A/N: I planned to have this updated much earlier, but my direction of this chapter changed midway through.
To DDaughterofAthena: Thank you! Your review made me want to continue on with this storyline which I wasn't entirely sure about to begin with.
Thank you to Kawkawrawr and Retr1bution for Following, and thank you to DDaughterofAthena and mylifeisogre for Favoriting!
Also, thank you to Grace842 and Thunderfang447 for Following and Favoriting!
I hope you guys enjoy the chapter!
DISCLAIMER: I. Don't. Own. PJO.
Silence was what her life contained.
Hours upon hours, sitting upon the metal floors of her cell while she attempted to distract herself from the frigid temperature. She sat there alone, gazing at anything that could hold her attention.
There was no one to talk to.
And she rarely spoke.
A majority of the days went by in a flash, not having anything specific about them to remember. She would usually put her ear to the wall, wondering if anyone could begin to speak of something that would hold her interest.
She got food a majority of the days. Prison food, stale and unclean. She attempted to make the most of the situation, believing that maybe she could gain the access to a better quality of a meal someday.
But the Exiled never got the sort.
She only left the cell twice a month. The first was for tests to be ran upon her, where she would wear a metal sign for what seemed like a mugshot, the words now etched into her brain:
Subject 10-2-15.
She loathed those numbers. They took her identity away from her, made her feel as if she were something less than human.
She never voiced it aloud, but her name was Piper. Piper Elizabeth McLean, and no one, not even Olympus, could take that away from her.
The only other time she escaped the clutches of isolation was when they ran a check upon her. It was for her chip, the tracker that kept her as one of them.
She knew that society would never welcome her back. That she was exiled, no matter where she would go.
All because of some lousy experiments that gave her an ability she never even asked for.
It was then that she began to hear the footsteps.
Startled, she stumbled back just a few steps, until she heard the voices. They were muffled with the wall separation, but she placed her ear to the cell, where she began to eavesdrop.
A man's voice was the first to have been heard: "How's your shift been going?"
Another voice joined him; a woman's. She groaned, and said, "What do you think?"
"Huh," the man said as if he was in thought. "I suppose that it isn't going very well."
"Tell me about it," the woman said, rather exasperatedly. "I've been stuck with the Level Twos. The Six-Twos. And one of them's lost it. I think she's number 55."
"What's she been doing?" The man asked.
"She's been screaming for the past fifteen days. She just won't stop. I tried to tell her supervisor that we should just let her go and be done with it. But she just won't budge."
The man sighed. "The girl you're talking about is not the only one. Underwood and Grace One—"
The woman shushed him, "Quiet! Say their damn numbers, or else you're going to get yourself fired. Saying that around these parts—I thought you had more sense than that!"
"Fine. 63 and 12 have been screaming, too. The girl makes it subtle. She gets through moments where she can't stop screaming and then she's eerily quiet the next. The boy on the other hand has always been paranoid, so he's probably gone ahead and snapped."
The two were quiet for the next few moments; Piper couldn't tell what they were thinking. She wasn't telepathic, so how was she supposed to know?
The footsteps sounded away to an unknown location, so Piper removed her ear from the wall. She stared at it, attempting to contemplate what had been said between the two employees. People were screaming? About what? Had they lost it for good?
Or maybe it was only an act. Maybe they were doing it to make people scared of them? Maybe to make them not seem as if they were threats. The possibilities were infinite.
The next few hours were spent as they always had been; staring, eating the stale bread, and looking up at the closed-in structure. She wondered for what felt like the millionth time whether or not she should just attempt to break open the wall above and be done with it.
Gods dammit! All she wanted was to live a life as any normal person was, to be a dove floating amongst the trees, not being stuck in a cell with only isolation to talk to! Away from the thoughts, away from everything!
She wanted the tracker out. She wanted to speak, to let her voice be heard.
But, from what it seemed now, that wasn't going to happen.
She remembered when the scientists told her to rarely speak, or else her voice would be entirely destroyed. It was as if she had a death-trap in her throat, which she might has well had.
She didn't want to make people do what she wanted. She didn't want it.
Any of it.
She heard the clock ring for curfew, and curled up under the lone bench in the room. Dust and bugs likely covered the vicinity, but she didn't care. It wasn't like her hygiene mattered here.
And so she closed her eyes with this in thought.
Oklahoma, 2064.
The rain outside never seemed to subside.
It pattered amongst the windows; the sound could have been considered annoying, only it wasn't. It provided her with a sense of peace that even her father couldn't give her.
It was one of the few moments where he wasn't on the phone, and Piper was grateful for that. He never put it down, and the nine-year old was starting to get annoyed.
When she wanted something, he just smiled and said that he'd do it, but he never did.
If she wanted to spend time with him, he'd say he would but got another business call last minute.
"It's work," he said, hoping she'd understand. And she did. Somewhat.
Piper just wanted things to go back to the way they had before.
She just wanted him to pay attention to her.
And he did when she stole.
It was never really a problem when she did such a thing. It was only little things, stuff that didn't matter in the end. An eraser. A pencil. Who would really care for such a thing in, say, fifty years?
Exactly. They wouldn't.
It all began that evening, the fire crackling, her father humming a tune that she only vaguely recognized. She stared out the window at the rain, the drops temporarily lingering on it before they slid down to the earthen ground.
She thought it was beautiful.
Other girls her age talked about pretty clothes and hairstyles. Piper didn't think about things like that, preferring her brown hair to be short and choppy, easy to handle. But others preferred luscious curls, hair longer to their waist.
Not all of them thought like this, but the others just. . . Weren't the type of people that she liked to talk to.
Piper preferred environmental beauty, the rain. The earth. The sky. Other people believed that it was just about her culture, and, while yes, that did play a part, it didn't completely define her.
These thoughts were abruptly brought to an end when she heard two knocks on the wooden door. The second was louder than the first, as if it were there to make the presence of the knocker clearer.
Her father looked up at it, got up, and said, "I'll answer it."
And so he did.
The door opened, and Piper saw two men wearing suits and black glasses. One was much more darker-skinned than the other, while the other had skin paler than moonlight. Piper wondered why they were there, considering the fact that they certainly did not look like her father's agents.
The very man was startled by their appearance, but he quickly recomposed himself. "Come in!" He said in such a welcoming tone that Piper just wanted to facepalm.
Whatever happened to the Stranger-Danger rule?
The two men entered in unison, staring at her with such an intensity that it felt like Piper was the reason they were there.
"Sir, we'd like to ask about your daughter." The darker of the two men said to her father.
Her dad put up his hands and said, "If you'd excuse me, but what are your names? I'm Tristan, and over there is my nine-year old, Piper."
The pale man spoke next, "My name is Timothy. His is Johnson." He held up a card. "We're agents for Olympus."
Her dad's eyes narrowed, "Olympus?"
"Yes," Johnson stated. "Now, may we ask about your daughter?"
Her father thought about it for a moment, and then answered with: "Of course! What do you want to know?"
"Yes, well, what is her Academic performance like?"
"Well, she sometimes steals things," Dad said. Great, she thought, let these two strangers know I'm a thief. "But they're not major, at least not yet. She pays attention, and she gets fairly good grades."
Timothy spoke this time. "Is she obedient?"
"Aside from the thievery, yes." Dad stated, and Piper sensed that he was suspicious. He really should have been much earlier, but she supposed that maybe he had just momentarily let his guard down.
Johnson pulled out a scanner, and Timothy brought out another sort of device; both had a multitude of buttons and switches to press or pull. "Sir, we'd like to know if it's okay to scan your daughter?" Timothy asked.
"Er, yes." Dad said, his eyes shifting to each of the two men.
Johnson held up a scanner towards her, and said, "Stand up!"
Piper cautiously did as she was told, and stood up straighter than a ruler. She felt her skin tingling as the scanner shined on her vertically; up and down, straight and center. It wasn't painful, it was just. . . Strange.
Eventually, the scanner dimmed, and Johnson looked at it. Timothy did as well, both looking at it. Johnson said, "She's the one."
Piper didn't know what to think of that.
Neither did her father, "Excuse me?"
Johnson put the scanner back into his pocket, while Timothy stated, "Sir, from the tests we have run upon your daughter, she seems to have a very high Potential. We're going to take her—"
"You're going to take me away?" Piper spoke up for the first time, her kaleidoscope eyes glaring at the man with fury.
Johnson smirked, "Yes, and you're not coming back for a long, long time."
Dad stood straighter, and spoke coldly. "Now wait just a moment. There is no way in hell that I am going to let you take my daughter without any more words. You are going to explain to me right now what Potential means and what you are doing."
"She's an Exiled," Johnson stated, his voice just speaking the blunt truth.
Piper didn't exactly know what that meant, but her father snarled, "Get out of here!"
Timothy smiled into a grin that seemed entirely maniacal, and Piper knew right then and there that these men weren't going to stop, "Gladly!"
Johnson raised up a machine and flipped the switch, and Piper was suddenly filled with a desire to do things. She felt a switch go into her hands, and her finger moved to press the button. She tried to resist, but her hand wouldn't budge, instead listening to whatever machine that she was holding between her brown fingers.
She raised it up to her father, and pressed the button.
Electricity came.
She didn't know how that was possible, but then she realized that the window had been opened, lightning striking freely amongst the sky. A part of it was fueling the switch, letting the lightning through.
Her father howled, his body twitching from the amount of electricity. He was resisting as much as he possibly could, but Piper's hand touched the button.
Again.
And again.
And again.
"I'm sorry!" She choked back a sob, clearly not wanting this to happen. Her father must have thought of this as if it was betrayal.
She wanted to stop. She wanted for none of this to have ever happened and to have just gone back to the good old days of stealing pencils.
Not torture.
Eventually, she stopped pressing. She fell to her knees, and saw that her father had been knocked out by the amount of electricity.
"He's not dead," Johnson snapped in a tone that was anything but reassuring.
Timothy grinned, "Oh, what d'you think we're gonna do with her? She's Exiled all right."
"Probably we should just make her finish the job," Johnson said. "Get rid of everything she still has left. Like we did with that boy and the fire last year."
"Yeah, we need to give the rest of Olympus a show—"
"Shut up," Piper whispered, and the rage just came back again, firing through her as if she were a bomb. "Shut up! Shut. UP!"
The men didn't speak for a few moments, before Johnson said, "She's Dite's, all right. Think of what that voice could accomplish."
"Lots of things," Timothy replied, before grinning wildly. "Hell, we could have the whole government under our hands with it!"
"But what should we do about the father?" Johnson asked, his eyes narrowed at Piper's dad's unmoving body.
Timothy shrugged, "Eh. Let's just lock him up somewhere. Wouldn't be as fun if we used the same method two times within two years. We'll punish him somehow. Maybe he'll be good blackmail material."
Johnson went over to her father and slung him across his shoulder, before he began to move towards the door. He opened it, walking outside.
Piper glared and kicked as she was dragged out by Timothy, who she definitely despised alongside his partner. She howled and pleaded for someone to help, anyone to answer.
But no one did.
And so the owl calls continued throughout the night, and it was not until morning until someone finally noticed that no one remained in the McLean home.
Papers were written.
Tabloids were read.
Lies were absorbed.
The gossip of what happened spread like wildfire.
None could believe what had occurred.
None could understand that maybe a nine-year old Exiled wasn't the cause of it.
They didn't know what had happened that night.
A girl was locked up.
She was tested upon.
She faced horrors that most nine-year olds could never even fathom.
So that Monday after the incident, Miss Fairlore's class had officially lost a member for good.
The girl with the kaleidoscope eyes.
A/N: Read and Review! Criticism is always welcome!