The dirt road made the car ride much bumpier than it needed to be. The girl lay on the seat opposite of Miriel under the influence of a sleeping drug but was being watched over by the man in the black suit. She looked out the window and watched the hills go by as the driver took them to the drop off point. This was her least favorite part.

No one spoke the entire ride. The man in black had taken care of the girl’s family, telling them that she had turned dangerous and that she’d be taken in and taken care of. Families hardly protested. They wanted what was best for their child and were often times afraid of the abilities they possessed. It was hard to wrap your mind around something that seemed so unnatural. One second, the person who was your world, whom you loved with all your heart, was exactly as you knew them to be and the next they were spitting fire or growing wings and the world around them shattered as the impossible became displayed before them. Shock is a nasty thing and Miriel knew it first hand.

When Miriel had been around eleven she found her power. She had woken one day in the trailer she had shared with her father. The man worked in a factory and had a drinking problem but that wasn’t the worst of it. He was also incredibly lonely. He was raising Miriel by himself, with little knowledge on how a girl worked. Her mother had left before Miriel could remember things, leaving her father to try his hardest to bring up a child he didn’t necessarily want. That morning, she had come out for breakfast after one of her father’s binge nights. He woke up from his place on the couch, groggy and still drunk. Taking one look at her he rose to his feet and started talking in a weird way that made Miriel uncomfortable. It was all fine until he nearly assaulted her and the facade dropped.

His eyes nearly bugged out of his head when he saw his child before him and not the apparition of a tall woman with red hair, wearing a tight black dress. Miriel continued on with her day but found that people began to look at her weird. She could feel a clicking in her mind, as if her mind were a remote with buttons. The clicking happened and something came over the person she was looking at. Eventually her best friend at the time told Miriel that she had entered the classroom as a famous wrestler and then turned into herself. That night the girl decided to run. There wasn’t any one thing that set it off, but if she was turning into people and didn’t know it, there was no need to subject anyone else to it.

She packed her bags and left in the darkest part of the night, while her father drank himself into sleep with the television still on. Miriel had walked to a bus stop and waited for morning. As people began to wait for a bus with her, she pushed the image of an old woman into their minds and it seemed to work. No one paid her any attention and she was ushered onto the vehicle with the rest of them, she even got a seat in the front.

Miriel had learned quickly the extent of her power. She found that she could cast a different image into a crowd of ten or less, making them each see her as a different person. Anymore than ten people and a single image was cast. She could be an animal, a person, a mythical beast, anything as long as it was alive. The girl had learned how to be deceptive early in her running away and that talent was a hard thing to shake. Miriel often times found herself casting an image into someone’s mind by accident, scared of them seeing who she truly was.

Looking at the man in black, Miriel realized she was doing that now. It was compulsory. She had been casting the image of a fit man in a similar black suit for no other reason than it wasn’t her image.

The car stopped on a the top of a hill and Miriel got out. A helicopter was waiting for them at the top of the hill and it would take them to an airport in Dublin where they would board a plane to the United States. Miriel had played a double agent in this conquest, appearing before the right people in the right guise, so that the organization she worked for could apprehend such a powerful Other. She looked at the girl, still unconscious, and felt a sadness in her heart. This isn’t what she wanted to be doing but what else was there.

A short, slim man jumped from the helicopter and jaunted towards them. His hands nearly reached the ground and his feet were three sizes too big for his body.

“Nice to see you Eustace.” Miriel said shaking the mans webbed hand.

“All the same to you Miriel.” Eustace said back, his voice gravelly as if he talked in a croak. “Is she settled?” the frog man asked the man in black.

With a swift nod, the man gently picked the girl up and placed her on a cot in the helicopter, placing a new IV into her and plugging the heart monitor back in.

“It’ll be a swift ride.” Eustace said walking to the helicopter himself. “I’ll have her there in no time. You coming with?” He said over his shoulder, realizing that Miriel wasn’t behind him.

She stood in one place, ringing her hands. For whatever reason, this one girl was causing her to have second thoughts. There was no way she could take out the man in black but maybe she could run. Maybe the organization would lose her in the crowd if she ran fast enough and casted at all times, never letting down her guard. The idea came and went as Miriel nodded and took the first step to the helicopter.

The trio put on their headsets and were in the air, propelling towards the airport. All was quiet in the little machine. Eustace talked only to the control tower and Miriel had nothing to say. When they landed, the man took the girl from the helicopter, cot and all, and pushed her to a waiting airplane. The plane looked more like a cargo place than as if it were made for people. There were seats along the walls, with open space in the middle. Miriel looked around the plane to the other Others that were along for the ride. There were members of the organization on board, along with children and adults who held special power.

A boy with branches growing out of his head looked at Miriel with tears in his eyes. She could see branches that had been broken off and splintered, presumably to fit him into a car. The woman looked at the boy and tried to give a reassuring smile but it felt forced. All around the plane people were restrained in some way or the other. A woman had a blindfold on, a girl had a gag, a boy’s hands were bound together in thick bandages, all around her, Miriel saw her people being captured in the name of keeping them safe. This wasn’t what safety looked like. This way of treating people like herself as inmates, making sure to stifle who they were, was not freedom.

The plane took off with Miriel sitting silently, staring at the floor. She didn’t cast, she didn’t talk, she barely slept, but an idea had inched its way to the front of her mind. Maybe she could do some good. Maybe after years with the organization, she could put her talent to better use than capturing her kind.

The plane landed eight hours later at a private hangar. The door opened and passengers were escorted out. Miriel undid the boy with branches on his head and helped him from the vehicle. She stood in the sun and breathed in new air. Things were about to change.