Chapter 1
Another boring family vacation for my family. We'd been going on one every spring break for as long as I could remember. This year we were going to a remote city in California. It was too hot here, I thought to myself. I was stuffed in between my two brothers in the backseat of our little car. It had plenty of storage space, yet not enough passenger room. All throughout the long drive I'd been jostled by my fidgeting brothers, and I had had enough. But just when I had reached my breaking point, my mom said "Were there!" I leaned over my brother and stared at the big resort stuck onto the edge of a forest. It looked weird, putting modern technology right next to nature. Apparently it had 10 floors, with 100 rooms on each. Great, I thought, another place for me to get lost. I never had a great sense of direction. Also it had a pool, an exercise room, and a dining room. There was a little day-care next to it, put there so that the adults could get rid of the kids. I was 15 now, so I didn't have to go anymore. Just my little twin brothers, who were 4, had to go. Their names were Jacob and Alex. They were cute, but evil little instigators. I was glad I wasn't stuck watching them this year. Last year we went to the Dino Land theme park, and I had to take them wherever they wanted to go. It had been horrible. I'd only gotten a third of the trip for myself. "Are you coming Bree? Get outta the car so we can put our stuff away and have fun, honey! " my mom snapped me out of my flashback. I got out of the car and it wasn't as hot as I'd thought. I grabbed my bags and raced up to our room, on the 7th floor, room #666. How odd, I thought, that we got the evil room. As soon as I got my stuff unpacked, I told my mom that I was going to check out the place, and that I would call her if I needed her. I left the room, insanely happy that I got to spend this trip free of responsibility. I walked down the hall, towards the stairwell, when I heard these people arguing. I've always been curious, so I listened with my ear pressed up against the door. I heard vague bits of the conversation, because it was getting more hushed as they went on. They spoke softly "We will need more children to experiment on….. No no no, we need to get them soon, so we can start splicing the DNA. Just find some, male and female, ages 8 to 16. Yes and make sure they wander away from their parents before you take them, we wouldn't want to get ourselves exposed, it would look bad…" All of this sounded very peculiar, and it was freaking me out. I turned to leave and I tripped on a metal doorstopper, just outside or the room. I fell hard, crashing into the ground audibly. The door crashed open in an instant. I quickly looked down the hall, and quickly found that no one else was in the hall. This wasn't good, this so wasn't good. I jumped up and ran like my life depended on it, for all I knew, it really did. "Stop her, stop her! Don't let her escape! She has heard too much, and she looks the right age. We can take her for experimentation. If she gets too far we can call in the Erasers. Just let her run, she has nowhere to go now." And I really didn't have anywhere safe to go. My parents had dropped off my brothers at the daycare and then they had gone out, leaving me with no way to get into our hotel room. I decided to leave the resort, and then run as far as I could get into the forest, and hide there. Then I'd call my parents, make sure they were back, and go to our room. Just then I flew out of the door. It was pouring rain. I lifted the hood to my sweatshirt, and ran for the woods, which provided some cover from the storm. The woods made me feel safe, because when I was a little kid I had used to climb trees in the woods behind our house. The feeling of being somewhat safe cleared my mind enough for me to think clearly. I wondered what the Erasers were. The way they spoke of them was like they were a failsafe plan. That somehow they could never fail. A shiver of fear ran down my spine. If they were that worried that I'd overheard them, and they spoke so calmly that the Erasers would get me, what chance did I have? How could I defeat the undefeatable? I focused on calming myself as I took in my surroundings. I stopped myself, realizing that I had been running for a while. I realized that I had gotten myself lost. I could no longer see the giant resort, or any other sign of civilization. All around me, there was nothing but pouring rain and deep green plant life. I zipped my sweatshirt all the way up, pulled the hood over my head again, and slid under a mass of branches and bushes. I felt in each of my pockets for my cell phone, and realized that I'd lost it somewhere. I had no way to safety. I wondered what they would think happened to me. Was I a runaway, as the video tapes would show, with me running to the woods? Or was I kidnapped, which was more accurate. I was glad that my family had Jacob and Alex, so they still had someone to love. I curled into a ball, and drifted into sleep…