I slammed his head into the wall hard enough to dent it  the wall, not his head. Not that there was anything in there to damage, anyways ¾ and let him slide to the floor. He scrambled away, babbling desperately.

"Please, please, I promise I'll change; I'll give to charity, I'll feed the poor, I'll become a goddamn drag queen if you'll just let me live!" his voice shook as he tried to put the desk between us.

I leant over the desk and grabbed him by his pudgy neck, the shadows on the walls writhing with the heat of my anger. "Listen to me, and listen well, because I promise you, this will be the last thing you ever hear." His eyes bulged, and his face took on a purplish shade. I dug in my fingernails. "You took something from me, something I can never reclaim. You took away my family, and I am going to make each and every one of you pay. By the time I am through, you will curse the day you had been born, and you will wish for death."

Blood welled from the crescent moon slits in his neck as I shoved him into a chair and taped his wrists and ankles. Closing my eyes, I placed my palms on his temples, feeling his hammering heartbeat.

We were standing on top of a tall cliff, with the wind whipping savagely around us. Or him, really. He wasn't aware of me. Sand was all I could see, it was a barren wasteland. Then there were specks on the horizon. They seem to be moving, but they are still too far away for me to be sure.

He waited in fearful silence, stunned into speechlessness. Closer they came, and I began to see forms, of different sizes. Still closer they came, and they were near enough that I could see what those forms were.

Babies, little children, all horribly deformed. Hordes of them, almost like bees from a distant hive. They surrounded the CEO, and I watched in grim silence as his worst fears unfolded around him.

A little girl approached him, shambling awkwardly on cats' paws attached to human ankles. She held out a hand, mottled and oozing with infection. Her body was covered with puncture marks and burns. "Mister," she said, "Why did you do these terrible things to me?" And I realized that these were all of his experiments.

A boy came up, his skin covered in scales, a sickly green color. Others as well. Suddenly the crowd parted and I saw the most devastating image of all: a tiny body, its arms and legs missing, somehow rolling towards him, crying, stopping at his feet. His head was turned towards him, the eyes pleading, the skin wrinkled and blotched and smelling of saline solution. The poor baby had been pulled apart, limb by limb, to test infants levels of pain tolerance.

The CEO tried to run, as fast as he could, but abruptly he fell and lost consciousness. I felt what he felt, and something was tearing at him. There was intense pain. Then more pain. He tried to scream out, but there was no response. No one cared. He tried desperately to fight against the pull, but then he realized that he had no arms or legs.

The next instant he was at someone's feet, looking up. Pleading. He had become that baby, that experiment. He was looking up at himself.

I came out of the Fear before he did, thinking. His Fear was confrontation, that he would someday have to face up to all that he had done. Anger coiled like a cobra in my belly. That day was today.

He was sobbing and begging. He already wanted me to kill him and get it over with. I showed him a few more Fears ¾ being buried alive, falling, snakes and spiders, etc ¾ before I obliged him, slashing my bowie knife across his neck in a jagged, pulsing red line.

I took the necklace from around my neck, wrapping the chain around my hand, and slit his wrists with my knife, letting the blood spill over the cross and pressing it to his cheek. Then I made the roman numeral for three on his forehead in black lipstick.

"Three down, fourteen to go," I announced to the blood spattered walls.

When I was with the Covey, they had called me Winter, because I reminded Blade of the season, everything harsh, but beautiful, strangely fragile. He said it was because of the way I looked, all angles, almost transparent. Now, as I dipped my fingers into the warm, thick blood, I wrote my new name on the white walls.

"Raven."

I bounced, kicking out the window and spreading my wings, reveling the feeling of the wind through my feathers. Even though I hated them more than Hitler, I was glad that the scientists had made me so much different from the others, but I hated them because they hadn't my Covey special, too. If they had, they would still be alive.

I rubbed my chest where my heart ached. Their faces flashed in front of my eyes in rapid motion. Blade, Trinity, Rosemary, Cipher, and Kieran. I missed them so much.

Blade had combat sense; he knew what moves someone was going to make before they made them, and knew if a situation was deadly, and to who. I loved him more than almost anyone. He was so like me, with his dark clothes and nature and dry humor.

Trinity was my best friend. She talked a lot, sure, but she was an amazing fighter and could borrow anyone's power. It didn't even have to be supernatural. If you were super strong, she could borrow that strength. Same with smarts.

Rosemary was my little baby. She could control the wind, and having someone like that around certainly made flying easier. She could call up and updraft and we would be able to coast for miles. She had light brown curls and big blue doe eyes.

Cipher could hack anything mechanical. If it had wheels, he could jack it. If it was made of metal, he could control it with his tecnopathy. He was the computer geek of the group, and probably the smartest. Never mind that he couldn't speak except in true bird calls. It was very educational to have him around. It was no wonder he hung around Rosie all the time, because she could speak with animals, too.

Kieran was the goofball of our little family, and he liked nothing better than to generate a force field right in front of you and watch you squish like a bug on a windshield. Of course, he never did it to us while we were flying, because I had promised him that if he ever did I would make him fly everywhere in his underwear for the next year.

I was the leader, sort of. It was just because I was the coldest, the one most able to make the best decision in the shortest amount of time, because that was how they designed me. They made me immune to toxins, sedatives, and radiation. I was umbrakinetic ¾ I could manipulate shadows ¾ and could mimic some animal structures, like eyes and claws and teeth, mostly the weapons. I had a touch of precognition, but I couldn't control it. It came and went on a whim. My communication with the dead was just as touch-and-go. One thing that was absolutely in my power, however, was my ability to show someone their worst fears.

When my Covey was slaughtered, their powers had somehow transferred to me. I barely even felt human anymore. Well, I wasn't technically human in the first place, but I felt more, wild, somehow, holding on to my sanity by the skin of my teeth.

I wiped the tears from my eyes roughly with the sleeve of my jacket. Maybe, maybe if they had just made Blade the leader… maybe they would all still be alive, maybe ¾ no. it didn't matter anymore, anyway. They were dead, and soon, just as soon as I could finish my mission, I would be too.