Genesis | Book One, The Genesis Series

NINE

Bianca needed to get out of this place. She wasn't a freak. She wasn't some kind of enhanced human, whatever the hell that was.

She was a normal girl, or so she thought.

As she darted down the dimly lit, never-ending hallways, her mind began to wonder why she had been down in that stupid exhibit in the first place.

She'd been walking around the museum, flirting with Kai the entire time, but Kai was the one saying that they needed to leave. She then thought about the new kid and Leo, but they had been down there a good while before she'd even thought about looking for Amber.

She stopped dead in her tracks. That was it. She knew who the problem was, at last.

Amber.

It had to be Amber's fault. It was always Amber's fault when something went wrong, at least according to Bianca. She herself was never at fault, of course.

A scowl on her face, she walked down the hall, angrily looking for the room Amber resided in.

Elsewhere, in Amber's room, she began to wake up, hours after fainting from disbelief at her newfound abilities. As her vision focused, her eyes finally made out Leo sitting at her bedside.

"L-Leo?" Amber asked, feeling the throbbing, hot pain on the side of her temple. "Where am I?"

"Amber!" Leo exclaimed happily, offering a grin, "Thank god. We thought you'd never wake up."

As she began to quickly sit up, barely able to see anything as her line of vision slowly focused, Leo rushed over to her and put his hand on her shoulder. "Woah, woah, you need to rest."

"What happened? Why does my head hurt so bad?"

"Well, you fainted last night, Amber. Landed right on your head, and got a minor concussion. Kai and I rushed you back too your room as soon as we could."

"Why did I faint?" Amber asked, curious as to why she'd fainted for apparently no reason at all. It couldn't have been fear, as it took a lot to scare the girl.

Now, this was one of Amber's many questions Leo was very reluctant to answer, because he feared she'd faint again, leaving him all alone once more.

"Leo," Amber asked again, "why did I faint?"

He had to give in, because he couldn't keep secrets like this from Amber, even if it was something she wasn't particularly fond of hearing.

"The reason you fainted..." Leo started awkwardly, unable to formulate an adequate excuse, "was because..."

"Because....what?" Amber asked, beginning to grow impatient with Leo's constant pauses.

"You kinda... sorta... have powers, Amber." Leo stuttered the sentence out, gazing at her beautiful brown hair, and roundish, freckled face. Her eyes were a light blue color, almost as if they were glowing. He felt like he was being hypnotized.

"What?" Amber asked, shocked. Her voice was an octave above a whisper. "You mean....like Kai's and the others?"

"Uh, yeah." he answered.

"Woah." Amber said, bewildered that any of this was actually possible. She'd thought she was in some dream-or nightmare-before, a figment of her imagination. Now, however, she was beginning to realize that all of this was actually real.

She placed one of her hands on her aching head, unintentionally using it as an ice pack as she desperately tried to remember what had happened in the moments before she had fainted.