Enter Maia! This story is finished, and is already crossposted to AO3 if you are too impatient!

"Every last one, route one, rural heart's got a story to tell

Every grandma, in-law, ex-girlfriend maybe knows it just a little too well
Whether you're late for church or you're stuck in jail
Hey, word's gonna get around
Everybody dies famous in a small town."

(Famous In a Small Town- Miranda Lambert)

"Where are you taking me?" Maia screamed, jerking her arms in her captors grips to no avail. She'd never been exceptionally strong, and they were obviously military men. There'd been rumors of a military base outside of town, but she hadn't believed them. Valleyview, Alberta was the last place a military base should have been near. The ice skating rinks of her youth were far from her mind, however. Her mind was on their minds. And their minds were centered on one word: mutant.

For as long as Maia could remember, she'd heard the thoughts of others. First her mother, then her father, then her brothers, then her sister, and then the mental voices of everyone else near her had trickled in. When she had been very young, she'd read the mind of a friend without realizing it, and the other girl had ostracized her almost instantly. After that, Maia had come to the conclusion that no one else needed to know that she could hear their every passing though. Honestly, she could usually ignore the mental ramblings of other people, and had done so most of her life with no issues. No one besides that girl in her childhood had ever accused her of being anything other than perfectly normal. All those years of being careful, of not making eye contact unless absolutely necessary, of being normal, were over in an instant.

She'd been stupid. So, so stupid.

She'd been at prom, in a pretty green dress that flattered her pale red hair, which had been curled and twisted up elaborately by her mother, and she was on the arm of a boy she half-way cared about. Everything had been perfect. Until thoughts that weren't her own came crashing down on her against the barriers she'd established. That usually never happened, not unless she'd made eye contact with the person before, and their thoughts were directed at her, like her mother thinking about calling her children to dinner.

The thoughts she heard outside the auditorium though, were loud and clear. A boy, one she'd never paid much attention to, but had made eye contact with in the second grade, was set on running his truck through the wooden doors of the auditorium with the express purpose of harming as many people as possible. Forgetting herself, Maia had screamed, begged people to move, begged them to save themselves. They'd stopped and stared at her for a moment. In the end, however, they had ignored her, and gone back to making out and drinking spiked punch.

The boy she'd never paid attention to, the one no one had ever paid attention to, had slammed his truck into the auditorium, right into the crowd.

At last count, five of her peers were dead.

How many more of the injured would pass, she would probably never know. Within two hours of the crash, a man in a uniform had herded Maia away from her parents, and before she realized what was going on, he had sedated her.

When she woke up, she'd been stripped and dressed in a grey tank top and loose sweatpants, and was being carried down a hallway by military men, their hands gripping her arms painfully.

She was a mutant. As soon as the news reports had started using the word, she'd know it applied to her too. She had exposed her ability in an effort to save others, and now she was in a military facility being dragged somewhere. It had to be a nightmare.

Then they realized she was awake, "Weapon X is gonna be real happy to see you. Hasn't eaten in a while, and you look pretty enough to eat, even out of that dress."

They were going to feed her to something. Fabulous. Eager to learn more, to better prepare herself for her impending death, she looked up at both of them, catching their eyes for a second, just long enough. That told her a lot more about her nightmare.

It wasn't a nightmare. In her dreams and nightmares, she could never read the minds of others, but she knew these mens' thoughts: One was internally begrudging having to touch her, afraid that her mutated DNA would somehow rub off on him. The other was gleeful both externally and internally about how she was about to get what she deserved for being a mutant.

Vague thoughts of shredded bodies passed through their minds. The pissy one even recalled vomiting over some hunk of meat that had been pulled from Weapon X's room.

Maia heard their voices in her head, like they were speaking in her ear, the crude one was thinking, "Maybe if there's anything left of this bitch, I'll take a turn with her."

Maia did her best to kick him in the crotch as punishment for those thoughts, but ultimately failed. He squeezed her arm hard for that, "Cut that out, you little bitch."

"Quit calling me that!" Maia growled, jerking again.

"Shut up and take it. You might live longer that way!" His tone was mocking, but the thoughts in his head confirmed she wouldn't live long. Whatever they were taking her towards, it was bad, really bad.

They opened a large metal door and threw her in, slamming it shut behind her as she fell face first onto the cold concrete floor.

At first, nothing happened. Maia didn't move, too afraid to draw any more attention to herself. Whatever was in the room hadn't seemed to notice her yet, because she heard nothing with her ears or with her mind. After several minutes, Maia pulled her arms in, tucking them under herself and coming to her knees, ignoring the sharp sting as her bruised legs pressed against the floor.

A few more minutes passed. Or so Maia assumed.

It was hard to tell how much time really had passed, the room was pitch black, and very cold, the only sounds coming from behind her. Fear of whatever they'd been certain was going to eat her ebbed in favor of fear of the temperature and the bare skin of her arms and feet. The solution to both fears seemed to be to pull herself into as tight a ball as possible and hope her thick curtain of red hair hid as much of her as possible.

The relative silence was broken suddenly by the shrill sound of metal on metal, like a door opening, but not the one behind her. Something stepped into the room in front of her, and Maia prepared herself to die.