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through the crowd of men huddled in the hallway.  The men spoke in low voices to one another as Mac carried me the length of the corridor, and down the stairs to a road car waiting in the parking lot.
    “How many are dead?” One man whispered to the shorter man standing next to him.
    “There have to be at least ten right there,” another proffered.
    “Did she do that?” the shorter man asked, in disbelief.
    “Impossible, she’s a child,” a heavily accented voice interjected.
    “Does she even have a weapon?”
    I could feel Mac’s body tense in response to the mutterings of the men.
    He placed me in the back seat of the waiting vehicle. I curled into a ball as he covered me with dry blankets.  My body and mind were numb, impervious to the rain and cold.  He tucked the red and black fabric under my chin.  I was vaguely aware that the material was itchy against my skin, but I didn’t move it away.
    I could hear the soft ping of the raindrops hitting the metal roof of the car, keeping perfect time with the tears leaking on to the soft leather seat and pooling underneath my cheek.  I tried to concentrate on the noise instead of the slideshow of my parents’ deaths playing on the inside of my eyelids.  I was convinced that the images, now seared into my conscious, would never fade.  The feelings I’d had in the closet were now gone, leaving me empty and hollow and tired – so tired.  I closed my swollen eyes and willed my own mind blank.
    I spent one month at the Medical facility located on the grounds of the McDonough School for the Talented.  Mac came to visit me every day.  He would keep up a constant, one-sided, conversation, never appearing bothered by my lack of response.  Every day the medics would draw my blood, hook me up to machines, and talk about my vital signs.  Sometimes they talked at me, sometimes they simply talked around me.
    One morning, Mac came into my room, instead of sitting in his usual chair in the corner he crouched down next to the side of my bed.  He made a point to lock my purple eyes with his own steely gray ones.
    “Natalia, I need to talk to you,” he said, in the most serious tone he’d ever used with me, “and I need you to listen very carefully.  The medics here say you are physically healthy, and that you can be released.”  When I did not comment, Mac plunged forward with what, I assumed, was a carefully thought-out speech.  “You have two choices.  I found an uncle – your father’s brother, I think – in Italy, who said he is willing to have you live with him and his family.”  He hesitated before giving me my second option, but I didn’t need to hear him say it; I read the one word plain as day out of his mind.  Before he could open his mouth to formulate the words, I said my first word in an entire month, “Revenge.”
    During one of his daily visits Mac had explained to me Toxic’s theory of what happened the night my parents were murdered.  They believed that the president of the Coalition, Ian Crane, had ordered the deaths of my family in retaliation for my father’s scientific contributions to the study of Talents and what caused our abilities.  Mac said our family wasn’t the only one the Coalition had targeted, but it was the first time they had left a survivor.
    That day I left Medical and went to live with Danbury “Mac” McDonough, his wife Gretchen, and their twelve year old son.  I had no personal items, so I followed Mac, empty handed, up the long stone path to a sprawling ranch-style house.  Before we reached the bright red front door, it opened, and inside stood a tall woman with pretty blonde hair and big brown eyes.  Standing next to her was a boy; he looked to be slightly older than I was, and already as tall as his mother.  He had shaggy blonde hair and big pale blue eyes. He smiled at me and, for the first time since my parents’ death, I smiled back.
    “Natalia, I would like you to meet my wife, Gretchen, and my