I woke from what felt like five minutes, my lungs taking in air as if I woke from a nightmare. Looking around, I saw I was still in the white box he had put me in. My heart was pounding, it wasn't that I had a nightmare . . . . I was in one.

My fist flew up and punched the ceiling of the white box. "Let me out!" I screamed.

Then something unexpected happened, the box flew open. A warm breeze hit my face instantly and the sun was beating down in streaks. Trees, I was under a canopy of them. The air was moist, humid.

I was afraid to sit up, afraid someone would be pointing a gun at me the moment I did. But I'd have to do it at some point. So I let my hands slip over the edge of the box, my fingers curling and my arms pushing me up. Had it really only been five minutes? I felt as if I'd been asleep for twelve hours, stiff as bone.

Just as I thought, though, I sat up and there was a man standing before me. He was against a tree but it wasn't a gun he was holding, it was a sword.

Who used swords anymore?

I looked at him, my hands in the air.

He was tall, rugged, looked as if he hadn't shaved in a few days. Shaggy hair told me he probably didn't shower much, either. His clothes were dirty, torn, probably working clothes.

"Who are you?" I asked him, my hands still in the air, showing him I wasn't going to hurt him.

The man only looked at me with fear, confusion.

"My name is Isabel." I said and ached to stand up.

"Stay down!" he finally spoke.

I kept my distance, staying where I was. "I-"

"Shut up." He stepped forward, his sowrd still at me. With his other hand he grabbed my chin and I looked away from him. The sword was at my neck, just under my chin. "Eyes, let me see your eyes."

I looked at him, what harm could it do?

He examined me and then grabbed my upper arm. "You're coming with me."

My body was jerked up from the box and I felt like a limp noodle. I was stiff, yet jello. I didn't know why or how that happened in just five minutes of be knocked out cold.

"Who are you?" I wondered as the dirty man dragged me along with him. "What is your name?"

"Just shut up! Keep quiet, woman." he snapped at me. I thought it best to do as he said, seeming as how he had a weapon, a dumb one, and I didn't.

He was holding both of my hands behind my back, by the wrist, and pushing me forward, through thick brush that felt hard beneath my feet. Looking down I saw asphault beneath the grass and vines. Why would asphault be under a forest floor?

The rugged man finally stopped at an old house, large and overgrown with brush. It was more like a warehouse than a home.

Once inside I saw almost nothing but a few other people and small pieces of makeshift furniture. Crates and seats and an old kitchen table, the kind you can fold away to make room in the kitchen. It didn't look cozy, not even with the old chandelier in the middle of the foyer's ceiling or the widing stairs to my right.

Two boys and a girl stood up. One of the boys looked older, even much older than the one binding my hands with his long fingers. He was shorter, too, with graying hair and a longer beard. The other was a boy with dark, jet black, hair. His skin was paler, unmarked. Not like my captures black tattoos that raked up his neck like ivory. Then there was the girl, shorter than all of the men and myself. She had blonde hair that was tied up in a braid, her arms cross over her chest.

"Strange clothes." the girl said with a snarky tone.

My capture let go of my wirsts but there was rope scraping against them in an instant. "I found her in the brush. She was in a big white box, nothing I ever saw before." he said, his voice low and serious.

The pale boy stepped forward and looked at me. "She's not Estranged, that much I know. What are we to do wih her, Noah?"

So, that was my capture's name, it was nice considering his rude tendancies.

"I don't know, Damon." said Noah, stepping in front of me now, rather than keeping back. The older man, though, kept his distance, unsure of me.

"Why did you want to see my eyes?" I asked.

They all looked at me like I was foreign, speaking a language they didn't understand. "She speaks English." said Damon, snarky like the girl.

Noah ignored my question.

"I was kidnapped some time ago, knocked out and put into that box. I don't even know where I am let alone what you mean by wanting to look at my eyes-"

"Silent!" Noah said, snapping at me again. "I will answer questions when I have decided what we're doing with you." Ah, he was the leader. I would have pegged the old guy as the leader, not Noah.

But, my mind was stupid. "I will not be silent." I said, mocking his voice. "Answer me."

Noah looked at me intently and turned away. "Put her in a room, boarded up. Lily, watch the door. Damon, Lucas, come with me."

I was a prisoner then. Lily brought me up the stairs and Noah disappeared with the two men I had barely met. They were probably deciding how to kill me or whether or not to let me go back home.

"You really are wearing some odd clothes." Lily said, herself dressed in a tight black outfit I would have seen in a spy movie.

I looked down at myself. I was wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and converse. To me, that was normal. "How come you wear that but Noah is wearing rags?" I wondered to Lily as she opened up a door to a plain room that held a mattress and a dresser.

"Disguise, duh. Get in, Noah will kill me if I don't do as he told me." Lily shoved my arm and shut the door.

Then, I didn't know what to do. I heard a piece of wood slid against the door as if I was in the dark ages. The window was nailed shut with bars on the outside of it, keeping from being able to do anything to escape. What was with these people? First I'm kidnapped . . . then kidnapped again? These people were even worse, living in the middle of what looked like nowhere, and overgrown and abandoned town.

I sat on the mattress. There wasn't much I could do, my hands were tied behind my back. I just wanted to go home, after all I had been through not hours ago I deserved that much.

It took hours – though – me sitting on the uncomfortable mattress. The board slid across the front of the door and in opened automatically. Damon was standing with a knife in his hand.

He bent and cut the rope, as I hoped that's why he was there with a sharp object. I gave him a slight smile and he did the same. Damon, I liked. He was friendly, even if he seemd kind of smug about it all.

"Noah doesn't like you talking back to him like that. Took me a while to get him just to think about letting you stay." Damon said.

"Thank you." I said back, Damon expected that much from my mouth.

Damon's eyes glowed, they were green like emeralds, like Noah's. They must be related. "Don't do it again. He's just a likely to slap you as kick you out onto the streets. Trust me . . . you don't want either of those."

I looked at him like a lost puppy, not knowing what he meant and knowing what he meant all at once. "Why wouldn't I want to be out there?"

It was then that Damon sat next to me. "You know, the box Noah found you in was covered in vines. It was dirty and old looking. Are you sure you weren't locked in there for days? Maybe longer?"

How would that be possible?

"I mean, it wasn't like it was dropped there. You show up wearing these old age clothes in the middle of a forest, an overgrown neighborhood."

What? "What?"

Damon sighed. "We're going to bring the box back here and exmine it."

"What do you mean old age clothes?"

He seemed surprised that's what I was worried about. "Don't get me wrong, love the vintage look, but you're in brand new clothes that are supposed to be about three centuries old. No one wears this stuff and when they do it looks like what Noah was wearing earlier."

Three centuries?

"I got these last year . . ." my voice trailed.

"The only clothes like this we have are all torn and old and stained. You're either a really good collector or Estranged." Damon pinched the fabric of my white shirt and snapped at it, letting it snap back to my skin.

We were silent for a minute as I thought. "What year is it?"

"Twenty-three fifteen."

It sounded like a military time to me rather than the year. "No, I got these clothes last year. Last year was Twenty-twelve."

Damon's eyes widened. "What?"

"Please tell me you're joking, Damon. It can't be Twenty-three fifteen. It just doesn't make any sense. I was out for five minutes, just five minutes!"

"Calm down! Breathe." Damon put his hands on my shoulders and pressed down.

My heart raced. It couldn't have been three centuries. It was only five minutes. This was a bad dream, a horrible one. My mind was tricking me. If I pinched myself I'd wake up.

I did just that and pinched myself. "Ow."

"What?"

"Nothing. This is real." My tone was stone cold.

My family. My friends. School. Teachers. Pets. Neighbors. Everyone. They were all gone. All that could be left were ancestors, if even that. There may be nothing. How was I here, though? Why wasn't I dead?

Maybe I was dead. Maybe this was all just part of my processing, part of getting to heaven. It was a test of some sorts. Had to be.

"Isabel, look at me." Damon said.

His voice was smooth, soothing. "Yes?"

"You need to get some rest."

"No. I need to be up. Resting will make me dwell to much. I need to do something. I need to know what exactly is going on with me. I should be dead." My voice was going on without me, my mind taking it over completely.

There was a shadow at the door and Damon and I both looked up. Noah was standing. He hadn't shaved, but he was wearing better clothes. Black, just like Damon's and Lily's. He looked muscular, lean, in his clothes and much less like a member of Survivor.

His eyes were stone cold, like my voice, and green. They didn't glow, they darkened. "You will rest. Damon, take her to my room. She will sleep more comfortably in there."

Damon nodded to his likely brother and helped me up. For a moment Noah blocked the door, looking at me and being hesitant to let me out of the boarded room.

"I wont go anywhere." I said with despair. "I have nowhere to go, anyway." Noah moved then and I followed Damon down a long hallway that didn't seem to end for me or my mind.