A/N: In this Elle Bishop is a mutant. Basically all Heroes characters are going to be described as mutants (rather than having "Specials" and "Mutants", as they're sort of the same thing, ability wise, or at least in this story anway.

Any constructive criticism, or nice reviews, or anything like that is very much welcomed. Any questions, feel free to ask in the reviews and I will answer as best I can in the next chapter. This is my first fanfiction, just to warn you in case it's dreadful. Hope you like it *fingers crossed*.

Disclaimer: X-Men First Class, Heroes, nor anything else in this fan fiction that you recognise, belongs to me. I own nothing. All rights belong to Marvel/ Tim Kring.

Prologue

Elle POV

I had been planning my escape for years.

I would spend hours daydreaming about what freedom would feel like, taste like, smell like; once I had finally found it. Some little girls wished for tiaras and teddy bears, but me? I wished for freedom.

My childhood was an unpleasant one; nightmarish memories of nameless scientists shooting thousands of electrical volts through my system, my father and Trask making notes in the background. Cold hands squirting me with water as they forced me to use my mutation, causing me to be electrocuted. And the pain, oh the pain- excruciating and never-ending.

The images flash cruelly behind my eyes as I run for my life, my tired legs pumping to and fro and try to propel myself faster, finally escaping my past.

It was my father that gave me to the scientists that worked for Trask to be experimented on. That day, when I had screamed for my daddy to make them stop and he just stood by, unwavering and unconcerned…that day will always burn in my mind.

I hate them all so much. The pure hatred and rage that roars in my soul is so intense it's almost tangible. Sometimes all I want more than anything is the vengeance I deserve- but then I have to remind myself that I want to find my freedom even more.

I was six years old when they first took my innocence away, when they robbed me of my childhood. Now here I am, twenty years old, and I've missed so much. Never had a friend or a first kiss, never seen a movie or experienced real love. The last person to truly love me was my mother and she died when I was four. Sucks to be me, huh?

Or at least it did. But now I'm on my way, I'm escaping.

For months I've been waiting for this: I stopped taking the drugs they gave me, which they trusted me to give myself as before I'd been a reasonable prisoner, well sort of, if you excuse the occasional face-scratch or biting of a scientist, that is. So I stockpiled them, keeping them in a sock under my mattress.

Then, when the time was right and I had enough pills for my plan to work, I crushed them up into a fine dust, which I then put back into the sock and put the sock in the front-pocket of my pinafore.

Whilst being escorted back to my cell by a guard, I used my mutation to shock the guard escorting me and then whilst he cried out conveniently "tripped" over in the direction of the guard's table that was near my cell knocking a pile of papers onto the floor and setting them alight with a light spark of electricity.

I plucked a key-card off the countertop and spilt the sock, which I had taken from my pocket beforehand, so that the drugs were tipped into the coffee mug of the guard sat there, who had been distracted by the imminent chaos unfolding before him.

Having regained their senses, my escort had then rather roughly dragged me back into my cell and locked me in there with his own key-card.

When nightfall fell, I used the key-card to open the door, checked that the guard was knocked out, possibly dead from an overdose but hey-ho, at his desk, and then did a runner. It was easier than I thought it would be, surprisingly.

All those years of tormenting that I had been put through and escape was really that easy? What a cruel feeling of irony that was.

Of course, I have no money, no map, no spare clothes, no food. I have no idea where I'm going and I've been running for miles and hours, judging on the lightness of the sky. But anything is better than that hellhole.

Anything.