I don't know whether I'm laughing at your boldness, or at my friend's lack of experience with girls," he says between laughs, his head thrown back. In that moment, Lena finds him alluring just for the fact that he manages to find the littlest of beauties in a world as dark as theirs. "Caelus and I don't meet people often here, see? Especially people our age. Caelus, meet Lena. She, uh, just arrived. Like just now."

Lena looks around. "But there are more of us than more of them." She juts her chin out, indicating to the level above where only a few guards are pacing the hanging walkway. "We're all in the same boat. So why..."

"Why isn't anyone cozying up with one another?" Caelus speaks directly to her for the first time, and she's surprised by how opposite he is from Roen, how cold he sounds. "Because this isn't a gathering of individuals, of likeness. It's a death penalty, and we're just waiting for our turn to die."

He looks away, as if he can't bear to make eye contact with her. Lena looks down, unsure to be angry, embarrassed, or saddened by what he'd just said.

"I'm sorry," Roen apologizes on behalf of his friend, fussing in front of Lena. "He's—I mean—"

"It's fine," Lena says quietly without looking up. "I know the reality of this world we live in."

"What Caelus is trying to say is that we'll be lucky enough to burn out from these chains of ours, before something else takes us down entirely."

Lena thinks she might be sick. Her eyes study the binding technology, and everything connects as she scans the room full of lifeless captives, eventually settling on Caelus' greying hair. He seems just as surprised as her as their gazes happen to collide again; he'd been watching her, but as she now looks back, he chooses to look away.

"I've been here longer than most," Caelus admits as if he'd read her mind. "If you're wondering about the hair."

Embarrassed and feeling flustered, she stutters, "I wasn't staring—"

He looks back at her, and she forgets everything she wants to say. His face is unreadable, a mask so impassive she wonders if he felt insulted at all, or is simply just is.

Roen seems to be the kind to take even the toughest topics lightly, and he slings a hand over Caelus' shoulders. "Where's the fun in sulking all the time?"

"I'm not sulking," Caelus protests, but doesn't shrug Roen off. Lena has the feeling they're always like this. "I don't sulk."

"Now that." Roen points triumphantly. "Only those who did guilty finds the need to defend themselves."

Watching the two boys interact, something flares within Lena—an odd sense of hope on this forsaken world, and with it, something very akin to nostalgia.

Her eyes blur as her head pounds, and the world begins to tilt around her.

"What's going on?" someone says on top of another, "Lena?" but she barely hears anything beyond this unknown depth she's drowning in.

Lena feels herself slipping away. Someone gathers over her, holding on and being the only anchor she has left to this world.

"Sorry, was it something I said?" That sounds like Caelus, and it's strange how she recognizes his voice even if he'd barely spoken to her.

Her head hurts again, and a flash of memory comes back to her—one of the previous timelines?

"Have we met?" Lena tries to ask again, unsure if she's even heard, because it's as if her soul is at a disconnect with reality.

This time she's rather certain what she means is that Caelus and Roen must have been with her in at least one of the other universes. She just had trouble recalling it until now—but why? She's losing her memories. All she needs to do is focus on her goal; she just needs one timeline where they can all live without fear. It doesn't even have to be perfect. It occurs now to her that while she remembers her leaps ending in a tragedy, she is unable to recall smaller details such as who's with her or how they'd come to lose.

Why? Is it the technology draining her, or is it the over usage of her abilities? Either way, she wants to remember. She needs to.

Lena isn't the only one fighting here. There are past lives to be remembered and honored. And yet, as she slips away, she thinks painfully and in resignation that no one will remember anything anyway.

They all just have one life.