Laura approaches me with the needle and I tremble, but Kitty keeps her hand on my shoulder throughout the whole process, squeezing tighter as I wince in pain, feeling the needle pierce my skin. I can feel the anaesthetic as it's forced from the tube, and we wait for a couple of minutes until my arm goes limp, having lost all feeling in my shoulder. I'm taken into the room off to the side, where Laura and Kitty both don sturdy looking aprons and help me onto what looks like a bench, laying me down on my front. Laura positions my arm and moves what looks like a camera over my back. They tell me to stay still and retreat to another room, and there are a few flashes before they come back in and help me sit up. I'm taken back out to the operating table by Kitty, while Laura collects the results. When she returns, she's frowning slightly, and I have a bad feeling about what she's found.

"You've got a small crack in your scapula, but it's a simple operation," she says. "You'll be up and about within a few days. It'll hurt to begin with, but there's enough painkiller around here to fix that, too, even if I have to do this again."

"You mean the anaesthetic?" I ask. She nods, and my stomach flips nervously. "When are you going to do the surgery?"

"Kitty, are you free now? I need someone to help me with this, and Hank is away-"

"And since you're training me, I'm the next best option," she says with a quick, knowing smile. "Sure, let me just run upstairs and work something out with someone; I'm meant to be helping Logan with one of his classes, but I'm pretty sure Pete's free."

"Be as quick as you can; I want to do this fairly quickly to avoid any more damage."

"I'll run then," she replies over her shoulder, already leaving the room.

Laura and I wait in relative silence for a couple of minutes until she suddenly breaks it, letting out an angry huff of breath.

"Dammit, Darcy, what did I tell you when you left?" she cries out of the blue.

"I couldn't help it!" I protest, nearly yelling in frustration. "It wasn't like I had any choice. How was I supposed to know she was going to hurt me like that? I didn't want this to happen either!" I'm nearly in tears by the time I finish my sentence, the stress of the last hour or so finally catching up to me.

"Darcy, I'm sorry," Laura says, sitting on the table next to me, her hand rubbing gentle circles on my back. "I'm just so worried about you, and I hate to see you getting hurt like this."

I gently rub my eyes with my good hand, trying to wipe away the tears. "I didn't mean to yell, you know. It just sort of… came out."

"I know you didn't." She taps her temple with her other hand. "Telepath, remember?"

"Oh, yeah," I say sheepishly. "I forgot about that."

"I don't think anyone would forget about yours," she says with a cheeky grin.

By the time Kitty comes back, we're both laughing, and she smiles at the scene that greets her. She shuts the door behind her and puts up a sign before pulling a white coat from a hook on the back of the door and putting it on. Laura stands up from the table and pulls on another pair of latex gloves, tossing a pair to Kitty, too. She then rummages in a small cardboard box and produces two pale green surgeons' masks. She slips one over her head and passes the other to Kitty, who does the same. They help me lie down on the operating table, inserting various needles into my arm and placing small round things that look like suction cups around my chest and head. I don't know what they do, but then Kitty flicks a switch on one of the machines around the table and it hums to life. Once it turns on, it beeps methodically, a green line tracing along the screen, jumping up in time with the beeping. After a minute I realise that it's tracking my heart rate.

"Darcy, we're just going to do a quick operation on your shoulder to fix it up." She holds up the X-ray they took of my shoulder earlier. She points to a part of it, and I can see a small crack in one of the bones. "That's your scapula there-"

"Your shoulder blade," Kitty says, interrupting Laura mid-sentence. Laura looks at her, raising her eyebrow at her. Kitty just shrugs. "What? It's not like she's going to know what you mean."

"Anyway, that's your shoulder blade, and that's what we're going to fix," she says, pointing at the crack. "We just need to knock you out and try and essentially glue it back together. You'll be awake in an hour, tops, and you'll be in a sling for a week at the most, depending on how much you rest it. There will be a dressing on it as well while the stitches dissolve, and there may be a small scar there once it's healed."

"What if the anaesthetic doesn't work? Will you know?"

She points to one of the other machines, showing me the screen. I follow the cords until they reach my head.

"This shows us your brain activity. It's fairly high now, but it'll drop right down while you're under. It'll tell us if you start to wake up, or if the anaesthetic doesn't work properly. You have no reason to worry. You're in safe hands. I've done this before."

"I'm not here to actually operate," Kitty points out quickly. "I'm just here to pass her whatever she needs as quickly as possible."

I nod slowly. "Alright then. So when are we going to do this?"

"If you're ready," Laura says, "we can do it now."

"Let's just get it over and done with."

"Good. I just need to place this over your nose and mouth, and this will knock you out during the surgery, so you won't remember a thing."

Laura carefully places the mask over my head, and I take a breath of whatever's being fed into it. I feel dizzy from the first breath, my vision already going hazy around the edges. Their voices are muffled and I can't hear what they're saying. My eyelids slide shut, and all the light escapes me.

I wake with a dull shock, my vision still clouded, and I can feel my arm, but not my shoulder, and I can't move it. I struggle, trying to figure out what has me trapped, until a warm hand pushes firmly but gently on my chest. I don't resist, but turn my head to look at whoever is beside me, wincing as I hear and feel my neck crack.

"Don't hurt yourself," a muffled voice says. I can see a vague figure sitting next to my head on a seat beside the bench. As my vision improves, I can just make out Kitty. "How're you doing, kid?"

I slowly nod my head, a smile forming on my lips. "Better. What's with my arm?"

She reaches out towards my face and carefully removes the mask, hanging it from the elastic on a hook on the other side of my head.

"There's a sling on it, and it's strapped behind your back as well so you can't move it at all. You've been given another shot of anaesthetic so you can't feel it now, but when we get you into a proper bed we'll prop you up with pillows so you don't roll on it accidentally."

Now I notice that I'm still on the operating table. "When can I get into a proper bed?"

She grins at me. "How about now?"

"What are you two talking about?" Laura asks, striding into the room.

"Getting Darcy back into a real bed," Kitty says. "She's right now, isn't she?"

"Yeah, she should be fine now. Do you want to do it? Storm's got me running some tests on a virus they found."

"Sure, I can do that," Kitty says, standing up. "Does she need to change?"

"That'd probably be best," Laura says. "Do you know where the clothes are?"

Kitty nods. "Of course I do."

"Get to it then," Laura says, and I can see a smile playing on her lips, like she's trying to hide it, but can't help showing a little.

Kitty pulls back the sheets and I swing my legs over the side, stepping down but stumbling as my legs take all my weight. Kitty catches me as I fall and I gasp, but relax when I see the gloves on her hands.

"Good to see you're not taking your chances with me," I say with a wry smile.

"I trust you," she says, letting me stand on my own.

"But I don't trust myself," I say softly, looking down at the floor.

"Hey," Kitty says, and I look up at her. "You have to trust yourself. That's the only way you're gonna survive in this world."

She leads me over to the bed and reaches into a cupboard, pulling out a white outfit. She pulls a partition over and sits the clothes on the bed. She carefully undoes the sling and I keep my arm as still as I can while she slowly pulls the gown over my head. She gasps and I hear her step back, and I can only assume she's found the scar on my back. It's jagged and fairly long, and from where I got attacked by a Rottweiler a couple of years ago.

"Don't worry about it," I mumble. "Just a dog."

"Did it hurt?"

"Not too much, I was high, so I couldn't really feel anything. I didn't even know how bad it was until one of my mates took a picture and showed me. Then they took me to hospital and my parents flipped out when they found out that I'd been smoking weed."

"You smoked weed?" she asks incredulously. "How old were you?"

"Thirteen," I say passively.

"How did you even get your hands on any?" she asks suspiciously.

"I had friends," I reply defensively. She raises an eyebrow and I sigh. "I said had, didn't I?"

"Why'd you do it?"

"Family shit. I needed something to get away from it all. That's part of the reason I ran away. The other part was the fact that my father tried to shoot me after what happened with Grace."

She nods understandingly, but she looks shocked. "How did you get out?"

"I jumped through my second-storey bedroom window into a rose bush while avoiding the bullets from my father's shotgun and ignoring my mother's screaming."

"At you, or…" she manages to mumble, but trails off, leaving it to me to finish.

"No, not at me, just in general; screaming for me to stay, my father to stop shooting, and for Gracie to come back to life. I'd already left before that happened, really. I never spent much time there before it happened, and I'd just kind of drifted away from there, you know?"

"You loved Grace, didn't you?"

I nod, tears welling up in my eyes. "I wanted to kill myself for what I'd done to her. She was the only person I loved, and who loved me." Tears are slowly, silently, slipping down my cheeks, but I don't sob, or make a noise. I simply wipe them away with my hand, and Kitty doesn't comment on it. She just finishes dressing me in the white racer back tank top and thin, loose, white trackpants. She helps me pull on my long black gloves and puts the sling back on, and I can see now that it's black, with a little padding to keep it comfortable while it sits snugly against my body.

"Don't worry about it," Kitty says, sensing my concern over the sling. "It's just so you don't move your shoulder blade, and it's only for a week at the most."

"It feels weird. Is it really necessary?"

"Yes. The less you move your arm, the less you move your shoulder blade. It's not too badly broken, but we want you to be better real soon."

"I'm not going to be down here the whole time, am I?"

Kitty laughs softly. "No, you can still sleep in your regular room, we just need to keep you here until probably after lunch, then you can re-join your classes and sleep in your own bed. Morgan should be down soon, and she'll bring some clothes with her for you."

"Are you sure she'll do that?" I ask as she lifts me onto the bed.

"I asked her to," she replies as she props me up with pillows and lays a blanket over me. "She listens to me, and she wasn't aiming to hurt you like that."

"Yeah, but still…" I trail off, knowing that I can't really argue against her.

"She's a good person," Kitty insists. "She just has her own way of showing it sometimes."

"I'll take your word for it," I mumble.

"There we go," she says, gently ruffling my hair. "You want anything before I go? A book or something? We've got tonnes."

"The Fault in Our Stars?" I say after a moment, thinking of one of my favourite books.

"There's a copy of that around here somewhere," she says. "I think Laura was reading it this morning. I'll try and track it down for you."

"Thanks," I say, managing a small smile.

"No problem. I'll be back in a minute, so just wait here."

"Well it's not like I can go anywhere, now is it?"

Kitty laughs, her eyes dancing, and leaves the room in search of the book. She returns a couple of minutes later with the book in her hand, which she places on the bedside table before she perches herself on the edge of the bed. I glance up at the clock and see that it's a little after 11.

"You happy here?" Kitty asks after a couple of minutes.

"Yeah, it seems like a pretty good place for people like us," I say. "If we went anywhere else, then…"

"Then we'd probably be killed," she says quietly, finishing my sentence for me. "It's heavy shit being one of us, but we're tough; we can handle it."

"I'm not. That's why I ran away. I'm too scared to face what I am."

She gently puts her gloved hand under my chin and lifts my head until I'm looking her in the eye. "You're not weak. You're young. You just don't have the experience that we do. That comes with time."

We sit in silence for a few minutes until I decide to ask her something.

"Kitty, why is it that Morgan listens to you more than anyone else?"

Kitty stiffens slightly, but answers my question anyway. "She's my sister. Not biologically," she adds quickly, "but my foster sister. She'd had a pretty rough time at home, and my parents were listed as foster carers, and they said they'd take her in. She was only about 9 at the time, so she was old enough to understand what was going on, and she was very angry about it. She wouldn't talk to my parents, and a lot of the time she'd shut herself in her room because nobody understood her, to put it in her words. After the first few times I spoke to her through the door, and after a couple of hours she let me in. We talked all night, and she cried on my shoulder, and she trusted me. A few months after that, I had to leave and come here. It killed her that I had to do that, but I visited her a few years later and explained everything to her. She was still angry with me, and upset that I had to go, but she knew why. A few years after that, I found a message on my phone from her, and she was in tears, saying that she needed my help and she didn't know what to do. I went home and found her door locked, so I climbed in through the window. When I got in, I saw her, slumped in the corner with a knife in her hand. I thought she was trying to kill herself, but then she showed me what had happened."

"How did she do that?" I ask, leaning forward a little.

"She went to stab herself in the leg, but nothing happened. She got me to cover her nose and mouth, too, and I held it for four or five minutes before I let go. I brought her back here with me, and she's been here ever since."

"How old was she?"

"She was only twelve. She's fifteen now, but that makes it more dangerous if she gets angry. She's bigger, older and stronger. But she won't hurt you; I told her not to. This was just an accident; she never meant to hurt you."

"You said that before," I point out.

"I know I did. I just want you to know that that's what happened. I'll leave you to read in peace. Morgan should be down soon, and you can probably leave with her." She ruffles my hair again and leaves, and I start to read my book.

A little bit of normality amongst all of this craziness.