A/N Hey, this is my first Fanfiction, so sorry if it's short. I hope you like it!

I'd never thought leaving would hurt so much. Never thought leaving behind everything I'd ever known could make me feel so empty, could make my throat feel as if it were being blocked by a steel knife, so painful I thought I would faint any second. My stomach was tied, a horrible coiling feeling slicing through my entrails and searing a path through my body. Flames erupted in my head, the memories burning my mind as they fought to control me, to drag me back to the life I knew, back to the people I loved. But I couldn't—I had to leave. I couldn't endanger them, couldn't be around them without their lives being in constant danger. It hurt to think I'd never see them again, but it felt right knowing that they would no longer be in danger. It was a weight off my shoulders, one that I hadn't been able to handle around them.

As I watched the two motorised doors of the subway train close, separating me from the world I had come to know and love, I collapsed tiredly into one of the filthy seats and pulled out the note. I'd named it that after I'd found it atop my pillow, a perfectly folded piece of crisp white paper folded exactly once in a perfect crease. I swallowed as I opened it, feeling suddenly vulnerable inside the cage of metal that was no longer stationary. The train rocked from side to side as my fingers opened the letter shakily. My stomach clenched painfully as I scanned the perfectly rounded words, each letter distinctively his. Since the day I'd turned thirteen I'd been getting letters in the mail from him, each one telling me that one day I'd come to him of my own will, that one day I'd be his again. I'd ignored each one, burning the perfectly folded paper in my mum's fireplace. I'd overlooked the warnings, disregarded each new note, but as of late they'd been coming more recently. Then just last month, I'd received one telling me that someone on Smith's street was going to be injured by something even the police couldn't explain. The next day the headlines screamed that someone had been assaulted, though the cause of the wound had been unexplainable. It was then that I started getting extremely scared. Another letter came the following week, telling me that an explosion was going to be set off at one of the local stores. A few hours later, Wal-Mart literally detonated, shrapnel littering the streets as the flames devoured the huge superstore hungrily. The following few days I received another letter explaining that someone with the same name as my mother was going to die. It happened half an hour later. Petrified and confused, I found another letter atop my dresser the next day, and I read it alarmingly. The letters never came directly to me. They had always been delivered into my mum's letter box. I unfolded the envelope to reveal one simple, one completely terrifying line.

Your mother is next.

I'd been paranoid for the rest of that day, not letting my mum out of my sight. I insisted we stay inside all day, insisted we play a game, or something equally as uninteresting. I'd never been one for board games, so it offered me the perfect excuse to concentrate easily. I figured that if I called the police, they'd send me off to a mental place, so I'd taken matters into my own hands. That night another letter came, sitting atop my pillow ever so perfectly. And it was that letter that now had me sitting on this train, speeding me off to some unknown place at eleven forty-three at night.

It was the letter I now had in my hand.

I read over the note for the thirteenth time in the past hour, a chill settling in the depths of my bones as I did so.

You have a choice, Clarissa. Come to me and your mother lives. None of your friends or family will be harmed. The minute you turn sixteen be at the Institute. You know the one, I know you do. You can see it, I know you can. Midnight Clarissa. You have been warned.

—V.

You have been warned. The line echoed throughout the walls of my mind, causing my head to burn painfully. I'd seen the Institute. It was big, it was scary, and it was also invisible. Each time I passed it I found my eyes magnetically drawn to the building, the gothic castle always compelling my eyes its way. When I'd asked my friends if they'd seen it they had thought I was seeing things. But I hadn't been. And here was my proof. Midnight Clarissa. Clarissa. Only one person had even called me Clarissa in my life and it was him. The very person my mum had warned me of, had forced me to keep away from. And in the end he had found me, he had contacted me.

My father.

All my life I'd lived without ever seeing my father, without ever talking to him. I'd never complained. The stories my mother had told of him spelled trouble and danger, constant threat. Evil I guess you could say. I'd never had any reason to doubt my mum, so when she'd told me about my father I'd believed every word she'd said. And then people began to die, were injured, just as the letters had told me. It was then that every word she had ever told me really sunk in. And now I was travelling right into the lion's den, right into the eye of the storm. I'd been called smart and clever all my life, precocious, older than I actually was. But I didn't feel very intelligent now. I didn't feel old and wise. I felt like a naive soon-to-be sixteen year old that had no idea what she was doing.

The train came to a rather ungraceful stop as the doors of the subway opened with an eerie groan. I swallowed a burning ball of nothingness as I stepped out into the Midnight darkness that had enveloped the world several hours prior to this moment. I checked my iPod for the time, the rectangular face reading eleven fifty-nine. I took a deep breath as I made my way through the secluded tunnel and up into the equally dark world above. The institute was parallel to the subway; hence it took less than a minute to walk to the courtyard of the great building. For some reason, that even my precious science couldn't explain, the castle was invisible, and although it was built near the station, there was absolutely nothing else around. To everyone else, the building was just a field of greenery, but to me, and a minute group of others I had never met in my life, this was actually a castle, that looked too gothic, too mysterious to look at all welcome. It seemed like it was more of an enormous mouth ready to devour any who stood brave enough to enter. Or any stupid enough to be drawn into it.

I wasn't feeling very brave.

I watched in horror as the nine digit on my iPod changed, morphing the entire number so that it now read Twelve o'clock. I gulped and watched in terror as before me the great doors of the building creaked open, revealing a shadowed figure that left me frozen in place; one that I was sure wasn't my father. That wasn't very reassuring.

'Well, well, who do we have here?'

'I, my name's Clary. I was—'

The figure gestured with his head, the action too masculine to be thought of as female. 'We're glad you made the deadline. Follow me.' I took a deep breath, shaking violently as I followed the boy, who couldn't have been much older than myself.

Here we go...

Please review so I know if it's any good! Thank-you guys!