Isaac Newton's Girl

Prologue - 2071

The phone call came at 2AM, December 15th, 2071. It was snowing. I remember.

"We've got him."

The words we'd been waiting for. The words that had echoed through Minho's mind as he'd scoured the wreckage of the W.I.C.K.E.D buildings. Through Thomas' as he tested drugs in the Andes until he fell asleep over the table. Through mine as I held patient after patient through bandage after bandage, scream after scream. "We got him. East Denver. But it ain't good."

A hospital is a strange place at night - the linoleum floors and the LED bulbs never change and the windowless corridors should suspend you in time, stop you from knowing, but they don't. The people move more slowly, the patients almost invisible and the only noise ricocheting off the white-panelled walls is the whirring of the machines behind closed doors. Like the bolted one we were all staring at - the one that reminded us a little too much of the Phase Three cells at W.I.C.K.E.D.

It seemed that even now, when the organisation had ceased to exist, the aftershocks of W.I.C.K.E.D's torture still had us trapped. Minho was pacing up and down like a military commander, his face set and muscles tight, twisting the doctor's message around and around in his hands like the words scrawled across it would change if he just kept moving.

"What do they mean, 'pending conscious reaction'?" He spat, not pausing in his strides as he glared at the nurse that skittered through the door behind him. "What other freaking 'reaction' can he have?"

No one answered. No one wanted to think about that. Thomas wasn't even listening. Sprawled on the linoleum, his mind was far away, in the backstreets of Denver eight months ago. A gun. A frightened boy with wild eyes. Please, Tommy, please.

"He's a fighter, damn it! Give him a cell of a chance and he'll fight like hell!"

"They don't know him." Gally broke in finally from the chair he'd slumped into. "They can't know that."

"Then why in hell is it their decision?!" Minho suddenly snapped out of his pacing, slamming his fist against the wall with such force that the boom echoed down the corridor like the rumble of cannons, a chunk of plaster crumbling onto the floor.

"Shuck it!" Min's voice was full of the desperation of the last eight months, layered over the fury of the past five years. When he spoke again, his voice was thick and quiet and not quite steady.

"What will we do, after all this? What will we do if they won't even try?"

The faint beeping of the Analysis machine filtered around the edges of the bolted door, filling our silence as its intensity increased. I ran my fingers across the misshapen lizard pendant at my neck, carved by a fifteen year old with indefinite hope in a training facility years ago. A.D Janson had told us our effort was futile, that we'd never be free. And maybe he was right - we might never escape W.I.C.K.E.D, not completely. But in this case W.I.C.K.E.D would always be wrong - this time we had hope. I stood and rested a hand on Minho's shoulder, turning him to face me.

"We'll do what we always do – what he told us to do. We'll fight. Together."

Chapter 1 – Memories, Madness and Black-Suited Men

Five Years Earlier

May 28th 2066

It was my mother's voice that pierced my safe duvet-cocoon world, ringing through the old house and summoning me into a reluctant 8 AM reality.

"Honey! There's… there's someone here to talk to you!"

When I woke up that morning, with the sun streaming in through the slats in my forever-bolted windows, I'd expected it to be like every other day that had crawled past since the Sun Flares hit: studying, reading, lunch, studying, piano, dinner, reading, bed – the repetitive jigsaw pieces that made up the monotony and isolation of my continual house arrest.

I was the only child of Jeremy and Lucille Serallier, a mechanical engineer and an English teacher, and ever since the Flare virus had reached America, my father disappearing soon after, my mother had yet to let me out of her sight. If I was lucky, my cousin Ruby might come round for ten minutes before Mom shooed her out and sterilized everything she'd touched - when my Uncle Dan started losing his mind, she'd become obsessive about me and hygiene. That had always seemed like shutting the door after the horse had bolted, but I couldn't blame her. She was afraid. We all were. But, when I woke up that morning, I had no idea that this one day and the people waiting in it – good, bad and ugly – would turn my small town life irretrievably upside down, tearing it into confetti pieces to build the one I live now.

Opening my eyes blearily, I dragged myself from my cocoon and into the window seat that my Dad had built when I was six. It was my favourite escape place – shaped like a crescent moon - and I had sat in it for so long over the years that the pink velvet of the seat was tattered and shiny in the centre. I stood up on the seat, hooking my fingers into the grooves I'd worn in the window-frame and looked out across the town – not that you could really call it that anymore. The Flare had forced almost everyone in this part of town into their homes and those who did go out wore masks across their faces and took huge detours to avoid passing within three metres of another human being, practically running to the next building to avoid interaction.

Like that can stop anything, I thought. It's an inevitable.

I'd decided that human beings in general react badly to inevitables. They see them, know in the backs of their heads what they are, but instead of enjoying the time they have before inevitability descends, they run around desperately trying to stop it and end up wasting their lives in constant fear of the only possibility left. And the people here were no different. Of course, there are always that gang of boys who play at being 'rebels', kicking a football around the concrete and yelling at the people in the houses. I could see them from my windowsill, aiming shots at each other's heads and lighting up cigarettes they'd bartered off some other idiot who wanted to blacken his lungs. One of them spotted my face at the window and made some comment that I couldn't hear to his friends. The loudest one, Josh Forster-Jones, shouted up to the window:

"You ogling us again, Birdie?! Come on down – we've got Marlboro Lights!"

I winced at the use of my father's nickname, feeling something twist painfully in my stomach, and dragged my fingers through my hair to flatten it before levering open the huge glass pane and leaning out.

"In your dreams FJ! I hope you choke on them!" I managed a mocking grin – Josh's mom was my mother's second cousin. We practically grew up in the same stroller – I wasn't afraid of him. But before he could reply, I heard a panicked gasp from inside, and my Mom's voice echoed up the stairs, fear lacing her words:

"Darling, close that window now! This minute - you know it's airborne – come down!"

I pulled it shut with a sigh. We're three floors up!

"It's closed, Mom – give me a second!

I grabbed my jeans, a vest top and my high-tops, pulled them on and grabbed a hairbrush off the dresser, glancing at myself in the mirror. My chestnut-coloured hair was sticking up on both sides of my head, like it usually did (which had always made my Dad laugh as he ruffled my hair and called me 'Grasshopper') but it didn't sound like I had time to put it in a ponytail, forget wash it, so I dragged a brush through it optimistically, cleaned my teeth and then ran down the three creaky flights to the kitchen before skidding to an abrupt halt at what greeted me.

Mom was there, leaning on the back of my father's chair, a strained smile on her worn face, but standing next to her was a tall man wearing a black suit and an equally black expression. He held a briefcase in one hand with the letters W.I.C.K.E.D stamped across it in red letters edged in gold. I remember wondering vaguely if this was some kind of twisted sing-a-gram – it was only a fortnight after my birthday – surely no businessman who wanted to be taken seriously would name their company 'WICKED' and stamp it across a briefcase in scarlet lettering? He looks more like a caricature than a person, I thought. But then the caricature caught me staring and gave me a tight-lipped smile that didn't reach his eyes- that didn't really fit my theory - before nodding to Mom, who suddenly jerked into action.

"Honey, this is Mr Black from the World In Catastrophe: Killzone Experiment Department."

She smiled too, attempting reassurance, but the look on her face was like nothing I'd ever seen before. Her lips were curved upwards, but they were trembling, almost like she was about to cry, and despite her attempted smile, my brain couldn't get past 'Killzone Department.' A cold feeling settled in my stomach. This was no sing-a-gram.

"He's here to talk to us about you." Briefcase nodded and gestured towards our patchwork armchairs chairs in the corner of the room. He looked so remarkably out of place among the scatter cushions in his perfectly tailored suit and polished shoes that I would have laughed if I hadn't been so unsettled.

"Sit down please. I need you to take this very seriously." By this point, the name of this organisation, my mother's face and the fact that Black was the first visitor we'd had for three years had ensured that I wasn't about to do anything else, but I was somewhat relieved to see him do something other than nod. I obeyed silently, pulling a cushion onto my lap and watching the man opposite me. Why is he looking at me like my life depends on it? He met my eyes and spread his hands wide.

"Look, I'm not going to beat around the bush here – there isn't an easy way to say this. You know about the Flare I assume. I hope so or perhaps you are not as intelligent as I was led to believe." I nodded sharply. Who doesn't know about the virus that's destroying the world as we know it? I hadn't seen it though. Not properly. Mom had kept me about as far away from Uncle Dan as was humanly possible – and he was on the Bliss anyway. But the laughter I'd heard still haunted my dreams.

"The fact is, it's stealing the identities of thousands every single day. Every attempt at quarantine or containment is failing. No matter what we build it always gets past it. The only treatment available is the Bliss, which is exceedingly costly to produce and does nothing to cure the disease."

"I know." I told him. Everybody knew. But other than to remind me that I'll eventually die in the worst imaginable way, why was he telling me?

"Good. But here's the thing, kid. We need a cure or the whole human race will die. But, as the situation stands, we have nothing to base it on. Cranks themselves are too volatile – the Flare Effect varies too much for any result to be useful. However, we have realised that a small group of people, mainly under the age of twenty, have a certain quality that could benefit our research and help us find a cure. People like this – people like you - seem to find it much harder to contract the Flare. Typically, it seems to affect individuals with a high intelligence level – though not always."

What? There was a way to prevent the Flare? Then why was this 'W.I.C.K.E.D' hiding it? My thoughts flickered to Uncle Dan, my mother, the girl that Ruby would eventually be.

"But – but why not tell everyone? People are dying!" My voice was rising. "How can you not tell them?" Mom raised her hand to quiet me but Mr Black just looked immeasurably sad.

"If only we could. But we can't work out what makes you kids the way you are. That's why we need your help. You will be placed into training for a number of – harmless – tests to try and study your mental patterns. With W.I.C.K.E.D, I assure you, you are safe. However, there are those on the outside that hate your kind – there are very few places of security for people like you, and we're offering you one. You can't take this lightly, kid. Therefore you must leave your home behind, assume a new identity and come with us."

I stared at him wordlessly, trying to take it in. Clearly, the Flare had already got to him. How could they expect me to leave my mother alone in this creaking old house, and follow him into some crackpot experiment like a rabbit in a shampoo lab? And then have the nerve to tell me it's for my own good? I calmly placed the cushion back onto the arm of the chair and met his gunmetal eyes.

"Thank you Mr Black, but I can't do that. My mother needs me here - she hasn't got anyone else. My father disappeared four years ago. I'm sorry for wasting your time."

I looked across to my mother, about to return her reassuring smile – I won't leave you – when she suddenly cast her eyes to the floor, avoiding my gaze. A slow smirk spread across Mr Black's face as he carried on.

"It's a non-negotiable situation, kid. Your mother signed you over an hour ago. You belong to the organization now. Your suitcase is by the door, packed."

This was a joke, or a hallucination, it had to be – I was asleep, I'd caught the Flare already, I was raving in an attic somewhere about sing-a-grams and men with ominous briefcases. This couldn't be real. However dark and twisted reality had become in the last decade, it wasn't this. I felt like I'd been punched in the stomach, the bruising already festering out to the rest of my body. The edges of my vision clouded and the room seemed to rock slightly, a sense of impossible betrayal filling my mind. 'Signed me over'. An object to be bought and sold.

My mother's eyes were still angled downwards, fixed on a blackened floorboard where one of my father's ill-fated robots had caught fire six years ago and, before I could plead with her, the man was holding out my duffel coat and was speaking again, pushing a small piece of white plastic about the size of a credit card across the table towards me. His voice reached me like an echo underwater.

"This is your identification. Under no circumstances let yourself be caught without it."

I picked it up off the table before looking at it in confusion:

NAME: Lilianne Pasteur

D.O.B: 03/11/000

GENDER: Female

SUBJECT: B5

PROPERTY OF WICKED

My gender was the only thing on that card that belonged to me.

"Lilianne Pasteur?" I asked. "But… that isn't my name." Mr Black sighed deeply and rolled his eyes, an unsettlingly juvenile gesture from someone so serious.

"They assured me you were intelligent. You must leave your identity behind or you will find yourself a target for Cranks and their allies. The faster you accept your identity the easier it will be. And we must leave now, Miss Pasteur."

Now, I have never been an especially dramatic individual – I'm the worrier, the peacemaker, the person on the edge of a fight screaming 'STOP, STOP' and bandaging the loser at the end. But in that second the last half hour, the tears that were silently coursing down my mother's face, Black's patronising pity and this false identity built up into a tsunami and crashed over my head and something within me snapped. I spun on my heel, dodging past Mom before she could react and bolting for the stairs, pulling the briefcase and the identification card off the nearby table in my wake and yelling over my shoulder:

"I am nobody's property!"

My eyes burned as I sprinted up the stairs, tears spilling over onto my cheeks. I'd spent the last three years of my life wishing and wishing I could be free from this place, that someone would take me away from here, and some distant part of my brain wondered why I was crying. I'd wanted adventure, I'd wanted a life – but not like this.

My head spinning with anger, fear and confusion, I flung myself into the window seat, climbing up to the highest section of it and perching there, determined to show the emptiness of the room that, however uncomfortable it was, I could sit there. I could control something. In those first few seconds, I gave in and cried, crying that sort of crying that doesn't make a whole lot of sense – the way you do without knowing what else to do - that crying that's fiercer than any tears with actual reason. But then something fluttered on the edge of my vision and I looked up. A piece of paper was caught in the corner of my window and when I pulled myself to it to look more closely, I saw that it was a prescription. A Bliss prescription to be precise, the thousand dollar figure still visible on the label. Against my will, fragment's of Mr Black's words slid into my whirling mind:

"Help us…people like you… thousands of lives… find a cure."

I looked back to the prescription. It was a local one. Whose is that? I wondered, Who else was trying to dodge death? I probably knew them. My area wasn't all that big – probably someone who'd come to all the school events, been to all the dances and balls, the charity actions, who'd put in five dollars to buy me a present when my Dad disappeared – someone who'd have their life stolen away. Could I stop that? Not alone. This wasn't a job for one person playing at being a hero. But how could I ever look out of my window again without seeing that slip of paper? How could I turn on the T.V without hearing the laughter or close my eyes without seeing their scarred faces – knowing that I had a chance to help and I refused? And why? Because I was frightened. But I bet I wasn't half as frightened as the owner of that slip.

Slowly, I opened the window and unhooked the sheet with my fingertips and slipped it into my pocket before clambering down from the seat and walking to my door. I looked back and took in the bright colours and the thousands of memories that filled the room: impromptu dance parties with my Mom when I'd had a bad day, adventure stories and school projects with Dad, building an Eiffel tower out of spaghetti, marshmallows and laughter, battling pirates and besting horrific beasts with Ruby– it almost crippled me. But I'd made my decision. And though I had no idea what my future would be, I knew in my heart that I'd never come back.

When I stepped back into the silent kitchen, taking the offered coat in a daze, I fought to mask the devastation on my face with some fragment of the determination I'd felt upstairs. Trying to keep my face still, I moved towards my Mom, who immediately reached out her arms for me, but Black grabbed my shoulder, pulling me back, his fingernails digging into my skin.

"No goodbyes. It makes it so much harder to leave. Besides, we've been here far too long already. It won't be long until someone gets a grip on our location – and I have a very tight schedule."

I forced back the fury and the tears that were choking me. "What happens then? If you get found?"

"Believe me kid, you've got to hope you never find out." Black pulled open our front door and a gust of air rushed in, immediately sending an age-old flicker of panic across Mom's face as she grabbed the nearest towel and pressed it to her mouth. My eyes flashed to the clock on the wall. 9 AM. It took one hour for the world to fall apart.

"Come on, Lilianne."

No. At the sound of the alien name, I ripped my shoulder out of his grip and ran back, throwing myself into my mother's arms, like the child I had been before the world had started to burn. She smelled of lavender and her favourite perfume, the one that Dad had bought her every Valentine's Day since they were seventeen years old. I remembered that she was on her very last bottle. What would she do next year? Her arms tightened around me, as they had a million times before, for every tear, every success, every heartbreak, every kiss since the day I was born. But this was a place that she couldn't protect me. This was a place I'd have to face on my own. I laced my fingers through her trembling ones, not bothering to hide my tears now.

"Why?" I whispered. For the first time that morning, she looked me in the eyes, her face suddenly intense, like she wanted to write every word of her next sentences into the surface of my brain, like the shopping lists she'd scrawl on my hands, just to make sure I held it there.

"I love you." She drew a deep shuddering breath. "God almighty, and I always will. Just like your father. You remind me to breathe, you remind me to get out of bed every day and do something with this life I have and God, I need you for that. But that's selfish, honey, can't you see that? I love you, but you're not safe here, I can't keep you safe anymore. I would die for you –" She laughed, suddenly, her voice almost hysterical. "And I never thought I'd have to tell you that. But what good would that do? Against this disease, those people, what good would that do? These people can keep you safe – I can't. I can't…"

Her voice broke, and she gripped my hands so tightly it left marks in my skin. I didn't even notice the sting. "Don't you ever think that I'm giving you up. Never, never. Don't you ever forget that. But you go out there, my darling, and you give them hell. Do you hear me?"

I nodded, unable to answer. I don't think I could ever have given her an answer, with any possible combination of words that could have told her how I felt in that second. Black suddenly cleared his throat and sighed, tapping his watch, entirely unmoved.

"Schedule, ladies…" All question of the matter vanished and I knew I hated him. I didn't respond, keeping my eyes fixed on my mother's.

"I'll give them hell. I promise. I love you too. Don't you ever forget that."

My voice trailed off, barely above a whisper as I whirled on my heel, grabbing my suitcase and running out of my door ahead of Black before she could pull me back, before I could change my mind, stepping out of our doorway and shattering everything I'd ever known.

Hi everyone!

I hope you liked the first chapter of Isaac Newton's Girl - I'd love to hear what you think in a review! Where is Black taking Lilianne? What will happen when she runs into the Ivy Trio? And most of all, what do you think's going on with the prologue?

I hope you all have a lovely week :)

Star * x