Chapter 1
October 1st, 1989 Elmwood, OK
Maisy Devault was just finishing her shift at Leechwood Diner before her boyfriend Chuck Harland came to pick her up for their date.
It had started like any other day in Elmwood, the same customers, the same jokes, the same smell of syrup, bacon, and crummy diner coffee that clung to her hair and clothing.
But today was different for one important reason. When Maisy started her shift, she was not pregnant. When she ended it, she had a healthy baby girl.
Needless to say, Chuck was a little surprised when he came to see Maisy that afternoon. He immediately proposed marriage, since that was the "right" thing to do.
They named their daughter Rain. The little girl cooed happily at her parents, who, though thoroughly unprepared for her arrival, loved her immediately.
So much so, that when a strange man showed up at their door and offered them money for her, they immediately shut the door in his face, unwilling to hear what sum he would have parted with in order to procure her.
Life was quite good, in the beginning.
Maisy's parents were disappointed that their daughter had gotten pregnant out of wedlock, but since it wasn't uncommon, they tried to help the young couple whenever they could.
But the happiness couldn't last. Resentment set in early, a combination of distrust and hard times.
Maisy had continued working, much to Chuck's surprise, and Chuck had taken over for his father as a repairman.
He lost his job the day that Rain turned four. Things only got worse from there.
Chuck began drinking heavily, with Maisy's paychecks footing the bill. The first time Rain heard them fighting, she hid under her bed until her mother had come in, hours past her normal bedtime, to tuck her in.
After that, the fights became an everyday thing. Rain hid under her bed every time, waiting until her mother came to get her to tuck her in to bed.
One night, when Rain was five years old, she heard a scream that gave her the strength to run out from under the bed.
Her mother was cowering in the kitchen, shaking and crying, while her father stood above her mother holding a long knife.
Rain, without any sense of self preservation, threw herself between her mother and her father.
The knife had just begun to swing downward when the point of the knife stopped moving, and bounced back against an unknown force.
The rebound sent Chuck flying across the room, into the wall on the other side of the kitchen. He had been knocked unconscious by the throw.
Maisy, for all her crying, merely stared in horror at her daughter. Somehow, the girl had put up some sort of barrier to prevent Chuck from hurting her.
It's wasn't long before the men in suits showed up. The police had been baffled by the report, unable to process how a small girl could have stopped a full grown man from injuring both herself and her mother. Naturally, this sort of phenomenon would not have gone unnoticed.
By that point, Maisy was too terrified of what her daughter was capable of to argue with the flash of badges and the government seal.
That was the day that Rain Harland died. It was also the day that Subject 8 was born.
Number Eight, as she was affectionately known, soon grew infamous in the compound. Her abilities only strengthened as she aged, along with the addition of genetic alteration, which solidified her position as one of the most powerful of all the children who lived there.
Of course, her status as the most powerful only grew as more and more of the children lost their lives to the harsh conditions they were subjected to.
It was after the death of a particularly close friend that Eight decided that she'd had enough.
While the night watch took place, she carefully bent the metal bars that surrounded her window. After she had squeezed through the bars and made it outside her cell, she camouflaged herself and quickly made her way to the gate.
Through a stroke of luck, a visitor was arriving at the compound. She snuck through the gate without anyone noticing and began running as soon as she was far enough away.
By the time the guards discovered she was missing, she was long gone. She had nothing to her name except the ugly gray uniform that everyone had been required to wear and a few supplies.
Rain was no simpleton. She'd been planning her escape for years, and had preyed upon the sympathy of her guards, who had snuck in books for her to read, and had given her a flashlight to use when the lights were turned off.
She had carefully stockpiled water and bits of food, knowing that she would need them for the journey ahead.
She had a few strokes of luck along her way.
A tour bus happened to be filling up at a gas station she'd come across, and she snuck on while the passengers had gone to use the restroom. They were two states away before the bus driver realized she'd stowed away.
While on the bus, she happened to find a small envelope of money that had fallen in between the seat and the floor. She held onto it fiercely, knowing that she'd need it to survive.
She bought a change of clothes, a box of hair dye, and colored contacts. Knowing that her money would eventually run out, she picked up a job at a local diner.
One night, as she was cleaning up after a large family, she saw a comic book that had been left behind.
The cover was brightly colored and it had six young children striking various poses. She wrinkled her brow at the name: "The Umbrella Academy."
She'd heard whispers of the mother when she'd gone to fill the drinks at the table.
"Did your father give you this?"
"Daddy got this when he was a kid. Did you see them on tv too, mommy? He said they were special."
"They were freaks, Theo. Hand it over. Your father shouldn't be filling your head with such nonsense."
The boy had sulked for the remainder of the meal, despite Rain's best efforts to make faces at him until he smiled. He and his mother had left her a ketchup smear on the booth as a reward.
As soon as her shift was finished, Rain poured over the comic, trying to discern fact from fiction. The truth, it seemed, was stranger than either. Rain looked though old news footage and papers at her local library, trying to glean any information that she possibly could. The librarian, who had noticed her interests, suggested that she read a new novel that was causing a bit of a stir.
After finishing the novel, Rain knew what she needed to do. She needed to find this academy. She needed them, and from what she had read, they needed her, too.
It took Rain three years to save enough money to travel to the academy. When she finally saved enough, she packed her things and hopped on a Greyhound bound for her destination.
When she stepped out of her cab, she frowned slightly. The building didn't look nearly as vibrant and well-maintained as it had in years past. A gloomy sort of atmosphere surrounded her as she knocked on the front door.
She almost fell over in surprise when a chimpanzee opened the door and smiled at her. She opened her mouth to speak, but he held up a hand to silence her.
"I know who you are, Miss Harland. I even know why you're here. You're a little late. Sir Reginald is dead."
Her surprise at his being a talking chimpanzee now paled in comparison to his knowing both who she was and what she had come for.
"But I've come all this way."
"Why don't you come in and meet them?"
Without giving her a chance to protest, the chimp ushered her into the mansion, closing the door with a loud bang behind them.